If It Scratches, Itch It!

Hello last night's Self Help Radio all about itching & scratching is online if you missed it on air it's now on the web site selfhelpradio.net it also contains a new episode of Sugar Substitute which also was on the air hey it was the first Self Help Radio on WRFL that's pretty cool don't you think all right then go listen already hooray!

The Wait Is Over!

That's right, Self Help Radio returns after two weeks & a day (wouldn't it have been easier to say "fifteen days"?) (hey, at least I didn't say "a fortnight & a day"!) (yeah, we know you were thinking that) & makes its premiere on 88.1 fm WRFL Lexington tonight at midnight!

What? You don't live here & can't hear it live? Nonsense! Just listen online at wrfl.fm! You can listen live & even call me (859.257.9735) (that's 859.257.WRFL) to freak me out.

What? You're not up even if it's earlier the farther west you go? Oh, well. I tried. The show will be put online at the Self Help Radio website as soon as I wake up tomorrow. Or as soon as they let me out of the drunk tank. Whatever comes first.

I'm excited. I need to go to the bathroom now.

Whither Itching & Scratching?

Oops, I just noticed that the Self Help Radio website lists the "itchy scratchy" show as today, August 10, instead of tomorrow, August 11, probably because I left the website in a box & forgot to unpack it. Wouldn't it be confused to learn that the show actually is August 12, since it's at midnight, but I'm not going to play that game with arbitrary definitions of time. It's bad enough that my show has to be in a "timeslot" when it's on the radio - but, enough. I've corrected it now so you can't be all like, "Where was Self Help Radio today?" Not anymore.

I also want to correct the misapprehension that folks at the Literal Club have somehow come upon that Self Help Radio's show this week is in support of or otherwise a proponent of itching &/or scratching. This canard has been & may still be being spread by folks at the Itches Institute who believe it is their sole solemn sworn duty to actively & aggressively promote itching & scratching in our already uncomfortable world. It seems ridiculous to say it over & over, but Self Help Radio critically examines its themes in as objective a way as possible, hardly ever taking sides except perhaps with good music & awkward, uncomfortable airbreaks. Please stop spreading this scuttlebutt or I'll show you how an émigré Texan scuttles butt, if you know what I mean & I think you do.

It means I'll be forced to resort to fisticuffs.

Also, this is a BLOG, this is not TWITTER, so whoever keeps telling me I'm going over 140 characters, please make note of the social network onto which you've logged. Much obliged.

I just counted, actually, & I only know 98 characters, & that includes my pets.

Was there something else I was supposed to talk about today? I am a little sleepy. I should perhaps eat some food. Mmm, food.

Preface To Itchy & Scratchy: A Dilemma Rears Its Irritated Head

At Self Help Radio, we have a mere ninety minutes - much less, really, when you think about how much that fool Gary talks - let's say seventy-five minutes if we're feeling charitable - to try to cover a subject as comprehensively as possible. If the GloboChem Theme-O-Matic 3000 would give more specific themes - you know, like "skin irritation" rather than "itchy & scratchy" - we might be able to be more thorough, possibly even exhausting, about our subjects. But let's be honest, the GloboChem Theme-O-Matic 3000 thinks we're all much stupider than it is, so it lobs soft balls.

With overarching themes - especially "double" themes like "itchy & scratchy" - there's bound to be something left out. & let me tell you, this week - on the show's premiere on Lexington radio! - we're going to find ourselves in a bit of a bind. Because if you mention "scratching" & music in the same sentence you are alluding to one of the cornerstones of hip hop culture. & there's no way Self Help Radio can cover the history of scratching - or even highlight the greats in the field - in just one set. & until an entire show can be called "scratching" - which seems like a good idea right about now, doesn't it GloboChem Theme-O-Matic 3000? - the entire show can't be entirely about scratching when there's also itching right there in the title.

Oh, management is convinced the issue will be handled tastefully & satisfactorily, but they never listen to the show; they just sit in their fat offices counting all the money. By the way, none of that money is made by Self Help Radio - the show is a tax write-off - but they don't need to be as nice as they are. They could be way more dismissive. We sometimes wish they were more dismissive. It might justify some of the show's embarrassment.

We know, you're asking, well, what the hell can I do about? Hmm. Maybe you can answer that better than the staff of Self Help Radio. We're going to go listen to a DJ Q-Bert record now.

There Are Times I've Been So Lucky...

...to not have had something like a blog. It's true! There have been times & situations where a permanent airing of my thoughts on personal events would have come back to bite me on the ass later on when they were inconsequential or otherwise irrelevant to current events - or they would've been embarrassing at the very least. I can think of two.

One was my first really intense break-up. Man, if I had committed to the blogosphere what I confided to friends I would be reviled & justly mistrusted, not just between the people involved in the break-up, but later women who dated me. Some things one thinks & writes in pain shouldn't be shared. Or at least the names should be changed to protect the guilty.

