Oops I'm running late!

Yeah, I'm a weasel. I've been too busy during my last weeks at work to steal time to write in this blog.

Wait. What? Last weeks at work?

Yes, it's true. I am leaving my job in two American weeks (compare them with other country's weeks - you'll see the difference) (spoiler alert: we work more) to leave the city of Austin behind & embark on a strange new journey - which will of course take Self Help Radio - to... where?

It's really quite underwhelming. I'm a little embarrassed about even trying to create some suspense about it. But I will. More information to come. Just rest assured that, for at least the month of June, Self Help Radio will continue to produce a radio show that virtually NO ONE will listen to, out of spite or out of ignorance, & then will take a break while the offices relocate.

This week? Knocking. How can you miss that? It's the one skill you have! The rest, well. You have to lie about them on your resume!

Whither Knocking?

A terrible dilemma is upon me. Oh wait. I might have used that word (dilemma) wrongly. Let me check the Economist's Guide To Common Solecisms:

This is not just any old awkwardness, it is one with horns, being, properly, a form of argument (the horned syllogism) in which you find yourself committed to accept one of two propositions each of which contradicts your original contention. Thus a dilemma offers the choice between two alternatives, each with equally nasty consequences.

Oh. Then it's not really a dilemma. The original contention, one supposes, is that I am doing a show about "knocking." See, I've been listening to all these songs all week about "knocking" &, well, as one might imagine, there are a WHOLE F-ING LOT OF THEM which are simply about the process of banging one's fist on a door, or moving the device on the door that makes a similar (though kinder to your fist) sound, to indicate that one is visiting someone else's home or place of business or building. So I was thinking, hey, maybe I should restrict the content of the show to that particular aspect of knocking & not the various other meanings, like being "knocked up," or the phrase "don't knock it." Neither of those alternative have nasty consequences, because, frankly, how can a bunch of songs on Self Help Radio be nasty?

Until I do a show about nastiness, that is.

I still haven't decided. But I know now it's not a dilemma. Just a sort of self-serving problem that I can wrestle with while drinking a little too much whiskey while listening to songs I've gather. Um. So. Never mind.

Preface To Knocking: There Are No Jokes About Knockers In This Blog Entry

I don't think I'll play any songs about "knockers" (if there are any) this week on the KNOCK show. I confess I haven't heard the term since I was a kid. Funnily enough, watching The Fall & Rise Of Reginald Perrin, a British sit-com from the 70s, last night, I did hear breasts referred to as "knockers." Crazy how these things happen.

The term "knockers" referring to breasts (some people say "women's breasts," but for the purposes of this discussion that seems redundant) is supposed to be fairly old though it became popular with army folk in the 40s. It was a "safe" euphemism for breasts for a while, coming into its own probably around the time of Laugh-In & dying out (more or less) by the beginning of the 80's. But no one really knows where it comes from.

One person on the www.phrases.org.uk message board added this: "A little site called LondonSlang.com asserts that the term orignates in London. It doesn't give any other explanation but it is listed along with the term 'knocking shop' for brothel. I'm not sure whether knocking shop is used here in the US, but it seems like it might be a clue to the phrase's origin." But I'm not at all convinced about that, though English speakers have used the word "knock" to mean "have sex," leading to a pregnant woman being "knocked up."

A "knocker" is properly one of two things: one who knocks, &/or a device on a door used to knock on it. Therefore one might imagine that calling a pair of breasts "knockers" would be related to this. On the same discussion list mentioned above, one shrewd poster pointed out that most doors only have a single knocker, so why would a pair of breasts be like a knocker? Someone suggested the motion of the knocker, but then the knocker isn't so much about its motion as it is about its sound, & most breasts I've had the experience to know are rather quiet. On the plus side, one correspondent pointed out that door knockers tend to be breast level - though I seem to remember them being more chin level - & I'm a fairly tall fellow.

I just don't know, & since the term is considered slang at best & vulgar at worst, most respectable etymologists won't bother with it. & the great Urban Dictionary doesn't care about word origins.

See? Not a single joke about knockers. Just information. That's the Self Help Radio way!

