Hurrah! Dickenbock Electronics!

Yes, hooray! The first Saturday episode of Dickenbock Electronics went off without any complaints by the Robot Board Of Trustees. I don't trust those trustees. They're untrustworthy.

It's available where it ought to be at selfhelpradio.net. You can listen to it at your leisure. Or actively, if your circuits require it. Guaranteed to increase your personal processing speed by 0.007%!

Next week will be the premiere of my jazz show. Which is currently untitled. Do you want to name it? You can if you want. Just send me an email. Otherwise I'll be forced to come up with a name myself. Eep.

Dream-Ending Dreams

I just woke up from a nap, & what woke me up was what I call a "dream-ending dream." These dreams are both impossibly familiar, & at the same time so completely absurd, that it shocks your system into consciousness just to assess their near-comic outrageousness.

There's nothing more boring than listening to someone tell you his or her dream (unless it's someone who think they can "interpret" a dream) (or than watching someone tell someone else their dream & having it interpreted) so I won't bore you with details except that this dream seemed to be about a "tradition," which is to say, something I did every year or so (which I never have) & which also referenced past examples of the tradition. The dream, therefore, either referred back to other dreams I've had (which seems terribly unlikely, with this fading memory of mine), or it created those memories & made them feel like memories in the dream.

The latter is more probable, & that's why dreams are so awesome. Still, if, when you dream, you retain a modicum of your own sense of self - like, for example, you're scared of heights, & in a dream you're going to bungee jump or parachute - then the dream of something so unlike you - or so unlikely that you would ever do such a thing - so disturbs your sense of self that it becomes a "dream-ending dream." It wakes you up to take stock of your sense of self, &, in the midst of the dream's artificial familiarity & its haphazardly concocted reminiscences, you have to return to consciousness just to make sure it wasn't real.

I don't think most of these "dream-ending dreams" are scary to the point of nightmare, but some of them have been a little on the exciting side - involving chases or other dramatic movie-style sequences - again, referencing something that probably couldn't or wouldn't ever happen to me.

I do wonder if they're the body's way of waking one up when one needs to wake up from, say, an overlong afternoon nap. I know a dude who naps thirty minutes each day in the afternoon. Thirty minutes! It usually takes that long for me to get to sleep!

Hey Choosers!

See, I know you're not beggars. Since beggars can't be choosers. Ergo, through the transitive property of fol de rol, with only a slight detour through the axioms of gibberish & nonsense, Q.E.D. ipso facto, you must be the choosers who cannot be beggars. I defy you to find the logic in my reasoning!

Since you are choosers & since you do in fact have a choice, & since I'm usually the last choice in pretty much anything, I might as well make sure you know you have a choice in radio shows if/when you should want to listen to them. (You can choose not to, I know.) That choice which you can be chosen last if you so choose is Self Help Radio, & this week's episode, which is about beggars (not choosers), is now available at selfhelpradio.net.

Is the show a choice blend of great musics? I wouldn't choose that language. But I think I chose well, among all the songs available about begging.

Please enjoy.

"Mendicancy"

Three more things to say about begging:

1) I have a story about something sort of like begging I did when I was in middle school, but it is really quite embarrassing - one of those things you either have to go all the way with or else risk it being uncovered by an unscrupulous biographer. Not that I'll ever have anyone write a biography about me. But if I did. I'd prefer not to tell.

2) One thing I'm not ashamed of, though it irritates some people I know, is that I generally give change to people who ask me for it on the street. In Austin, walking down Guadalupe in the afternoon, I'd empty my pockets for the bums & street kids who were there. When I was a smoker, I'd also give away cigarettes. It seemed the least I could do. So far I've only been hit up by folks outside a Chinese restaurant here in Huntington, & I've given them change, too. Although the two or three people who've asked me for money have been specific & have wanted at least a dollar. Which suggests to me that, even if there isn't much competition, there are fewer people around here willing to part with their coinage, so your average West Virginian beggar needs to aim higher.

3) But I don't give money to people begging at intersections or near highway off-ramps. I don't know why that bugs me so much. Maybe because I am forced to look at them - which is what they want - & feel a little guilty. I think also that I sometimes worry if I give them money, I'll hold up traffic. Anyway, they don't seem to do that in West Virginia, either. But in Austin, there was usually someone at major roads & off-ramps. At one intersection near where I lived in Austin, there'd be bums begging at almost every corner. You couldn't avoid them.