The other was a difficult situation at KOOP radio. I started my blog two or so years after a serious political crisis at that station, but if I had been writing it during that time - well, I would hope I would have been more prudent about what I said - but in some of those deliberations things were said about me that I might have thought to refute in a blog form. Certainly things like that could be quoted out of context & they would have been. One personal email written by me to one of my antagonists at the time ended with the line, "Thank you, this will be very helpful." An entire blog - even full of the usual nonsense I write - would've been me just spoon-feeding ammunition (that's a weird mixed metaphor) to my political rivals.

The reason I am thinking about this is because, having recently left another radio station, I feel a mighty urge to tell stories about my time there. As you might imagine, some of the stories I would tell would perhaps cast the station in a bad light. I am certain most of the people there wouldn't notice or care if I said something negative about their station, but there's a psychological situation with complaining that makes people think the complainer is the one with the qualities he or she is attributing to the one complained about. Any radio stations in my future would not only have my bitching to look on, & surely that would reflect badly on me.

So I won't. Not in this forum. I've toyed with the idea of writing a book about my experiences at KOOP & maybe one day I will. But there will be no tell-all on this blog. Too scary for me. Too dangerous.

The Relocation Has Happened

Yes, gentle listener, Self Help Radio had finally saved up enough for a bus ticket from West Virginia but, instead of going to Hollywood to fulfill its dream of being a movie starlet at a lunch counter, it only had enough nickels to get to Lexington, Kentucky. But that's okay! It's very nice here! There's vegan pizza!

One very nice thing about Lexington, Kentucky, is that it was an awesome college radio, WRFL, & one of the reasons for its awesomeness is that it allows non-students to deejay. & so, I am very happy to announce that Self Help Radio will premiere on 88.1 fm WRFL on Wednesday night (August 11) at midnight. (Technically, it's Thursday morning, August 12, at midnight, but you know how I feel about midnight. Or do you? No? I'll tell you, then: I feel like it's the same day I woke up until I go to sleep unless I stay up past dawn, then it's the next day.) Huzzah! Hooray!

Oh, & you can listen live, if you are so inclined. You should go listen now. You'll love it.

This is only a fill-in position for a couple of weeks but I am hoping to continue in the fall. Cross your fingers for me!

There will also be new episodes of Sugar Substitute following Self Help Radio on the next two Wednesdays. The other shows I do will continue to appear on Saturdays starting next Saturday. There's still a lot of stuff in boxes, you know. Books & stuff. I might also have put the bus I was on in a box. Something does smell like diesel.

Did you hear me say hooray! & also huzzah! Self Help Radio on WRFL! Yippee!

I Know, It's Tuesday

But there are boxes of music everywhere & they can't be opened for a new Self Help Radio this week. But they'll be safely taken to Lexington in two days & then, next Tuesday, a new Self Help Radio! Hooray! Huzzah!

What? You didn't even know we were gone? Oh, bother.

Taking A Week Off

Hello, friends. Self Help Radio has finally found a hole in the fence & will be escaping from West Virginia in a matter of days. But that escape will allow the show only to carry a few songs, for even though we're not going far - just a hundred miles west to Lexington, Kentucky - we can't carry everything we need to make a radio show. No, we'll have to forage for it once we're there.

So the next Self Help Radio show will happen a week from Tuesday. As for the extra shows - like Tags & Tricks, which was supposed to happen tomorrow - that will happen two weeks from tomorrow.

Keep your eyes on this blog for furtive developments. I mean, further. Further developments. Furtively.

A Parting Guest

It's by James Whitcomb Riley!

WHAT delightful hosts are they—
     Life & Love!
Lingeringly I turn away,
     This late hour, yet glad enough
They have not withheld from me
     Their high hospitality.
So, with face lit with delight
     & all gratitude, I stay
     Yet to press their hands & say,
"Thanks.—So fine a time! Good night."

Riley wrote that after listening to this week's Self Help Radio (only he did it sometime in the late 19th century - don't ask me how) (ask Doctor Who how!) which you can listen to like an old poet at selfhelpradio.net!

Be my guest. Really. Be my guest!

Whither Be My Guest?

Hello! You're here for the party, I see. I must ask: do you know the rules? The Guest Rules?

They are available all over the place, but I will freely share them with you as I freely share my home.

Rule number one: did I invite you here? I did! Was it a formal invitation? It was! Did you RSVP?

Oh, you don't know what that means. It's French, the initials for "répondez s'il vous plaît." It means, "Respond, please," or, in the colloquial, "write back, bitch!"

So, you didn't. I see. Because you didn't know.

Well, why bother with the other rules if you're not going to follow the first? Jeez, who doesn't know what RSVP means? Get out! GET OUT!

