Not Any Longer Confessive Obpulsive

Ack! I can't stop playing this game! It's a game where you have like twenty seconds to match nine album (or CD) covers with the names of the record. I'm not very good at it, though. The category I most find myself in is "alternative" although if they had a category called "records Gary's brothers had that he rifled through continually when he was a young kid" I'd be awesome at it.

There were certain records I would never have listened to, not in a million years, but whose sleeves I found amazing, like a panel of a long comic book the rest of which existed entirely in my head. For example, the cover to Queen's News Of The World (the image doesn't show you how the record folded out), which I would never, even as a kid, have listened to of my own free will, although, of course, I've heard the songs "We Will Rock You" & "We Are The Champions" more times than my mother ever told me she loved me. But the cover! An alien made of stone killing all those hippies! The stories that album cover brought into my head!

There were other memorable ones, but I can't find images of them online - I guess they were not as famouss, or maybe I'm remembering the names wrong - but games like this do make me miss vinyl & the attention lavished on album covers. Maybe I suck at the game because most of the records in the "alternative" category are from CDs & who the fuck pays attention to a CD cover?

Record collecting friends back in the day often would distinguish between a "great package" - the music & the presentation were both great - & great records that had shitty sleeves & great sleeves hiding awful records. Middle- to late-period 4AD records often got that last complaint - 23 Envelope did a smashing job with the sleeve but the record is unfuckinglistenable. Do you hear me Ultra Vivid Scene? Do you?

(That's not really my opinion. I was in character! Plus, that first Ultra Vivid Scene record, the one with the toothbrush on the cover - that's not a very good presentation for a decent pop record.)

I do miss vinyl, but not enough to actually buy it. Ack! What a pain in the ass! It's so much easier to be digital. & maybe I'm a philistine, but it sounds fine to me. But perhaps the vinyl-o-philes are winning. Which is great. There'll be more records whose sleeves I don't recognize in work-habit-destroying games like this one.

No worries! My iPod will tell me what the sleeve looks like!

Whither Trash?

If there's anything you must take away from a cursory glance at post-ideological America in the twenty-first of all possible centuries, it's this: the fucking place is a mess. What the hell went on here? Your father & I were just gone for the weekend & we come back & - I mean, just look at Wyoming. Look at it.

I am completely ripping off a Kids In The Hall sketch right now. I can't remember much of it, so I can't find it in their episode guides or on YouTube, but I know a Kids In The Hall sketch when I rip it off. & that's one of them. Maybe.

I would also like to point out that it's the second time this week I have used some sort of construction involving "the 21st century." I believe on Monday I used the phrase "the twenty-first of all human centuries" & just above I noted that this was "the twenty-first of all possible centuries." I would like you to incorporate this sort of talk in your everyday language. & not just about centuries. It helps to imagine that you're addressing a large audience. A large, nude audience.

You know what? I was totally not ripping off a Kids In The Hall sketch up there. It was an homage. Which reminds me. I once used the word "homage" in a phone call to someone who probably never called me back, but I pronounced it "hommedge." A friend who was sitting next to me corrected me when I got off the phone. He asked me where I heard the word & why I was pronouncing it wrong, & I said (which was true) that I had read it & never heard it spoken. That happened with the word "ascertain" too. & "metropolis," which I used to pronounce met-ro-pol-is, not muh-trop-o-lis. Oh shit! Maybe that dude didn't call me back because I mispronounced homage! What a judgmental fuck.

It might not be a Kids In The Hall sketch, but I'm pretty sure it is. I seem to remember Dave Foley in it. They throw a party & they trash the country & they have to clean it up before their parents get home. Who else could it be? That sketch freaked me out the first time I saw it, in a similar way to how I felt the first time I saw the Monty Python Olympic Hide & Seek. That gave me nightmares.

I wasn't writing in this blog in 2004, but since I did an imaginary radio show about trash then, you can go back & read my imaginary blog where I imaginarily discussed why I chose that theme. I can't imagine I ripped off the Kids In The Hall at that time - but I probably did.

Preface To Trash: Wait! Didn't You Do A Trash Show Before?

I got this email from the little voice that lives inside my head:

Dear fuckface,
I know you pride yourself on being "original" & "edgy" & "heterosexual," but I am writing to inform you that you are totally re-doing one of your old themes this week. Ha! This is hubris, my friend! Your pride goeth & then you fucking fall! Because you're all like "I never do the same theme except when it's a special event because I am that good a deejay & I am also a girl waah! waah!" But ha ha! You did a "trash" show back in the summer of 2004! What do you say to that?
love,
your inner voice

I wish I could tell you how kind it was of my inner voice to write me an email. Normally it just engenders in me tremendous guilt & shame that I can only forget about with massive amounts of alcohol. This may mean that our relationship is getting better.

What my little voice tells you is true, & you can see it on my website on the page of 2004 playlists. According to this page, on June 30, 2004, I did a show about "Trash." But wait! Look what it says next to it: "Imaginary Radio Show # 3"! What could that mean?

It means that, in the summer of 2004, I was not doing my radio show. The reason for it had to do with internal KOOP politics - I had offended the regime in power at the time, & they used their cronies to accuse me of stuff, which resulted in me not doing a radio show for a couple of months. In the interval, I pretended to do radio shows - if it happened now, I'd be doing podcasts - but then, I just posted playlists. I probably also burned myself some CDs to listen to, or to send to my girlfriend, who was in New York that summer. I just didn't want to get out of practice. The point is, I never really did a radio show with the theme of "trash" - I just made a playlist. Is all.

Hey! I just got another email from the little voice that lives in my head:

Dear douchebag,
You win - but only on a technicality. Next time, though, I bury you. I fucking obliterate you.
can't wait for dinner,
your inner voice

If my inner voice ever figures out how to text, I will be in all thirty-two kinds of hell.

A Punishment Of Britches

Let it never be said, in the annals of all humankind, in this choked & stinkish blog-o-sphere, where altitude & attitude trump rectitude & pulchritude, where each voice is equal in theory but unreadable in practice, where one is judged by content management systems, network & web page affiliations, ad clicks & crossover marketing potential, as we hunker down in this, the twenty-first of all human centuries, where challenges are affirmations & every diagnosis is also a prognosis, where the last of labels shall set us all free, where the digital boundaries are drawn by RAM & CPU, not by surveyor & natural landmark, where the slowly disappearing highway on the emptying American terrain reappears in our mind, unbounded, in leaps & bounds, at the outset on its last legs, fetid, fertile, fanciful, false, the whole slew of this & that not to replace those & them, but to render them neutral & neutered, to placate power while posing as populist, where... In this... Let it not be said... As we in this century are... Uh... Fuck!

I lost my train of thought.

Oh, well, why not just go listen to the "Pale Show," this past week's episode of Self Help Radio, which is available for your listerine pleasure at selfhelpradio.net. It's free of harmful ultraviolet rays, although it may have dangerous musics.

Seriously, though, I was going to say something meaningful up there. It's just, fuck! I lost my train of thought.

What To Do When Your Teeth Disagree

Have you ever had a friend talk to you at length about a book, including telling you the basic plot & also about some of the more interesting stories & characters within, usually commenting on each person or event & telling you exactly how it made them feel or what they thought it meant, & then, after this moderately tolerable dialogue, smiling at you & saying, "Do you wanna read it?" How do you tell your friend that they did for the book what most movie trailers do for movies? Which is to say, ruined it for me.

