Appy Hanniversary

Six year doing this. & still with only one pair of pants.

That doesn't mean I have only spent six years in radio - I been doing this since 1994, when I was either 6 years old, or 60 years old, depending on what will get me more respect. (There is no in-between. Sorry.) (I learned that from William Shatner. Sorry.) It just means six long years of Self Help Radio.

Wait. Is it six? What if it's actually seven? What if it's actually five?

I'm terrible at anniversaries, of course, so the Broken Show is an update - a remake, if you will - of the Broken Show which aired originally October 23, 2002. On a Wednesday. In the afternoon. With a haze in the air that made me think of Pasadena slightly melting.

Pasadena melting? That happens all the time! The sixth anniversary of this Self Help Radio show will only happen once, if I can help it. Visit the SHR website tomorrow in the afternoon to hear this show. You can bring all the booze you want. You'll need it!

Six years old! Now I have to find a good school for my young show. Why did I home-school pre-school? I don't want this show in public schools!

The Blooz

Hey! I was listening to the radio yesterday morning & my former high school Hall Monitor chum & current Secretary of State of the Imaginary Anarchistic Republic Of The Moon, Dick Dickenbock, was subbing for KVRX's show Blues At Sunrise! So I've asked him if I can archive it on the Self Help Radio site, & after trying to convince him that I did in fact know him & was not working for a "Mr. Bookie" looking for cash, he said, "Whatever."

Thusly! I recorded it & saved it anyway, so if you'd like to listen to Mr. Dickenbock explore the "roots of Texas blues," you can listen to the show over at selfhelpradio.net. If it doesn't give you the blues, I don't know what will.

Thanks, Dick! Can I have my lunch money back now?

Whither A Broken Anniversary?

Lo, there comes contradiction & coincidence, confluence & consternation, as Self Help Radio proudly beams from its mountaintop aerie, & says unto all true believers, & also to those who are untrue, for truly shall they be in earshot, the one, the only Self Help Radio doth proclaim, "Yea & it is given unto us all a sixth anniversary show!"

"Tell us, o radio show," cries the listeners, "what shall we do to celebrate a radio show which, if it were a human, would still not be able to read & might also wetteth thy thou radio show bed?"

Self Help Radio begins to answer.

"Also," says the listeners, "as radio shows go, it is truly spake that Self Help Radio was either breast-fed too long or perhaps was weaned too early. As radio shows go, it is verily mentally & intellectually retarded."

"Enough!" cried the haughty anniversary-having Self Help Radio. "Be it decreed with great speed like a weed gone to seed in the greed of the deed: we shall celebrate our anniversary by revisiting an old theme, especially one that we can do better the second time around. So mote it be, so shall it be done!"

A clap of thunder! A claptrap of thunder! People wearing necklaces to hide their disfigured necks! Camera phones taking weird photos of animals doing things they ought not! A puff of smoke, a weeping willow running out of kleenex!

& lo in October 2008, the sixth anniversary wast thereby performed, & the revisited theme was revisited & reviews were as always mixed & yea, the children of the children of the children who first turned away from Self Help Radio said unto the gathered townsfolk, "What shall we burn tonight?"

& Self Help Radio saw it, & saw that it was good.

Preface To The Broken Anniversary Show: Happy 500th Self Help Radio Blog Post!

You got it! 500 posts & I'm still not out of words! Take that, my third grade elementary school teacher who thought I was stupid for stapling my pants to the bicker rug!

I want to celebrate this ridiculously arbitrary moment by offering you something. You can claim it by doing the following: send an email to this email address (dickenbock at gmail dot com) with an address to which you'd like me to send you stuff. What will I send you?

I will send you the Self Help Radio Self Help Love Yourself Self Pack! It will include (probably) a Self Help Radio tee-shirt, a Self Help CD, some miracle sand I got in the Holy Land (or is that for my religious show?) & other stuff. Just send me an email that says "Happy Anniversary!" & that's it. It's my way of saying, "Just like my birthday, I have to buy other people stuff to celebrate my anniversary."

Yay 500th post! Yay anniversaries! Yay anything else you can think of!

