Preface To Remember...: You Remember Wrong

It's touching how much humans rely upon their memories, but it's sad how memories betray us. I recently counseled my sister, who was feeling old & thinking she couldn't remember dumb shit from her past, that it didn't really matter, since she probably didn't remember them the way they actually happened anyway. It still seems a little strange for me to feel this way, since I used to worry in my youth about forgetting everything that happened to me, & kept a kind of diary for some time in early adulthood. (The diary is totally boring & useless now, by the way, since I often will refer to people that I honestly can't remember, & usually by their first names, which is maddeningly unhelpful.)

I don't worry about forgetting thing so much anymore. Everything I read about the human brain suggests that when we do remember, we remember a lot of our lives incorrectly. We remember, mostly, to protect ourselves. I recently became reacquainted with someone from my past & was honestly surprised that he had completely remade his past, when he had done some awful things, into a sort of sad tableau wherein people had hurt him for indiscriminate reasons. I don't think he was lying, I think he was utterly sincere. & he seemed downright puzzled that some folks from that time had any hostility toward him.

I flatter myself that I am somewhat self-aware, & so I imagine that I do the same things. In fact, I completely understand that it's not even a conscious choice, that our brains have evolved in such a way to try, at the very least, to make sure we're the heroes of our lives or, failing that, that we at least hold on to some modicum of sanity in a narrative that doesn't make fill us with complete self-loathing. How else could we live with some of the things we know we're capable of?

There are other ways our brain fucks with us of course, but the way our memory betrays us seems especially poignant to me.

The Self Help Radio iPhone App

Does not exist.

But if it did, what would it do?

I'd imagine it would be connected with some over-the-top database - requiring me to pay exorbitant fees to hated record companies - that would match your idea for a "theme" to a series of songs that you could download &/or play.

I think I would probably try to block more mainstream songs, not because I would not necessarily play them on the show, but just out of spite. Does Sony really need more money? Really?

I'd probably also have to record lots of meaningless factoids so you could enter a "theme" into the app &, when available, there'd be my tired voice saying something like, "It's a fungus so it's not really a plant or an animal."

(I've actually done a Self Help Radio about mushrooms, so I got to play songs about fungus. Push the button & hear "Slender Fungus" by Tones On Tail!)

What else? I'm new to the whole "app" thing, having no iPhone & only recently getting a secondhand iPad from my wife, who had no use for it.

I suppose there'd be the obligatory pictures of beagles. There can never been enough pictures of beagles.

But what else? Would there be no other options for the Self Help Radio iPhone app?

Then it's a good thing it doesn't exist.

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode One

I've written a few times on this blog about the inane "A Joke A Day" email service (I'm sure there's more than one) which I would often subscribe to for email accounts that, back in the day, were free but which I never used. Often those email accounts would expire if you didn't have email coming to them, but because I thought it was (at least initially) funny to have email accounts at startrekonline.com & muslimonline.com (both sites, & my email addresses, are long defunct), I'd sign up for an account & then subscribe to the A Joke A Day service. One account I use still gets them, & I rarely read them, but am too lazy to unsubscribe. I recently thought, what if I actually saved them, then featured what I consider the best, or funniest, or worst, or most notable, or simply something to talk about once a week? & so I shall.

The most common A Joke A Day is pretty lame. You've probably heard it before, & I confess to never actually laughing at any A Joke A Day. But this A Joke A Day, from Wednesday the 22nd, is based on a pretty funny pun, but seemed exceptionally clumsy in its execution - & it was familiar:

"When Mozart passed away, he was buried in a churchyard.

"A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery & heard some strange noises coming from the area where Mozart was buried. Terrified, the drunk ran & got the priest to come & listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave & heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran & got the town magistrate.

"When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, & said, 'Ah, yes, that's Mozart's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards.'

"He listened a while longer, & said, 'There's the Eighth Symphony, And it's backwards, too. Most puzzling.'

"So the magistrate kept listening; 'There's the Seventh... the Sixth...the Fifth...'

"Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up & announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery. 'My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Mozart decomposing.'"

I'm not a classical music maven but I do know that the composer most associated with nine symphonies isn't Mozart (who actually composed over forty of them) but Beethoven. I know for the sake of the joke it's just important it's a classical music composer that you recognize, but this does seem especially lazy.