My girlfriend regularly wears clothes without pockets (I am told this is a woman thing) & sometimes uses it as an excuses to bum money off of me. This doesn't bother me, as I like to pretend I can provide something to her, & I usually have more cash on hand than she does, but she almost never remembers, once she's taken, say, a twenty, to go buy ice or something, she never remembers to bring me the change. Here's my worry: if she has no pockets, where is my change?

I am now an avid flosser. This shouldn't surprise you. But there was a time - not very long ago, I will shamefully admit - that flossing seemed incorrect to me for one reason: I wasn't really convinced there ought to be spaces in between teeth. Hear me out. It struck me that perhaps our teeth should be close enough together that even a something threadlike couldn't get between them - & worse yet, that if you tried to get something between them, you'd crack the teeth. I can't think what disabused me of that notion. Oh, yeah. Regular flossing.

While listening to lots of Bill Hicks trying to find a bit he did about how pale he is (for this week's show, & no, I didn't find it on any of his recorded released stuff, so I suppose it's from a videotape or television special), I was struck by how little I laughed. I did think it was excruciatingly funny, but I've listened to the records so much that I don't laugh any more - I anticipate the humor. Much like the way when I listen to stuff that I've been listening to my entire life I now listen to the instruments more - say, the bass, if I've never paid any attention to it - I found myself listening to the audience. Sometimes you can even make out conversations. The reason I mention this is not only to segue to talking about this week's show but also to note that I don't have the same experience with comedy on television or film - Monty Python or Marx Brothers. Just recorded comedy.

Speaking of things you might not think are funny, the new show is being prepared this afternoon. Look for it tomorrow afternoon. Listen to it Sunday afternoon. Reflect on it Monday afternoon. Tell your friends about itTuesday afternoon. Call in sick to work so you can be drunk Wednesday afternoon. Who care what you do Thursday afternoon? I'll be recording another podcast next Friday afternoon. Let's continue in this vein. For ever.

I'm Sometimes A Punk

Though I don't have a mohawk. Nor do I know any Mohawks. I might ask them if they like punk rock music.

I like a lot of it, but of course not all of it. Some of the stuff that I like that I think of as punk is probably not punk, & lots of the stuff that is thought of as punk I can't really stand. What sort of punk do I like? I'm glad I'm pretending that you ask.

You can have a listen to a mix I sort of made for my nephew's college graduation party (it's edited) last month here on the Self Help Radio Extra page. It's without any interruption & it's about seventy-four minutes long.

No mohawk required! From me to you! Now, if you're excuse me, I'm going to daydream & listen to Bill Moyers talk.

Whither A Show About Paleness?

Is paleness even a word?

Ack! I am late for today's blog entry! I have no compelling explanations! I don't need to defend myself to you! You got more explaining to do than me! Judge not lest ye be judged!

Yeah, it's a weird idea, a show about a lack of color. I confess there aren't a lot of songs about that. There are more songs about pale things. So it'll mainly be a show about pale things, more than paleness. Sue me. It's just a podcast.

I myself am quite pale. Always have been. Some people's skin ripens like fruit in the sun & stays golden over the summer. I resort to a zombie-esque hue mere moments after non-sunburn exposure. Here's a funny story: I went to a dermatologist a while back to get a third eye removed (long story) & the dermatologist wanted to look at my back which, truth be told, is as white as vanilla ice cream. Not french vanilla - I'm talking soft serve vanilla. Anyway, she said, "You've got some sun damaged back here." She meant freckles. That's a bad way to talk about freckles. Freckles may be caused by sun damage, but it's evil to take something as adorable as freckles & make them seem evil. I won't have it.

Plus, she wouldn't remove the third eye. Referred me to an evil optometrist. Long story.

The experience of the pale is certainly one we shall explore. Or else I will say "Ack!" once more, & collapse on the floor.

Preface To The Pale Show: Ode On A Plastic Spoon

Hey! Who put this ode on this plastic spoon? I was gonna use this spoon! Do you know how hard it is to get ode off a plastic spoon? Cleaners can melt the freakin' plastic! You! Yeah, you, with the beret! Are you the dirty dog poet who put this ode on my plastic spoon? What the fuck? Do I go over to your house & write a limerick on your butter knife? Hanh? Do I wander by your work & write a sestina on your spork? Oh Christ, look, you've got me rhyming now. Just get away from me! & don't mess with my non-biodegradable cutlery ever again!

This particular Self Help Radio blog entry was supposed to be enjoyed - prepared just for you - with a small cup of some sweet pale yogurt. The place was set & you were to come here, make yourself comfortable, & read an amusing preface to a show about a lack of color while eating something that not only lacks color, but also taste. All prepared for you by Self Help Radio. Because Self Help Radio wants to be hospitable.

Instead, some itinerant wannabe bard stops by, sees something that no sane person could possibly see in a plastic spoon sitting next to the yogurt, & just can't help WRITING AN ODE on the plastic spoon. That's all thirteen kinds of crazy! Hey! You should be ashamed of yourself!

What the...? Oh great. Well, the good news is, the ode is gone. The bad news is, so is the yogurt. Yes, the poet ate his ode with the food. He literally ate his own words. Har har. He thinks he's so clever.

Get out of here! I gotta blog to write! Stupid poets!

Braise, Whimper & Fold

One more story about Bill before too long:

Bill never met a musical instrument he didn't want to put his mouth on. He could play them all tolerably well, if your definition of "tolerable" is the same definition John Ashcroft uses for testicular electrocution at Gitmo. Man I hated when he picked up an oboe - for example - & just started tooting on it. You did not want to go to any sort of store with him, nor church, but that was because he loved Satan.

How I found myself in a dried goods store last weekend I am not sure. I didn't even know there were such entities as "dried goods stores" outside of those infernal Hobbit books. Blast them! Yet there Bill & I stood, chewing on gunpowder & talking about tamarind when, out of nowhere he said, "I hear someone calling my name!"

You have to have regular responses to Bill, otherwise you won't make much sense, but my regular response to him was to the exclamation, "I hear [Jesus/God/The Virgin Mary/Albert Einstein] calling my name!" I had never heard him be vague. I listened, too. I heard it!

"Songs about me!" said Bill. It was true. The lunatic dried good store owner with the painted-on hard-on was playing songs about Bill. Bill was apoplectic. He accused the shopkeeper of adding cayenne pepper to the no-MSG sugar cane. But I told him, "Bill, that fellow isn't playing songs about you. He's listening to a radio show playing songs about you!"

It was true! The man behind the counter had gone to selfhelpradio.net & downloaded this week's show. Bill was astonished. He couldn't leave. He didn't leave.

For all I know, he's there still.

Make This Blog Your Only Best Blog!

Now I know for a fact that literally a couple or more people read the Self Help Radio blog with awesome regularity. (Far more than listen to my podcasts!) (Hey, could my blog readers think the podcast is simply me reading the blog? Well, it's not!) But I would love if maybe thousands more would read it. (I'd love it more, though, if thousands listened to Self Help Radio. That's problematic, though - the show really isn't all that good.)

I absorbed with interest the Wired article Secrets of the 7 Basic Blog Posts & realized that I fail on most accounts. I hereby promise to follow these secrets until at least ten people read this blog every day. Then I'll really pump up the volume.

Here, in case you don't want to read the linked article above, is a summary of the seven points:

1. Be upset!
It's really hard to be so angry when I'm mainly confused. I'll try, though. Oh! That Hillary!
Does that work? Hanh?

