When Apologies Attack!

Wow, yesterday's attempt at being funny slash profound was a load of horse pooper, wasn't it? I don't know what the fuck I was sniffing at that time. I think I wrote a word every half hour. While little bits of asbestos drifted from the unsafe ceiling above. I'm serious, who the fuck was I trying to impress? Ezra Pound? Wallace Stevens? Betsy Mae in Accounting? My department doesn't even have an Accounting section! I don't know what part of my department Betsy Mae works for!

Like most people, I blog in the nude. This makes writing in my blog at work very uncomfortable, since, like most American & Canadian businesses, my work requires that I be at least partially clothed for the entire work day. ("Fig Leaf Fridays" being a relatively new development. Usually that's most popular in the Swimsuit Section of the Department.) Add to all of this the fact that I am not supposed to blog at work (except when I ghost-write my boss's blog), & you can imagine the looks I get from my co-workers when I begin to disrobe in my cubicle! One of these days I'll either get in a lot of trouble or I'll catch cold. Damn they keep these offices frosty!

What I really need to do, though, is just apologize. No one should have to trudge through the treacly, tragic stabs of ha ha that I attempt on a more or less daily basis here. Luckily, nearly no one does. Most likely, if you're reading this, you're my mother wondering what I am saying behind her back, or you're a spider crawling the web looking for poor bastards to sell viagra to make their newly-extended penises work. Which reminds me. I need to answer an email from a cute Russian girl who found my name in a chat room...

While blogging has become a serious pasttime in this United Snakes, it's more & more the less & less affluent who spend oodles & oodles of time downloading porn & music from Russian Federation websites that somehow slip right past expensive corporate firewalls with tacky corporate firewallpaper. I know that my (very) hypothetical audience is essentially finding their way here looking for Amazon Dot Com promotional codes & the lastest nipple slip from the latest nymphette. I have only those illusions that enable me to walk out the door every morning with my handgun on safety - the rest of the time, I look quizzically at graphs & make sure that the court-mandated pills I take to keep my dogs loving me are safely down the gullet. So, too, the blog is not so much required to be adventurous, but simply moded: an arm of the radio show, as the music is the radio show's heart.

Gah! I can't stop it! What the fuck am I writing! How long can this go on! Did you ever see such a fat, bloated tick of crapola stuck suckily to the side of a computer screen? Ye gods, I am a douche.

Also, self-pity & self-deprecation, while admirable in a much-lauded public servant or celebrity, is essentially the face of acceptable well-rehearsed modesty, while in a virtually unknown blogger, it's BOOOOOOOOORRRRINGGGGG.

It's true, actually. Bah.

Whither Glue?

So glad you asked. I answer with a question: how glue are you?

We often think of glue as a noun, but not so Self Help Radio! Self Help Radio uses glue to describe itself - & so should you. For it's glue that we are missing in our nonstick world of counters & tabletops. Glue is how we should answer questions like "How are you?" ("Glue!") or "How do you feel?" (Glue!"). I am convinced much work would be accomplished if we simply be more glue than we currently are. Heck, I even think we could invent a new genre of music & call it "the glues."

But maybe you don't entirely get it, or, in the new jargon, you don't glue. I glue. Totally, I do. It sometimes helps understanding if we turn what was formerly a noun into not just an adjective, but also a verb. To allow oneself to feel glue, one must simply glue. Glueing is how glue describes itself. Maybe unfortunately, there's already a verb, "to glue," which means something like, "to apply glue." That may be a hurdle. But just like the verb "to eat" once meant "to not eat" (back in the 13th century or something - I read it online I think - or maybe I dreamt it in one of my etymological dreams), so too can we change the meaning of the verb "to glue." One way to do this is to eliminate glue as a noun.

& that means eliminating glue as a substance. You've discovered this week's Self Help Radio's most nefarious scheme: the elimination of glue as a substance. It's unnatural to stick things together when they don't want to be! It's unnatural to force adherence in regards to adhering! In elimintating glue as a substance, we are left with only memory - & metaphor.

We shall then become the metaphor. We shall be glue. & we'll reclaim the noun, at last. As the world falls apart, we, the glue, will express ourselves as glue, & we shall glue.

I ask again: how glue are you?

Preface To Glue: What Is That Delicious Smell?

One day, in 1982, when a certain insensitive American Literature teacher made a certain sensitive schoolboy run out of class in tears, the history of the Trinidad, Texas, Independent School District was changed forever. That crying schoolboy fled to the boy's restroom, where he found a small group of young toughs sniffing airplane glue. Though slight of build & smart, the weeping schoolboy fell in with that crowd, & a series of personal disasters & run-ins with the law surely followed. There was death, disease, unhappiness, hospital visits, & a lot of sex for some reason, & with some rather attractive young women, including one who I swear looked exactly like Phoebe Cates in Fast Times At Ridgemont High. There were fights with parents, clergy, the mean man at the cigar store, even with his closest friends. By the time everyone had given up on that sensitive schoolboy, he was alone in the world, with only one functioning nostril & one last drop in that tube of glue.

But he let that drop go to waste. Determine, still a little fucked up, he pulled himself together that lonely night & turned his life around. It wasn't easy, but since he was a white kid whose parents had been saving money for him for college, it wasn't really all that difficult, either. In any event, his addiction cured, he went to school, determined to make school safe for everyone, but especially sensitive schoolboys with addicitive personalities.

& that sensitive schoolboy turned out to be none other than Dr. Jack Scrawfelter, Superintendent to the TISD! & his first duty: he fired the teacher who had hurt him so!

Interestingly, that teacher, Elmyra Crabtree, was only a few weeks from retiring, but due to a trumped-up charge against her by the superintendent, she was denied a large portion of her retirement, & spent her savings in court challenging the ruling. The judge was a good friend of the Scrawfelter family & also had two kids in the school district, so she basically lost everything when he ruled against her. She now works in the bean section of a school lunchroom in Corsicana.

Let that be a lesson to you, glue sniffers & mean teachers alike! I can make up a story about both, & have the weight of my trumped-up moral make you feel weird! It's true! It's not true! What do you know?

In Which Our Hero Forgets His ATM Card & Gets Arrested

This will mean nothing to anyone who isn't a Texan who's had to drive on the I-35 corridor from Austin to Dallas (or vice versa) in the month of August ever in the last twenty years, but I just want to say: FREAKY. It's rained more on this part of the world this summer than it would have if we'd been forced to live One Hundred Years Of Solitude, so all of central Texas is green, gReEn, GREEN! Usually around this time of year, there are warnings of fires. People put cigarettes out in their hands if there's nothing else around. Grills are subject to background checks. Kids with magnifying glasses get roughed up by the Highway Patrol & sent to reeducation camps. But this summer: it's so green it hurts.

It's too weird. I blame the Bible.

This has nothing to do with what I was going to tell you, which is this: if you missed last week's show about "bathing" (which has already been compared to "a delightful interview with Charlie Rose" by my mother, who also missed last week's show, but who thinks I'm a lot like Charlie Rose don't ask me why), you can go over to selfhelpradio.net & listen to the whole thing as if it were happening now. Which is isn't. Because I'm right here.

Fungi love this moistness. I blame the Bible.

Cry At Will!

I am locked outside my house. I am banging on the door but no one is within. Well, not no one. There are cats, but they are listening to music really loud, so they can't hear me knocking.

I live in what some might call a house that was built about a decade & a half before I was born. The house, unlike me, is not afraid of the eventually colonscopy - as it has put it, "Wasps have lived on me. Rats have burrowed around my foundation. What do I fear someone sticking something up my ass? Have you seen my sewage line? I feel sorry for the fucking doctor!"

My house stopped speaking to me a few minutes ago. It wanted to talk about John From Cincinatti which, though I am enjoying it, doesn't seem as important as getting into the house right now. I have to make a radio show, it needs me to shut the damn cats' music up!

It made me think of an apartment I once knew. It was a little gay - you know how apartments are - but whenever I locked myself out - er, I didn't mean to imply that I currently locked myself out - I mean, I'm not that careless - but anyway, the apartment I knew was kinder than my house. My house is like, "Ha ha, asshole, can't get in the house. The dogs have been tied up by the cats & they're shitting all over your records, ha ha ha."

Anyway, I got to get inside. I am writing this with my mind. Tomorrow I am planning to do my show with my mind as well. Unless, you know. I lock my brain in the house.

Whither Bathing?

I like to be clean. I am happy to be living in a part of the universe where I can be clean. My hair gets greasy. My skin gets dry. I need a bath & cremes & lotions & wraps & powders & expensive gadgets to not be a crumbly, sweaty, smelly thing. & that's just in the morning. By afternoon I need a quick shower & a group of scary Italian men to rub essential oils all over me before the end of the workday. & of course a bath in ice-cold lamb's blood at the end of the night, with a Cuban cigar & a cup of fair-trade tea, to keep me from the night terrors.

It's your average Western Civilization lifestyle, & I am damned lucky to have it. So I don't think it's too presumptuous to celebrate it with a Self Help Radio about it. In fact, I would say it's part & parcel with my other radio shows celebrating the incredible luck I've had being born in the United States. My show about having a very low probability of being the victim of sudden, inexplicable violence was a big hit, as was my show about being very fortunate to not have to worry about diseases in my tap water. Of all my shows on this theme, my least popular one was the one about how buying a hybrid car is the main way I can save the world. Even my equally self-deluded American listeners saw through that shit.

But! We can celebrate being clean! It's certainly something the whole world wants, even if it's impossible for most of them. I think the admonition "Think clean thoughts!" is appropriate here, although we should qualify it - don't make the thoughts themselves clean (as in, not perverted) - but make the thoughts about being clean!

Also, I am working on a way to make listening to Self Help Radio the equivalent of taking a ninety minute shower. Details forthcoming.

Preface To Bathing: Is It Okay To Shower While Drunk?