The other thing is, I laughed at this joke the first time I saw it, which happened to be in a The Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson:



Suffice it to say, the economy of style Larson had to use makes the pun more impressive, & doesn't require the lengthy set-up. It also doesn't require the weird notion that music played backwards is somehow music returning to its source - & you know, symphonies are played with full orchestras, so you had an prodigious amount of sound returning into the dead composer's head.

(Or so I assume. The joke suggests the music is faint, but I can't imagine it was coming from dead Mozart.)

I am over-analyzing but I'll be doing that on Thursdays from now on. It's fun (for me) to pick apart why something isn't terribly funny. This joke, which probably predates the The Far Side cartoon, is as crumbly & decaying as Mozart in his grave, but there's something I will say at the very end which I find interesting, since many of the A Joke A Day jokes have, like their audience, I suppose, a vague American religiosity & positivity that undermines the best humor's cynical, sarcastic & antisocial punch, & it's this:

You've got a dead dude, & music's coming from his grave, but the town's paid expert on spiritual matters, the priest, is not only "frightened" by the noise coming from the grave - his area of expertise - but he actually runs to the town's secular authority, the magistrate - who handily solves the problem after "listening for a moment." Is this supposed to be a mild criticism of the uselessness of religious folks, who really don't (& frankly can't) know more about death than anyone else? Or maybe it was subconscious?

Even if it's the latter, it makes the joke (for me) better than your average A Joke A Day.

A Trip To The Suburbs

elf Help Radio left the big city to visit the suburbs this week, & got a little lost. All the houses look the same! I went to the same convenience store THREE TIMES! I forgot that I grew up in the suburbs. Or maybe I'm pretending I forgot?

The suburbs have their charms, but mostly the music I found was somewhat critical. You can be the judge. The entire suburban show exists in the exurbs called the Self Help Radio website. I have divided the show in half, like a classic two-car garage, & part one is here under all this crap from last Christmas while part two is over near the lawnmower I think. If you forget to close the garage doors before you leave, don't worry - a nice police officer will come to the door to tell us late at night.

The songs in each part are below. Thanks for listening! I have to drive back to the city now.

(part one)
"Sweet Suburbia" Skids _Dunfermline_
"The Sounds Of The Suburbs" The Members _Sound Of The Suburbs: A Collection Of The Members' Finest Moments_

"Surburbia" Pet Shop Boys _Please_
"Suburban Homeboy" Sparks _Lil' Beethoven_
"City & Suburban" Always _Looking For Mr. Wright_
"The Suburb In Between" The Mabels _The Closest People_
"If Not Now..." The Guild League _Speak Up_

"Rockin' The Suburbs (feat. William Shatner)" Ben Folds _Over The Hedge_
"In The Suburbs" Let's Wrestle _Nursing Home_
"Suburban Home" Descendents _Milo Goes To College_

(part two)
"Suburbs" Junior Achiever _All The Little Letdowns_
"Suburban Rock Dolls" The Chubbies _Your Favourite Everything_

"The Suburbs Are Killing Us" My Favorite _The Happiest Days Of Our Lives_
"Suburban Relapse (John Peel Session)" Siouxsie & The Banshees _The Scream_
"Suburban Family Lament" Ruth Copeland _Invictus/Hot Wax Grooves & Breaks_
"Lost In The Supermarket" The Clash _Lost In The Supermarket_
"Suburban Dogs" Real Estate _Real Estate_

"Suburban Girls" The Commercials _Compare & Decide_
"Death In The Suburbs" The Diodes _Tired Of Waking Up Tired_
"Suburban Life" The Novas _Trip In Tyme Vol. 5_

Whither The Suburbs?

Suburbs may require their own haikus.

Suburbs have their own ideas of cheese.

Suburban living has its own special brand of angst.

& of course there's husband- & wife-swapping.

It took a while, but eventually there was even suburban rock music.

Whatever is happening with suburban (aka "white") flight?

An online rhyming dictionary found "no perfect rhymes" for suburb, although some fine imperfect ones exist. For example, this, from the Lucksmiths:

"A storm rolls across the suburbs
& the streets are as empty as the cupboards."

Preface To The Suburbs: Where You From?

According to a Pew Research Center poll from 2008, "more than six-in-ten adults (63%) have moved to a new community at least once in their lives, while 37% have never left their hometowns."