Haunted By Fritos

Eep! As I sit in my office writing this, one of the students who works for me is eating Fritos, by which I mean the corn chips, & not the general line of snack products by Frito-Lay, which, I might add, is a Texas-based business, for which Texans show great gratitude to the corporation by being proudly morbidly obese.

The scent of Fritos takes my mind back to days of elementary school when other kids - not I, alas, as I was too poor to afford the twenty-five cent lunch at the time - got excited over "Frito Pie," which is basically chili poured over Fritos with melted cheese-like plastic on top. I've always wanted to make a vegetarian version, now that I think about it, but the memories of poor-kid envy of lower-middle-class luxury, coupled with the fact that I am currently identifying the smell as "greasy" - if that's possible - is kind of turning my stomach - like those weird christian dancers on the Soup the other day.

This is really apropos nothing at all, except to let you know I'm thinking of you & two important things:

1) Last week's episode of Self Help Radio is available for your listening pleasure. Click the link. What a show you'll hear!

2) Tomorrow is the legendary 500th entry of this blog. Visit & win! What will you win? I don't know! Because it won't be a contest! It'll be something else!

Bringing Brazilian Ideas Home

Get this: in Brazil, according to a Telegraph article, "politicians often adopt unusual names at election time. Candidates are allowed to either register in their own name or a chosen one. Many use their long-held nicknames but some adopt outlandish identities to grab attention." That's why there's at least six people running in municipal elections with the name "Barack Obama." But some of the other names are much, much better. To wit:

Cattle Ana, Elephant Without A Tail, Big Charlie Knives, Jorge Bushi (guaranteed to lose), DJ Saddam (playing music that you must dance to or die), John, Chico & Luis Bin Laden ( the likable members of the Bin Laden family), & my three favorites, who'd surely get my vote unless they were running against one another & then, unlike in the United States, I'd have a really hard time deciding whom to vote for: King of the Cuckolds, Kung Fu Fatty & The Second King of Prawns. (Okay, I'd vote for Kung Fu Fatty. But only if he'd make sure to appoint Hong Kong Phooey Secretary of Defense.)

In that spirit, I'd like to encourage the current US Presidential candidates to adopt nicknames for the polls. I'll help. For McCain, "Cranky McOldstein" would be appropriate, while for Obama, what about "Smarty McHopey-Hope"? The Vice-President candidates could be "Professor Squinty Hairplants" (Biden) & just plain "Unqualified" (you know who). I encourage you to write all the candidates to bring this delightful notion to the states. Heaven knows we could use a good laugh right about now.

& speaking of something that could use some humor injected in it, Self Help Radio is new tomorrow afternoon. Do visit & listen. It doesn't deserve a nickname. It's not running for anything.

The Self Help Radio Email Archive Project: Submission Two

This is one of my favorite ever emails written to someone I was vaguely interested in but who didn't want to flirt back. We actually stayed cordial, since she had something of a sense of humor, but this email seemed to end our email correspondence. It's called "Hortense Cauliflower - a novel" & it was written over twelve years ago.

How good to hear from your skanky self. I am as always madly in love with life & very happy. The tests came back negative, thank god - I really am going to have to start using protection, especially if he isn't going to. Wink wink. I have no plans & I am sadly out of whack. What will death be like? What will breasts be like? When one walks carefully down the Rue de la Huchette, one must (as always) keep an eye on the little ones. Oh love, how rare to hear your voice in this sticky dry lonely summer. I am as always madly in love with life & very happy. The girlfriend says hi. The boyfriend is sullen. Did I tell you I dreamt about having sex with you? We seemed to be having fun, but of course I was being needy & you were doing a "friend" a "favor." People pop in & out of life, but nothing sticks. I need more sticky stuff to stick nonstick stuff on my not-so-sticky wall. We still haven't found out where the leak comes from; perhaps the cat is sneakier than we originally gave him credit for. The bigger the car, the larger the load. Name one promise you've kept, just one, & I will buy you a bag of cookies. If you break the promise later, I will have to take the cookies back. I am as always madly in love with life & very happy. Have you seen "Trainspotting"? Wouldn't you rather drink a whole lot with me on my living room floor & even cry a little. How your make-up would run! And I'd try to catch it, of course, every little drop preciouser & preciouser. If only I were someone's type. I can be someone's type sixty words a minute. That's a word a second, slower than I normally talk. Shall we summer in the Chateau or winter in the golf cart? Ah lady, loveliness like yours can't be bought, it can't be cultivated, it can't even be dreamed about unless you're next to the dreamer... I wish I could, like e e cummings said, keep your heart in my heart, but mine, I fear, is too small, & getting smaller every day. I am as always madly in love with life & very happy. Remind me to tell you funny stories about natural selection. Make a plan, invite me along. Would it flatter you if I told you that I am in love with a woman who looks just like you? Have you heard the latest Scary Girlfriend Jokes? Do strangers approach you with flowers & mints? I will attempt to attempt you again, & again, & again. You were thought about in your absence, if not missed. What can you expect? I am often more self-absorbed than is legally required. I am as always madly in love with life & very happy. Ha ha ha!