Because I can't follow the Host Rules if you're too lazy to follow the Guest Rules.

I will keep this bottle of wine you brought as well as the spinach artichoke dip. I can't stand these chips, though. Too salty. Ick.

Next time follow the Guest Rules! You've only yourself to blame!

Preface To Be My Guest: Please Listen To Dickenbock Electronics!

It's true! I finally put Saturday's episode of Dickenbock Electronics on the Self Help Radio website for your listening enjoyments. You may visit selfhelpradio.net to listen to your heart's content.

Hey! There's new stuff from Mount Kimbie & James Blake & Baths & Walls. There's old stuff from Child's View & Console & Fila Brazillia. Someone wanted to hear Front 242 so I played Front 242. That's the kind of show it was. It is. It's there! For you!

Or are you like me & just totally freaked out about tonight's True Blood. I mean, my gosh!

Today's Dickenbock Electronics...

...will be posted some time tomorrow. I had a busy day.

Bleep beep boop boop.

A Blog Reminisces: When I Was 900

Bunny, you're a weirdo. Someone asked me to write a song in the middle of dinner, so I used snatches of conversation for lines 2 & 6 & for an unusually large portion of the chorus. Then I proceeded to inform the guest panel that I, indeed, helped write the controversial lyrics for the Will Smith song which contain the profound lines, "You saw my blinker, bitch."

Is it cosplay if you dress like Donny & I dress like Marie? Someone told me the best way to enjoy ackee & saltfish is not to eat the saltfish & to compliment the ackee. No, ackee fruit is not tacky fruit. You're thinking of mangoes. What fruit have you not eaten nor heard of? There is a remarkable amount of fruit on this planet, you certainly can't have tried them all.

In Proverbs, you might read, "Pride goeth before destruction, & an haughty spirit before a fall." Then you might think "AN haughty"? That's very British. Don't the British often fail to pronounce their aitches? Like they say "ello" & "ospital" & "omoseuxal"? Then wouldn't that read, in King James English, "a naughty spirit"? Is a haughty spirit always a naughty spirit? Who's translating whom here?

Can I raise half a glass (I drank the other half already) for 900 blog posts on this worthless blog? Let me put it another way. Is it at all possible any of you never-sober Onanists - who can't be bothered to even pretend to care at this point about my self-indulgent radio flights of fancy - would mind if I made a meaningless toast to a meaningless achievement at this point in the alcoholic proceedings? If so, please, might I suggest that you venture outside to play a game of hide-&-go-fuck-yourself? If not, then, hooray! A toast to 900 entries on this blog! May the fates be kind & not make me write 900 more!

A Life Underlived

Weird "milestones" like writing almost 900 blog posts make me think about the things I don't do or accomplish more than the things that I have done or plan to do. For example: when you log on to Blogger, it gives you a screen which lists all the blog you "subscribe" to or "follow." Wanna know how many I am subscribed to? None. Nada. The blogs I read regularly are bookmarked on my browser, so I don't have to log on to Blogger to find them. It may seem a ridiculously small thing, but it saves me that one step.

But it does mean I exist outside whatever community could possibly be created by being a "follower" of a blog. You know, they might notice that I like their blog, & return the compliment. Or someone who likes one of the blogs I like might notice this blog. There are always good reasons to dip one's toe into the lukewarm pool of human interaction, not the least of which is to alert folks who might not know that there's something called Self Help Radio which isn't a self-help radio show at all.

I just don't do that. I have a myspace page & a Facebook page & of course the selfhelpradio.net website & this blog & really I don't do much else. Some might say what I already do is a lot - other, more popular radio shows don't even bother. But if I were an up & coming band, this would be the bare bones of what I'd do to promote myself. & I'm not up & coming. I'm down & going.

The blog thing is pretty easy to maintain & write in, & it doesn't smack of crass hype. (That's a redundant phrase.) Also, since no one reads this, I'm not too worried about the content, which of course is probably why I don't try to enter into some kind of reciprocal relationship in the blogosphere: it's not a very interesting blog, is it.

I guess, though, it's better than 899 posts of my awful poetry. Hey! I could make a blog of that!

Countdown To 900!

Imagine, I'm two posts away from 900 entries into this blog! That means that, if I write here today & tomorrow, Friday will be number 900. Not all of the entries have been full-sized & virtually none of them were interesting, but it's surely something of an achievement. I've previously tallied the length of time that it took to reach other milestones, so let me update that (assuming, as I probably shouldn't, that I'll reach 900 by Friday):

I started this blog on September 12, 2006.
The 100th post happened on March 7, 2007. That would've been roughly 176 days later.
The 200th post happened on August 13, 2007. (158 days after the 100th post.)
The 300th post happened on January 9, 2008. (149 days after the 200th post.)
The 400th post happened on May 26, 2008. (138 days after the 300th post.)
The 500th post happened on October 14, 2008. (141 days after the 400th post.)
The 600th post happened on March 25, 2009. (162 days after the 500th post.)
The 700th post happened on September 23, 2009. (186 days after the 600th post.)
The 800th post happened on February 19, 2010. (149 days since the the 700th post.)
& the 900th post will happen on July 23, 2010 - which would make it 154 days since number 800.