There's more: "The most rooted region" is the Midwest - 46% of adult residents there have spent their entire lives in one community. The West is the "least rooted" - 30% have stayed in their hometown. Where I'm from, the South (if you consider Texas the South, & many Texans do) is 36%, while the East is 38%.

I live in the Midwest now, & it does seem like a lot of the people I meet are from Lexington. However, the poll data says that Texas is a much more "sticky" state - more people who were born there still live there (75%) than people in Kentucky (62%).

More more: 77% of people who went to college & graduated have moved around, while 56% of those who just finished high school or less stayed in their same communities.

Might it be because one often goes away to college & therefore realize there is more out there? There's a reason the word provincial has the word "province" in it.

I dunno. The poll allowed for "stayers" to have the exemption of military duty & college, so some people just really love their hometowns.

The study, which is now three years old, says that the American population is settling down - only 11% of respondents had moved in the last year, which is the lowest amount since researchers started tracking that data in the 1940s. But that was right before the The Great Recession started - I believe more Americans are moving now.

I don't have any data to back that up, though!

Being An Oblate Spheroid...

I was reading about Hipparchus, an ancient Greek astronomer, on the Wikipedia just now (I know, I'm a nerd) (would it be cooler if I mention that he invented trigonometry? no?) because I was reading earlier about the phenomenon called precession.

That is not, by the way, the miserable period of time when you realize you're going to be depressed all day. Unless we're still collecting sniglets? Are we?

Anyway, the article says that Hipparchus is "known for being almost universally recognized as discoverer of the precession of the equinoxes." That basically means that the sky, as we perceive it, tends to move around, so the "fixed stars" aren't quite so fixed. & to annoy astrologers, this is mentioned every few years because the constellations that they think determine their fates are not where they're supposed to be anymore, having moved one sky-segment over.

Why does precession happen? It's all about the shape of the Earth. This is what I read:

"Being an oblate spheroid, the Earth has a nonspherical shape, bulging outward at the equator." This makes the earth spin not like a top (as we imagine when we spin a globe) but more like a gyroscope.

It's all the more amazing because Oblate Spheroid was my nickname in high school. That, or "Fatty Fatty Fat Pants Faggot."

I feel more proud of the first one. After reading this today, I mean.

The Age Of Self Help Radio Began This Morning!

Then ended ninety minutes later. Oh well. That was the shortest recorded Age in the History Of The Ages. It was so short, in fact, that Self Help Radio is not allowed to be included in the running for those things that Belong To The Ages. Instead, it will probably be consigned to Those Things You Haven't Thought About In Ages.

The show nonetheless managed to feature lots of songs about different ages, & discussed therein were the three ages of prehistory, a possible answer to the question "What comes after the Iron Age?", & a complete avoidance of all those geologic ages that are harder to pronounce than the epochs. Truly, a most edifying experience.

The shows that were played are listed below. The show is sitting at the Self Help Radio website, wondering if it's still in the Information Age or now the Big Data Age. For your convenience, the show has been bifurcated & part one is available at this link while part two is available at this link.

Please enjoy. It's the Age of Tiny Radio Shows, after all!

(part one)

"Stone Age Woo" Nervous Norvus _Stone Age Woo: The Zorch Sounds Of Nervous Norvus_
"Space Age" The Monks _The Early Years 1964 - 1965_
"Fabled Age" Barcelona _Simon Basic_

"Ice Age" Joy Division _Still_
"Age Of Progress" A-Frames _Black Forest_
"Sons Of The Silent Age" David Bowie _"Heroes"_
"2nd Dark Age" The Fall _Dragnet_
"Diamond Age" Blue Orchids _A Darker Bloom: The Blue Orchids Collection_
"Bronze Age" Dawn Of Man _In The Bronze Age_

"The Atom Age" Bill Nelson's Red Noise _Sound On Sound_
"Computer Age" Neil Young _Trans_

(part two)

"Space Age Renegade" Mandroid _B-Boy No Comply_
"The Age Of Information" Momus _Ping Pong_

"Aquarius" Paul Jones _Best Of The Sixties_
"Another Age" Phil Ochs _Rehearsals For Retirement_
"New Age" Velvet Underground _Loaded_
"Golden Age" Peter Blegvad _Hangman's Hill_
"Age Of Kings" Mountain Goats _All Eternals Deck_

"The Golden Age Of Aviation" The Lucksmiths _Staring At The Sky_
"Space Age Mom" Damien Jurado _Waters Ave S._
"Space-Age Couple" Captain Beefheart _Lick My Decals Off, Baby_

Whither Ages?