There Was An Accident This Weekend

Actually, several. All on Self Help Radio. Sucked into a musical maelstrom so you could live your weekend accident-free. Do listen. It'll make you safer.

Also, if you book your face on that face-the-book place, you can become a fan of Self Help Radio. I'll try to snazz the place up.

& May's Self Help Radio Extra? Ack, I'll work on it. Maybe have it by tomorrow. Promise!

Accident Waiting To Happen

This means two things:

1) The accident show is waiting to happen, & happen it will, accidentally on purpose tomorrow in the afternoon at selfhelpradio.net!

2) I resigned from my job today. I'll expand more later, not because you care, because I know you don't, but because it will affect Self Help Radio, which may have to take a few weeks off during the summer. More on that later.

Be careful, though - there'll be an accident tomorrow. But specifically on Self Help Radio. If it's not related to Self Help Radio, that accident is NOT MY FAULT!

The Darkness That Is Our 21st Century

There are apparently types of hugs between which teens differentiate. Word is that the youngsters hug all the time. Some people seem a little upset about it, mainly school administrators, who don't have enough to do while keeping an eye on all the teachers they don't let touch their students. Could it have come any sooner that someone would call it the lamest teen moral panic ever?

Remember when the choice was hugs or drugs (supposing, of course, the drug wasn't ecstasy, I guess)? Why are they upset now when it's obvious a lot of teens have made the choice they advocated (assuming, again, that it wasn't ecstasy they chose)? Or were the parents the only people who would get the hugs? Do you know how much better I would've turned out if I got physical affection from even my male friends in high school? My sweet lord.

Whither Accidents?

It's tempting to lie & say that the idea for this show is purely an accident. But it isn't. I've been wanting to collect songs about accidents because two of my favorite songs in the world are (ostensibly) about accidents.

"Accidents Will Happen" by Elvis Costello, & "Accident Waiting To Happen" by Billy Bragg.

Despite how utterly disappointing his career has been since around 1992 or 1993 (whenever Brutal Youth, his last great album, came out), Elvis Costello can still count me a trainspotting EC nerd. I recently put Imperial Bedroom on my iPod & listened to it all the way through on the way to work, probably the first time I've listened to the entire record in over a decade. "Accidents Will Happen" is the first song on Armed Forces, which many people feel is too polished & poppy, especially compared to the raw rocker This Year's Model, but, except for a couple of songs I don't care much for, the album has some of my favorite EC tunes. ("Two Little Hitlers," "Party Girl," "Moods For Moderns," well, okay, virtually everything except probably "Goon Squad" & the overplayed-as-"Alison" "Peace Love & Understanding" song.) But in addition to starting the record off with a song called "Accidents Will Happen," it's certainly no accident that EC began his album with a song that begins, "Oh, I just don't know where to begin..." Exquisite.

That would be enough of a reason to organize a show around something as silly as accidents, except...

Billy Bragg (whose artistic output took a more steep nosedive than EC's after the magnificent & near-perfect Workers' Playtime) (though, I should say, it didn't have as far to fall as EC's did) released the muddled & mostly-unlistenable Don't Try This At Home in 1991, & boy was I knocked out by the first track, which is "Accident Waiting To Happen." The rest of the record, not so much. Maybe it was just the album's title - I know he was just trying to be cute, but should the poster boy for DIY indie really have called his record DON'T Try This At Home? It's like he was deliberately gainsaying the Desperate Bicycles - & his own raison d'etre. But add in the obligatory early-90's REM appearance, add several generally not memorable songs, & it's an album that totally used up all its energy in the first track, & while I am fond of "Sexuality" because it's silly, I couldn't care less about the rest of the record.

I should note that one song that should have resonated with me is his cover of Fred Neil's "Dolphins," & if you read the Allmusic review of the record, it gives Billy Boy credit for the song, though it does correct it on other appearances. Bragg's rendition is fine, but after a tedious song called "God's Footballer," you would think someone whistling to themselves while bathing their cats was a joy.