Remember, there's an entire Self Help Radio show about begging coming tomorrow! It's true! I'll let you know when it happens!

Whither Begging?

Oh, you know, there's a wikipedia article about begging, which contains the hilarious line: "Beggars rarely recorded their techniques, & often used to disguise their own communication." It's sometimes pretty hard to read their signs, it's true. & I guess they would get lost down the ages.

There's also a helpful list of notable beggars. (I checked, I wasn't there.)

The word seems to have an interesting & disputed past. Here's what it says at this online encyclopedia:

Beggar, one who begs, particularly one who gains his [or her] living by asking the charitable contributions of others . The word, with the verbal forrn " to beg," in Middle English beggen, is of obscure history . The words appear first in English in the 13th century, & were early connected with "bag," with reference to the receptacle for alms carried by the beggars . The most probable derivation of the word, & that now generally accepted, is that it is a corruption of the name of the lay communities known as Beguines & Beghards, which, shortly after their establishment, followed the friars in the practice of mendicancy.

It goes on to mention - then discount - another origin, which the Wiktionary definition thinks is probable: "Probably from Old English bedecian." What does bedecian mean? According to the above encyclopedia, bedecian is "a rare Old English word... which is apparently connected with the Gothic bidjan... but between the occurrence of bedecian at the end of the 9th century & the appearance of 'beggar' & 'beg' in the 13th, there is a blank, & no explanation can be given of the great change in form."

Take that!

The Free Dictionary takes a different view. It says the word beggar is from "Middle English, from Old French begart, ultimately from Middle Dutch beggaert, one who rattles off prayers." Since I know that holy folks from England to Delhi have been beggars & lived in poverty for centuries, I kinda dig this origin.

But I am not an etymologist, so I can only look at what everyone is saying, & pretend I have earned an opinion in the matter.

Also, mendicancy? Let's bring that word back into wider usage, shall we?

Preface To Begging: What Shall I Put On My Sign Today?

A while back, the wife & I were driving through rural Ohio & we noticed some mildly creative - mostly groanworthy - church marquee signs. She said, "I think I should take some pictures & start collecting them!" One quick web search later, & we discovered (of course) that there was already such a site.

As I was thinking about beggars & begging - this week's theme - I thought about the crazy signs that people begging for money would have in Austin (not so many beggars in Huntington) & I thought, "I should have taken pictures!"

But of course someone already has. & also someone else. & probably more.

At least there's a place where I can get an idea if ever I am reduced to begging on the street. I like this one:

What's Coming Next

I am saying my goodbyes to WMUL this week, & have done my last show there, but of course Self Help Radio will continue as it has, with or without a radio station, heck! with or without listeners! I will have new shows every Tuesday but I'm loathe to abandon the other shows that I've also been doing, Dickenbock Electronics & Sugar Substitute.

Thus & therefore I'll continue to do them, but will do them now on Saturdays, & I'll add a couple of shows to satisfy my restless musical wanderings; one will be a jazz show, the other will be an old-time scratchy record country & blues show. I haven't come up with names yet. Do you want to help me name them?

The shows will alternate so they're basically monthly. Self Help Radio weekly, the other shows monthly. Self Help Radio on Tuesdays, the other shows on Saturday. More material for me to share. More material for you to ignore!

What's coming next is really not so different from what is, but I thought I should tell you anyway. Y'know?

Told you!

I told you I could do an entire show with songs entitled "Tell Me"! Didn't I tell you? Don't tell me I didn't! I remember telling you I could do an entire show of different songs with a single title. You said, "Tell me the title." I said, "That's it!"

The show is available for your wonder & concern at selfhelpradio.net.

I'm telling you, it's true!

I Shouldn't Twitter

No. No, I shouldn't. No matter what Roger Ebert says.

What I am going to do is do Self Help Radio tonight (the theme is "tell me") on WMUL which is at 88.1 on the fm dial. It starts at 9pm, with a new episode of Sugar Substitute on at 10:30pm. Both shows will be archived later, of course, at selfhelpradio.net.

Stop me before I start to tweet!

Whither Tell Me?

I'm very excited by this show. I believe that, for the very first time ever (for me), every song I play on Self Help Radio will have the same title. Yes, there will be nothing but songs entitled "Tell Me" on this week's show. I think that's frickin' awesome.