2. Buy a thing!
I encourage you to buy into my dreams of independent media. But you can't find that in stores. Rats. Maybe I should try to find something to support - maybe a website to help me & my friends after all the Christians disappear?

3. Animals are cute!
Right. I must stop posting pictures of animals that have recently died.

4. People are dumb!
Right. That's why they're not listening to Self Help Radio.

5. Something I like, only different!
Oh, I got this down. That's what Self Help Radio is!

6. Weird science!
Wouldn't you rather see a sunset on Mars? I thought so.

7. Me, the blogger!
Whew, I got this one cold.

In any event, I promise to remember you all when I get too big for the blogsosphere & have to get ghost writers to write these posts. Let's circle our wagons now & enjoy our own intimate relationship before it gets ruined by the paparazzi & Entertainment Tonight.

Your task: tomorrow, in the afternoon, visit selfhelpradio.net & listen to a show about people named Bill. You do NOT have to be named Bill, or William, or Billy, or Will, etc., to enjoy the show. But you'll like it more. I betcha.

Yet Lagged

Our cheap little motel room in Durham sat right above the window where late-night guests (who talk loud because they're talking to hotel clerks behind a plexiglass divider, despite the fact that they could be heard all through the whole motor court) got rooms - or didn't get rooms, as the case may be. One fellow walked back & forth to his car muttering about "eight lousy bucks" until he finally relented (paying with a credit card!), & another yelled on a cell phone about the cost then walked over to another nearby motel, as if the person on the other line was William Shatner trying to get him a better deal. I heard all this over the weird watery gurgle of the air conditioner because I am prone to listen to the night as I sleep.

I went out last night to find the late-night clerk playing with a radio-operated car in the parking lot, & that same fellow freaked me out when we were coming home that evening because he was apparently escorting some visitor to a room a few doors down from ours. They went in, they came out, the visitor went away. You bet I thought it was drugs!

But Magda & I drove through the blackness of the Durham highway to the airport at four this morning &, a little over fourteen hours later, I am back at home in my lovely little house feeling it had been nothing more than a dream. A dream with trees. During the three days we were in Durham, I struggled to get some sense of where everything was - you know that weird feeling when you see a street that you know you were on some part of, but it seems to you that this one is perpendicular to the one you were on earlier - I consulted a map afterwards to show up my failed human sensors - & I wonder now if it'll come back to me when next I'm there. Durham is rather small, you know. & in a forest. Forests are made to be lost in.

Big decisions were made there but I woke up from a nap just now & want to return to some more sleeping while my dogs & cats are still a little sluggish from sleep too. Plus there's a storm brewing! I'm sure I'll talk more about things of overdramatic import at another time. I have a postscript for this which ties it to this week's Self Help Radio: the night clerk? His name was Billy!*

* I don't really know if this is true. But it seemed a nice ending for an otherwise meaningless ramble.

Whither Bill?

Dispatch from Durham:

My friend Bill (or Billy, when he's drunk; or William, when he's in court; or Wilhelm, when he's drunk in court in Germany; but never Will) doesn't really exist. He is a fingerprint of my imagination. He lives on the peripheries, on the side of our mind where nothing is ever put straight, as the poet said. Yet he is insistent! & much like the monkeys that paint the clothes that we wear when the weather is about to get worse, I can't not listen to it. Not even with ear muffs & cotton candy breath.

Did you know you can buy fireworks in supermarkets in Durham? I don't know if they're good fireworks, but I can find out. I don't believe they'll let me take them home, though. "They" meaning "supermarkets in Durham."

Bill doesn't believe in fireworks that aren't generated by romance. Nor Hollywood. Nor his latest Hollywood romance. But he does understand that he possesses a naive curiosity which, as the poet says, forces two strangers to talk, & so he would like to be forced to talk to the weird people who, he believes because I told him, have written songs about him. I said I would gather them. I would buy some new shoes. I would gather the songs around the shoes. & I would let him in!

Did you know it's not legal to fire fireworks off outside the door to your second story motel room at the so-called traffic on I-85? Some nice police officers gave me a stern talking-to. They're very butch in North Carolina.

Bill is nearly always sober. Me not so much. Self Help Radio is a very serious thing & it helps out all manner of folks, especially, this week, those called "Bill." I hope my friend Bill, even though he does not exist, can appreciate that.

I hope you, even though you probably don't exist, can understand that.

Preface To Bill: What? No blog today?

Yeah, been hanging out in Durham all day, with lemurs mostly, & nowhere near a computer. Sorry. Maybe more tomorrow?

Also, I didn't meet one person named Bill today.

& Then There's North Carolina...

Yes, sports fans, I'll be spending three of the seven days of this week - or is it four? - I think the fourth will be spent getting through airports - in the area of North Carolina where I'll be living in two short months. So the posts may be shorter, though no pithier, & certainly not any more interesting than normal. But if I take pictures of anything astonishing, I might just share them with you.

No, it's early but it's still Monday so I must be the first to tell you that this past week's podcast, appropriately or inappropriately about beauty pageants, is now available where you always knew it would be at selfhelpradio.net. It features ninety minutes of songs, discussion, facts & lies about contests for beauty. How could you not want to listen to it? Oh come on!

Maybe you'll hear from me sooner than later - but if not, look for me in the "triangle" area of North Carolina. I'm sure you'll know me by sight. I'll be the one who is embarrassed saying the name "Carrboro."

Also, this week's show is about people named Bill. William. Billy. Wilhelm. Willy. Etc. So if you want to tell me a story about your favorite Bill, send me an email & I'll dedicate a song to them. You can encourage those haters who don't listen to Self Help Radio to write in, too. Because! The show will not just be about a particular Bill. It's about all Bills. Whomever they may be. It's true!

The Last Repetitive Stress Injury Ever

I am proud at the beginning of this 2008-2009 pageant season to announce that, despite comments from critics calling it "sexist," "degrading," "unappealing" & "imaginary," Miss Self Help Radio 2009 is accepting entries! Yes, before I & the show depart for the comforting wilds of Durham, North Carolina, we'll have one last Miss Self Help Radio pageant in Austin, Texas.

Rules are the same as always: contestants must have listened to at least ten (10) Self Help Radio shows during the previous year. Packets for each show will be handed out. A score of 60% or better will need to be achieved or the contestant is liable to be condescended to. Contestants must also be of the relatively female persuasion or otherwise not object to being called "Miss." The entry fee will be waived for most everyone who makes a fuss. No one under eighteen is allowed to enter, & don't blame me, blame the sponsors of the Junior Miss Self Help Radio contest, who refused to let me drink while I was judging. Christ! It's not like I was giving it to the kids!

More details on the contest can be found on tomorrow's podcast of Self Help Radio, available some time in the mid-afternoon at selfhelpradio.net. Do listen for lots of songs about beauty pageants & their contestants as well as an interview with someone who knows more than I do about less than it seems.

The Miss Self Help Radio Pageant is sponsored, as always, by Bloat. Bloat, since 1972, America's original & only.

At The End Of May, A Mix Is Born

Hey! That's right! I managed despite my grief to put together a mix for you what I call "Self Help Radio Extra"! You can find it for downloading on the Self Help Radio Extra page. Where it always is. Once a month.

I'll try to make the next one in a more timely fashion. I am a bit of a procrastinator. Once a month shouldn't mean "at the end of every month." Perhaps I should do two a month. It would keep me on my toes.

You can see what's on this uninterrupted seventy-six minute mix (suitable for burning onto a CD & then crushing under a stiletto heel) by visiting the Self Help Radio Extra page. Do have a listen. I enjoy the putting together of music, although I fear I am not very good at it.