Is there anything more to say here? My seduction skills sucked.

P.S. At the time, I didn't know there really was a Rue de la Huchette. I thought it was nonsense in my brain. But two years ago I had awesome falafel on the Rue de la Huchette. There were hardly any children there at all.

Whither What A Show!?

By this point in our walk together, there are three things which inevitably you can say about Self Help Radio, &, therefore, by extension, this video of a herding pig, which are these:

1) No one knows what's going on or what's any of it's supposed to mean.
2) No one knows why anyone would bother with this sort of thing week after week.
3) No one is paying attention anyway.

Frequently, in my travels & travails from bus stop to work, from bar to gutter, & from hospital room to jail cell, I encounter a special soul who wants to speak glowingly about this or that, who has no idea who I am (which is good, as I've just picked their pocket & later will puke on their shoes), but seems to "know something" about radio. Nothing they say that they appreciate about their favorite radio shows resembles or otherwise parallels Self Help Radio. & I take away this thought: Will I ever eat food prepared in a kitchen again, & not heated by the sun shining on a dumpster? Also, I think, does this mean Self Help Radio is a singular, original show, or that it's probably one of the worst ideas ever, painfully & senselessly undertaken by a deluded fool?

I can't answer that, as I am deluded fool notorious for my awful ideas. Here's one of them: a selection of songs based on the phrase "what a [insert noun]!" What a great idea! What a stupid idea! What? A regular Self Help Radio type show? What a maroon!

Preface To What A Show!: Detox Report

Look at this - I'm all sweaty, I've wet myself again, my eyes won't focus, I'm trembling, I can't keep food down, I can barely stand up - God damn it I'm addicted to something again! & I'm such a dumb fuck that I never remember what I'm addicted to until I start going through withdrawal.

Well. This is a fine how d'you do! Does this ever happen to you? Or are you a stronger person than I am? Fair enough. I'm a middle-aged man (although, of course, if I go on this way, I might be closer to the end of my life than the middle) & I really shouldn't be experimenting with drugs the way I do. & my friend's pharmaceuticals - I know they're not for me. I just can't help it. & I eat too much. & I'm with John McCain here - gambling's fucking addictive! But so much fun!

& you know, you turn around, something else is addictive - food, sex, self-mutilation, sadism, science fiction, pornography, the Catholic Church - so what the fuck? Am I supposed to live a removed, simple existence, or can I become addicted to solitude & contemplation as well? Wait. Can solitude & contemplation get you high? Big ups to my Buddhist homies!

Look, I've started puking bile & what looks like partially digested pennies. I must've had a crazy night. I'm not sure what it is I've become addicted to this time, but I'm sure off it now, because my body is rattling me like an epileptic in a bumper car. Whatever it is, though, I promise: I'll let you know.

Finding A Nice Home For Your Stray

Did your open heart cause your stray to want to stay? How do you close your heart? Will it involve Swedish Death Metal? Not at all, says experts at the Whimpering Plains Pet Asylum, located in beautiful Katemcy, Texas, somewhere in one of the scattered dwellings so lushly described in the Handbook of Texas Online. Says founder Andrew Cootsburgstein, "Why the hell would you want to say we're in Katemcy? No one's ever fucking heard of Katemcy!"