But boy! is "Accident Waiting To Happen" a great song! & not just because I like the punning line, "You're a dedicated swallower of fascism." & this was in the days before Fox News! It sounds great, it's driving, you want to sing along.

The theme is accidents this week, but it's kind of on purpose. Didn't think I could resist making that joke did you? You don't know me at all.

Preface To Accidents: Addiction Is Deadly

I've become kind of addicted to the Netflix play-movie-in-the-browser function. It's made me watch too many movies (usually while I'm doing other stuff on the computer) that I would probably NEVER watch, even if they came on television. Is it because the movies are in the background in the same way that kids of today watch stuff constantly on their computers while they do homework, twitter, chat, download porn & music & pirate movies? I always thought I was too old for this. & I do do one thing they probably don't - when I am absorbed in an email or something else that's taking my time, I tend to "rewind" the movie to see the stuff I've missed. In any event, I feel dumb because I just watched two movies that I thought were all right but didn't really want to watch & I'm late writing in this blog.

I've probably started this because my new computer has a gorgeous screen & I like to use it. I'm going to start watching my favorite pretty movies on it before too long.

I have mentioned this before (& I mention it on my show when I read something from a column) but I am a big fan of the Word Detective. I just remembered a column he wrote a while back which, unfortunately, doesn't have anything to with Netflix Instant Play (or whatever it's called) addiction. In this column, about the origins of the word "crank," he talks about words like "dial" which we still use even though we don't really use phones with dials any more. He remarks that words like "crank" & "dial" are both in "a range of terms still in common usage even though the technologies that spawned them have profoundly changed, turning words whose logic once would have been obvious into linguistic fossils." But surely there's a better name for them than "linguistic fossils"! Let's come up with one.

I thought of that because I mentioned that I "rewind" the online movies, even though there's no tape involved. Funny, yes?

This Lonely Memorial Day...

...the wife is off in West Virginia looking for a place for us to hang our hats, & I've been tending to the lazy dogs & cats & listening to lots of stuff composing this month's Self Help Radio Extra in my head. As for the outside, what is the fucking weather? I don't know your zip code, but at mine, & I quote, "ITS FUCKING HOT." The site also adds, "I recommend staying away from fat people." Though I'm not sure why. They may have some food & refreshing beverages to share!

Speaking of sharing, you do know that the long weekend didn't pass without a new Self Help Radio, didn't you? Though I couldn't make it to the indiepop gathering in San Francisco this month, I did my part by continuing the never-ending Indiepop A To Zs. It's fun! & it's sponsored by Stinky!

& speaking of fat people, I'm going to go make myself something to eat. I hope the rest of your day goes swimmingly, provided it's not humidity you're swimming through. That would mean you were somewhere near here, where, as you know, it's quite hot. I read it on a website!

Escuse Me, Are Those Mine Pants?

For the fair of warning & the faint of heart I tell you, Self Help Radio is brand new this Memorandum Day weekend & you don't have to drive on America's unsafe highways to bask in its basket. Just click the link above when you think you know better & all will be chilled & served on a white wine platter, if the Americans still make such things, which I doubt.

One warning: the show this week is full of misspellings. I'm sorry about that. The spellcheck wasn't working this past week & I traded it in for a garage door opener that lambastes you like a psychic parrot. I could not refuse. Now if only I had an opener on which to put my garage.

One furtherance in the cause of righteousness: I or someone called Dick Dickenbock who I swear is not just me under an assumed name, but I assume the name under duress, will be hosting KVRX's "Artist Hour," which features smart-ass know-it-all dum-dums spotlighting an artist for an hour then forgetting about him/her/it/them until they drunk-call them on their wedding night & remind them of the sad little snowflakes they've become. But that's of no conceit as I or someone called etc., etc., will be featuring the great Rodd Keith. Tomorrow night from 10 to 11pm CST. Yes, an hour of song-poem brilliance. You can go out afterwards - the lite beer will still be there with the roofie, waiting for you to drink it up yum yum.

KVRX has been relocated due to a complicated fumigation, so I'm not sure if the station is streaming currently (or just streaming currents) but I will probably relocate the show from KVRX's temporary space to the SHR website in the fullest letter of the law in no uncertain terms. Just wash this space, & your face, & if you're an employee, you must wash your face-space after every other meal.