Have fun!

Whither Beauty Pageants?

Confession time: I've never sat through any televised (or live) beauty pageant, & that includes ones that I might have been present for. I have seen a few movies about them - "Little Miss Sunshine" probably being the best - how many movies have been made about them, you might wonder - well, here's a list - but in general, I haven't had a whole lot of interest in what seemed a weirdly staged - lots of standing around for the "contestants" - & mostly formal exercise in shallowness.

I probably conceived of the notion of the show around the time the video for the Miss Teen USA pageant started making the rounds - you know, this one - because it most likely started a process in my brain that could have gone something like this:

1) This is sad. She's nervous but she's also kinda stupid.
2) It's also sad that people think this is funny.
3) I guess people think it's funny because they probably hate the idea of a competition for "the prettiest."
4) It's natural to want to think the most generically beautiful people are the dumbest.
5) That sure is a big stage she's standing on.
6) If it's Miss Teen USA, does that mean there are fifty contestants?
7) Maybe more, with Guam & Puerto Rico & Iraq & all our other provinces?
8) This is a weird idea.
9) I bet beauty contests started in America.
10) Do you think there are a lot of songs about beauty contests?

That all happened within a few seconds, most likely while I was drunk, & I probably created a folder on my computer & noticed it some time later. Because chances are I put the folder not in the place where I keep show ideas (that would be a folder called "show_ideas"), but in something completely irrelevant, like "taxes" or "embarrassing photographs of monkeys" or "recipes that are mainly excuses for eating lots of cheese."

Now the chickens have come home to roost. But they are beauty chickens.

Preface To Beauty Pageant: What Horrible Memories This Show Will Bring Back

I actually thought instead of trying to be funny & talking about the show today, I'd post some more pictures of Buster. I hope you don't mind.

I have tried to arrange them like so: Buster alone, a snap of Buster & Blue Boy, then pictures of Buster with Beatrice & with Bolan. They're not chronological. They're just some of the few snapshots I & Magda, neither of whom are really picture takers, have collected over the years.

Buster

I lost a dear friend, my child, on Friday. My cat Buster, at the very young feline age of ten, died very suddenly from a viral infection called FIP. You can read about it at the Wikipedia link there. It was treacherous & awful & my girlfriend Magda & I did everything in our power to try to help him. But it came too fast & now he's no longer with us. It's been a horrible weekend, with feelings of anger & regret, torturous dreams & sad awakenings, & of course the fear of it happening to our other two cats. Mostly, though, I miss him being around. I loved him so.

I adopted Buster when he was a kitten about ten years ago. He was part of the litter of a cat that lived around my sister's house in Garland. He would probably have been a feral cat & lived only a few years (if that) had I not fallen in love with his gray tabbiness & that round, stone face. I brought him back to Austin & named him Buster, after Buster Keaton, someone else I love dearly. (Buster Kitten, get it?) I brought him home to be with me & my cat Blue Boy, who had feline leukemia. I don't know why I decided to adopt him - there were great fears that he could contract Blue Boy's disease - but I brought him into my life thoughtlessly, because he was affectionate in a bull-headed, oafish way, the opposite of Blue Boy's delicate grace.

Buster had a singular charm as a kitten - a leaky anus. Many a guest would find him on their lap & he'd leave them a small round surprise when he got up. He outgrew that (thank god) but there were several weeks there where I was cleaning up little brown rings on the carpet every damn day. He also discovered my roommate's weird collection of plastic bags & we found out soon enough by following the overpowering smell that he liked to urinate in plastic bags. Buster was a charmer.

Blue Boy was in good health that summer, but as he deteriorated, I had to separate him & Buster. The last month of Blue Boy's life, I kept Buster in a different room, & now, although I have been guilty about it for a long time, I do treasure the memory of the hour or hours I spent in that room to feed Buster & play with him & try to make up for confining him while Blue Boy was starting to fade. Buster was young & loved to fight & steal food - Blue Boy was dying.

Blue Boy died at a weird time in my life. I had changed focus at work, I had left KVRX, & I was about to move from the place where I had lived for almost six years - a place I lived in longer than any other place in my life. I had Buster tested again for feline leukemia a month or so after Blue Boy's death, but despite all the grooming & fighting & sharing (& stealing) of food, he didn't have the disease. I was very grateful - I wanted Buster to be with me for a long, long time.

I moved into a smaller place that December, & it was just Buster & me. I remember he would inexplicably hide from me, & I worried he had sneaked out of the screen door & out to the busy street nearby. I also remember, in those smoking days, in those smoking in the house days, I'd have the door open to the night & just be staring out into the backyard & Buster & I would marvel at the giant moths which would bat upon against the porch light. Buster was a very expressive cat, & he had a lot of things to say to anything outside, be it another cat, a bird, an insect, or a person, all through his life. He would often wake me up with shrieks at passing cats. As annoyed as I always was, it would be like beautiful music to hear it now.

I have one very strong memory of that time. The first time I tried e, I was alone at home, & he came up to me, purring, & I started petting him. It must've last a half-hour, the sensation of his fur was astonishing. It was a mutually beneficial heavy petting session on drugs. Subsequent times on e after that always included some touch-time with the kittens. Buster's fur was always best of all.

That summer I adopted another kitten, named Beatrice, & that was when Buster came into his own. For all his oafishness, for all his slight slowness of mind (I think now he wasn't so much stupid as deliberate, & he stolidly kept his own pace), he was a great big brother. Beatrice was (& is) a peevish cat, skittish & quick to defense, but Buster impressed me with his patience, his love, his inexplicable tolerance & care of this obviously irrational little white girl cat. He & Beatrice were closer than I was ever able to be to either of them, & Beatrice has let virtually no one but him & me touch her her entire life. The two of them wouldn't share the same space often, but they did come together & groom one another, & Buster hardly ever was at the claw end of one of Beatrice's hissy fits. When he was, though, he understood. He raised her!

I can't imagine how she misses him - but she surely must.

When Magda & I got together, she brought a dog into our life, & Buster made it perfectly clear that he ran the house. George the beagle was followed by Ringo the beagle who was followed by many fostered dogs (over ten, who rarely stayed longer than a month) & finally by Winston, & while there have been occasions when they've gone all doggie & chased Beatrice way, I have the image in my head of three hungry hounds wanting desperately to get into the kitchen to eat their dinner but whining instead because this tiny tabby - weighing at most twelve pounds - was standing in their way. Buster would often just mosey up to one of them - for some reason, Ringo particularly interested him - & swat him with a quick ninja cat paw. Just to make sure everyone his role was understood.

With a woman living with us, Buster revealed another endearing trait - he liked women's shoes. Not wearing them (that would have been freaky), but what Magda has called "making love" with them. If they were stranger's shoes, even better. It was always slightly embarrassing to see Buster roll himself over a shoe, like watching a dog hump a pillow.

Two years ago Magda brought home a black cat we call Bolan & Buster also raised him. They were fast friends, & Buster was just as patient with this child as he was with Beatrice, & this child grew to be twice his size.

Buster accepted all the changes because he was Buster. A more centered cat I have yet to meet. He loved food, he loved to sit in the window & watch the world go by, he loved to be next to humans (but not in their lap - maybe being shoved away because he was leaving poo stains conditioned him as a kit), he loved to be petted, &, as he got older, he loved to drool. Buster had a very sensitive head - rubbing him the wrong way always caused him to rattle his head - so if you were petting him, & if he started to drool, you had to be extra careful about scratching the head the wrong way, or else he'd bathe you in his drooly happiness.