The learned professor of smarty-pants stuff, Edmund Noggin, once produced a widely-derided study of the effects of certain drugs (including alcohol & tobacco) in the shower. Some background may be needed: Professor Noggin (or Nogsy, to his prostitutes) felt that he was way too grubby for his own good, & he bathed over six times a day. He was not strictly a shower man; he could & did enjoy a warm bath whenever the moment felt right. He developed over time a permanent wrinkliness to his skin. Mainly people thought he might be a pug. Despite that, he continued to test - mainly on himself - the effects of normal day-to-day experiences while in the bath or shower. The results were not really all that exciting, but it made him happy. His articles were never published in American scientific journals, but later it was discovered that many of them were translated poorly & ended up in Communist Party Newsletters in small towns of the former USSR satellites of Latvia & Lithuania.

Here are some excerpts from his report on drugs in the shower:

Alcohol: Need to remember not to sip directly under the shower head... Easy to slip & fall & break glass. Easy to get confused & accidentally eat soap.... Re: gin & tap water - my god, does gin go with everything?... If you pass out in the shower, most likely the cold water after the hot water runs out will wake you... Delicious.

Ecstasy: Oh sweet mother of god. Oh gracious universe. Oh this feels amazing. Why should I ever leave? Why won't anyone ever just love me like this water is loving every part of my body right now? I need to find someone to shower with me!

Marijuana: Got hungry, skipped the shower, fell asleep in front of the television.

LSD: Water is made of light. They lie, those scientists (I can't believe I once thought of myself as a scientist!) when they said light's speed is constant. Can't you see, water is light, wrapping itself around you, dripping off you. It takes the unclean parts of you when it leaves, so I am watching my bad parts slowly get sucked down the drain while I am replaced entirely with light. This world has poisoned me, there is so much of myself to replace with slow, solid, nourishing light!

Tobacco: It's fucking hard to keep this lit. Next time maybe I'll try a pipe.

Speed: I've never been so clean. I cleaned between my toes. I cleaned between my hairs. I think I also cleaned the shower. & the bathroom. & wrote this report. & typed it. & sent it out.

A Tale Of Two Radio Shows

This past weekend, I did two radio shows. One was my normal (used conditionally) show, Self Help Radio. The other was another KOOP show, which I subbed, called Stronger Than Dirt. You can click on the link to see what sort of show that is, if you're not familiar with the song it's named after.

On one show, two people dressed as bunny rabbits showed up. On the other, someone strange called & told me "I sounded familiar" but not because they'd heard me on the radio.

On one show, gods that take the form of bunnies were professionally discussed. On the other, footwear of deejays was unprofessionally discussed.

On one show, uncomfortable & unconventional commentary about rabbit poop was celebrated. On the other, Canada was unsuccessfully located on a map.

On both shows, incredible music was shared with the people of Austin. But you don't have to take my word for it (or even be in Austin). Both shows have been made digital exactly as they happened & are available for your listening pleasure right here. What are you afraid of? What are you waiting for?

I am sleepy now. I'll nap while you listen.

Professional Confessional

Carlton Wind, of Megasticks, Nebraska, writes: "I once fed the largest hamster known to woman (indeed, only a man had seen a larger hamster, & that man, alas, was not myself) the world's stickiest head of lettuce (verified by committee) & wrote the best narrative on the experience I had currently available."

Rita Mylar, of Curt, Delaware, responds: "Happy indeed is the (non-existent) soul whose piece of (intangible) mind is made (virtually) whole by kind & good (insufferable) works within the confines of (metaphysical) beauty!"

Dr. Emily Ouch, of Reeling, Nevada, commented later: "You may imagine that the sum is equal to the sum of its parts, but that is a common misconception by the layperson in regards to both diagnoses & treatment of what we in the business call 'the sum of its parts.' It's now well understood that some of its parts are in fact not really factored into the sum of its parts. We find that sumptious."

Children's entertainer Chet "Fluffy The Moose" Spurt weighed in on the editorial page of the Bongos, Alabama, Bingo Quarterly: "As superfluous as the destruction of a single species - a single species of a thousand thousand members we may want to remind ourselves! - may appear in the annals of the cosmos - a work that spans a billion billion volumes we may say as we try to find a book in this library! - as one of those such species who may yet die - who may find themselves as merely one of a trillion trillion trillion footnotes in but a single book in that momentous library we must be aware! - truly even so it should bum us out."

Famed newscaster & javelin catcher Horace Tilde of Woetown, Kansas, mentioned: "Old bumps, sit ye not on mine forehead, though thy crusty way be but crust in my way. Old folds of skin, lay ye not on mine flabby buttocks, but set ye gently, so I my yet rest comfortably on my piles. Old nasty thoughts, come ye not when my mind is most intoxicated, but approach ye calmly, bearing gifts of pornography written, photograped & filmed, so I may see thee when I may most need thee. Yay, verily."

But it's Grant Cheesecutter of Wormwood, Texas, who made it most clear: "I don't give two whooping cranes if you can't get your ass motivated to listen to Self Help Radio on 91.7 fm KOOP this afternoon. I don't give a flying fleidermaus whether you listen to it online at koop.org from 4:30 to 6pm central United States time. Truly, I couldn't give more than half a shipwrecked shogun. I'll do it with you, I'll do without you. God you make me puke."

Not Enough Time To Make Any Sense

Busy busy busy. Also, rainy rainy rainy. It's 75 degrees outside right now. In July. At 5pm. That's so fucked it's not funny.

But it's going to get worse!

Yay Global Warming!

Whither Rabbits?

It's simple. My show this week is happening on July 27. Exactly sixty-seven years ago on that date, July 27, 1940, a brilliant fellow from Taylor, Texas (which is just a few miles north of Austin, where you can hear Self Help Radio) named Tex Avery directed the very first cartoon which featured the iconic animated smart-ass (& very close friend of mine during my youth) Bugs Bunny. I'll be celebrating Bugs' sixty-seventh birthday on my show Friday with a show all about Bugs' family: the Leporidae. The rabbits.

Oh, Bugs'll make an appearance. Don't you worry.

Also, next week's show will be about bathing. So for those of you who don't like it when my show has an actual reason for having its theme of the week, I'll return to being utterly arbitrary in August.

Preface To Rabbits: A Long Discussion Of That Episode Of "Gilligan's Island" Where Our Hero Ate The Radioactive Carrots & Got Super Eyesight

Bunny was the name of the schoolgirl tragedy we witnessed on Prom Night, 1993. You didn't remember all of it - you'd been huffing charred Cocoa Puffs since 10am - but we had made a pact that said this: if we couldn't get anyone to go with the prom to us, we'd act like we didn't care while inside we'd feel like we'd never do anything greater than killing ourselves. Since we weren't terribly motivated, we planned instead to eat as many sandwiches as we could without looking at one another. That was the plan. But as you know, human beings make plans while rabbits laugh. The night turned into a tragicomedy.

At the time, the woman you loved was working as the bass guitar in a psychobilly band. The woman I loved was married to the drumkit in the same band. We weren't old enough to get in the bar, but the kindly bouncer let us sit across the street & listen. Across the street was the halfway house, & we only thought about it insofar as we wondered what exactly it was halfway between. We figured it was something like, halfway between the bar & the house behind it. Something like that.

Louie Crazypants was a convicted felon with convictions. He didn't believe two homosexual boys like you & me should be so unhappy on our Prom Night 1993. I explained we weren't so much gay as sensitive & he beat the living shit out of me for sassing him. I still remember his kind eyes as he explained to me, apologizing, why he had to do it, baby. Then he gut-punched you to show you he loved you, too. He handcuffed us to the back of his truck & drove us to the prom.

Wow, were we fucked up that night! Louie bought us beer & grapefruit, & he told us to drink up, only hitting us when we accidentally squirted him with grapefruit juice, as you will, trying to forced a piece out with a spoon. We arrived at the school in time for the crowning of the King & Queen. Looking around, you & I noticed the same thing - for some reason, Louie had taken us to a school not in our city, but in the neighboring suburb. We also noticed he had covered himself in gasoline & was laughing madly as he moved toward the school door.

Oh Bunny! You were the cutest Prom Queen I'd ever seen, & I'd seen at least one before. Louie ran straight for you as you sneaked a cigarette, balancing your tiara so prettily as you attempted to light a smoke in heels. Your light came on as Louie came on & the two of you went up, up, up. The school, which had earlier that week had all of its asbestos removed & so was feeling a little vulnerable, caught fire as if in spite. Handcuffed to the truck, holding grapefruit rinds to protect us from parts of the school flying at us as the it blazed, we barely saw the class come flying out of the school, virtually every one of them horribly burned & screaming.

The police weren't entirely understanding - we were beaten repeatedly & forced to answer to the name "Betty" - but in the end, they couldn't explain how we could be handcuffed to a truck & also able to start a fire. When we tried to show the cop how we could have done it anyway, our lawyer stopped us, & he was beaten repeatedly. We enjoyed that.

We found out about Bunny years later, when the story was made into a made-for-TV movie that you saw on a plane. You wrote to the producer about how unfair it was that they cast Anthony Michael Hall as you, but I was perfectly happy with the brillaint casting of Paul Dooley as me. You called me that night - the first time we talked in years - & my mother yelled at you & then went across the street & threw eggs at your window. Those were the days!

No Buns For You!

SELF HELP RADIO NOTES. PAGE ONE.

In addition to the regular Self Help Radio, which will allegedly be about rabbits this week, Self Help Radio host & founder Gary Dickerson will guest host the famous KOOP show Stronger Than Dirt.

SELF HELP RADIO NOTES. PAGE TWO.

Self Help Radio host & founder Gary Dickerson spoke with authorities & was unable to provide any information about the whereabouts of KOOP programmer & host of the famous KOOP show, Stronger Than Dirt, Scott Gardner, although Gary Dickerson seemed to think he'd turn up after Sunday or so.

SELF HELP RADIO NOTES. PAGE THREE.

If you're sad about missing Self Help Radio last Friday, the show about "Pride," or if you are sad because you heard it, you can either relive your pain or experience it for the first time, because the show is available in its entirety on the Self Help Radio web page.

SELF HELP RADIO NOTES. PAGE FIVE.