Have a good long weekend!

Two Links That Make Me Happy

What's the fucking weather?

Can I marry gay?

But maybe first you should ask, Must I marry gay?

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 20?

This is hardly the time to think about it, economically-wise, & maybe it's also a little insulting to the unemployed, but how DO you quit your job gracefully? I asked a panel of nine imaginary job-quitters, just to be on the safe side. Here's what they said, almost but not quite in the order in which they said it.

Number one said, "Get out before things get really, really bad!"
When is that, I asked.
"When there's no more coffee!" number one screamed, & quit the panel. (Not very gracefully, I might add.)

Number two said, "Tell the most powerful bot first, then adhere to the hierarchical rules that were programmed into you at construction."
(I should tell you, imaginary panelist number two is a robot who hails from a planet of sentient robots. Just FYI.)

Number three said, "Burn bridges!"
Really, I asked.
"I meant britches!" number three said. "Burn those britches! You'll never get the smell out! Never!"

Number four said, "If there's an exit interview, pretend it's an interview for a role on a reality television show."
I had no comment to that.

Number five said, "Don't write a resignation letter!"
No?
"No!" number five said. "Instead, just try to act resigned all the time."

Number six said, "Tell them you'll call every day. You're not really leaving. You're just visiting your mother in Duluth."
But won't they catch on?
"No," said number six. "Lookit. They were dumb enough to hire you in the first place, yeah?"

Number seven said, "Be sexy so you can get good reference books."
Reference books?
"Sure," said number seven, "you want your boss to give you good reference books when you leave."
Uh, I think you mean references.
"Are you sure?" asked number seven.
Um, maybe I meant referees?
"That's the spirit!" said number seven.

Number eight said, "Be an asshole about it to your co-workers, who can't quit because of their gambling debts & their chronic alcoholism. Also, act like the old-timers are really old. That'll teach 'em!"
Teach them what?
"That you're an asshole!" cackled number eight.

Number nine said, "Go, my child, into the wide world, knowing full well that those for whom you worked are no longer your masters & you are no longer their slave. Instead, you are no better than a hobo, eating your own filth & earning nothing, while they, they have hired someone almost exactly like you to replace you, & scarcely know you have gone."

Thanks guys!

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 20: I Just Bought A New Computer!

Except for the weird, flat, purse-sized keyboard, it's pretty awesome.

I need to go move everything from the old computer to the new one. So I can't be horsing around with you right now. Maybe later?

Argyle In A Minute

Argyle is, of course, a magical place in Scotland where all kinds of colored diamonds are arranged as though on a checkerboard & live in peace & harmony. Not like those druggies in Paisley. Stupid Paisleyites!

I recently had a chance to take drugs with a fellow from Paisley &, in my stupor, I was able to tour imaginary Argyle in the minute it took for the effects to wear off from what I now know wasn't a hallucinogen but was, instead, instant coffee cut with confidence & elan. Still, I think, as I noticed in my hazy dream-like state that the town were all big fans of Self Help Radio, I'll tell you about some of the sites I saw should you, too, find yourself there under no uncertain circumstances.

If you're in the uptown/midtown area, visit Sam's Irish Coffee shop, & ask for tea. He'll have a laugh, accuse you of being Protestant, & throw you out. Sam's Irish Coffee shop is a Scottish institution, being funded by several governments & Shane McGowan, formerly of the Pogues. He's always there, making his teeth say awful things to you.

If you're in the midtown/uptown area near the stables, visit The Bookdrop, an actual library bookdrop which doesn't work properly, so you can simply reach in & browse through a fascinating collection of books people have recently returned. Warning: taking books from The Bookdrop may be stealing.

If you're in the midtown/midtown area, be sure to see the shifting ideas at the nearby Firth. It may not be the first Firth you've even seen (it was more fourth Firth), but it will be funnest. Little indiepop kids with too many scarves on pretend to ride skateboards & write earnest poetry on benches all around. You may even see Stuart Murdoch & still no one will believe you.

