Coming Up Tomorrow On The Dickenbock Report: Mermaid Day

(image found here)

March 29 is Mermaid Day. Dick Dickenbock thinks mermaids are real. He claims to have dated one in college. But he's probably thinking about the mermaid Superman dated in college. Anyway, he's excited there's a Mermaid Day. He hopes she might be listening. He's been pining for her.

We hope you'll listen to. Tomorrow, Sunday, from noon to 1pm, on 91.1+107.1fm in Portland, xray dot fm everywhere.

Everywhere? Even under the sea? Dick Dickenbock sure hopes so!

This Week In Self Help: March 20 22 + 24

This is what the past seven days (not counting today) looked like if you looked at me on the radio:

March 20 on The Songcircle on KBOO, I celebrated Women's History Month with lots of women making history - all new releases by women artists! You can listen to the show on the KBOO website.

March 22 on The Dickenbock Report on XRAY, I reported on Daffodil Day. You can listen to the show on the XRAY website.

March 24 on Self Help Radio on KBOO, I explored the theme embers. You can listen to the show on the KBOO website. Or you can listen to the show on the Self Help Radio website.

March 24 on Corporate Standardized Programming on KBOO, I played a lot of new releases. You can listen to the show on the KBOO website (after Self Help Radio). Or you can listen to the show on the Self Help Radio website.

The picture above is a sunset I took in Kentucky in 2014. But it kinda looks like embers, doesn't it? If you squint, maybe? Maybe?

Self Help Radio 032426: Embers

Because I was "on vacation" last week - I followed my wife to a conference & bummed around while she did work - I knew I'd have no guests for this week's show. So there are no guests on this week's Self Help Radio. In this way, the show resembles Self Help Radio as it existed pre-2014: just me talking about the theme in-between the songs.

Of course then as now the songs are the important part of the show. So listen for the songs, but stay if you must to hear whether the theme is in the bible or to hear me read a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem.

Where can you listen? At the KBOO website, & at the Self Help Radio website. What happens on the show is listed below.

Hopefully I can relight the program next week!

Self Help Radio Embers Show

"Burning Embers" Lou Reed _The Raven_

"Ember" Alastair Galbraith _Mirrorwork_

"Embers" Skinny Lister _A Matter Of Life & Love_

introduction & definitions

"Dying Embers" The Dream Syndicate _Out Of The Grey_

"City Of Embers" Mercyland _Mercyland_

"Burning Embers" The Manhattan Love Suicides _More Heat! More Panic!_

"Embers" The Orielles _Only You Left_

"Ashes & Embers" The Casket Girls _True Love Kills The Fairy Tale_

more about embers

"Embers Glow" Jane Fielding with The Kenny Drew Quintet _Embers Glow_

"Dying Ember" Sarah Jarosz _Polaroid Lovers_

"Embers" Lily & Madeleine _Nite Swim_

"Ember Age" Sound Of Ceres _Nostalgia For Infinity_

"Garden Of Embers" Karavan Sarai _Torn In Love_

is the theme in the bible?

"Staring At The Embers" Tim Finn _Escapade_

"Ember Days" The Proctors _Everlasting Light_

"Embers" The Orange Peels _Begin The Begone_

"Embers" Tunng _Turbines_

"Ember" Lubec _PDX Pop Now! 2017_

poetry!

"Ember In The Ash" Blank Range _Marooned With The Treasure_

"The Embers" Vagabon _Infinite Worlds_

"Blue Embers" The Head & The Heart _Aperture_

"Ember Days" The Lemon Twigs _A Dream Is All We Know_

"Head Embers" Thundertree _Thundertree_

conclusion & goodbye

"Ember" Dirty Three _Cinder_

"English Embers" Contrastate _Recorded Evidence II_

"The Re-Entry Of Embers" Venusian Motel Guests _All Was Carbon_

Whither Embers?

(image found here)

Fire is kinda weird, isn't it? I remember just staring at it as a kid, thinking, this shit is weird. & it was unsafe - it burned you! But it was everywhere! People would use it to light their cigarettes. We didn't have a gas stove but if you turned the elements on on the electric stove & just touched a piece of paper to one of them, wow! the paper would catch fire.

& yes, I too had a fling with fire when I was a kid. I would steal matches & take things to burn & hide behind the bushes of a nearby church & set them on fire. There was space between the bushes & the brick walls of the church. It was very private. I can't remember all I burned but I did ruin a couple of my Star Wars action figures. I never wanted the fire to get too big - I liked the feeling of control - so I never wanted to expand my actions to larger venues. Like most other things, I wasn't very good at pyromania. & it passed soon enough - though I never got caught, I thought my mother would be very mad at me if I was caught burning things near a church.

This happened sometime around my ninth, tenth, or eleventh year. It's a testimony to how often I was left alone - & what I might have been able to get up to if I'd had a more destructive imagination. As it stood, some flammable things went missing, along with a lighter & some matches, & no one knew I had done it. Not even my little brother, who was often hanging around in my childhood. Again, it never developed into an obsession & once I was satisfied I had reached the limits of what I could set on fire in my little world, I never spent much time burning things after that. I think I knew if I invited other people shit could get out of control!

This story of my dull childhood must suffice for today's post because I have no idea why I chose the theme "embers" for this week's show. I knew I'd be doing a show after a week of vacation & I knew I wouldn't have time for interviews, so maybe I thought I couldn't find "experts" to talk about embers. I couldn't say. What I could say is that I had a brief fling with a moderate pyromania at a young age & I must have felt some mild satisfaction as the fires burned down to their embers.

Hey! Self Help Radio has the theme "embers"! Tonight on KBOO! 90.7fm in town kboo dot fm everywhere! Be careful! It's still hot!

Preface To Embers: My Computer Tells Me

That photo was taken in March, 2019, on our visit to Portland to look for somewhere to live once we knew my wife had gotten the job here. Tonight - almost exactly seven years later - I was looking for images of "embers" to share & maybe write something dumb about them - since they're this week's theme - & my computer gave me this picture when I searched the term.

Which confused me. Does the weird hood of that weird car look like embers? Is there some fire damage or something in the photo? What the hell does that picture have to do with embers? Then I noticed:

The old car's owners supported Oregon Public Broadcasting. I guess the computer confused "member" for "ember."

Oh damn it just occurred to me, I had so much fun trying to figure out why the computer thought the image had anything to do with embers that I forgot you might have enjoyed it, too. A kind of Where's Waldo? sort of thing. But I ruined it. Dang.

It has become impressive tho hasn't it that our computers find words in our images? I am almost as impressed as I am frightened!