Any listener who has last seen or otherwise heard anything from Self Help Radio host & founder Gary Dickerson's naked mole rats, who went out for a drink last Friday after a brief heated exchange & have not called home since are advised to contact Gary Dickerson at the Self Help Radio offices. Please note: the naked mole rats might currently be clothed.

SELF HELP RADIO NOTES. PAGE SIX.

Did you know that naked mole rats have extremely hard teeth because they eat very hard things. Like corm. Or rhizone. Or corn nuts. Or the rims of whiskey glasses. But mainly the roots of plants. You know. God I miss them. Babies please come home!

Proverbs 16:18

Oh why did I agree to do a show about PRIDE? It's making me look bad! It's the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins! I am so fucked!

Wait a second. I don't believe in that "sin" shit. Plus, I am a child of the last three decades of the 20th century. Pride was never a bad thing. Pride was the one thing you had when you had nothing else. Fuck you Bible! I am proud to be the person I am.

Oh wait. I'm a white dude. White Pride is what racists call their hatred. I don't have any of that. I barely have a heritage, let alone some kind of "culture" about which I can be proud of. Now I'm fucked again.

But I am kinda proud of my radio station, which recently had its license renewed. Fuck yeah! Community radio pride! I am totally down with that.

So if you're proud of yourself for non-icky or fucked-up reasons, or if you're proud that there's a radio station like KOOP around, or if you're just glad there's only seven deadly sins, because you've counted at least twenty, then you will enjoy Self Help Radio today at 4:30pm. That's Central time. You can hear it on 91.7 fm or you can go to the KOOP website to listen online.

If you do, I'll be proud of you.

Partner Faking Her Orgasm?

I love love love the Urban Dictionary.

When I have to do a show where there's not a whole lot to talk about & I don't really want to make things up (well, I never really don't want to make things up), I'll go see what the kids are defining.

Sometimes, though, there are things I could never say on the air. Like this definition of pride meat. I have no doubt young men have used this phrase before. It certainly sounds like something a twenty-year-old would talk about. That, & a pride swing. Kids today! So free & easy with their naughty bits!

I could probably get away with talking about the "lewd" act called the Pride of Montpelier, but it's only funny because of the second part of the definition.

In Austin there are a lot of pride rides. Did they call cars in the 70's with Black Power stickers on them "pride rides"? Were there Black Power stickers? Why not?

But, in any case, tomorrow's Self Help Radio will at the very least increase the amount of prideons you have. Isn't that worth it?

Whither Pride?

Dear Communists,

Look! It's a naked guy with a bird's head! No, really!

Have you had problems with pride? I guess I've had my highs & lows. We always think we're better than we are until we're laid low.

That girl's dangerous! She must be on some powerful stuff!

A show about pride should not be construed as me having pride in my show. I know how embarrassing it is. Like being pantsed every Friday from 4:30 to 6:00 by the nerdiest bullies in the world. Which you will of course find on KOOP.

We'll have to face the fact that we're not alone in the universe.

I operate almost entirely like a stuffed iPod on random. Pride just came up. But not that U2 song. I'm not talking about individual songs - I mean themes. My iPod is stuffed with themes.

The whole fucking universe is split in two!

You know what I hate? When people attempt to pat themselves on the back by saying, "You'd be proud of me..." & then telling me something they are proud of. Hell, I'm amazed anyone gets up in the morning. My pride in you is already at its lowest possible point.

Unit 1-7 respond. Unit 1-7! I'm missed you so!

Listen Friday. You'll see. Pride goeth before a weekend.

Preface To Pride: Insomnia Is My Shame

Other people named "me." A late-night study in failure.

This Gary Dickerson makes more money than I'll ever see. & wow! Check out those stock options! He seems to be working with semiconductors.

This Gary Dickerson seems to live in Phoenix & takes nice pictures. (I like that it says "Gary Dickerson's Favorite Photos.")

This Gary Dickerson has written a helpful article called "Fluke Facts," & he should know, since he's "a member of the Manasquan Fishing Club, past president and vice president of JCAA, chairman of the Fluke Committee and a JCAA Trustee." Good for him!

This Gary Dickerson (with a picture) owns Dickerson Mechanical in & was elected President of the Flint Plumbing & Mechanical Contractors in 2005. Such accomplishments!

Yikes! If you scroll down on this page, you'll see two generations of Gary Dickersons involved in a lawsuit at the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. I can only dream of what it might be all about.

There's a douchebag named Gary Dickerson apparently really involved at this radio station. Oh wait. That's me.

In this court case (another court case!), the issue is the state of Texas vs. William Speer, a prisoner who killed his fellow inmate, whose name was Gary Dickerson. That sucks.

This youngster named Gary Dickerson is located in "Glorius Gloucester."

About this Gary Dickerson, we discover "Gary Dickerson has been in the commercial furniture industry since 1992." Don't I know!

This Gary Dickerson is a sergeant in the DeKalb (Georgia) Police Department’s Vice Squad. There's a picture, too!

This Gary Dickerson teaches a class on glass bead making. No shit.

I could go on for hours but I should try to sleep. There are so many Gary Dickersons in the world! We should be in a club.

Zzzzzzz.

My Lover, My Vice Principal

- What do you think of my teeth?
- What about your teeth?
- They were just cleaned.
- Yeah?
- So?
- So what?
- Do they look clean?
- I guess so.
- Take a good look.
- You want me to inspect your teeth?
- Sure.
- Why?
- What if the hygienist did a shitty job?
- How am I supposed to know if the dental hygienist did a shitty job or not?
- Look, I picked up this pamphlet, & it says here: "Dental hygienists remove soft & hard deposits from teeth, teach patients how to practice good oral hygiene, & provide other preventive dental care." My hygienist didn't say dick about practicing good oral hygiene, but instead talked about American Idol for a half hour with her hands in my mouth. So I'm curious, did she in fact remove soft & hard deposits from my teeth, or even provide other preventive dental care? I can't look myself!
- Not even in a mirror?
- Can't you just take a look?
- I'm not a dentist! I'm not a dental hygienist!
- Have you ever seen like plague or other gunk on teeth?
- Sure, but...
- Then just be a pal & take a look.
- I don't know...
- If you do, I'll give you a treat.
- A treat?
- A treat.
- What kind of treat?
- You'll have to inspect my teeth to find out.
- Oh, what the hell.
- I'll open my mouth big & wide.
- Uh, as far as I can tell, OW! Motherfucker! You fucking bit me!
- That's the treat!
- Jesus Christ! What a fucking psycho! I didn't even tell you how your teeth were!
- I couldn't wait to give you the treat!

Downsides/Regression

Thanks for nice calls during Self Help Radio today. It's nice to be on the radio. You're nice to listen.

I am drinking whiskey late into a Friday evening watching "WKRP In Cincinatti" on DVD. Three thoughts come to mind.

1) Even though they don't feature the original music (as explained here), I'm not as disappointed by that as I should be - something about the generic music they use seems appropriate. Maybe because, having been a deejay for over a decade, I could never be so distracted & lackadaisical behind the board. The station must have had a LOT of dead air. But I am sad they cut clips from the aired shows because of the music. That sucks.

2) I loved radio as a kid, but this show probably fanned the flames of my desire to be a deejay more than anything else. But I can't tell you why. Nothing about the station, Johnny Fever, or Venus Flytrap resembles any kind of deejay I ever wanted to be.

3) I am sad to say that another childhood crush is dead. I don't find Jan Smithers anywhere near as Bailey Quarters as cute as I remember her. That's sad. Luckily, I still think Loni Anderson is hideous. Also, I never noticed Andy Travis' accent. Is it because I was raised in Texas?

That's all. Some thoughts. Gonna watch the ridiculous & crazy turkey episode now.

Rent Is Due

I am asked in the privacy of my own head what this blog has to do with a radio show called Self Help Radio. I answer on this blog HOW DARE YOU.

Playlists are everywhere. Recordings of the show abound. Pieces of fragments of segments of me are all over your interweb. But where are the concepts, the conceptualizations, the computations or conception which make up what little radio show I can offer. Here. I keep them here. You would maybe like a tour?

My weariness is only surpassed by my exhaustion. I wouldn't notice either except I am so bone tired. I will go into the hibernation kiddie pool & soak myself into a Friday, when I can Self Help the Radio. All that's required of you is to listen & enjoy, not judge. HOW DARE YOU.

HOW DARE I. I feel like a seedless pumpkin, I am sorry. You have & always will be the paw for my thorn. It's good we occasionally yell. One of us might be dead. Once the other looks startled, we know the squabbling will continue.

But your retinue is paging you. You never really cared what I did here. You were hoping I'd have images of Starlet McNewPerson around so you could download. Make into a wallpaper. For your friends. Like it was 1996.

Oh shit, gotta go. Rent's due.

Whither Boots?

Did you ever wonder, have you ever did? Had you never thought of, if so why? What would happen if you every so often why? These are questions I ask yourself nearly any time, yet unbeknownst to the Captains Of Industry & the Lieutentants On The Mountains, these queries remain unqualified in daily life. So too I begin alone a difficulty with insecure series based on real or actual eventful, called "Boots!"

Mr. Boots, he is prototagonist. Mrs Boots, she is but a window to the wind. The little Boots never came to pass, & therefore thus is monster an unhappiness for folks like these. Sit down or the theme music may overwhelm!

Mr Boots is accessible his assets all in a roadster. Mrs Boot is not necessarily unfaithful in the classic sense. What installation of time-sensitive documentation haven't we once or twice felt obligation in & around the rush hour daytime? Protection is the end of jealousy, is sadness with aging punk rocket helpless in her ultimately lamed desperation.

Mr Boots never did ever, but Mrs Boots understood only in her blood clots. The little Boots might wail, When does Daddy come from? but it's the stern police matron who will shake a finger of disgusting to the archaeology on the second floor. Did you see this as an end or as a mean end? Rubbing soreness is like unto smarter wounds.

Mr Boots is last onscreen in a driving rainbow. Mrs Boots has been alimonily summarized. Since never did the little Boots cry in the night or ever more, it's only lawyers & priestly who make chump change into rhyme. If morality is expected, especially in preproduction, it's the "new blogosphere" here, where art's for art's forsaken, & never you mind it's edutainment.