Also, in case you've been wanting to hear some of the best music that's come out in the last couple of months, you can listen to June's Self Help Radio Extra, which is available at self help radio dot net slash extra dot html. It has twenty-two songs & last seventy five minutes. & best of all, there's not any of that annoying guy who does Self Help Radio talking anywhere on it. Enjoy!

Preface To Tell Me: You Don't Have To Tell Me After All

I never really did understand iambic pentameter. I think people believe that playwrights in the olden days that used iambic pentameter didn't deliberately set out to use iambic pentameter but instead just thought about the world in iambic pentameter. I myself think that's untrue, although I'm probably wrong. Just because I am lazy & don't think a lot about my "writing style" or even proper grammar, punctuation, & spelling doesn't mean that others don't. It seems a very human thing to ascribe one's own weaknesses onto others, probably as a way to self-justify. Ambition, discipline, skill - when one lacks those things (like I do), one chooses instead to ascribe popularity, fame, success, etc., to something like luck rather than genuine hard work & talent. So forget what I said. People who write in iambic pentameter probably mean to do so, following what to them is a serious poetic tradition, & they don't labor with it like I used to in high school, counting the syllables on my fingers. They have trained themselves to think in that form, to better let the words flow naturally & beautifully.

I am always slightly sad that I'll never have the same kind of success (due to my own lack of ambition, discipline & most of all skill) as others, but two things about my fate give me a little comfort. One is that luck can & does play a big part. I know, some people make their own luck, but sometimes that can backfire. The other is that more & more people are successful in smaller & smaller circles. Our society is becoming larger but more compartmentalized, with tiny subsubcultures now freely able to communicate & gather, ignoring or otherwise unaware of the attempts by the corporate world to create & sustain a monoculture with their own stars, musicians, & authorities. Therefore your average "success," though he, she or they can become wealthy, will not likely attain the level of success of a "star" even a decade ago. Everything is more diffuse.

In a way, it's becoming more like it used to be. Before film & music recording, & although word did reach smaller communities about famous actors & musicians, the "stars" of one's life were more than likely the talented people in one's vicinity.

Or maybe not. I'm just thinking out loud on a Sunday morning.

A Punishment Of Lindas

Surely, thought Carl with alarm, they don't expect me to memorize all this! There had to be at least five pages of rules & regulations. Or, with more annoying alliteration, "policies & procedures," as the fat man with the missing bottom teeth had told him in the tiny HR room where he filled out his paperwork. Jesus God, Carl almost muttered to himself, what you have to do to get a job these days.

"See Linda in room 12," the fat man had said, with a slight whistle, as his tongue pushed unopposed air through the gap in his teeth.

He glanced over the pages of company policy while he waited. Linda, of course, made Carl wait. Lindas were always making Carl wait.

Linda Meyer had been his high school guidance counselor, who had told him sadly that he wasn't "college material." He remembered sitting outside her office, missing lunch, just to have her glance over his grades, his SAT scores, his college applications, & then give him dire predictions about his future.

& Linda Smith, the first girl to kiss him, who made him wait for weeks before he could discover her badly padded bra.

& Linda West - who became Linda Strunk after a short-lived marriage - had been the minor Southwestern poet who had been his graduate advisor while he worked on his abortive master's degree. All those hours, waiting for her to finish some phone call with her fiancee, then later her ex-husband or her lawyer, they had worn him out. He had loved Robinson Jeffers so much, now he could barely read his name on a book's spine.

How many Lindas had he waited for his entire life? Linda Murphy, the other Linda Smith, the Linda who ran the dance studio where the Linda he was once married to took her daughter from a previous marriage, the Linda who had the bar who was born in Yorba Linda which is why she was called Linda ("I'm sure glad I wasn't named Yorba!") - his whole life a punishment of Lindas.

Linda Bingham was this Linda's name & she was friendly but curt. With professional perfunctoriness she highlighted the sections of the manual on which he would be tested after his training period. Everything, she said, is in this document, & she directed him to sign several forms.