It's ridiculous all the ridiculous things you miss when your pet's gone.

Buster was the patriarch of this house. We'd find him in the oddest places - on top of things or under things or in things like drawers - & we had no idea how he got there. He knew the place like no one else. Him being gone is not only like a part of me being gone - like a heart attack kills a part of your heart, the death of Buster has killed a part of what makes me me, what makes me love - but also like something's been stolen from this place, like some part of it has disappeared & it seems incomplete. This house is broken & can't be fixed any more.

So this motherfucking virus came & Buster stopped eating & despite everything - despite Magda reading about European treatments, our friendly neighbor forcing him (because we couldn't, we always felt we were hurting) to take steroids & antivirals & interferon, arguments with the vet about a feeding tube (we felt he might be able to live with the virus if we kept his weight up) - despite all our attempts to feed him all kinds of crazy meats & cat treats - despite long conversations I had with him, as he got more shaky & his meows became strained & his purr sounded like it had pitch-shifted, these long discussions we had with me telling him how much he meant to us & how he was supposed to live much longer - it just happened so fucking fast! - he succumbed to that bastard virus & now he's gone.

It's Memorial Day & this is also blog entry four hundred, & it certainly wasn't planned, but I am glad I have a place & time to honor Buster with some small remembrances. There's a poem Kinky Friedman quotes when he talks about the death of his cat which I thought about when Blue Boy died, & I think about now, nearly nine years later: "We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle..." Kinky Friedman adds, "People may surprise you with unexpected kindness. Dogs have a depth of loyalty that we often seem unworthy of. But the love of a cat is a blessing, a privilege in this world."

I probably didn't deserve Buster's love, but I am glad I was able to know him & love him & let him live a lot longer on this planet than he would have if he had been feral. I'm glad he was able to interact with so many people & be a big brother to Beatrice & Bolan. & I'm glad he got to be the first cat to soil so many clean new litter boxes. & I'm glad he got to live in more than one place, to escape outside occasionally, to eat lots of really stinky food, to play with & sometimes kill lots of bugs, to be alive, in my life, asleep next to me on the bed at night, drooling on me in happiness, reminding me sometimes hours before when it was time to eat.

I love you & miss you Buster. If there's a place beautiful pets go when they die, I'll visit you when I have left this world. If there's not, then I just want to thank you for sharing your life with me. It was a blessing & a privilege & as long as I'm able, I'll never forget how you honored me with your life.

Hypnotic Weekend

I don't usually write on this blog on the weekend, but you don't usually read it at all, so we're both being unusual. What else can we do? Gasoline costs too much to drink all day long! Might as well read blogs!

Know what else you can do? You can listen to this week's Self Help Radio podcast, which is all about hypnosis. Not only are there fancy dan songs about hypnosis but also the host & founder of Self Help Radio, Carlos Mencia, gets hypnotized on the air! Oh wait, Mr Mencia is not hosting this week. Someone named Gary is.

In any event, the show is available like it always is at selfhelpradio.net. Listen to it all weekend long. It may help you quit smoking. Or even start smoking.

I also wanted to write today because this is my 399th post to the blog, & I have a special memorial to write about for my 400th post. It turns out that I have to memorialize a loved one on Memorial Day. Weird sadnesses have conspired with mild triumphs to make it really a Memorial Day. See you then.

Lonesomer Friday

A famous hypnotist walks into a bar. A not-so-famous hypnotist walks into a bar. A dude with those weird x-ray glasses with the hypno wheel on them which don't really work walks into a bar. A bar is open, a bar is closed.

More & more, life seems to contain more & more of stuff which I apparently said, felt & did, but to which I have increasingly less access. More than hypnotism, I think I'd like to have someone pump energy into my hypothalamus like they did on a recent episode of House. Whether it works on not, who know, but now I will be expecting to have lucid dreams/memories in high definition color.

Tomorrow I will have a new podcast for you - & this one will be very good I hope you know - & also rather silly - so please look around to find it & enjoy it on your Memorial Day weekend. Days off are good for listening to weirdoes & their radio shows. I would do it if I knew some weirdoes on the radio. Where have they gone I wonder? All the weirdoes?

You know where one of them is, at least! Have a good weekend!

Game Is The Name Of The Lame

I really enjoy making the Self Help Radio Extra mixes. If I didn't enjoy hunting down music for the Self Help Radio themes, I might just make weekly mixes. As it stands, I try to make time to make the best mixes, but even leaving the radio station that seemed to take up half my life hasn't really freed up my time - I find other things to do.

I wanted to have a new Extra mix up today, but instead I've been listening to records on how to hypnotize yourself for the next podcast. So I'll try to have the mix up this time next week. I'm lame. I'm really lame.

Speaking of, no one's very excited about my upcoming four hundredth post on this blog. One person sent me a link to a blog that was started around the same time as this one that has over a thousand posts. Imagine! Granted, the posts tend to be more links & they're smaller. Imagine! Also, they have nothing to do with a radio show/podcast the blogger does. Imagine! It also has pitchers of nekkid wimmen. Imagine! Should I find some wimmen for post four hundred & take pitchers of them nekkid? I might get more hits. I might lose the missus. Wow that's a lame pun. Especially since I'm not married. Also, I have no pitchers of wimmen anywhere, & none of those (I'll presume) have any nekkidness involved. Imagine!

Then I'm not going to make a big deal about the four hundredth post. What, am I crazy? 400 posts! That's amazing!

Wow, I'm lame. But this week's show will rock!

Whither Hypnosis?

I know what you're thinking. I'm going to hypnotize you & make you act like a chicken. Or worse, I'm going to make you act like a naked chicken. Or worst, I'm going to act like a naked chicken while you're hypnotized. Nothing could be farther from the truth! I want to hypnotize you to help you quit smoking. Eating too much. Wetting your bed. Biting your nails. Masturbating. Believing in God. Popping pills. Short-changing the customers. Wrestling with your demons. Mistaking sex for love. Running for office. Randomizing. Stuff like that.

You don't have to be afraid! Here, go visit this vaguely mystical-looking website to read some common myths of hypnosis. There! Doesn't that make you feel better? Hey, if a place called "deeptrancenow.com" says hypnosis is all right, it must be all right!

Listen, tootsie pop, it's just a radio show featuring songs & information about hypnosis. It's not scary! It's an adventure! I have spent the last seventy-two hours implanting auto-suggestions in-between the more comforting notes of all the peppiest songs I'll play on this week's Self Help Radio. But that's nothing compared to the subliminal messages in your average episode of "60 Minutes." & that doesn't include the truly terrifying pharmaceutical ads. I stress again: these messages are for your self-improvement, not for your embarrassment. They may make me laugh, but they're not a laughing matter. I know that. You know I know that.

You are feeling very sleepy. It must be the light of the computer monitor. It makes me tired, too. Please don't read any websites right now about politics. Read instead some calming stories about zombies. Zombies rule! But they're not hypnotized, & neither are you.

When I snap my fingers, you'll wake up & feel refreshed. Your head will be lighter & so will your wallet. Follow the lights on the floor to the door & exit onto the street going left.

Preface To Hypnosis: I Can't Hypnotize But I Can Mesmerize

Messages left in tiny boxes in front of houses in my neighborhood (which are not, by the way, for me) speak of cynicism & gloom: they warn of dissolving marriages, shockingly lowered values on recently-appraised homes, noisier dogs sneaked in during the night, a party which may cause inconvenience come Thursday. Was there ever a time when these notices spoke of happy things, like births, or career advancement, or just general good news? Who knows - &, again, I'm not supposed to be reading them.