Didn't talk fastly enough? Perhaps moreover the underlying thematically went over the shoulder of the head, or under the against & metaphor. You're welcome for taking only hours a day to wander; it's more than basic, to prevent an anguish where previously there was only pain. But there's more!

Preface To Boots: I Own Only Two Pairs Of Shoes

I want to ask you about your boots. What happened to you that you value boots so little? What if I told you that, when you were a baby, we called you "Boots"? & that, at your work, your co-workers say, when you're coming toward them, "Here comes Mr Boots!" Is that why you don't take care of your boots?

Boots may seem bulky & inconsiderate, but sometimes to protect your ankles & allow you to stay out of shin-deep muck & water, you have to sacrifice the breathing space of the skin beneath your ankles. Your grandfather knew that. Your grandmother knew your grandfather knew that. We don't know what went wrong with you.

Really? Boots have a bad reputation among the literati? Who are the literati anyway? Not you, surely. You got a poem published once in the back of Maxim. & it was a dirty poem besides. You rhymed "wussy" with "pussy." Ooo, move over Wallace Stevens. Don't you know self-importance looks cooler in boots?

What, me? No, I don't own any boots. But I am not talking about me. I'm talking about you. Your antipathy toward boots boggles the mind. I sentence you to three years as a shoe salesman! Now get out of my court! Bailiff! Boot him out of here! Ha ha, get it? My bailiff has boots! & he's giving you the boot! On your booty!

I stole that joke from Clarence Thomas. Now, what else is on the docket! This fellow? Sir! What happened to your boots? Oh, it's going to be a long night.

Thou Canvasback!

Here are fifteen words (one for each letter of the alphabet you can remember when you're very drunk) which have been decreed by the United States Word Authority to be used sparingly if at all during this week. Please make sure that, if you find yourself about to utter, mutter, write or "text" any of these words, that you exhaust all possibility of synonymic word or phrase. For example, if one of the words on the list (alas, it is not) were "president," you could use a word like "douchebag," which means approximately the same thing, & is never on the Sparing Words List.

The list, then, with notes from Gerald Pork, the Lexicographer-In-Chief:

1) "armed" (Note: "carrying" would be acceptable; "packing heat" might be embarrassing.)
2) "berth" (Note: all sailors feeling compelled to use this word will be keelhauled.)
3) "cure" (Note: If you're talking about the band The Cure, it's fine.)
4) "fear" (Note: Unless you're a chicken.)
5) "groin" (Note: Of course! Why didn't we think of it before! The word should be onomatopoeia!)
6) "impulse" (Note: this includes impulsive, but not "I'm pulsing!", which is for some reason a very popular phrase among the youth of Altoona.)
7) "jabroni" (Note: Unless you're in Italy.)
8) "louse" (Note: Nor is the plural okay.)
9) "menthol" (Note: The government recommends that menthol smokers ask for "the minty cigarettes.")
10) "oops" (Note: This might not be disallowed; it might just be a penciled-in error by the committee.)
11) "privy" (Note: Or even "privvy." We just don't like the way it sounds. Even with a British accent.)
12) "Q" (Note: Just saying the letter is not allowed. Pronouncing it is fine, since it's not really a sound & it's pronounced "kw." Or just "k.")
13) "taint" (Note: snicker, snicker.)
14) "ulgerfunkel" (Note: we swear, it's a real word. Look it up. Just don't use it.)
15) "word" (Note: Which will make next week's report an ass pain.)

We thank you for your attention.

Baby Is In Love With Fire

Baby, baby, please put down the cello. It never did anything to hurt you. Yes, that's a cello. You've never seen a cello? Is that why you want to hurt it?

Some rock stars who end up owning curvy bulging instrumentals cannot help by sticking stickers on them. This is probably an incorrect response to the curviness or bulgiation of the instrument. Unless it doesn't matter. But flautists never put stickers on their flutes. Or do they?

Why focus, then, on how fire destroys things that are flat as well as things that are round? Why not focus instead on fire's tendency to taper itself around the top of the flame? Why not talk about fire as a solid thing with an edge? Or even think about it? It might take your mind off of being burned alive.

All this talk makes the model blue. Do you know Blue the model? She's skinny, foreign & addicted to model airplane glue. She looks at the world in a weird way, & prefers you bring her leaves rather than flowers, as if she's playing the odds. Then she's stick the stem in some glue & snort until her eyes bleed.

Do you even know the difference between gangrene & distemper? Like me, you're confused with the word "gangrene" - why isn't it called "ganyellow"? Fuck Latin roots, I want to be able to trust medical terms again. Like we did when we were children.

When I finally meet your parents, please do not tell them I was not proud of us on this day. Please don't mention the blood-soaked tablecloth or the high cheekbones I made for you to wear. Tell them instead that we came to an impasse & all it took was a burning cello & thirteen stitches for us to know that love is impernanet & difficult.

Whither Worms?

I can't remember why I decided to do a show about worms. I wrote it down one day & it became a reality. That's right, I'm a follower & practicioner of Scribbling Your Dreams, the powerful spiritual system which helps you bring all that you desire to reality. Consider:

- Alma Tetragon of Oneida, Wisconsin made it a habit to write down the things she needed when she would go "shopping." Once at a suitable market or store, she would look to the list & get the things she wanted. Coincidence? Only a fool would think so!

- Martin "The Herbie" Textile would often write home when he was in college at Brown Shirt University, & he would always make it a point to let his mother & father know in not-very-subtle language when he needed twenty bucks here, fifty bucks there. His parents would send him the money! Luck? Not hardly!

- Don Apachepants was a moderately successful Herbivore who was often too busy to communicate verbally with people at his business. He would therefore write & send memos to his workers. An example: if he sent a note to his secretary which read, "I'll have my usual lunch of potatos & pills at one," he would find his afternoon repast on his desk at one pm. Was this magic? Are you some kind of crazy fuck?

What did all of these things have in common? The person desired something, & then they wrote it down. The power of the written word has been well known ever since Santa Claus began keeping his famous "lists" two thousand years ago, & the children who found themselves on the "naughty" side developed painful, incurable, terminal diseases, but it was long suspected you had to be an immortal like Santa Claus to make such things happen. But no! It's within the realm of mortals like you - & like me.

So now, when I want something, I write it down. Please note: email doesn't count. Nor does blogging. It has to be a written note. Whether the handwriting needs to be legible is subject of intense scientific scrutiny. Also, it does not appear to work in any language other than English, unless you're an immortal like Santa Claus. Sorry!

More & more people are putting all their eggs in the basket called Scribbling Your Dreams, & why not? It seems to be true. It feels right. I can cite anecdotal evidence to support it. Why shouldn't it be true?

Let me know if you can make some money off this, & cut me in, wouldya?

Preface To Worms: The Nature Of Things

This is what we drink on Self Help Radio:



Made from tears, not from worms. So there.

O What A Whiff It Is

Dear Snoots,

Did you get the wet hair I sent you in the mail? It was sent through this wacky gift site/online fart-noise-making organization called Self Help Radio. Why hadn't I heard of them before?

Much love,
Dad

Dear Dumbass,

I am happy to learn you've added 2.0 to your name to reflect your current state of plastic surgery. How do I know this? Because I've discovered a web site, Self Help Radio, in which I can find out personal information about people I hate. (For people I love, it costs money.)

Ha ha,
Vinny Dictive

Dear Prestidigitator,

Your combination microwave oven/drum kit has arrived from Self Help Radio. Did you want me to put it in the den, the kitchen, or in the back of my mind?

Please advise,
Guileless

Dear Tacks,

I was listening to a radio show the other day & it hurt me to listen to it. I think it was called Self Help Radio. It hurt it hurt it hurt. Do you know it's archived? Even the show I heard on Friday! Oh I am nauseous from all the pain.

Ouch,
Muggsy

Dear College Graduate,

I am sorry, but your qualifications make it impossible for us to hire you. Pardon me, that sentence should have read "lack of qualifications." Perhaps you should work somewhere else. Might we suggest Self Help Radio?

Sincerely,
High Paying Job

Dear Moby D,

I am writing you out of sheerest desperation. Our next port of call is the tropical dive called Self Help Radio. It's the place where the slave kids make gummy bears. Please say you'll forgive me so I can stop this aimless wandering.

Please!
Ahab

My friends,

We take as our text today the third chapter & sixth verse of Self Help Radio. Please remember, clean your hymnals afterwards. Your soul will take a little longer. Now: pray! Pray God Damn It! PRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

Amen,
Pastor Douche

Undead Blogging

Weird. I am writing this as my show has just begun. I apologize for it already. If you keep listening, it might not get any better, but at least you'll get used to it, like a daily beating or lead poisoning. Oh boy! My first airbreak!

Ha! I just told people who might have been listening that I am blogging! Uh oh. One of my apprentices has said she'll be showing up. I guess I don't want to be blogging while she's here. So I won't.

You're not listening to Self Help Radio right now on KOOP radio? Well, I applaud your taste, but I am a self-deprecating sort & the show might actually be good. Wouldn't you hate to miss that?

Me too.

Heart Of Hearts

Question! Did you really fall off a log on your back in the muddy rain?
Answer! Where did I put that bad attitude!

Question! What happens to all the hugs & kisses when we run out of x's & o's?
Answer! Which one of you mothers belongs to this garage sale!

Query! How does a friend stop being a friend & becoming a psycho poseur?
Response! Why are you so blind, you feckless fuck!

Ringtone! Did I catch you with who-know-you at the you-where-you know-when-know?
Texting! Which computer language am I speaking: bleddle deddle bleddle beddle!

Observation! Who worries about ice cubes until it's too late?
Misapprehension! Who drinks gin at room temperature who isn't British & sickly!

Question! Does how much you hate make how little you care seem too much to deal with?
Answer! What movie is that from why won't you tell me!

Relativity! What do you call someone who can't tell the difference between frogs & rats?
Certainty! Shall we try to replace the context of the "so & so walks into a bar" joke!