She stood, asked him to wait, & left the office to get something approved. Linda's office, Carl thought, was tidy & tiny. There were no pictures on her desk, but she did have a corkboard the size of a dinner platter in the far left corner of the room, next to a Ziggy calendar. He didn't want to get up & be caught snooping so he leaned as close as he could from his chair to scan it. The usual cartoons were there - the obligatory Dilbert, of course, plus yellowing Far Side squares - as well as a couple of cards for birthdays or anniversaries. A small rectangle of paper the size of a fortune cookie fortune was the only thing he couldn't read, so he quickly got out of his chair to sneak a look.

It read, simply, "In the Zulu language, the word 'linda' means 'to wait.'"

Carl snapped back to his seat as if drawn by a powerful magnet. He felt like he should have know that fortune cookie fortune fact a long time ago.

& Linda Bingham made him wait twenty-two more minutes until she returned & welcomed him to the company.

The High Cost Of Afternoon Napping

I'm up now! Why do you have to be so loud?

YES I did my radio shows last night. Self Help Radio at 9pm, Dickenbock Electronics at 10:30pm. & I put them up this morning at selfhelpradio.net like I said I would. Then I went back to bed.

Why? Because I was up late & it's a warm & rainy day today. If I had a job, I'd go to work. As it is, it's a nice day for napping.

I'm going back to sleep. Go, go listen to my radio shows. Just, you know, keep it down.

Fifteen Days Later

Self Help Radio returns! A new night! A new time! Same old radio show, though.

Starting tonight at 9pm on WMUL (that's 88.1 on your fm dial), Self Help Radio sits in its summer home for the three hottest months of the year. But if you're not in Huntington, don't worry, the show will be archived by robot pixies tomorrow at selfhelpradio.net. This blog will let you know exactly when it's ready for you.

Excited? Look, at least the show's not going to compete with "Lost." That would've sucked.

Whither At What Cost?

There is (was?) a record store in Dallas (it still exists, though not where I used to visit, & here's its website) which was probably the first giant record store I had ever seen. The owner was a puffy middle-aged man with deep set eyes who seemed to be continually surrounded by skinny "new wave" boys.

An aside: when I was in high school, kids who looked like punks or goths or whatever were called "new wave." The wife, who's a decade younger than I am, pointed out some kids at the park yesterday & lamented that that was what they now call "goth." "Goth," she said, "meant something different in my day." But I apparently pre-dated the "goth" label. Suffice it to say, I was never anything but a kind of shambling mess.

This record store was pretty awesome to my high school mind. What seemed like millions of albums arranged alphabetically, on dozens of tables & on the floor, with cool posters (also for sale) all around the giant room. I didn't know or recognize most of them, of course - I gravitated immediately to the Bowie & Elvis Costello sections.

The biggest problem with the store was that there were no price tags. The owner, who was creepy & obviously gay, would simply stand there & you had to hold up what you wanted & ask the price. It became immediately clear that the amount one paid could be negotiated - if you were cute & flirty to the owner, for example, you'd pay less. As an ugly fat kid, I was at a tremendous disadvantage, although I think I once got a discount on an Elvis Costello import single by joking that I loved him so much I would marry him.

One had to give one's money to the owner, too. No cash register, just handing money & a wallet opened for change. The owner asked a friend of mine once if he could put the change in his pocket for him.

Rumors of course swirled around the alleged pedophile about criminal proceedings, but perhaps he was able to either keep his liaisons secret or he had some self-control. He seems to be doing fine now.

I only went to the store a few times in high school, & rarely returned once I went to college, although I did take my nephew to the place perhaps when he was in high school, which would have been in the mid to late 90s. I can't remember if prices were labelled at that point. But the "bartering" aspect of the store, with my own meager funds as a high school student, eventually made me come to loathe the store, despite its selection.

I just prefer to know what something costs up front.

Preface To At What Cost?: The Price Of Obscurity!

In recent correspondence with Mr. Elmer Comma of the Latin American division of World Canadian Surprises, Mr. Augustine Stained had this to say, painstakingly typed out in a text message when clearly some abbreviation was in order:

To any and all sundry concerned, I must needs forsooth express extreme displeasure at recent events notwithstanding the overall profit margin in relation to certain we must admit ill-conceived and indubitably ultimately self-defeating measures implemented with regard to earthquakes in Chile & Haiti as well as but not necessarily influencing financial disasters concomitant to and created by the current British Petroleum so-called oil leak which stands to affect our bottom line and the earning potential of the myriad programs in the pipe (no pun intended) for the expansion of our Caribbean division, overseen by not only Mr. Comma but also several people in our British Ecuadorian office who have of course been carbon-copied on this text message. In furtherance of both opportunity-seeking as well as damage control I have scheduled for four p.m. today a conference call using only the most inclusive and cutting-edge of technology so please confirm your attendance for the server boys. Yours sincerely, Mr. Augustine Monroe Stained, Senior Vice-President for Catapults and Conviviality, World Canadian Surprises, North American Polar Ice Cap Division. Please forward.