This fictional & oftentimes literally made-up Asylum can take whatever pet you throw at it, although pets being carried in must use the front door. Since Katemcy, Texas, is full of people who either haven't yet realized they're living in a hell-hole called Katemcy, Texas, or, worse yet, like it there, the Asylum plans to have the stray pets overtake the town in population a hundredfold. Cootsburgstein says, "Even if I wanted to have a place for unwanted strays to stay - which I think is a neat idea though I can't imagine there being a lot of money for it - it would make no sense to put it in an out-of-the-way village where even basic cable is a crazy dream." Adds Cootsburgstein, "I mean, come on!"

The Whimpering Plains Pet Asylum is a proud sponsor of Self Help Radio, & lets Self Help Radio staff come there to roll around with the happy animals, shares treats with them, & occasionally steps in the poo which is, frankly, ankle-deep in some places. Cootburgstein admits that the animals have not yet taken enough pride in the place to pick up after themselves: "I think I drove through Katemcy once, but I was changing CDs in the car at the time, so I looked down for half a second & missed it. Seriously, if you're going to make me head of some dumb-ass delusion, please put it somewhere significant, like Mason a few miles south. That's a motherfucking town!"

Self Help Radio dedicates last week's show featuring songs about being "too late" to the fine people who we wish existed to staff the place we wish existed at the Whimpering Plains Pet Asylum. We appreciate you!

The Gathering Storm

Hey! Did you know that I am a mere seven posts away from my 500th - yes, that's FIVE HUNDREDTH - post on this silly blog? I feel like I should do something special. & by something special, I don't mean a nostalgiac look back at previous anniversary posts. We can do that now:

from post 100 (March 7, 2007):

Welcome to the 100th post of my Self Help Radio blog! It's such a special occasion I've made this entire entry out of cheese. [...]

Hooray! 100 posts! Someone get me a cheese shredder & we can eat!

from post 200 (August 13, 2007):

So, let me formally apologize for this disappointing 200th post & let's move on to more or less the same sort of thing for the next one hundred. Oh boy! One hundred more posts! Who would've thought? Etc., etc.

from post 300 (January 9, 2008):

This is my THREE HUNDREDTH post on this blog. Has anyone (you know, beside James Joyce) ever used some many letters of the alphabet to say so little? Why can't academics use my blog to support their careers? It just seems sad.

from post 400 (the saddest one, May 26, 2008):

It's Memorial Day & this is also blog entry four hundred, & it certainly wasn't planned, but I am glad I have a place & time to honor Buster with some small remembrances.

I think I was so disappointed by the disappointment that was the disappointing two-hundredth post that I have downplayed the anniversary aspect since then. But no more! Let's celebrate!

So it'll probably happen week after next - what do you want to celebrate with? Shall I send you something in the mail? Do you want to have your picture taken with my dogs? Can I write you a poem or teach you braille? You must let me know. Let me know!

& of course it's not too late to plan to listen to Self Help Radio this weekend, the theme of which is "too late!" Tomorrow afternoon. Be there or be... too late!

The Self Help Radio Email Archive Project: Submission One

It's well known among those who know me well that I suffered (& therefore so did they) for a lot of my young adult life with a sort of depression. I was never diagnosed, & I worked through it in a way that I know many folks wouldn't be able to, but the depression & the recovery did lead me to alienate lots of sweet folks in ways that I regret now but, through the rosy lens of time, which tells me you can't go home again so why not laugh at the stumbling it took to get you away from there, I can wince & make fun of my past, & now, so can you!

Presenting the Self Help Radio Email Archive Project! Each week, if & when possible, I'll present an old email I wrote under unhappy circumstances for your edification & amusement. I'll not print any email I did not myself write, nor will I leave in the email any obvious reference to the person to whom I was writing, to respect their privacy, although I'm sure they've forgotten about me long, long ago.

Today's submission is full of ridiculous capital letters & was supposed to be funny. The person to whom I wrote never responded. The email was entitled "Mail Bomb." It was written over ten years ago.