Offensive! Are those new shoes?
Defensive! Are those new tits!

Dominant! What are you going to do about your stupid life!
Submissive! What would Sam Beckett do!

Pre-op! Can someone tell me that name of that mean & ugly nurse?
Post-op! Why would any hospital hire such an obviously hateful person!

Question! What do you think my kitten says when she says "meeow"?
Answer! What does your blood taste like!

Science! Aren't you afraid of getting caught?
Religion! Do you think they'll put me back in the happy place with the happy pills!

Open! Do you double space the text so it's easier for the average person to read?
Closed! What does any of this have to do with a radio show!

Simple! Why can't I get to sleep even when I'm really really tired?
Complicated! Why can't I wake up even when I have nothing to do!

Question! Don't you hate that you didn't pay enough attention to Nikki Sudden when he was alive?
Answer! Do you really want a list of my regrets!

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 9?

Isn't it enough I love the music I love? Do I give a shit whether you listen to the unbearable nonsense you listen to? Do I come over to your house & weed-whack without permission? Why do you feel the need to charge me for all the oxygen I breathe around you? You're mean.

I'll say it again. I don't have enough noodles in my life. Let me rephrase. I am uncomfortable around naked people. However, I have been known to discard clothing in my time. This is not much in way of an explanation. But you keep your glasses too tightly pressed to your face. You know how that makes my teeth weep.

Someone the other day was making plans for tomorrow, & no I wasn't invited along nor did I want to be. Still she said, "How far in advance do you plan your shows?" I began to explain how a heterosexual Celtic mage does a dance on my forehead exactly fourteen seconds after I enter rem sleep if I am sober & it's not later than 4am, & how I then commune with a round table (if you will) of slightly incorrect copies of minor characters in post-war American novels, & we drink a bit of a mildly alcoholic concoction that tastes like a warm bloody mary that's fallen asleep next to a flat plastic bottle of RC Cola, & after a couple of hands of canasta (which I can only play in my dreams; I don't know how to in an awake state), we discuss what's going to happen on Self Help Radio in the next few weeks...

But she stopped me there. She said, "Not your radio shows. The shows you put on for the neighborhood when you get drunk, turn the stereo on, dance around the room like a burglar struggling with an attack dog, all the time forgetting to close your drapes. How far in advance do you plan for those shows?"

I guess when I buy the booze, the idea's put in my head. That's not helpful, though. I want to talk about the heterosexual Celtic mage!

Still, indiepop is vibrant & fun, & there's more & more. & this week we will begin the Cs! You can listen to old episodes of the Indiepop A To Z OCD Radio Experiment at the Self Help Radio archive page. If you're able to make it there before Friday, you might win a prize.

Or you might you be the same judgmental jerk you were the last time we talked about music. Gah!

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 9 (I Think): Oh No Not This Again!

Indiepop is nice music. I first encountered it in a closet (that's where I meet all my music, now that I think about it). It was actually afraid of the funk. Who isn't? But I cajoled it out & we've been pals ever since.

Agh! I keep scratching a scab on my knee & it keeps bleeding. I have a bleeding knee! I sound like a place where white people slaughtered Native Americans. I will confess though, that I've always liked the way blood tastes. Well, my blood. I've never tasted anyone else's blood. I could very well be the pickiest vampire ever.

When I write things like that ("the pickiest vampire ever"), I wish I were a songwriter, because I could then write a song called "The Pickiest Vampire Ever." Then I would probably twee it up a bit, & it'd become an INDIEPOP song called "The Pickiest Vampire Ever." It would have lines like, "He doesn't like the taste of blood/Unless he is in love in love." I would need to be a lot more cute, however. I've never been cute enough for indiepop.

When I say that, by the way, I don't mean that indiepoppers are cute. Ack, no! Some of the homeliest people love indiepop. They definitely think they are cute, but more than anything, they act cute. I don't act cute enough for indiepop. I am a dork. But I'm not self-consciously dorky enough for nerdcore. Not to disrespect nerdcore. Any genre that has a "star" called MC Plus+ is all right by me.

When indiepop gets that self-consciously cute, it's hard to stomach. Something much easier to stomach is indiepop's cleverness. That's what drew me to it in the first place. I heard it punning in my closet. Rats! Another indiepop song I'll never be able to write!

Anyway, indiepop is nice music. So I say.

Oh Ye Of Little Fates!

Perhaps a few introductory remarks might be in order. For those of us joining you overseas. In case your ship, which shall sail, sails alas! I am happy to brief the settlement & offer the customary light fare that recruits expect in every buffet & bar on this side of the world. Alas!

1) There will be no fondling of hallowed topics on this radio show. It's either fuck them or get out of the way.
2) When I say "sit still," I mean "sit still." When I say "look away," I mean, "panic!"
3) The importance of yard work - or the fretting about thereof - shall not be undersold.
4) Recently it has come to my attention that you require prerecorded cues to determine when you need to laugh. This is unacceptable.
5) However, subliminal sounds (which sound a lot like goats weeping) have been inserted into archived radio shows to help you know when you are supposed to be amused. Don't thank me all at once.
6) Fire breathing may seem hokey but it can totally mess your throat up.
7) Even metaphorically.
8) I was thinking about it, though, when you have fantasy movies or books or whatever & the graceful gallant knight is battling the wild, evil dragon, & the dragon roars & flame comes out of its mouth, that flame is basically the dragon's flammable spit. Am I right? Like, the spit has a chemical reaction to oxygen & turns to flame. If so, that's just gross.
9) Because, you know, human fire breathers have to put liquid into their mouths in order to blow fire. Human spit is not flammable. Not ever. Not even for people with Butt Breath.
10) Butt Breath cannot be detected on the radio, which may explain why so many people at KOOP have Butt Breath.
11) They know who they are.
12) It's getting so that your average meeting at KOOP, even when held at a fancy downtown eatery, smells like it's being held in the front restroom of the United States Diarrhea Club.
13) If you know what I mean.
14) On this radio show, we don't talk about body parts much.
15) On this blog, it's all butts & balls.
16) & saliva & blood.
17) & recalcitrance & woe.
18) Do not operate heavy machinery for a few hours after my show. This isn't because of something my show does to your brain - this is because it's Friday & you're supposed to be off work. & when you're off work, you drink. A lot. So don't operate heavy machinery when you're drunk. Duh.
19) Light machinery is fine.
20) Light machinery is machinery an eight-year-old girl can pick up & carry around for seven minutes.
21) Singing along is fine.
22) Sexing along is weird.
23) There is only one other thing to mention.
24) Why must you constantly change record labels?
25) I can't keep up with your reissues!

For more in an active sense, you can as of right now go to the selfhelpradio.net archive page & listen to last Friday's exciting & exacting episode. I will be over at your house later today to ask you how it made you feel. Make me scones.

Head Up The Ass & Away

Oops. I didn't write anything yesterday! What will the Yagfijhi Tribe of Outer Greentopula do without my nonsense to fete their prophecies? Too late! They've all returned en masse to Tony Danza.

When we last left out this discussion, we were discussing how digusting it is that, the older people get, the shallower they become. But then the Grey Goose said, "Are we only talking about people who talk about rock & roll as if it's a way of life?" "No, no," said Jonathan Swift, trying valiantly to pass a kidney stone. "Shallowness," he continued, "is as common as pimples on the butt of existence." The audience cheered. I managed to ask the prestigious panel, "Well, can we choose not to be shallow?" There was hearty laughter all around.

"You can no more choose how shallow you are," said the dish who ran away with the spoon, "than you can pick the consistency of the viscous membrane that coats all of those inner tissues which are regularly exposed to outside sources." "That's a lie!" said Emmy-award-winning actress Desiree Fluke. "I am the product of the sum of all my parts." "All your parties," former Soviet Ambassador Ted Danson quipped, to a smattering of titterings in the solarium.

In spirited philosophical discussions such as these, it's not uncommon for commoners to feel they need to inject some common sense. "Come on," said Peasant Hobo, "you're acting like people understand what the fuck they think. They don't. They're stupid, they're shallow. Especially if they pretend that some art form defines them like a religion or an ethnic group. Also, panties are gross. Why can't women wear boxer shorts like men? & don't get me stared on thongs. How can a dude who has to wear cast off clothing enjoy his day in a thong? Anyway, I want to ask you all as I wander around the room if you can spare a dollar for a man who's really hungry & who lost his virginity for his country."

The evening got late, but since it was the longest day of the year, no one noticed. Everyone thought we were in some fucked-up Northern English city like Newcastle or the Bronx, where the sun doesn't so much as set in the summer as lie low. Presently the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse went on a beer run & three drama critics drank WD-40 & convulsed quietly to themselves on the bathroom floor. Bob Dylan came to the door & he was beat up. Time ceased to feel timely. A discussion about the properties of sleepy metals seemed about to wake up the room, but then the concierge brought us all chocolates & ginger ale & we knew it was nearing the end.

Your homework assignment today is to tune in to a radio show online (might I request koop.org at 4:30pm today central standard time) & regurgitate its highlights in a blue book on Monday. Ta!

Whither Quitting?

Fuck. I thought that said "whither quilting?" I had material about perse quilts & medallion quilts & story quilts & paper quilts. I even had a joke about saying "I had material" in reference to quilts. I even fucking MADE A QUILT in Photoshop to post to the blog. But it turns out my show this week is about quitting. What jerk wants to do a show about that? Not me. I quit.

I mean, I quilt. I am a quilter of the highest caliber. Do you want to know how good a quilter I am? Well, do you know the meaning of these words?

postrelate
feebrut extension
rulling the inside weadet
hunfitching
moscle round
kenfoil

No? Then you're not a quilter of the highest caliber. That's because they ONLY use words like these when you are of a high enough caliber of quilter to learn what these words mean. & these words are kept more secret than L Ron Hubbard's frozen brain - you won't find them in any dictionary. No. I am being a total jerk & breaking all the Quilt Club rules (the first two rules of Quilt Club, etc.) just to make a point. Sometimes when you're thinking about kenfoiling the feebrut extension, it behooves you the rull the inside weadlet postrelately instead of hunfitching the moscle round - or the moscle sidearm for that matter (that's a quilter joke). & that's why I feel comfortable telling you.