If I add it all up, it's 900 posts spread amongst 1,413 days - an average of .64 posts a day. If my math is right, & it probably isn't, that's about one post every three days.

By the way, virtually no one visits this blog, which is about right, since that's also the number of people that listen to Self Help Radio. I have "Google Analytics" installed to keep track of visits, but I don't think it's all that reliable - I've talked to people who've said - sincerely, so I should believe them - they've downloaded & listened to certain shows, & the Analytics contradicts them. But if I just use the Analytics data, I can see that this blog has had a mere forty visits in the past month, & of them, it says, only eleven were "absolute unique visitors." If you're reading this, you're an absolutely unique visitor. That makes you awesome.

Should I plan something special for number 900? I sure like adding up days. We'll see. One special thing that'll happen that day for sure is my love returns home from Africa then. That's celebration enough for me!

There's A Riot Goin' On

On July the twentieth, 2010
I was serving time in the state pen
Ten o'clock at night
I was ready to do my show
I heard a whistle blow
And I heard somebody bellow

There's a riot goin' on!
There's a riot goin' on!
There's a riot goin' on!
Over at selfhelpradio.net!

Yes, you can listen to today's Self Help Radio by clicking the above link. It's the closest thing to being in a riot short of having a self-important neighbor beat you down with a truncheon. Listen!

Whither Riots?

Ah ah ah! you say. You, sir, have been slacking off! We know for a fact that today is your show, & usually you write your "whither this theme" or "whether that theme" on the day or so before your show! In fact, isn't it true you haven't written anything in this blog for days & days?

It's true, I haven't written since Saturday. But I have good reasons!

Everyone always thinks they have good reasons for neglect!

Well, now, I don't mean to neglect this blog. I spent the day Sunday in Lexington, Kentucky, for reasons that may become clearer later.

Ooo, a mystery!

No mystery - we're relocating there. & by we, I mean, the family. Self Help Radio will still be produced by increasingly deranged clones of myself in a little shack somewhere outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. Or Hong Kong. Wherever they've stored the cloning machine.

So Self Help Radio will be on the air in Lexington!

You're not listening.

What happened Monday?

In what spirit is that question asked?

Why didn't you write in this stupid blog, you self-involved homunculus?

Oh, I've been going through my old stuff, throwing most of it away - like I should've done in Austin but there was no time to do before we moved. I spent hours yesterday. I found some amazing stuff.

Such as?

None of your business. Do you wanna hear about riots?

Can't I just wait for the show today?

You can!

Hooray! Sugar Substitute!

That kind of sounds like a cheer you might hear from a diabetic. I don't mean that. I mean that today's episode of Sugar Substitute, which is the pop show I used to do every-other-week after Self Help Radio, but which I now do every-four-weeks on Saturdays, is now available for your listening pleasure if you are one of those people who uses a computer to listen to music. I am one of those people too. I should go listen!

Oh, I forgot to tell you where it is. It is where it ought to be, at selfhelpradio.net. It's where the elite meet the effete. Not the elite effete nor the effete elite - only the non-elite effete meet the non-effete elite. It just seemed safer that way.

Thanks for listening!

Funny How Time Fails

It's not nearly enough to copy old poetry & pretend it's how you currently feel. Even old photos won't quite capture the way you finally want to feel today. Because at the time you didn't know how you felt & now that you do you no longer feel that way. Did you think you were the only person feeling unfeeling then, & now do you think no one else fails to feel the same?

Some people would be more impressed with how much money you spent on video games you can barely remember playing. You might as well have been drunk, or doing drugs, or signed up for an informal class in which you learned some sort of craft you would never use. You might even now feel that, somewhat, in your hands, like something you once did but cannot or will not do anymore.

Luckily no one believes now that you reach a certain age with a cachet of answers, sometimes called "wisdom," since the bare stupidity of the world is on continual display. But you did believe that, didn't you. You thought at some point you could walk out of the therapy room in your head & begin living life like a character in a movie right before the credits.

Even if your insides now are simply a reverse mirror image of your outsides then, you can still continue. Just tread lightly. & for fuck's sake, be honest with yourself. What's wanting is not what is, & may never be, but what you're wanting is what you are.

& stop going through the old boxes where you put your days after you've squandered them.

I'm Not Cruel

But Self Help Radio is today. It's all about the cruelty. You can hear it all at selfhelpradio.net.

I hope you'll be so kind as to have a listen. I thank you.