I wanted to do a show about ages a million moons ago when I was listening to Joy Division's song "Ice Age" on my iPod while walking somewhere in the hot Texas summer. I thought it would be funny to have an entire show about ice ages when it was going on forty days of plus one hundred degree temperature. Funny? Cruel.

I could never find a lot of (good) songs about ice ages so my definition expanded. I finally decided I had enough songs. That's the reason it's happening. I wish I could be all like Stan Lee was when he proclaimed "The Age of Marvel Comics is here!" & be like "The Age Of Self Help Radio is here!" But I am not that bold.

Besides, Self Help Radio is only eight years old. If I did try to shout that, someone might shush me & say "Act your age!"

There will be many ages discussed & many songs about ages played tomorrow morning at 7:30 am on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington, & you can listen to it anywhere at wrfl dot fm. I'll put it up later tomorrow on the Self Help Radio Web Page.

I have a feeling, though, that the Age Of Self Help Radio may only last ninety minutes. So you might want to listen live. To get that "I was there" feeling. It'll be something kind queasy.

Preface To Ages: Another Confusing Theme Needs To Be Elucidated

Note to self: stop using the word "elucidate."

This week's Self Help Radio theme, which is "ages," might best have been (if I had been thinking about it) capitalized, as "Ages," which would perhaps have separated it from the many other definitions of the word. The meaning of "ages" (or "Ages") that Self Help Radio will be exploring this week is these, courtesy of the Free Dictionary:

1. A period in the history of humankind marked by a distinctive characteristic or achievement: the Stone Age; the computer age.

2. A period in the history of the earth, usually shorter than an epoch: the Ice Age.

3. A period of time marked by the presence or influence of a dominant figure: the Elizabethan Age.

Some Ages are have a general agreement in terms of time, usually because of an event, such as "the Atomic Age," so-called because it began with the development & explosion of the atom bomb. Some are more arbitrary, like calling a period of time "a golden age" (as some in this country do) when, perhaps, at the same time many of the people around were victims of oppression. They probably will not call that time for them a "golden age."

Of course, like all measurements of time, "Ages" are human-designated. But then so is Self Help Radio. The exploration of "Ages" on the show this week may indeed begin the Age Of Self Help Radio.

Though I doubt it.

Parachesis

"In rhetoric, parachesis is the repetition of the same sound in several words in close succession. Alliteration (initial rhyme) is a special case of parachesis."

So says the Wikipedia. It's disappointing, because if I heard someone say, "I'd like a parachesis," I would imagine they meant a couple of delicious bricks of cheddar.

Alliteration is one of those fingers of speech that one learns right away & uses to annoy everyone except English teachers. I still remember when, in ninth grade, I told my teacher, whose name might have been Mrs. Holder, that a phrase in Poe's "The Raven" was a perfect example of alliteration: "the grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt... bird of yore." She might have given me a gold star. Or boxed my ears.

Alliteration is a form of consonance, which is when you have repeated consonant sounds, except alliteration is simply at the beginning of words. Poe uses a little consonance above with "ungainly." He's a bad-ass.

He's also great (not bad) at assonance, which is repeated vowel sounds in words. All of these are examples of parachesis, which is not a word anyone ever said to me in school. Even now, as I thumb through a fun little book I've had for many moons called "Figures Of Speech: 60 Ways To Turn A Phrase" by Arthur Quinn, I see this author regards all forms of parachesis to be a bit beneath him. He prefers instead metaplasmus, which is misspelling for effect, used often in dialect, although Shakespeare (of course) does it all the time.

Don't tell my wife about it, though - she'll claim all her spelling mistakes are "for effect." Also, she'll beat me at Scrabble with "metaplasmus" over a triple words score.

The Show About Wondering Wanders Home

In case you were wondering why it took over a day to get my Self Help Radio show about wondering up, I'll just say that in a twenty-one hour period I found myself doing eight hours of radio with about two hours of sleep. Is it any wonder I put off putting the show about wondering on the web? It is in fact no wonder that I didn't have the time. I only wonder if this increasing sleep deprivation will start making me horticulture ampersand flute room.