I've spent the day looking at old emails I wrote you. You're so lucky I wrote such wonderful emails to you. I am a fabulous email writer. I think I will crown myself "King Cockhead" & never show my face around here again.

I'm just plain sweet, when I am not being King Cockhead. The girl what recently broked my heart told me I was "too sweet." Then she broked my heart. Just say la vie.

Yes! He's King Shit of Fuck Mountain! He's so right it makes your penis hurt, if you have a penis & it doesn't hurt already! Make him God! Make him God! Woo-hoo!

I talk very quietly, always have, in amazingly beautiful & seductive tones. My ears bleed when I scratch my ass. Anyway, I break glass here. I'm such a wonderful person, but I've got problems. & you'll never touch me.

The latest KVRX CD won the best CD Design award & of course I headed the team that designed it. Ta-da! I am KING SHIT! I am KING COCKHEAD! EVERYONE! FUCK ME UP THE ASS! NOW! NOW! NOW!

I get to make a speech, too. Tonight. With a naked girl on each arm. That's FORTY-THREE NAKED GIRLS! I am a sea cucumber!

Do they hold this at the Convention Center? Since when do women marry suits? Or date them for that matter? Did I tell you that my ears bleed whenever you sing? Preach on, Sister!

Enclosed please find a picture of a skinny girl in a tight white dress with her nipples erect. I like the picture because she looks like a mannequin & I like the road she's on. Wish I were there, wish I was there & nobody could find me.

I hope you have all the emails I wrote you. I am so fucking brilliant I am scared of my shorts. They will be worth mucho money when that diamond bullet finds its way into my head or heart. Save them! Save them now!

I love you, & always will, for I am a good KING COCKHEAD with a heart of GOLDEN CHEESE.

xoxox
gary

I have of course no idea why someone would not reply to such a beautiful email.

Whither Too Late?

Oh crap. It's too late in the day to write in my blog about this week's show, which is "too late." The show, if I were to do it now, would be too early, even if it were "too late." But I have stuff to do & frittered away time today with stuff like work & mining & now it's just too late to write anything. Drat!

Preface To Too Late!: A Brutal Ritual Is Born & Bred

Do you own a hazmat suit? I don't. But I do want one. Unfortunately, one hears two disheartening facts about hazmat suits that makes it very unlikely for me to ever get a hazmat suit (unless you get one for me):

1) They're apparently expensive - some may cost as much as four thousand dollars!
2) Some of them have to be disposed after use. Like a tuxedo!

By the way, I don't want one because I'm afraid of biological or chemical or nuclear attacks. I just want to have a hazmat suit. No one I know has one. So it would be neat to have friends over & say, "Hey! Have you seen my new hazmat suit?" They'd ooo & aaa & perhaps even try it on. What fun!

Of course, if there were a biological or chemical or nuclear attack while a friend was wearing my hazmat suit, then I'd be shit out of luck. So if I get a hazmat suit, you can't wear it for very long, & you certainly can't wear it outside.

What will I need? Something called a SCBA with a hanging mask. A cooling vest. A voice-actuated radio with a microphone in the mask. Protective gloves. A one-piece Tyvek suit. What's that? It's one of these. Disposable! What a waste. Also Tyvek booties.

That's just one layer! Listen to this: "The suit has a one way (exhaust) pressure bleed valve. This is required because as the wearer exhales, the used air must go somewhere. Even with this valve, the suits tend to blow up like balloons. When sealed up, the wearer is completely isolated from the outside atmosphere. Nothing (hopefully) can get in, and, unfortunately, almost nothing (including body heat and sweat) can get out. These suits are comprised of up to a dozen protective layers."

(That's from the Santa Clara County Fire Department website. Those guys get to wear hazmat suits at work!)

Doesn't it sound awesome? I'm not saying you should get me anything for National Day of the People's Republic of China (which is tomorrow), but if you're going to, there's an idea. A hazmat suit for Gary. Yippee!