Oh yes, these quilting terms are REAL. Just because you don't quilt doesn't mean that I made them up. & also, these terms have NOTHING IN COMMON with the weird dolphin-sounds that needepoint people make when they hang out together. That's not a real language. They're just making noise. Those people are freaks.

Maybe one day I'll do a show about quilting, but I guess I need to read the memos more closely. Luckily, I understand too well that the theme next week will be Indonesian Pots, A To Z. A snap!

Preface To Quitting: Are You Hiring?

Holy mother of skank! I don't think I'm quitting Self Help Radio this week, nor is Self Help Radio quitting me. Indeed, I am committed to the radio show until they pry it from my cold, sweaty hands. Note: you don't have to kill me to get my show! But my hands are sweaty!

How many things have you quit? I've quit smoking. I quit eating meat longer than half my life ago. I've quit pretending that you love me. I have quit a couple of jobs, but I didn't quit school - I actually finished it. I haven't quit life, though it seems to me that life has quit me. I haven't quit using square quotes around words like "square quotes." I haven't quit using lots of exclamation points although this makes me seem like a ten-year-old girl!!!!!! Have I quit using question marks. Does anyone know if I've quit using quotation marks. I have quit eating at fast food restaurants, thanks to the visceral unhappiness of Super Size Me, as well as the book (but NOT the movie) Fast Food Nation. I have quit believing in being in love, though I haven't quit loving. I haven't quit pretending, in the moments I go to sleep, that I am living in a superhero world that I invited when I was ten. I haven't quit helplessly seeking happiness.

I know that in time am going to quit my job, my city, my life, even my radio station, at some point. But I won't be quitting this blog today. Maybe tomorrow. But tomorrow I may quit talking about my radio show on this blog. & I won't be doing it because I am a quitter. It's not because I can't quit being ironical. But it is because I just like quitting things. Although I miss cigarettes. Agh!

Don't you quit me, though. I needs ya.

Apple Juice All Day

I'd like to dedicate this song to my two oldest friends from 15th grade, Pork Rib & Spanky. I have no idea where they are today, but if I google their names, I get a barbecue joint in New York, so who knows? They might be sandwiches now.

I'd also like to dedicate this song to the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board. It takes a lot of money & a certain kind of ballsy stupidity to consistently stand for & promote the wrongest possible things day in & day out, but you do it. I love you guys.

If it's not too much, I'd also like to dedicate this to people with teeth. Recent studies in our species' continuing evolution have explained that, as we eat more mushy food, teeth are no longer going to be selected for. That explains why so many American children are being born without them. Well, that's cool, but for those of us who still have teeth - this is for you.

Before I start, I should say that this song was inspired by the recent immigrant debate in this country & also season 5 of "Friends." Both are eminently thought-provoking, though only one is hilarious. I confess I was huffing lots of decaf roast around the time I wrote this, so if the song smells funny, you'll know why.

I promise, I'm not one of those prima donna artists who needs a Shasta enema & Malayasian snickerdoodles on my rider, but I would ask please the front two rows, can you guys make sure that you don't clip your finger- or toenails during the performance? I know, Peter Gabriel has the same hang-up, but he does have a particularly nasty hunk of dead human stuff stuck under his foreskin, so it's not quite the same. Just try to remember to clip & trim at home. It keeps everyone happy.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. This short number got me my country club membership as well as three free passes to The Gay Conspiracy: The Movie. I sing it like a tennis star, from my diaphragm, or like an architect, from a diagram. Here goes. One, two, three, four...

WE INTERRUPT THIS TO TELL YOU: SELF HELP RADIO'S LAST SHOW, ON JUNE 15, 2007, ABOUT "TRAFFIC" IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD HERE. YOU WANT IT. YOU WANT IT MORE THAN ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE. GO LISTEN NOW.

Thank you. Well, I told you it was short!

Scared Of Cinderella

Fables being what they are - sleepy, mistrustful, metrosexual - it should come as no surprise to the modern consumer that the Great American Cheese Belt is undergoing a fashionable makeover in order to compete with the cooler (eg, chain-smoking) Overseas Cheese Markets. This documentary will show you how.

"Now THAT's what I call a gangbang!" was the way President Bush (no offense) described it to his "fuckwit pals" in the agricultural community last Thursday while touring a midwestern air pollution factory which, sources close to this reporter - but frankly closer to my wife, with whom they went to school - have confirmed, is the number one producer of air muck & filthy in all the kingdom. The President, who later consumed an entire dwarf while laughing heartily at an entire season of "30 Rock" shown simultaneously on 32 plasma TVs, praised American ingeniousness & also, for some reason, Michael Caine.

Michael Caine could not be reached for commitment.

But if you like people whose voices trail off as they get that look in their eyes that suggest unspeakable dread, you'll absolutely adore the 2008 Swarm Chili Deployment. The wonders of the space age make a slight return with this hip & ghetto fabulous way to feed everyone who believes in Jesus & who can't afford a too, too Hollywoodish high colonic. Spokespeople for the groove have been dispatched to every suburban white flight checkpoint & will report back weather permitting.

We know you've been sharing your holiday snapshots with a community of grim rueful failure, but did you know you can caption those same photos in the privacy of your own head? No more will antagonistic family members wonder what national freak of nature you're standing in front of as they count your chins & wet themselves online. A spellcheck is placed within a mouse click, but only for the lucky winners (chosen nightly) who can correct identify a local prostitute, City Council member or a relative from a series of Google Cloud Photos.

Which way, you may well ask, is the Self Help Radio way? The experts will be releasing the highly anticipated sequel to their 2005 report, What Says Hunh?, which mentions the show obliquely if at all. After the fulmination & the letters of apology to all the available media outlets, as well as the video game/pornographic novel, the results may be reviewed THIS FRIDAY & EVERY AVAILABLE FRIDAY on Self Help Radio from 4:30 to 6:00pm. Online is listened live. There is furthermore no excuse.

Next week: why do you look so sad? I don't think that's appropriate.

Leave My Husband Alone!/Waiting For The Coffee To Download

What has he ever done to you? In strange regalia, the modern radio listener approaches, all wires & field mice, to start the busiest of loafsome days. He's not a strong man - he's a tender man, a man of love, a lover not a fighter. Like tender strips of moss-flavored skin he or she makes a democracy with his her choice of music slash infotainment. I don't know why you can't just leave him alone. Like hands held for prayer or "tell it to the judge" a morning of warm woe begins for this listener, this listener who has chosen to give it all up for embarrassing, homocidal or syruply mediocre. I mean, what has he ever done to you?

Why is this? Does it make you feel like a big person to pick on someone who can't defend himself? Perhaps the next-door neighbors put flyers up for their most recent suicide pact. Do you think it'll make me want you? There's a chance a promotion at work just netted free cigarettes or free cigarette burns. I could never love someone like you. It's true, local music never was what it used to be, but the local dailies & weeklies, monthlys & yearlys are still trying to convince everyone there's something to write & read about. I want someone like him - someone who may get the shit kicked out of him by cads & bullies like you, but someone who has a heart & a brain & not what you have instead - two fists! It's important to remember the names of the roadies & bouncers, because they're the ones who'll get you drugs & backstage dawdling. Just stop it! If you doze during the live DJ set, you might get to see the club owner beat up his "partner." You'll kill him! If not, well - thank god your work is next to the plasma center. You asshole he's not fighting back!

As a child, you wanted to play "junkie & dealer," & now, as an adult, you want to play "child." So you'll hit me too? Returning phone calls may be easier than ever, especially since phones are ubiquitous as assholes with phones, but you are being frisked at the convenience store for weapons & viruses, & all you really wanted was small talk & perhaps advice on how to keep the flintlock on your musket clean. What a strong, strong man you are, picking on two people weaker than you, people who obviously DO NOT want to fight you. While you're booking the mariachi band for your own funeral, it hits you: like an embarrassing drunken Facebook photograph, you've been automatically saved & backed-up. You know the police call this assault.

Which doesn't explain your radio choices, even if it informs them. Stop it stop it stop it stop it! You'll need to see if there's a greeting card with a stranger's name in the candy aisle so you can begin sucking up again. You're killing him! You'll feel only slightly bitter, especially since you can't hear anything anyone says, & most of us are no better off than you. God damn it I said stop it why can't you stop it! But shouldn't we feel sad about it all? Oh god oh god oh god look at all this blood! Isn't there something we can at least say we'll do to make a change? Leave me alone leave me alone! Or is it really enough - the emptiness, the repetition, the callous over your heart, the radio you "listen" to? Oh my god someone help me! I believe you. Someone help me! I hope you believe you.

Whither Traffic?

I take a bus. Or should I say, the bus takes me? I don't drive to work. I drive only when driving is the only way to get somewhere. Like a liquor store at 8:50pm. Or a latenight rockshow. I love to drive don't get me wrong. I just don't drive. So what do I know about traffic?

I have not trafficked drugs. I have trafficked with demons, though they were minor demons (meaning under the age of 2100 years) & they wanted drugs from me, so they went away empty-horned. My bus, which is neither really my bus nor even the same bus daily (I check the numbers), is often stuck in traffic, & the bus driver will swear like a demon. Also, there's this one driver who has horns, or she wears her hair weirdly, which could be the same. Or different.

About a year ago, I did a show about driving. Two years ago I did a show about the effects of saltpeter on the central nervous system. That show was seized by Homeland Security. I miss that show. I hear it entertains no one at Guantanamo Bay. Three years ago, I tried to do a show about steering wheels, but it revolted against me & it became a show about steering committees, & I refused to air it, instead rerunning a show I did about the great Cheese Strike during the war on sailing. That one won a Tony. Sorry, scratch that. It won a Tony The Tiger Award. Because it was grrrrrrrrrrrreat!