Even though I am having to splash water into my face just to keep writing this, I was relatively cogent during my show about wondering, which (as you need not wonder) had plenty of songs about wondering. The show may be wondering but it hasn't wandered from its home at self help radio dot net. The show is divided into two parts, with part one being carefully placed here, & the second part somewhat more recklessly stuck down here. If you're wondering what songs I played about wondering, they're listed below, including which songs are in which part.

I wonder if I'll remember writing this after a few more hours sleep.

(part one)

"I Wonder" Bill Nelson's Orchestra Arcana _Iconography_
"I Wonder, I Wonder, I Wonder" Martha Tilton _And The Angel Sings_
"I Wonder" The Gants _Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, Vol. 2_

"Wonder People (I Do Wonder)" Love _Forever Changes_
"I Wonder Why" Dion & The Belmonts _Dion Hits (1958-1963)_
"Runaway" Del Shannon _Greatest Hits_
"I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now?" Banjo Kings _The Good Time Jazz Story_
"I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" Boyce & Hart _I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight_
"I'm Wondering" Stevie Wonder _At The Close Of A Century_

"Things I Wonder" The Shaggs _The Shaggs_
"You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here" The Mothers Of Invention _Freak Out!_
"I Wonder Who We Are" The Clientele _Bonfires On The Heath_
"The Boy Wonders" Aztec Camera _High Land, Hard Rain_

(part two)

"Well I Wonder" The Smiths _Meat Is Murder_

"I Wonder" The Ronettes _Phil Spector: Back To Mono_
"I Wonder" The Squires _Neil Young Archives, Vol. I: Early Years (1963-1968)_
"I Wonder Who" Aguaturbia _Complete Tracks_
"Sometimes I Wonder" The Harbinger Complex _Love Is The Song We Sing (San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970)_
"I Wonder Why" The Pastels _I Wonder Why 7"_
"I've Been Wondering" The Minders _Hooray For Tuesday_
"I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone" The Mountain Goats _Sweden_

"I Wonder" Gaze _Shake The Pounce_
"I Wonder What Went Wrong" Meow Meow! _Meow Meow!_
"I Wonder Why My Favorite Boy Leaves Me In The Rain" Marshmallow Kisses _I Wonder Why My Favorite Boy Leaves Me In The Rain_
"Wonder" The Springfields _Wonder 7"_
"I Wonder If You're Drunk Enough To Sleep With Me Tonight" Ballboy _A Guide For The Daylight Hours_
"I Wonder If I'll Ever See You Again" The Leopards _I Wonder If I'll Ever See You Again_

Wondering About Today's Self Help Radio?

I am going to be subbing another show on WRFL tonight, so I won't have the time today to post this morning's Self Help Radio, about wondering, until tomorrow. Sorry about that.

If you'd like to hear me play very old skool hip hop, I'll be doing that on Tommy's show tonight from 10 pm to midnight Eastern, at the link above or 88.1 fm in old skool radio format. I will be exceptionally sleep deprived. It could be amusing.

Whither The Wondering Show?

Someone was telling me I should do a "wonderful" show since there "must be a lot of songs using the word 'wonderful' shouldn't there?" (Incidentally, I'm not sure those were the person's exact words, but it seemed to be more forceful if not more believable to put the statement in quotes.) It's true, I found approximately four million songs with the title "wonderful" alone. (The Allmusic Guide lists over eight hundred but compared with the amazing set-up we have around here, they're amateurs.) (Amateurs that make more money than we do.) (I shouldn't feel bad about that because Self Help Radio is a labor of love.) (Also a labor of self-loathing.)

I have just received a telegram from Grammar Control that says I have already used up my June allotment of parenthetical expressions. That seems unfair. I am appealing the decision & I have something interesting to add but if I put it in a sentence right next to the interesting statement it wouldn't make any sense but I have no more parentheses left. I also wish I had invested in Emoticons. But I chose not to click that box when I signed up for the blog.

Being a contrary sort - to get back to what I was saying - I decided against a "wonderful" show but was intrigued by the idea of wondering. I wondered what a show about wondering would be like - & I also figured out that if you use dashes instead of parentheses, you can still have grammatical structures that resembled parenthetical expressions but weren't - I guess Emily Dickinson used a lot of dashes - instead of parentheses - & there are some people that have called that genius - so I recall something my mother never said to me, which wasn't, "If you can't be a genius, stand close to a genius & hope for osmosis."