Nevermind The Bedsores

In a mention at the last convention, the intention of the dissention of those who escaped detention was by extension brought to our attention. Like a benediction adapted from fiction delivered with sloppy diction, this removed all restrictions & caused friction tantamount to dereliction. The unruly faction sought to take action to gain a measure of satisfaction from the reaction of the abstraction, causing a distraction from their transaction. Such causation happened in gradation leading to the formation of a new foundation premised on the temptation of salvation for friends & relations currently on vacation. Denouncing it as absurd was what was preferred among those who concurred - even preferred - to dismiss the word that occurred as though it were slurred, unheard, conferred by a nerd.

All of this fol de rol would have easily been avoided if they had all come together as you & I have now & simply sat down with drink in hand & ears wide open & listened to last week's episode of Self Help Radio. Known the world over as the one true radio show, capable of moderating the fiercest of disagreements, possessing the finest of what is known as "good music," Self Help Radio is currently under study by conflict-resolution researchers the world over for its measured manners & soothing overtones.

& if that's not entirely (or at all) true, then at least it's fun. Go! Listen to Self Help Radio! Or I'll rhyme some more!

Late On Friday

Obligatory post to remind you Self Help Radio is new tomorrow afternoon-ish. A short about diaries. You can use this link as a little key to unlock it at Self Help Radio Dot Net. Not yet! Tomorrow around the afternoon time when I am napping & you want to steal my secrets. Or see what I really think of you. Or what you really think of me. That's right! I read your diary & copied the nasty things you said about me word-for-word in my diary! How you like them apples, appleton?!?

Have a nice weekend. Get some sleep. Have a few drinks. Listen to the show!

Scheduled Outage

They're going to turn off this blog before anything can be written in it. Whatever shall I do? Must I be pithy? Must I be succinct? How can I be asked to do things I have obviously never done before?

I'm going to try to see Morgen Spurlock tonight. I'm not a horror movie fan, but I can safely say that, of all the scary damn movies ever made, his documentary/death-defying experiment Super Size Me frightened me the most. I am not certain exactly why - I am a hard-drinking vegetarian who's bound to die earlier than most - but since I saw the film, I have not eaten fast food.

I must qualify. Yes, there have been two or three exceptions, probably at airports, but also once when I had to rescue my crazy girlfriend from her own death-defying experiment, which was: falling asleep in a car going seventy miles an hour on highway 10 forty miles from Van Horn, Texas. There was nothing to eat in Van Horn except fast food, as I got there late & the supermarket was closed.

But I won't eat fast food if there are other options. & anyway, reading Fast Food Nation (& not seeing the shitty Dickie Linklater film) was more than enough for me to avoid the value menu cartel.

I say above that I am going to try to see Morgen Spurlock because of this asinine practice that places like the University have of giving out a lot of free tickets & then letting the people who come early & stand in line get in. I only hope Spurlock isn't as cool as the last person I waited hours for, which was Richard Dawkins (the picture on the wikipedia page is from the very appearance I saw!), so there won't be a large crowd. I also hope Spurlock doesn't do what Dawkins did, which was bring an amateurish powerpoint presentation with which to embarrass us all.

What? I can't shoot the shit any more? With my Self Help Radio peeps? Why? You've scheduled an outage? Bastards! I'll see you in

Whither Diaries?

I've never had a diary per se - you know, a little book with a lock that says "My Diary" on it. Not because I thought it was gay or anything - which it is. But because I never had one. No one bought me one. I wouldn't have had the money to buy myself one - not when there were still new comics coming out, anyway.

I remember in the summer of my seventh grade/eighth grade year, I became aware that I could forget my entire life. (That was before, of course, I had a lot of stuff to regret.) So I started making "tape recording" diaries at the ends of tapes of nonsense I recorded, whether it was episodes of television shows (we didn't have a VCR & yes, I would listen to them as though I were watching a repeat) or stupid attempts to be funny that eerily presaged my own dumb attempts at humor on my radio show. (My favorite fake person was a badly-British-accented fellow whose name was Gary Gutslucker. I don't remember if I thought the word was supposed to be dirty or not.)

I have some of those tapes around somewhere - I didn't make more than two weeks' worth, & my life was BORING so they're not special in any way. But they did set a tone: instead of diaries that talked about stuff, I recounted things I did. I had miscalculated the fact that ideas change as experiences change, & that I might not recognize the people I was talking about - not to mention the places I felt I would always remember.