I was talking about my favorite bus, whose name (not coincidentally) is Tony, & how one day we were stuck in traffic, & the underpaid bus driver dude was having an acid flashback, & three giggly girls in the back were humming Shangri-Las songs out of tune, & out of order, & Tony said, "Traffic sucks!" & I was saying to myself, as I always do when a bus talks to me, "Thisisn'treal thisisn'treal thiscan'tbereal this-is-not-real." But then Tony said, "You should do a show about traffic."

Suddenly, I realized that life was a dream & the only way to be free of suffering was by following the Eightfold Path. Then I looked down, saw that I hadn't yet finished the sudoko puzzle du jour, & the acid flashback bus driver drove straight over an old VW bug to make the exit ramp. That was then, this is this coming Friday.

Preface To Traffic: Steve Winwood Is My Summer Romance

Self Help Radio, the most breakfast cereally of all radio shows, has its good themes & its bad themes. A show I once did about sorghum may have netted me tremendous praise from the National Sweet Sorghum Producers & Processors Association, not to mention a couple of scary people who drink sorghum beer, but since it only featured one song, the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Sorghum" (which isn't even a real song), & eighty-six minutes of me trying desperately to talk about sorghum, well, that show is widely considered the nadir of a radio program built on extremely low expectations. By contrast, the "free money" theme was well received, & only cost me four thousand dollars.

This week, our theme will be "traffic," which may or may not be annoying if you're listening in a car on I-35 getting completely fucked up on the fumes of the semi in front of you. I frankly don't care. What I do care about is that you people stop writing me & asking me if I will feature any factoids about Steve Winwood. No! No I won't! & I don't care that I once received a handjob from a priest in a confessional while he was humming "Higher Love"! I'm not proud of that. I'm not even Catholic.

I will, however, slake the thirst of you Winwoodians by telling my favorite Steve Winwood in the world. I know, everyone has their favorite Steve Winwood story, like the one about him dressing up as a priest & giving unsuspecting boys handjobs in confessionals, but this is not one of your average Steve Winwood stories. This one does not feature Jimi Hendrix or Ginger Baker or Eric Clapton or Malcolm X or Stephen Fry or Bunny Wailer or Dick Cheney or Kay Parker or Marc Chagall or Giorgio Moroder or Parker Posey or Marianne Faithfull or Lou Dobbs or Richard Hatch or Pepper Anderson or Roy Clark or Steve Ditko or Audra Lindley or Richard Hilton or Bobby Trendy or Arturo Sandoval or Rodney Allen Rippy or Dave Brock or Joe Mannix or Joe Montana or Josephine Baker or Ahmed Sékou Touré or Richard Dawson or Muff Winwood or Woody Herman or Estelle Getty or Trina Robbins or Kiki-la-Doucette or Jim Corbett or Bradley Whitford or Farrah Franklin or Mary Jane Parker or Saint Anastasia the Patrician or Steve Doocy or Casper The Friendly Ghost or William Tecumseh Sherman or Los Huracanes del Norte or Alf Landon or Barry Bonds or Ali Larter or even, now that I think of it, Steve Winwood. Yes, it's the only Steve Winwood story that I can think of that doesn't actually involve Steve Winwood. There won't be a reference to one of his songs, or one of his bands, or his mental problems, or his famous letters to Penthouse Forum, or his inability to form a complete sentence since quitting cocaine in 2004. In that sense, this is truly a great Steve Winwood story.

& that story is, frankly, too painful for me to tell right now. I will also need to ask my mother how she feels about it. So. Maybe tomorrow. Now, leave me alone, you Winwoodsuckers. There'll be no Winwood on Self Help Radio this Friday. Nor will there ever be any Winwood on Self Help Radio! I mean it!

Learn How To Have A Good Time All The Time

Guess what happens to me today? No, I'm not going to become one of the painfully deluded lefties who have volunteered to keep Hugo Chavez's nutsack clean & smooth - & for that, you know, he may try to take me off the air - nor am I going to be getting my weekly audio accu-beating during Magic ELJ's Soul Vaccination - that guy has it in for me! - no, I am visiting a medical professional & I'm getting a blotch removed from my personality.

I know, I know. You're like, "What? Isn't it your blotches that make you who you are?" Oh, I agree. But it turns out that this blotch may be pre-cantakerous. I'm just too young for that. So my metaphysician is doing a personality adjustment, & removing a small portion of my charm, simply because it was looking a little discolored & it was causing people to doubt my charisma. Imagine! They were thinking I was a painfully deluded leftie who couldn't wait to volunteer to shave & shampoo Hugo Chavez's ballsack! That blotch has got to go.

I believe it was Tim Magazine (or was it Newweek?) that reported that graphic, amusing descriptions of your fucked-up sexuality is the new sarcasm, but this blotch (I am told) sits somewhere between sweetly-faked honesty & the organ that generates a "hunh, life doesn't suck so bad right now" feeling when someone tells me they like my show. I may find these feelings lacking afterward, but I could retain as much as 90% of both. I just wish the blotch were sitting on top of my sleepiness. I'd say, cut it all out!

I hope I will be well enough tomorrow to expound upon a show about traffic, but if not, I'll double-team you on Wednesday. Just remember, I might be a little different. But at least I won't be sacrificing my intergrity & morality just because another blowhard dictator is paying lip service to some ideals I may believe. Yay!

Trigger Harpy

I am feeling negative. Stop me feeling negative. It would be nice for my negativity to have an outlet today. An AC outlet, please. Direct current is too direct for me. Doesn't it know? Jokes about one's sexuality are the new sarcasm.

However, there is no outlet for me. I have given away my show today to a pixie from the Northeast. He will leave hair all over my pillow & drink all my soy cheese. Worst of all, he will prove more exciting than my own show, so I'll have to spend the evening drinking toasts to my inadequacy. Then, of course, I'll get arrested for mowing the lawn at 4am. It'll be my 36th birthday all over again.

The goodest news is that I'll be seeing Patton Oswalt on Sunday. He'll make me have funnies. The other goodest news is that I'll be back next week with a special heartfelt Self Help Radio which will touch the hearts of all the children & their friends in the Travis County Monsterplex, now surrounded by the George W Bush Memorial Moat, & this very special Self Help Radio will be all about traffic.

Traffic! You know what it is, but you don't know what causes it. Also, you sometimes see people in traffic who are apparently having sex. What's up with that? How are they having sex in traffic & you couldn't get laid if you owned a yacht & your face cleared up? We won't be talking about that, actually. Nor will we be making fun of people with really black circles under their eyes. They don't deserve it, & they're still stuck in traffic.

Have a good weekend! Listen to KOOP! Don't get incarcerated!

Online Toffee Makers Revolt

I've been taking a lot of online "tests" that ask questions like "Are You A Homosexual In Your Own Pants?" & "Which Character On Law & Odor Are You Most Like?" & "How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up, Coma Boy?" They're a great way to wile away the time if you're afraid of the work you must do to satisfy the demon lords, but I was most excited recently to discover this particular survey, which has since mysteriously disappeared, as if I dreamed it & it never existed on the Interweb ever. I'll reproduce what I remember:

HOW MANY BRAINS CAN YOU USE TO COLONIZE GLIESE 581C?

This test determines whether you, unlike your roommate, have enough brains to colonize an Earth-like planet before supper. All responses will be considered final. You cannot go to the bathroom. While taking this test, humming is encouraged.

1) I know what boys like.
a) Boys like me.
b) Boys, like me.
c) Boys like meets.
d) Boys like meat.

3) Given three sides of a four-sided triangle, you can compute the fifth side:
a) On Star Trek.
b) On Star Wars.
c) In your dreams.
d) In your underwear.

7) Recent science indicates that RC Cola never really existed. That means that:
a) I've never been loved.
b) Sixteen dead blackbirds are all I have to show for my college education.
c) George Orwell was an a-hole.
d) The delicious taste of Flapdoodle is responsible.

8) Two trendy people live in Austin. They automatically:
a) Think anything they're told is good is good.
b) Think anything they're told is good is good.
c) Think anything they're told is good is good.
d) Think anything they're told is good is good.

10) I like mayonnaise...
a) In Springtime.
b) On long drives.
c) With news of dead Playboy centerfolds.
d) On long sandwiches.

12) A carpet is to a lizard as a picture of you in high school is to:
a) Mile High Stadium, Denver, Colorado
b) A caterpillar
c) Mud
d) Whistling

13) Which of the following is generally known as a gerund?
a) Not this one.
b) Unh-unh.
c) Not even close.
d) Wrong

17) I have never really felt love.
a) Boo fucking hoo.
b) Have a little something to drink, pardner.
c) Take back what you said about Avril Lavigne.
d) Two words: hooker party!

21) Finish this sentence to form the punchline of a famous Milton Berle joke: I can't go to the theatre tonight, sugar tits, as I am sitting on the toilet because of _______
a) Screaming Shits
b) Pulsating Piles
c) Rocketing Rectum Disorder
d) Lonesomeness

24) Which famous Hollywood United States Walt Disney President is best known for drinking his own semen every morning before running the world?
a) Dick Cheney
b) Ronald Reagan (the Gay One)
c) Ronald Reagan (the Straight One)
d) George Bush (either one)

26) This survey is attempting to help you access parts of your mind you didn't think were active because you believe nonsense like astrology & "The Secret" & people who get you high & say dumb shit like "Dude, we only use 90% of our brains - what would it be like if we used ALL ONE HUNDRED PERCENT." When you realize how incredibly much you've wasted your life, what will you most likely do?
a) Go on pretty much the same way.
b) Become your parents.
c) Kill yourself.
d) Kill as many people as possible before you're caught.

29) The number of bumper stickers I have on my car in no way reflects my crippling insecurity.
a) False
b) What?
c) They're funny!
d) I wish I had a car.

34) The number of divorces in the United States keeps rising. Why do you think that is?
a) Just write it down.
b) Seriously, we can't figure it out.
c) It's not one of these answers, though.
d) So this question won't count.