Grammar Central has ordered me to cease & also desist from overuse of the dashes until they can make a formal ruling. Which is a shame because they don't meet for formal rulings until the fall. I wonder if I'll get in trouble if I don't cease & desist? What if I just cease but don't desist? Or vice-versa?

Best not fuck with Grammar Central. They could recall my accent collection.

But there's nothing wrong with wondering.

Preface To The Wondering Show: It's Going To Be One Of Those Shows Isn't It

Fancy is struck. The passive voice is implemented. No one has any cause for alarm.

I know people get in trouble for things everyone else is doing - illegal downloads & marijuana smoking are two things that I just thought of - but some kids were talking the other day about both of those things, how they do it without feeling like it's wrong & how they just don't feel the law has caught up. But they could get into trouble for doing either!

Even though it hasn't gone anywhere, I do kind of miss vinyl. I was never sensitive enough (or self-important enough) to claim it sounded better than digital music. I gravitated to digital music out of convenience. But the presentation of music on vinyl is more aesthetically pleasing.

One of the more fascinating, & possibly illegal, developments is the fact that people will put songs on YouTube as a "movie." I was talking to a friend in Austin about a song that she didn't know if she'd heard & I just went to YouTube & there it was. In fact, some deejays I know play their entire shows off YouTube these days. Not me. I still use CDs.

I like playing requests but I wish people who made requests would be sensitive to songs that have bad words in them - what the FCC considers bad words - when they make their requests. I have no idea if it makes them mad if I can't play a song with "fuck" in it at eight in the morning, but I am grateful for those song lyrics web sites because I can at least scan the lyrics before I play a song I'm unfamiliar with.

Actually, I don't mind that they don't care - they're not familiar with the FCC & they probably don't even think about the songs & whether they're indecent or obscene. That's my problem. I just feel a twinge of guilt when I can't play it for its content of even the simplest of naughty words.

I have a headache. Do you?

I'm Hungover/I'm All Over The Place

Both are true. With the wife out of town & the dogs paid hush puppies as hush money, I am free to be me & me. But instead I am squandering my freedom eating too much & subbing radio shows.

TONIGHT - Friday the 3rd - I'll be subbing The Uncle Bill Show, one of WRFL's best shows, & I'm hoping not to make a mess of it. That's from 8 to 10 pm Eastern time. Listen at 88.1 fm on your radio or online at wrfl dot fm.

Monday morning is another Sugar Substitute & Self Help Radio but MONDAY NIGHT I am subbing the Old School Hip Hop show from 10 to midnight. It'll be pretty old school. That's at the same place: 88.1 fm on your radio or online at wrfl dot fm.

I need to take a nap now.

A Devil - Er, I Mean, Satan - Of A Show

It was a quiet Memorial Day show this morning, wherein I played more songs that talked about Satan than most heavy metal shows. I don't think anyone was awake to listen, though.

The devil has lots of names (& he's been called a lot of names, too) & today's show examined a few of them: Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, The Evil One, The Prince Of Darkness, Mephisto - even Gary. We also talked about backwards masking, different origin stories for Satan, & I hoped someone would send me lots of Chick Tracts. No such luck, though. It's still just me & Satan.

The demonic songs I played are below. The show is where it usually is at self help radio dot net. It's in two parts, as I've recently begun to note, with part one in this part of hell & part two in this section of the Inferno. Since there's no such as a devil, it's not at all scary. Unless you think there's such a thing as a devil. That's frightening!

As always, thanks for listening. Satan thanks you, too.

xo gary

(part one)

"Liszt: Mephisto Waltz # 1, 'Der Tanz In Der Dorfschenke'" Angéle Dubeau & La Pietà _Infernal Violins_

"Beelz" Stephen Lynch _The Craig Machine_
"Bunnyrabbits, Satan, Cheese & Milk" Stark Effect _Mic In Track_
"Bus To Beelzebub" Soul Coughing _Ruby Vroom_
"Satan" Deerhoof _Holdy Paws_
"Yom Pha Barn Norn Pahwaa (Satan's Nightmare)" Paiboon _Thai Beat A Go-Go, Vol. 1_

