Whither SIlver Linings?

Someone asked me the other day - someone who previously didn't know I did a radio show - they actually asked me how I decide what themes to cover. I used to tell people I get them in my dreams, but if that were true all my radio shows would be about my dead animals or being naked in weird places. I didn't want to sound mystical or anything but I said a lot of the time I let the universe suggest themes to me. Luckily this person was just making small talk & didn't actually care about my radio show so I didn't have to talk about it any further.

Sadly for you, that's part of the point of this blog & you should be thankful! I could write me about the dreams where I am naked in places where there's no real reason for me to be naked. This happens so often in dreams these days that I'm not even embarrassed much anymore. I just wonder where my clothes have gone.

When I say "let the universe suggest themes," it usually means that I notice something - like lots of songs with the same title. Which is what happened for "silver linings." I noticed a couple of songs with the name & wondered if there were enough to do an entire show. That's how it happened. Why that's the theme tonight.

Pretty unsatisfying, I'm sure. Like having the same dumb dream over & over. I remember when I would find myself flying in dreams! That was more fun.

Anyway - every Self Help Radio episode has a silver lining, & tonight it's all silver linings. Listen from midnight to 2pm on 90.7fm in Portland & online everywhere at kboo dot fm.

(Sorry I didn't have any pictures of clouds with silver linings.)

Five Thousand

This is the five thousandth post on this blog. I used to make a bigger deal about post numbers until I discovered that I was counting them incorrectly. Also, the blogger site counts them anyway, & I hadn't noticed that. Anyway, it was a dumb way to fill space & terribly uninteresting so I stopped doing it. But post number five thousand seemed too much of a milestone to pass up.

It was way back in September - the 12th actually - of 2006 when I decided to start this blog. Self Help Radio had been on the air for almost four years. The radio station on which it aired, KOOP in Austin, had managed to stabilize after some unhappinesses, & I felt like I'd be doing the show there for some time to come.

When I started the show, I had a girlfriend in grad school. Right after the show left the Austin airwaves, I got married to a newly minted doctor of philosophy who would be taking a job - & me, & the show - to West Virginia. I kept doing the blog because why not?

Blogger gives me stats about the blog so I know it's never had a large readership. I am lucky if I get to the high two digits in terms of "views." Some time ago (I can't say when) I bemoaned the fact that I was forgetting the blog so I determined to write in it at least five times a week. By far the most "popular" (if you want to call it that) posts have been the eulogies I have written for my pets. But that's more because I also post them on social media & my friends come to read them - not because those readers are listeners of my shows.

In fact, I have no idea who listens to my shows & why. I get very little feedback from anyone - very few calls, texts, or blog comments - which may have bothered me at one time but surely doesn't now. Why should it? I am doing something I truly love & would do it if I were the last person in the world. Well, maybe not then. Maybe if I were among the last seventeen people on Earth. Just to have sometime to do in between fighting the mutants & the mole people. In any event, radio is the most fun I have ever had & at some point I knew I'd do it even if no one were listening. Which might be the case

According to the "date calculator" at Time&DateDotCom, there have been 7,245 days between the beginning of this blog & today. Almost twenty years, as can easily be figured out (2006 to 2026). But also:

625,968,000 seconds

10,432,800 minutes

173,880 hours

7245 days

1035 weeks

My ability to do math in my head is shitty but I see the number 5,000 & the total of weeks (1035) & I assume that means I average around five posts a week. Which is how I have been & will continue to do it. Except this week. I added an extra day because - five thousand posts!

Finally - you might ask - are any of those old posts worth reading? Probably not. A lot of them are me being nonsensical. A handful are me trying to be creative. Way too many are me trying to be funny & instead being extremely unfunny. The ones about the animals I lost I do revisit & they make me cry. But I am glad I wrote them because I loved those creatures so & love them still. I wish I wrote better so I could've given them a grander send-off, but they thought I talked too much as it was.

One thing is certain, I don't think I'll still be doing Self Help Radio in twenty years. I can't be sure I'll even be around in twenty years. So we will mostly probably (at my current rate of blog entries) never see a ten thousandth blog post. But according to Just Delete Me, it is "impossible" to delete one's Blogger account. So this dumb blog will survive me. For better or worse.

Happy random mostly unearned achievement day to Self Help Radio's blog!

Preface To Silver Linings: The Most Popular Silver Linings Song Of All

(image from here)

According to the Wikipedia, the song - written by Jerome Kern (music) & B.G. DeSylva (lyrics), was first in an "unsuccessful musical," but was published in 1920, & reused in the musical Sally, made popular by Marilynn Miller, whose image is on the sheet music above.

According to Secondhand Songs, there are at least 248 covers of it, with the earliest recording appearing to be by Marion Miller in 1921. The website has versions of it that run from that date to 2025. It does not appear to lost its charm.

With 248 versions, it would be entirely possible for me to do an entire show of versions of this song. I won't do that, tho. Every time I hear it, I think of that "Look For The Union Label" song, & I think I prefer that one.

But I will play one version of the song on the "silver linings" show.