I took this up again some time during college, again making the monstrous error of not elaborating on my ideas, my ambitions, my feelings. Looking over one of these this past summer when I was getting rid of shit because I thought I was moving to another part of the world - "diary entries" which were scrawled in the margins of old notebooks full of class notes - I found deeply important comments like: "Saw Rose today. She said I should seek professional help." I couldn't for the life of me remember who the hell Rose is. Or was. I didn't read much more.

When I first went online & met folks online - 1994, was it? - I wrote lots of emails. Lots of fucking emails. I gathered a day's worth a year or so later & realized, wow hey! They function like a diary! They were more emotional, more confessional, & because I was writing to another person, I had to explain things like my ideas, my thoughts, why I believed what I believed, etc.

Like with the tapes, though, the task of compiling them was just dumb. Also, a hard drive wipe would have erased everything - though so far that hasn't happened. Maybe that's a good thing.

Without explaining a tryst with Usenet & the inevitable trailing off of internet-only friends, I have had less & less "diary-like" opportunities over the past decade, & have never really tried to keep anything like a diary since then. I have been able to talk somewhat about my life on the radio - though that usually gets to be BORING too - & I can still use the email collection as a kind of vague outline of my life's experiences, but the last, worst hope is probably this blog, which I write it every day of the week, usually, & which usually contains nearly nothing about my life. You know, except for days like today.

Which is perfect.

Preface To My Diary: Home Sick Is Not Homesick

It is not. When one is homesick, one is not "home." One can perhaps be in a temporary "home," which is to say a place where one is residing, such as a cabin in the woods if one is a forest ranger, or a military base if one is a soldier, or on a relative's pull-out sofa if one is an American who has just lost one's house because of greedy American bankers wanting as much money as humanly possible & given permission by a corrupt American government, or a small "plate" at the bottom edge of a diamond if one is a baseball player scoring a run for the game, but none of those "homes" are the same as the place were one either resides in a more permanent sense or is the place one considers that one belongs. "Homesickness" is the longing one feels for one's place of belonging, often more imagined than real, & it can be potent.

Being home sick, as I am today, actually means being in that place of belonging, but not in good physical or mental shape - ailing in some way, or temporarily brought low by a germ or virus or bad luck.

The difference, like a lot of things, is a matter of context. But it can create misunderstanding if context is not properly emphasized, for example, to a call to work. "I am home sick today." "Where are you?" "At home." "Why are you homesick, then? You're at home." "That's what I meant. I'm home sick." "For what?" "I'm not home sick for anything, I'm home sick because of something." "What are you homesick because of?" "My guess is something spoiled or otherwise stomach-affecting in last night's meal." "God, who would be homesick for something like that?" "Me." "You're crazy! You should see a doctor!" "If it continues, I will." "I don't mean a doctor for being homesick!" "But if I am home sick too long, surely I should see a doctor?" "Not a medical doctor! A psychologist or something!" "How could a psychologist help me if I have a stomach ache?" "Well, he couldn't, but he could help you if you've spent too long homesick." "You make no sense."

Et cetera. Much unintended comedic conversation until the ghosts of Abbot & Costello appear & beat the living crap out of the idiotic pair.

This is a public service announcement from Self Help Radio & a nauseous fellow wishing he could sleep all day.

Bail Me Out!

Seriously. If there's that much money lying around, who would miss a few thousand dollars put into the account of a sweet fellow who does a silly radio show that - I think I read this somewhere - "hurts no one & no one hurts it"? Call it "the Iraq way," & pretend I am one of the Halliburtons.

No? Well, fine. But I shall continue to do all the things I normally do, but with less money than if I had the government money they are now spending to buy us all an insurance company. Can I at least have some insurance? Do the owners get a discount?

No? All right, then I'm going to go start working on this week's exciting episode of Self Help Radio, which will feature excerpts from my diary because the show is about diaries. How exciting! Nothing like last week's ridiculous show about heartbeats, which I did while holding my breath. A mistake!

You want to listen to it anyway? You're sweet. Visit Self Help Radio to do so, then. I will be happy & also slightly embarrassed. You know. Like I always am.