If you're uptown with some downtown urges, there are always lovely women waiting for the buses that never come in their minds. They are robust lasses, some with mighty handshakes, others with handy milkshakes, & still others with dentist appointments that you swear to god they'll never keep. You may only be in Argyle for a minute, but a few seconds on grinning wench is never wasted, unless she's grinning because rigor mortis has set in. Then dial 911 & hope William Petersen is working that week. & not, as luck would have it, Flavor Flav.

This wonderful travel tip was brought to you by last week's Self Help Radio, which used Scottish concrete in at least one of the songs it played during the show. Be a sport & have a listen. You'll never be able to snort all that instant coffee in one go anyway!

Getting Back On Your Feed

I had this strange memory last night before I fell asleep - it seemed to come out of nowhere. My family lived in these apartments from the time I was in fifth to probably ninth grade, & the apartments were called "Villa Cordoba." (We pronounced it vil-la of course, not vee-ya, because we were dumb white kids.) It was squarely shaped, with doors opening, on the street at the front of the complex, to the street, & the other three sides to the parking lot that surrounded it like a moat. Little patios with stucco walls looked into the complex's center, which had a few apartments, a laundry room, the manager's office, & a pool that was generally never cleaned so was always full of green, green water. At the center of each of the complex's walls was a breezeway, with studio apartments above them (the rest of the apartments were two-story).

My thought - which wasn't quite a dream, because I wasn't asleep yet - was about the breezeway at the back of the apartments, which looked out over a parking lot, of course, & a white fence which separated the complex from the rest of the world, & then a giant Lutheran church with giant lush lawns where we played football & baseball when we were sure worshippers weren't around (you know, when their parking lot wasn't full of cars).

The front breezeway looked into the space where the manager's office was. The two side breezeways looked into the pool area. But the back breezeway, which always seemed very dark to me (maybe because it faced east & was protected from the sun by the church shadow), just looked at a wall. If you didn't know there was a path on which you could go left or right into the complex, you might think it was a dead end.

Why I thought about this place I don't know. I did a show about breezes last week or so, & talked a little about breezeways, & definitely thought of those breezeways of my youth, but it doesn't explain why this memory would appear & haunt me now. Because it did haunt me - I wanted to go to sleep, but my brain was now on fire, trying to remember details like: there was a door, wasn't there, some sort of custodial or storage door, in the south wall, a door I'm sure I tried to open whenever I walked by. Also, my brain wanted to remember if the breezeway smelled - if it were dirtier than the others, since it was darker - or if it were usually clean or cluttered with leaves, cigarette butts, trash.

It was a strange sensation - an irrelevant, uncalled memory suddenly at the forefront of all my thoughts - & me in a vulnerable place, where I had to make an almost physical effort to remove it from my mind, to think about whatever other dumb stuff - dumb, perhaps, but more relevant - I think about before I fall asleep.

I said it haunted me, & obviously it did. I just spent some moments looking through old short stories I used to write before I realized I wasn't very good at it, to see if I described it better back then, when it was certainly closer in time & not subject to all the intervening years & their onerous memories. But alas, no! I am still haunted.

Did I mentioned a new Self Help Radio tomorrow? Look for it in the afternoon.

Old Joke Found In An Old Email

Busy listening to concrete songs today so I have nothing really of value to say. Actually, I am apparently writing in rhyme but you don't care, I do it all the time. & possibly you think I'm awful square for pointing this out to you right then & there. No no no, don't call a cop, I promise, I promise, I'll stop, I'll stop.

No, man, it doesn't scan. If I had time to write a real letter, I'll bet you that all my rhymes would be better. & though it's really some dude's lame journal, you must now notice some rhymes are internal.

Ack! Alack!

I was looking for an email to reproduce for my whaddayacallit "Email Archive Blah Blah" & found an old joke sent to me on September 26, 1996, which made me laugh a full twelve years later. So I excise it from the entire email & share it with you:

Q: Why shouldn't you piss off a Unitarian?
A: Because they'll burn a question mark in your lawn.

Ha ha!