If one walks a straight line from the edge of the driveway to the edge of the curb where one stands to wait for the bus, one naturally must walk through houses, back yards, flower beds, storage sheds, over cars & fences, past angry home owners with guns & sharp tongues, into & out of a few businesses, across one busy street & at least two or three not-so-busy ones. This is true about all the nearby bus stops, not just the one I take to get to work every day. Even the bus stops that lead away from my work. There is no straight line away from my house to any bus stop.

That makes me very, very nervous. Anxiety is an old friend, but as I get older, I can imagine the nerves fraying, like sleeves or tassels, until they're just dangling, fraught, always in motion. It's no wonder I sneak glances into the little boxes which hold the messages for others in the neighborhood - for the uptight effeminate fellow & his perfumed dog; for the happy couple with the motorized, air-conditioned stroller for their new sprog; for the grumpy old conservative & his solid gold walker, slowly making his day-long trip up the block & back; for even the visitors, solicitors or stalkers, who pretend they're part of this neighborhood & who everyone else pretends are a part of this neighborhood.

I couldn't tell you why I am disconnected in this way. I smile, sometimes I wave, but the people who live around me often turn off their lights & close up their trees when I pass. I cannot say if it's just that they dislike me or if I committed some kind of offense. I want to say to them, "But I bought the house! I do not rent! I do not lease! I mow my own lawn & put up my own Christmas lights! Look! Look! It's my name on the mail! It's my name on the magazines!" But what good would that do? Surely those who reject me have closed their ears like their minds & they can't hear a word I say. Just the sound of my footsteps trailing into the loneliness of my home.

The noise you hear is the neighborhood sharpening its teeth. The noise you don't hear is my television turning off as I look out my picture window & fall asleep staring into the street. The night comes, the night goes. All manner of things happen, usually, & usually you don't need to pay attention. The power goes off & the houses empty as we all look to see if it's a community event, & not something ridiculous like someone forgetting to pay their bills. We ask the questions, we stand around, we stare at each other's lawns, cars, for sale signs, political candidate signs, dying trees, edged shrubs, boxes of recycling. Then the power comes on again. We go back inside.

Something starts all over again. Something never ended. Something never began.

Another Non-Random Show Notification On Your Otherwise Spotless Corkboard

Posted this weekend: Self Help Radio show number - er - I mean Jesus I don't know what frickin' number show it is - it's the show about lemons. It's available where you normally find Self Help Radio podcasts & archived versions of the old radio show: both in my head & at selfhelpradio.net.

I want to add that you can certainly keep those suggestions coming about what I should do special for my 400th post on this blog. "Nude photos of my cats" is certainly a hilarious option, especially since they're perverts, but they have their own blog so you can already see them. "Free access to this blog for life" seemed a little smart-alecky until I realized someone could make the argument that "free access" means I have to pay their ISP bills. Fat chance!

But I do believe the four hundredth post should be exciting, special, awesome, tacky, windswept, consumptive, cricket & rad, so I am still taking suggestions. Number 400 (wow, like the hit film!) should break some time next week. I suggest you plan your parties now!

But don't forget the point of today's notice: a show about lemons at selfhelpradio.net! Have some with your afternoon tea!

A Twist Of Lemon

Tomorrow! Probably in the middle of the day! Or maybe sooner! But maybe later! The Self Help Radio podcast series continues with a lemony show all about lemons! It'll be tart & tangy, sour & sweet! It can clean your hair & your furniture! It will go good with beverages & garnish your entree! Wow! What the hell! That's one great radio show!

Now all I have to do is put it together. I wish it was as easy as writing about it. Damn it.

Pay attention to selfhelpradio.net tomorrow (Saturday) to see when I post the show, or write an email to this email address to ask me to notify you when it's posted.

Seriously, I gotta start working on that show. Why am I wasting my time on a blog? Jeez.

That Boy Hermes

According to the list of things which is collected for things in the thing-like interface which controls this blogging device thing, I am rapidly approaching my four-hundredth blog entry. (Well, rapidly. I mean, it's less than ten entries off, so it'll happen in like two weeks or something.) (It's certainly as rapid as any blogging I do I suppose.) (Thing.) I ask you, loyal readers of other blogs than this, what should be the celebration that we celebrate for the four-hundredth Self Help Radio blog? Here are some choices sent in by Mrs. Mull's second-grand class, Doonesburg, Ohio:

1) Photos of Gary being kicked in the head! (submitted several times)
2) Free trip to Planet Zed!
3) Tell us a story, tell us a story!
4) More money for lunch please. I am hungry.
5) A special song written for all the famous things that are four hundred!
6) Two cats for every orphan!
7) A rhyming dictionary for the lucky winner!
8) Three or more tours of duty in Iraq starting this summer!
9) A haircut & a shave!
10) Tacky joke gift vetted by your drunk uncle!

What else? What could it be? What shall we do? Wherever shall we go? Could there should there be a contest? Should there would there be a prize? Ought there be a law? Might there be a drawing (of names), or a drawing (of famous people in funny caricature)? I can't decide. You have to decide! Four hundred is a big number. Help me figure out what should happen when blog post number four hundred happens!

Thing.

Whither Lemons?

A fan of lemons was telling me just the other day, "There's that old song, you know, about how the interior of the lemon isn't very good to eat, & I was always puzzled by this. I always ate lemons like other kids at oranges, or even grapefruit. I'd scoop the pulp out & just eat. It never occurred to me that it wasn't supposed to be edible. So I continue eating the flesh - for lack of a better word - of lemons to this very day. You may not believe me but it's true.

"What's weirder," he continued, "is that I can't do the same with limes. I can't eat a section of a lime in the same way that I can basically 'eat up' a lemon. It doesn't taste good enough & the consistency, the texture of the lime isn't the same. Isn't that just too odd? Because you can set a lemon & a lime side-by-side & even cut them in half, & they look like basically the same fruit, only colored differently. But they are very, very different. They are - at least to my taste buds - polar opposites.

"I can also tell you," said the fan of lemons, "that I could chew on a lemon rind - did you know they also call it a 'zest'? - I could chew on a lemon zest in the same way other kids chewed gum. To me, there was nothing better, after consuming the inside of a lemon, spitting its seeds out, wiping the sticky sour juice from my face - nothing better than gnawing off a piece of lemon zest & spending the rest of the day just chew, chew, chewing it. Other children, with their Wrigley's & their Fruit Stripe & they're Double Bubble, they'd complain of losing flavor & having to keep sticking new pieces of gum in their mouths, but not me. A little lemon rind went a long way."

"I wish I could tell you," he said with a sigh, "why I am so obsessed with lemons. There's probably a moment - or moments, really, felicitous, random moments when I was young - when lemons were the only thing around to eat, & I ate them. Ate them up. & my love of lemons continues undeterred to this day. I love lemon tea, lemon-flavored soft drinks, lemon garnishes, lemon juice dripped on frying foods, lemonade of course, lemon added to any alcohol, lemon candies, lemon, lemon, lemon! The taste of lemons. It overwhelms me & is the one thing on this planet that makes me completely, totally happy."

"Well," I said, "that's good news, because my radio show, Self Help Radio, this week features nothing but talk & music about lemons!"

"Hey," said the fan of lemons, "I didn't know you did a radio show."