"Satan Is Real" Louvin Brothers _Satan Is Real_
"Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down" Frank Proffitt, Vilas, NC _High Atmosphere_
"Chased Old Satan Through The Door" The Woodie Brothers _Black & White Hillbilly Music_
"Get Thee Behind Me, Satan" Almanac Singers _Songs For Political Action 03: The Almanac Singers: March 1941-July 1941_

(part two)

"Train To Satanville" Gin Gillette _Desperate Rock 'n' Roll, Vol. 2_
"Party Of The First Part" Bauhaus _Swing The Heartache: The BBC Sessions_

"Led Zeppelin" Michael Mills _Hidden & Satanic Messages In Rock Music_
"Satanic Messages" Michael Ian Black _I Am A Wonderful Man_
"Dignitaries Of Hell" Coven _Witchcraft Destoys Minds & Reaps Souls_
"Prince Of Darkness" Mr. Flood's Party _Mr. Flood's Party_
"Don't Shake Me Lucifer" Roky Erickson & The Aliens _The Evil One_

"Lucifer Over Lancashire" The Fall _458489 B Sides_
"Satan Rejected My Soul" Morrissey _Maladjusted_
"Prince Of Darkness" Mekons _Heaven & Hell_

Whither A Devil By Any Other Name...?

You might notice that I don't repeat themes - except on my anniversary shows - so when something strikes my fancy, & it makes me think of a theme, but I recognize (despite my early-onset senility) that I have in fact done that theme before, one thing I can do is see if there's some kind of semantic loophole I can utilize to "revisit" the theme without actually repeating it.

One of the earliest shows I did, back in July of 2003, when Self Help Radio wasn't even a year old, was a show with the theme "The Devil You Say." It was songs about devils. Since there are so many songs simply about devils, I didn't have to add songs about the other names of The Devil - like Satan, or Lucifer, or Beelzebub, or Justin Bieber - they remained in limbo. Until this show idea came along. Therefore, I am doing what appears to be another show about the devil - only no "devil" songs on it. A loophole! Unlike the kind you wish you could find in contracts you sign with the Evil One for your soul.

By the way, when I did the "devil" show, way back when, I got a call from a listener - this was in Austin, mind - who asked me if I was doing the show because that same day an inexplicably popular morning deejay on the NPR station - whose name I shall not say because he might be conjured by the attention, & he's a great reason not to be in Austin - had done a similar show. I told the caller that, no, I didn't listen to that particular person on the radio & would prefer electro-shock therapy to having to endure his dreadful idea of a radio show, & also that I had been working on the show all week without knowing he had done a show with the same theme (though I didn't have the interns he had to find music for me).

The caller seemed alarmed. "What do you think it means," he said, "that the two of you came up with the same theme on the same day?"

I said, "It's a pretty broad theme. It's just a coincidence."

"I don't think so," the caller scoffed. "It seems kinda ominous."

In radio land, you don't want to tell a listener that they're acting dumb & superstitious - or just dumb - & you certainly don't want to engage them & ask them what sort of supernatural mechanism known only to their tiny brains might be at work in such a situation - I'm sure he wouldn't have been as freaked out if the theme coincidentally repeated by the two of us had been "cheese" - so I just said thank you for the call & hung up.

Ah, Austin.

Meanwhile, in Lexington, you can listen to lots of songs about properly-named devils tomorrow on Self Help Radio on the 88.1 frequency at 7:30 am, following a new Sugar Substitute at 6am. You can listen everywhere that Satan can (especially in Austin, where the success of that NPR deejay can only be explained by a deal with Beelzebub) online at wrfl dot fm. I'll be archiving the show later that day, but just in case Satan doesn't allow it to air - you should listen!

Preface To A Devil By Any Other Name: Childhood Fears

Did you enjoy being frightened as a child? I was torn between the joy of being terrified & the general sense of calling bullshit on a world that was extremely suspect when it came to proving its scary claims. I kind of had a proto-scientific bent when it came to things that scared me. Here are two stories about intrepid Gary as a ghost-hunter & demon-summoner.

I remember when that book "The Amityville Horror" came out. My mother was reading it - I don't know if she ever finished it - & we had a giant hard-cover copy sitting in the living room which I had checked out one afternoon. On the cover was a picture of the window from which the evil pig - or else just evil pig eyes, I don't remember - could be seen. That haunted me. The evening after I read a few pages - not very scary pages, I remember - I couldn't go to sleep until after I had gone downstairs & hidden the book in the oven. The oven, I guess I imagined, would protect me from evil spirits.