Whither Concrete?

A fairer question 'twas never ask'd. For this season, therefore do I placate my modest brow with an ode (like the oddest odists do) to that most hardened of versatile materials, viz. concrete, from the Latin concretus, which (every schoolchild ought know) means "hardened" or "hard" or "hardcore."

Consider this thy then, mine "Ode On Concrete." Written in 1821.

Concrete, concrete, have you any wool?
Nay sir, nay sir, I am instead a construction material composed of cement & sometimes other cement-like materials such as fly ash & slag cement, aggregate, gravel, limestone, granite (these three often mixed with sand), water, and chemicals.
But concrete! Why does thou deny me my rhyme?
For ought not odes rhyme, all the ode-ly time?
Nay sir, nay sir, I'm just a plain material one might find on your highway or sidewalk or sometimes around bunkers in freaky movies where a serial killer lines his murder room with concrete because of the creepy way fluorescent light just kind of hangs on concrete walls like egg whites slowly dripping down, down, down, causing immense despair in the poor victim, shackled & dead by the morning she or he cannot see in the hollow timelessness of the concrete prison.
Uh, okay concrete. Whatever. Just wanted to write an ode here, not speculate on what you daydream about when you're being mixed in one of those trucks.

So, no ode. I was all totally odic, too. If that's a word.

Preface To Concrete: Lazy Logic

I subscribed a long time ago to a "joke of the day" email thing to make sure one of my stupid online accounts was getting mail because, in those pre-google days, they'd sometimes close the accounts (if they didn't go out of business anyway - r.i.p. startrekmail & muslimmail!) if you didn't have regular email (& of course I'd forget about it anyway). I did it with the account that accesses this blog - & sometimes it's the only mail I have. So. Sometimes I read really, really bad jokes of the day.

The weirdest thing is the "offensive stereotype" joke - for example, if you're from Texas, the putatively stupidest Texan would be someone who went to Texas A & M, or an "Aggie" - has been apparently cleaned up - politically corrected, one might say - in that the subjects of those jokes are called "Antarctans" by this service. Apparently it's all right to offend the few hundred folks who live in Antarctica, but not people who should be smart enough to know that the school you went to doesn't define you. Unless you let it, I suppose. Anyway.

So today's was this sort of "strange but true" "funny thing to think about" series of arbitrary comparisons that might fly in a lame stand-up comic's act (which is probably where it originated), but seems to be monstrously unfunny because of its lazy logic. What's more, it's premise or motif or whatever is "Only in America..." which might also be a little insulting if you're the sort of person who doesn't like this country being dissed.

Here's a couple of just plain bad examples. Remember, they're supposed to be "things to make you stop and think."

- "Only in America can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance."

That's not technically true. The only stats I have are from a dumb song where it claims that "22% of the time a pizza arrives faster than an ambulance." That's in Great Britain. But I dunno - lately my pizzas have been coming awful slowly, probably because there are less drivers after gas exploded in price. Anyway, until someone can produce data on this, I call bullshit on it.

- "Only in America are there handicap parking places in front of a skating rink."

This is one of the stupidest. Do they imagine all handicapped ("differently-abled") people are wheelchair-bound? What about amputees with prosthetics? Surely they can ice-skate just fine. & in any event, can a person with a handicap not visit an ice rink? Take his or her family there? What a douchebag this "joke writer" is!

These two are somewhat similar:

- "Only in America do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front."
- "Only in America do banks leave both doors open & then chain the pens to the counters."

I think both of these are risk-assessment decisions. The drugs are easier to steal in the drug store than the money in the bank (which is in a safe, with armed guards around for protection). So put the drugs in the back. Leave the bank open (like the drug store does, of course) during business hours. & the pens are chained to make sure not only that people don't walk off with them (because people do, & I'm sure they're not intentionally stealing them) but also so the next customer doesn't have to pick it up off the floor, or dig for it under crap on the counter.

Also, it's not only the sick that visit the pharmacist. We have many reasons to go there, & filling a prescription doesn't necessarily mean we're so gravely ill that a short walk into the bowels of a store would be something like an insult. I should also add that some smokers are pretty sick a lot of the time. Nyah.