37) To answer this question, you'll need to think logically. Gert has five frisbees. All five frisbees are weighted down with Gert's tears. Gert's girlfriend of seven years, Nan, left him last night for a window washer. Gert wants to throw all five frisbees on the tops of the roofs of the five friends who knew about Nan's treachery but didn't tell Gert. Gert has been drinking for the past seventeen hours. The neighborhood in which Gert's friends live has seventy-four houses. Assuming the wind is light & breezy from the southeast, & the frisbees are flying at only 75% of their potential, & Gert sees one-hundred & forty-eight houses, whose windows will Gert NOT break?
a) The Nelsons
b) That Sex Offender With The White Van
c) Old Mister Woods
d) The Kaiser

40) Life on another planet will most probably be either much less complex or much more complex than human life. We're just saying. It's not like you're going to meet a Klingon or something. It's going to be algae or a being nearly Godlike that thinks you are algae.
a) I hope we meet the algae.
b) I believe Jesus wouldn't do that to me.
c) I'm so alone.
d) Leave me alone.

Postscript: The score I received on the "test" said:

You are ready, willing & able to colonize another planet. You think clearly, you are able to solve complex problems, & you believe it when people tell you things like this. You'll make a great guinea pig when we start shooting people in the general direction of that planet. Contact NASA right away. Go on. Do it.

Guess what! I am going to Gliese 581C! Yay!

Whither Ken's Last Ever Summer Invasion Extravagander 2007?

I first met Ken Lastever at a Hollywood Dachsund Party hosted by Carl Reiner. Both of us had been brought there because of a deep, abiding fear of John Locke. Also, two very different judges - the Honorable Nelson Motherfucker of Garland, Texas, & the Right Justified Honorable Elvis Twinkie of Brooklyn, New York - had sentenced us to Hollywood for youthful indiscretions which the two learned justices hoped we could turn in lucrative careers. We failed, however, & after an abortive attempt to drown Robin Williams in a punch bowl filled with his own ego & unfunniness, we fled, hoping never to see each other again.

Years after that, but before now, I ran into Ken Extravaganza at a Bush Election campaign fundraiser. It was four hundred million dollars a plate, but Ken had had a plate pre-installed in his head, & he was showing it off to the faith-based-inclined. I had been attempting to make a bong out of a Bible when none other than Karl Rove came by & showed me which of the epistles made better rolling papers & the man himself, Laura Bush, came running into the gala event like a cat at a rocking chair fire. Using soothing words & a hand pump, Ken was able to calm the crowd & insert post-hypnotic commands into their brain, which would make them feel something akin to joy when they saw draft dodgers clear brush. This, like many things Ken did, would backfire later, & he testified his regret at the Cindy Sheehan murder trial in Dimension X a few months later.

While I rightly admire Ken for his radios, I am at loggerheads when it comes to his shows. Or maybe it's the other way around. However, he did cure me of the brain hiccups, & though he has not promised to meet me in the People's Court to settle our bills, the assistant pastor at the church by the bus stop to which I am constantly late has let me know that he thinks it would be the organic thing to do to let Ken Radio steal ninety minutes of Self Help Radio this week while I sit in the corner & really, really think about my life, & how much of it I've really enjoyed, & how little of it I have left, especially if I lose my left eye.

So I ceded one week to Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza, the Summer 2007 Invasion Tour. & like all those Democrats who voted to give George Bush a war, I will regret it & it will hurt my chances to be president. But only for my Block Association.

Preface To Ken's Last Summer Radio Invasion Extravaganza: Embedding Secret Words In Plaintext

After forty-three years of stand-up, I decided to enjoy the leisure of a more supine comic. It coincided with the tenth anniversary of my third anniversary of forgetting that I was in medical school. Which is one of the main reasons I didn't need to be around this week. It's not just the loneliness of the applause - or the long-winded runner - or the man who has the "cleaning" job of scraping the fake blood off the wall on television crime shows - though all those things did contribute. Sometime in the past. When you still cared.

The years go by, & your blessings are counting on you. You're the main authority on the subject matter of shit that's been happening to you. Unless you are being filmed, in which case there'll be lots of footage. & not just footage. Headage. Breastage. Torsoage. Hipsage. It's the age of the bodyage.

I wish I could tell you more about Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza, but we've only known each other for a short time. I'll meditate on it tonight, & tomorrow, I'll throw all caution to the wind & make up several lies & one important truth. Like I am the president of Venezuela!

My Name, Your Newspaper

It's happened to almost all of us almost once: local notoreity in the local news magazine. (Some of the rest of us appear on local children's shows when we are local children.) (The rest of the some of us appear on a pederast's blog accidentally because we're standing next to the child at the beach where the pederast is secretly taking pictures with his patented "towel-phone" (tm).) It just so happens I've appeared in the local rag holding a mop & pail for my middle school's "Clean Up The Filthy Mouths Of The Unbelievers" event, where we went to local non-Christian churches (of which there weren't a lot, so we ended up outside of Catholic schools) & we did minor custodial work on their front steps, at which places our Youth Minister, Pastor Demon, screamed if there was press present. Interestingly, one of the kindly old friars who worked at one school always gave me a couple of bucks for my work; since it was sinful money, I spent it on porn.

Anyway, this is just to say that ONCE AGAIN, I don't appear at all in the newspapers. Why is that? Certainly not for lack of photogenic qualities. I'd suggest a conspiracy, but I am afraid of the sort of people that attracts. Besides, I know the reason why. I'm too edgy. Too cool. Too mediocre at what I do. Too forgettable. & that's just something they can't get past. They're looking for real newsertainment - all I can give them is enternews. & their figure of speech department is cash poor at the moment.

Speaking of, how long does it take you to eat a muffin? I have discovered that, in a morning where there are lots of muffins, I can normally finish, say, half a muffin in a little under thirty seconds. But give me a whole muffin (after the half muffin), & I'll nibble on the whole muffin for hours. That means that I spent five hours on a muffin & a half today. For fuck's sake! That's newsworthy!

But ring the village bells & call home the village whores, I am announcing that last Friday's show, which looked at popcorn in a way that no other radio show that's dealt with popcorn ever has, is now available for podcasty downloading on my site. It's at the top of the archive page. Go listen. There's a free muffin with every download!*

* If there's someone around to give you a muffin.

Charles Nelson Reilly, RIP

Goodbye, Chuck.

Last year, for Christmas, for myself, because my girlfriend & my family don't really buy me presents, & because I don't really buy anyone but me presents, I treated myself to a seasonal gift by buying the Match Game Box Set. If they collected every episode of Match Game on DVD - all nine hundred years of it - I would be one of those people who would buy it - & watch it. For the rest of my life.

Of course part of the reason for that was Charles Nelson Reilly. So I am sad that my head has been up my ass for the past week & I didn't even notice he had left us. I also am furious that there wasn't a national day of mourning, with nothing but Charles Nelson Reilly on the television.

They better correct this mistake when Richard Dawson dies, goddamnit.

Self Help Radio, today at 4:30pm, on the air in Austin at 91.7 fm, live at koop.org (CST), archived eventually at selfhelpradio.net. It's probably safe to say I wouldn't be such a goof if I had never been exposed to - over & over throughout my childhood - Charles Nelson Reilly.

When Owls Attack!

Back in the 1960's, everybody was a Marxist. It seemed to me that capers & ashtrays could be rolled into the one thing that is more intellectually satisfying. In America & Israel, I've interviewed people who thought a monkey should give birth to a man. How does it feel to be at camp like that? I find myself concerned in more belief strongly to engage in dialogue with people like you in an Irish accent. In case we've missed something.

Repeatedly, I've been brought up short. The trump card can't be argued with. In this book, my misunderstanding is to talk about this a bit. Faith said she was needed only when she wasn't in evidence. However, I come from when you do say what kind of use to support the fair questions of immediacy. What are the final stages? It tries to make the best possible sense of things.

We can't make a decision to step out. We do need to talk, probably. Take two. One way or another. Not even steven. All sort between naught & a hundred. My attempt to get there, that is to say, is that's there's an inherent improbabilty in saying exactly the same thing of any kind. You can make a probably cognitive judgment. There's a tension to the side of things. Let's live a life beside of that.

I understand what you believe; I wish I understood why. If you feel it flows, I'm very happy to take it. They're all different - how do you know this is the right one, & not the abstract of the physics? Grasping - some realize some of it. Look - it offers the narrative, the way of looking at things, to hold personally that what is good is brought to fulfillment. I would hope they'd want to dialogue with you!

Fundamentally, the world is your oyster sauce. I never said what you said was indicative of having the rest of the night to manufacture labels or never-you-minds. Qualitatively the reasoning seems to misspeak. Nevertheless. It's been what some might call a pleasure to reassuringly talk. That's enough of that.

Whither Popcorn?

This tale is told in five parts. "Chapters," you may say. If you're some kind of storyteller.

Part I: The Link

79 Versions Of Popcorn.

Part II: The Story From My Childhood.

I once knew a kid named Gus. Gus's family had a microwave oven. Mine didn't. The first time I saw a microwave oven, I was a little excited. Because I am/was a comic book geek, I knew that one got super powers from overexposure to weird rays. So I kept wanting to open the microwave oven while it was on, to expose myself to microwaves. I could have become a super hero! Gus's mom wouldn't let me.

We never ate microwave popcorn at Gus's house, though. The family never had any.

Part III: The James Brown Connection

"Popcorn" became some inexplicable idiom in the funk community. James Brown started it. Apparently it lasted for some time. It has absolutely nothing to do with the "Hot Butter" hit of the same name. I can't say for certain it's anything but a dance craze, but I warn you, I miss sexual innuendo unless it's spelled out in the same stark relief that makes Dan Savage's column Savage Love about as erotical as a photocopier. Although I am sure someone does find that erotic, & has written Dan Savage about it.

Part IV: The Weird Coincidence

I have been planning/working on this show for at least a couple of month, & I just today noticed that the Funky 16 Corners Radio website did a show last week about the James Brown Popcorn craze. I will trust that you believe, especially after you listen to my show, that I was not influenced by this one iota. You can download mp3s & dig the funky popcorn flavor here.

Part V: The Promise

I'll have lots of different songs about popcorn on Friday. I ate popcorn last night. I like popcorn. Come listen to Self Help Radio when we talk about popcorn. You freak.