This test message was not read by any of the people to whom it was ostensibly sent; however, the crime fiction author & National Public Radio commentator Mr. Morton Smug spent a full thirteen minutes reading it with undetectable emotion on an episode of "This American Life" to be aired in the fall.

Mr. Augustine Stained continues to write long messages using only his iPhone & possibly a thesaurus, unaware that he was fired two years ago when the offices where he was supposedly working fell into the Arctic Sea, the glacier on which the office was built (on Mr. Stained's recommendation) having sunk overnight. Mr. Stained had begun working from home on that day. He enjoyed it so well that he chose never to return, which saved his life, although the current glacier on which he built his dream house will probably be gone in the next two years.

He in unaware of any lawsuits pending. He is still waiting for the 4pm conference call to begin.

The Stumbling Return

Driving into Huntington, West Virginia, from the east, yesterday at around 4 pm (Eastern Daylight Time), Bob Dylan on the iPod plugged into the car stereo, black clouds in the western sky.

Driving into the upward slanted driveway just to the right of our house (if you're looking at the house, in front), big drops of water like childhood tears beginning to splash inches apart, intermittently, on the windshield, on the roof of the car, on our heads as we got the dogs out & headed indoors.

Close flashes of lightning like mirages appeared in our peripheral vision, in vague reflections on the windows of our house & the empty house across the street, the sudden thunder following loudly, rumbling us & telling us that the lightning was touching ground very near our own.

Emptying the car with an umbrella's handle held between chin & right shoulder, rain getting all over my back, running down my legs, soaking the trunk of the car.

Giving up, calling the mother to tell her we're home safe, three thousand miles travelled in eight days.

Smelling an unusual home, thinking it looks more empty than we remembered it to be, smelling like dust & wood, still familiar & warm, & of course happy to see the cats, which (we are happy & grateful) remember us & greet us immediately.

Back home again, such as it is.

Only Europeans Take Vacations

Americans take "time off."

So it shall be with Self Help Radio. As the only person dumb enough to host it, me, goes to Dallas, Texas, home of the world's biggest hair, to see a nephew get recepted (since he's already married, he's holding a late reception) (I suppose the place one holds a reception is a receptacle) (also, one should really get a receipt if you pay for a reception) there will not be anyone to host the show for the coming week. It's best to let it skip a week than force a reluctant "guest host" to man or woman the helm of what is a clunky drive of a show.

Plus! When Self Help Radio returns, it'll be at a new time, which is Tuesdays at 9pm. The shows should be placed on the web, as long as the show is on Tuesdays, on Wednesdays therefore. Blog entries will be modified accordingly. Accordions will be entered modifyingly. I would like a refill now, barkeep.

See you in a little over a week! xox

The End Of The Argument

That's it! No more arguing. I'm putting a stop to it now.

I have heard all the arguments up to & including the last one, which is a pretty long argument, & which is preserved in audio form at the Self Help Radio website. It's going to take a while to get through it, actually. It's a little confusing.

If you must argue, you must then listen to the show. If you're tired of arguing, you can understand why by listening to show.

No! You can't argue with me. Listen to the show.

It's arguably fun to listen to.

Self Help Radio: Argument Clinic

Tonight - I'm not going to argue about this - Self Help Radio is on for the last time in May 2010 at midnight in Huntington on 88.1 fm WMUL. (Also, while supplies last, you can see a picture of me on that page. I won an award.) I'll avoid another disagreement with you by putting the show up without any further discussion tomorrow on selfhelpradio.net. Let's just keep the peace, all right.

Can I embed a video here? No? I don't know how. So go over here to YouTube to watch Monty Python's classic argument sketch. I still laugh when I see this. It's quite brilliant.

Stupid git.

Not you, I was just quoting the... Oh here we go again!