- "Only in America do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight."

Do we know that for a fact that it's only in America this happens? I imagine it's also probably true in Canada. Anyway, the Straight Dope answered this to my satisfaction a while ago.

Oh, don't click this link for the meaning of Canadian Hot Dog. Don't say I didn't warn you.

- "Only in America do we use the word 'politics' to describe the process so well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures'."

Of course, that's a dumb etymology, & the word for politics is Dutch is "politiek," in French it's "politique," in German it's "Politik," & in Italian it's "politica," all of which contain "poli" & some word that sounds like "tic."

The word "politics" comes from a Greek root meaning "civic affairs."

I think it's a dumb joke, but I am acting sort of irritated because not only is this purporting to make some sort of point about how crazy America is (even if just for a laugh), but it's now lying to do so.

One last one:

- "Only in America do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering."

Stop & think about this one. While you are mulling this, another person, someone not as thoughtful as you are, someone who believes that the political correctness mafia has simply gone too far with this nonsense & is a beagle's whisker away from an aneurysm, this person just can't believe all the wasteful motherfucking shit that we do to bend over backwards for one segment of society. Braille on a drive-up keypad! What the fuck?

Except you, like me, can see beyond this little taunt. We have a sense of proportion. We think. We know that people with handicaps aren't just wheelchair bound & should be able, in any case, to visit skating rinks even if they can't themselves skate. (I don't skate & I've been skating rinks. You're allowed.) We look at the big picture. We can surmise things, & then, perhaps, if they seem a little odd, we can check them out. We think this way: the corporate scum at Diebold & places like that who make ATMs (ATM machine is of course redundant) don't get an order like this: "We need 400,000 machines for Texas. Oh, & make 7,000 of them Braille-free for drive-up banking." They simply make the machine, & make them all the same, according to federal & state regulations, & some of them get put in drive-up positions. How fucked would they be if they did the opposite? Plenty. They deserve it, but they're covering their asses. & they're also probably saving money by not having to make two different kinds of ATMs - after all, I have no vision defects & I can use the ones with Braille just fine.

Plus, what if you're with a friend who has impaired vision & you're driving around & he wants to stop at a bank machine? You're going to make your friend get out? Why? There's Braille on the drive-through ATM! That's classy!

Livin' Largesse

New Self Help Radio show (about the breeze, of course) at selfhelpradio.net. In case you weren't paying attention.

May we take a moment, apropos nothing, to talk about regurgitation? That link links to the Wikipedia page about vomiting, & notes that "the two terms are often used interchangeably," but that they're two different processes &, what's more, the "causes of vomiting & regurgitation are generally different."

Members of my family have a deep, deep fear & dislike of vomiting & they can't or won't even try to do it when they're sick. They will leave the room when someone else is vomiting, because the very sound of it (sometimes even on television) will make they start to vomit. I used to be like that - I would only vomit if I absolutely had to, & usually even then I'd fight it.

But not anymore. Now I can vomit when I need to, & sometimes I even vomit preemptively, such as when I've had too much to drink & am about to go to bed, or when I feel something close to food poisoning & I assume that upchucking will make me feel better. While members of my family to this very day will suffer though emesis would relieve their discomfort, I could theoretically purge like a supermodel.

What changed? I had my heart mightily broken many moons ago. (Approximately 225 moons, I reckon.) (That's for my Native American time-keeping friends.) During the aftermath, I couldn't keep food down with any regularity. The merest thought of the one who had devastated me would cause me to throw up, literally. Though I of course got better, steeling my heart to let it get broken again & again, the ease at which I could vomit (& the acceptance I had of it, since I couldn't really stop it) stayed with me. No sticking a finger down a throat for me! If I think I need to ralph, I can do it.

Why this is on my mind I don't know. It certainly has nothing to do with this week's Self Help Radio, which will be about concrete.

Whither Breezes?

Whither indeed! The week breezed by. I am all airy & stuff.

But! New Self Help Radio tomorrow! Catch it - on the breeze!