Success! I was able to fall asleep, & didn't wake up to an evil pig looking at me for purposes I left to my imagination. Great. But what about the next night?

Also, would my mother be mad at me for putting a book in an oven overnight? (I didn't turn the oven on.) (She didn't say anything to me about it.)

The next night I thought, look, if ghosts or demons are going to come get me - I think because something as flimsy as an oven - an oven for fuck's sake! - had prevented them from coming, they might not actually exist - then why not let them come? The next night I brought the book upstairs with me.

It stayed there until either my mother retrieved it or I simply forgot it was there. I guess I knew books had a certain power, but that book, I had discovered, was full of shit.

As for summoning a demon, well - even though as children we didn't have any real idea who "Bloody Mary" was, the name itself was pretty frightening. What's more, we knew that she was dead now but could be summoned. Why summoned? Why would anyone want to bring a murderess back from the dead? Who made that stupid rule? No matter, we knew there was a scary she-demon from the past who was described as "bloody" no because she was hurt but because she bloodied people up, & we knew how to call her.

Here's the way I remember the process. & here's a description of it as a "game." But it was no game to us children.

Basically, you were supposed to go into a room without light (I thought immediately of a bathroom, since ours had no windows, although it was a more confined place), twirl twelve times saying "Bloody Mary!" (I chose to say it like Igor from the Frankenstein movies) & then, if you're not too sick, leaning into the mirror & saying her name a thirteenth time. She was supposed to appear &, out of gratitude for bringing her back, attack you & claw your eyes out.

The story intrigued me but I didn't know anyone who was brave enough to do it. So, one afternoon, when no one was around (I had enough sense at the age of nine or ten to realize that some people might think what I was doing was stupid), I gave it a shot. I confess I might have messed up the process some - as I said, the bathroom was small & I bumped into a lot of things as I was twirling - not to mention that I had to feel my way back around on the thirteenth turn to find the mirror - so all of this might have been rather disappointing to Mary - but of course she didn't come. I emerged with some bruises on my shins, but my eyes intact.

I was - & frankly still am - disappointed that I didn't live in a world with devils & demons & haunted books & mirrors. What has surprised me most about the people who live on this planet who still do think they live in a world with devils & demons & etc. is how easy it is to find out you don't all by yourself.

The Politics Of Lame

Just as this not-a-single-reason-for-existence blog celebrated its 1,100th (that's one thousand, one hundredth) post, I make the decision to "take it down a notch." (I am using that phrase incorrectly, as one might expect; it really means this.) I have, for the past couple of years, if not longer, if not shorter, tried to write in this blog, even when I have nothing to say, especially when I have nothing to say, at least five times a week. That seemed somehow appropriate (in whatever logical system that thankfully only exists in my own head) when the show was on in the afternoon or evening. For some reason, since the show is on in the mornings now, it just really seems awkward to me to have two days (Friday & Tuesday) which are only vaguely attached to the show's theme, when talking about the theme is what I advertise this blog to be for. Oh I suppose I could share videos & stuff on this blog, only that's what I use my Tumblr blog for. Or I could just post interesting links, or maybe just pictures of my animals... But isn't that what Facebook is for? Don't you have enough Facebook friends already? You want me to friend you is that it? The other option is to use these pages to write about some other topic I feel strongly about, like politics, or religion, or Star Trek, or my cats. I suppose I've done that in the past. I don't really have the stomach for a lot of it. I'm not really a critic & I'm not really all that topical. What I am is kind of lame.

(You know, lame.)

(Do people who are actually lame, which is to say, "disabled so that movement, especially walking, is difficult or impossible," object to that word meaning "uncool"? Or do we even call people like that "lame" anymore?)

(Where was I?)

All that tedious rationalizing up there is just my way of saying that I've decided to write only four days a week now instead of five. Fridays through Monday. Fridays I'll try to say something interesting, & Saturdays & Sundays are me talking about or around the upcoming theme, & Monday is when I announce I've posted the show on the web site. I don't think this will discommode anyone (I learned what that word, which means "to put to inconvenience; trouble," meant back in the day when I reflected that it would be very inconvenient & troubling if one pushed you off a commode, meaning a toilet, while you were using it) but I thought a formal announcement necessary.

Also, it gave me something to talk about on a Friday.

The 1,200th post looks farther away now.