Preface To Lemons: I'd Rather Talk About Toast

Don't get me wrong. I'm very excited about this week's show, for which I am receiving absolutely no money from the Texas Citrus Exchange. No money, nor any of their delicious fruit, certainly not sent in lovely gift baskets directly to my door for any consideration whatsoever. Oh delicious citrus! Your sourness is the sweetest thing in my life!

Recently, though, I've begun to question the very nature of fruit. It's so, well, fruity. Can that be a good thing? Some fruitarians think that, but can we truly trust anyone who has so willfully given up cheese? I think not.

One struggles to find one's way in the shopping cart of life, & I have been a vegetarian since way before you thought I was cool, but the questions with which one grapples can be philosophical finger traps - such as this one: why worry about lemons, when all you can think about is toast?

It's true! Why does toast haunt me so? Since our toaster died, I have been forced to make toast in a "toaster oven." The toast comes out disappointed & rueful. The butter will not melt, it feels the toast's shame. I had to put this morning's toast out of its misery by throwing it into a mob of hungry beagles! What sort of death is that for bread? For toast? I may as well have shoved it up the assholes of pigeons in the park!

One doesn't have the same moral & ethical quandaries with fruit, even with citrus, whose reputation among fruits is that of scoundrels & knaves. At the very least douchebags. Fruits have nothing on toast! But you can put fruit on toast! Preferably sliced thin. If you must.

I sing a dirge of toast lost today. The citrus fruits would weep acrid tears, if weep they could, if they hadn't already been crushed into juice. Mmm, juice. Salud!

From Dynamite To Los Angeles

Suddenly I am regretting not beginning all of my blog entries with a salutation. What a dreadful miscalculation! Now my blog has no personality! It's just like me!

Followers of the stomach flu may note with sadness that I am more or less back to my usual state of health which, frankly, for most people is a bit on the sickly side. I managed to fly to Los Angeles & attend my girlfriend's sister's wedding, but couldn't take advantage of the free booze & was back in Austin before Spielberg knew I was there. He & I are just NOT on speaking terms.

Before I left Saturday morning, though, I finished the first post-radio show podcast, which is still an episode of Self Help Radio, warts & all, & is available for your listening pleasure at the regular place, cnn.com. No, that's not right. & no, Wolf Blitzer & I are also NOT on speaking terms. A situation room without a self-destruct button?! What the fuck was he thinking?

The Self Help Radio show about dynamite is available at (of course) selfhelpradio.net. Do go listen. You may be the only person who does!

One Dynamite Podcast!

The Self Help Radio non-radio pro-podcast revolution begins in just a little time, my friends. Oh yes! As we speak, smelly beagles of all ages are sniffing the butts of all kind of music - all about the subject "dynamite" - which will be gathered tenderly, like flowers or cigarette butts, & turned into a deliciously explosive podcast you'll want to tell your friend about.

Do you want me to tell you when it's posted? Send an email to this address & I'll do that. Meanwhile I'll tease you by saying that this week's podcast will featuring the likes of Sly & The Family Stone, Iggy Pop, Slim Gaillard, King Floyd & Dick & The Family Cheney. Well, maybe not the last one. But all the rest & more!

Only at selfhelpradio.net. Only with fresh fruits & veggies. Only on time, never late. Only as a last resort.

Huzzah!

In Which Our Hero Makes One Final House Call

In the big media flap that was me distancing myself from my pastor's inappropriate behavior & apparently seditious sermons - wait, that wasn't me at all - was that former French president Jaques Chirac? Wasn't I him in a previous French life? I can't remember. I know there was a big media flap involving me, Caroll Spinney, an ostrich recently "liberated" from the San Diego Zoo, & Alaskan celebrity Mike Gravell. There always is, it seems, when a season ends. It's the burden of being virtually unknown & living in an imaginary world in my own hollow head.

Due to this media flurry, it may have been lost in the shuffle that the last episode of the fine show "The House Call" (normally ably hosted by heavy drinker Justin B) was poorly subbed by me during the hour before the Self Help Radio Season Finale. That show, featuring a not-entirely-right-in-the-head co-host, Mike, is available for listening at the Self Help Radio website. It's worth your time, if only to hear Xiu Xiu's magnificent cover of "Under Pressure." That's a keeper.

Go! Listen! I've got an imaginary press conference to attend, & later I'll be doing some imaginary drugs & crashing my imaginary car into the real tree.

Whither Dynamite?

Two things are interesting to me about dynamite. Ka & boom!

Was that funny? Well, I'm not funny. I'm sickly & I can't go to Los Angeles for my girlfriend's sister's wedding. So I'm sick, I'm depressed, I'm making enemies in my girlfriend's family, & I'm not funny.

Still. Two things are interesting to me about dynamite.

One, the fact that the dude who invented it was so shaken by an accidentally published obituary ("the merchant of death is dead!" it announced) that he started the Nobel Prizes to "atone" for his great destruction. I mean, if everyone did that, Dick Cheney would be spending the rest of his life giving everyone in America fifty dollars! Imagine that!

Two, the fact that it's a weird metaphor. To call someone "dynamite" is to call them "explosive" or "catastrophically violent," right? Nope. It means "great!" I'll be discussing this at length on the podcast. It's weird to me. "Dynamite" = "great"? What's next? "Bad" = "good"?

Of course, there are lots of great songs about dynamite, too. That's the main reason I do these shows I do, you know. The great music. & also the explosions. Ka-boom!

Preface To Dynamite: A Stomach Flu For All Humankind!

I don't know about you, but I am pretty annoyed by viruses. & I'm not afraid to say so! You know what I'm talking about - viruses - sub-microscopic infectious agents that are unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell. You feel me? No? What if I remind you that viruses consist of genetical material - DNA or RNA - within a protective protein coat called a capsid? Ah, you know what I'm talking about. Fucking viruses! They infect cellular life forms & are grouped into animal, plant & bacterial types, according to the type of host infected. & isn't that the shit?

I was minding my own business last week when some motherfucking virus decided to hang out in my stomach. Say what? You heard me! You know what followed? It wasn't beer & skittles, if that's what you mean. Unless by "beer & skittles" you mean "upchuck & the trots." In which case, then, yeah, it's been three days of beer & skittles.

I didn't go to a doctor, but I'm pretty sure I had (& may still have) this: a norovirus. I did in fact have a low grade fever Saturday night. (The grade? D+.) I scared the hell out of my girlfriend because I kept talking to her but I was responding to imaginings & dreams. Ah, fevers. Like a cheap drug when you least can afford it.

I am doing better now - I have to, I am driving to Los Angeles on Thursday. Wow, I get to transport a norovirus across the country! Someone please please please tell me Scarlet Johansson & Ryan Reynolds are in LA! Please please please.

This does mean limited blog entires for the next week. I'll warn more later. Now. Urp. I need to go visit the facilities.

Cake Request Form

I just discovered there was such a thing as a "cake request form." Ah, bureaucracy. Just tell me where to sign.

The very lastest Self Help Radio on KOOP was quite a blow-out. Hear what the critics are saying?

Nope.

Me neither.

But take my word for it, it was more fun than watching angry people trying to douse the Olympic Torch while French police on roller skates daydream of Segues! & guess what what! You can listen to it in its entirety at selfhelpradio.net! Not just now! Also later! Isn't that just freaky?

& nothing on the cake request form says anything about "one per customer." Suckers!

Last Show On KOOP!

This is it, friends. My last appearance on KOOP radio. It starts at 3:30pm when I sub the House Call one last time, & then the ninety-minute "season finale" of Self Help Radio.

But wait! Unlike most season finales, the "new" season of SHR begins right away next week as a podcast. Send an email if you want to be notified of SHR podcasts! The best is yet to come!

I hope you tune in today. It's a crazy show. Weird interviews, exclusive songs written for the show, & I will make love to a panda on the air. Well, maybe not. We'll see.

Your last chance to hear Self Help Radio on the radio in Austin is 4:30 today! Tune in!

My Last Ear Candy

I came to KOOP in late 2000 on the invite of one of the many Jennifers who have hosted the indiepop show "Ear Candy" since the late 1910s. I had been missing radio a lot but I didn't really want to have to get involved with another organization - especially one with as fearsome & intolerant a reputation as KOOP. In the end, I DID get involved, & I hope I helped change the station into a more welcoming place - but this is not the place to talk about that.

I subbed Ear Candy quite a bit over the years - I just counted - it was around twenty times - & I always loved the show. The first time I was on KOOP, actually, was an Ear Candy show. So it was very nice that Lace - the current Jennifer who handles Ear Candy - asked me to sub the show last Saturday. It was a nice way to say goodbye to a show that was like my second home on KOOP.

Want to listen to that show? You can! At selfhelpradio.net!. Please to enjoy.

& tomorrow is the last time you'll ever hear me on the air in Austin, Texas. Why hasn't the news media called? This is what I want to know.

Whither A Season Finale?

All things - good or not - must come to an end. Of course, Self Help Radio is not ending, but its place on the KOOP schedule is. It's happening at the end of the season. Ergo, Season Finale.

Where will Self Help Radio end up? Well, it comes with me wherever I go, so it'll end up in North Carolina. That's where I'll be by the end of the summer. Why, you many ask. Why Gary? Why the Deep South? You've quit smoking. You really don't want to have to explain yourself Jesse Helms. What gives?

I'll tell you. My girlfriend Magda is getting a job at Duke. Duke is a university in Durham, North Carolina. I love my girlfriend Magda in the way that a boy sometimes loves a girl & wants to be with her all the time. She's very smart & very dorky & we both have seen every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation too many times. She can speak the language of lemurs. She eats sesame tofu as fast as I do - if not faster. She's funny-looking in a pretty kind of way. I like her!

I decided I'd rather be with my girlfriend than without her. So I follow her. She gets to teach college, I get to work the clean-up shift at Whataburger. Wait. Do they have Whataburger in North Carolina? I need to start sending resumes out!

Self Help Radio may end up on the radio in Durham, or it may just be a podcast for the next year or so. In any case, it's unstoppable! You can't stop it! It's impossible to stop Self Help Radio! Like a crazy dream, it now leaps from the confines of "regular radio" into the aether, & online, but also into the aether, where it communicates with the space demons & protects Earth from unholy meteor penetrations & extraterrestrial salads!

Preface To The Season Finale: Guestbook Weirdness!

Here's something I never thought I'd have to deal with: a weirdo trying to harass me.

A while back I decided to do something totally dorky & add a "guestbook" to my site. It's free, it's silly, it's totally 1996. There have been some nice comments & some misspellings & it seemed a harmless thing to do.

Last week, someone who really, really doesn't like Self Help Radio decided to leave a nasty comment. I figured, hey, everyone's entitled to their opinion, even if it seemed strange to me to take the time to go to some place you don't like & write something nasty about it. It seemed - well - a little douchebaggish. But whatever.

The next day someone wrote something in defense of me, referring to the nasty entry. It was sweet & I thought, all right, it's like point/counterpoint. I certainly didn't want there to be an "argument" going on - I mean, if you don't like the show, you don't like the show, how can you "convince" someone about their own opinion? - but here are two people making two points & now let's go back to the regular stuff.

Yesterday, the person who wrote the first entry - under a different name - it's a really simple guestbook, you can claim to be whomever you want - wrote another mean entry. (How do I know it's the same person? The entries came from the same IP address. The guestbook administration lets me know where the entries come from.) I decided it wasn't the place for that sort of thing, so I deleted the comments - the two nasty ones, & (I'm sorry to the nice person who wrote this!) the one in defense of the show which referenced the first "bad review."

Of course, the nasty ones keep coming, & I'll keep deleting them, since they don't make sense now in the guestbook's context. & I know the same person is writing them all, so I can't even be flattered by hordes of people hating on me. So I make a quiet plea or four:

1) If you don't like Self Help Radio, don't worry, it's leaving the Austin airways. You might not have been able to work the magic radio dial to change the station while I was on the air, but now, since I won't be there, you don't have to trouble yourself. Everything is fine. You'll be all right.

2) I will continue podcasting, & will eventually be on the radio elsewhere, but that will require you to use a computer to download the shows &/or listen online. If you don't like the show, please don't take the trouble! Put it out of your mind. Self Help Radio can't ever hurt you. Things that other people like that you find awful can't hurt you. Concentrate on the things you like. Write nice things on their web pages. It will make the people who make the things you like feel really good. That's much better than trying to make someone feel bad, isn't it?

3) If you must leave comments, leave them here on the blog. Then we can have a conversation. We can't on a guestbook.

4) If you want to have a conversation, use your real name! Don't post under fake names! It undercuts your criticism! What are you afraid of? You know my real name. There are many ways to get to know who I am. Why not tell me who you are?

That's all. I don't like being this "self-indulgent" but it's such a weird & interesting thing to have to deal with, I had to tell SOMEONE. I hope you don't mind!

One Whole Planet

Someone just said to me, "I don't have control issues." "No?" I said, because I wasn't really paying attention & wasn't sure if she had just accused me of telling her that she had "control issues," whatever that means. "No," she said. "I don't need to be in control of much." "How much do you need to be in control of?" I asked her. "One whole planet," she said.

I don't need that much. Just a couple more Self Help Radio shows on KOOP & the promise of radio in the future. & look! The next-to-the-last Self Help Radio is available for your glistening listening pleasure now at selfhelpradio.net. Please listen & enjoy.

& don't hate me for my lack of ambition!

2 Shows To Go!

I am feeling especially wary about today's penultimate Self Help Radio, & I'll tell you why: it's not really under my control. You heard me. My show is programming itself. That's right! What kind of sick sci-fi nonsense is this? But the orders came from above. I don't have a say in my next-to-the-last show. I tell you, if I weren't leaving already, I'd have a bit of a huff prepared.

What is there to say? Today at 4:30pm CST, live on the 91.7 fm frequency & at koop.org is the first of two final Self Help Radio shows on KOOP. Oh boy! Yay boo! My teeth feel sad. I hope you can find it in your hearts to sacrifice any extra candy to my toothsome cause.

Come listen at 4:30! I will be paying my mortgage on the air!

Exter! Exter!

Happy Thursday. I made it back from Dallas & am working worrisomely on my next-to-last Self Help Radio. But I was thinking - hey, it's the end of April isn't it motherfucker? (Whenever I talk to myself in my head, I am extremely profane. I don't know why that is. For veracity's sake, I must write my thoughts down EXACTLY AS I HAVE THEM. If I didn't, I would be no better than [insert someone or something {like a media organization, or your lying-ass roommate in college} you think is a dissembling sack of sick], right?

If indeed it is the end of April, you selfish fucked-up douchehead, then isn't it time once again for another Self Help Radio Extra mix? Oh indeed it is. Please the Self Help Radio Extra page for a unique mix of the new sounds & the hot old sounds & the hot sounds that I don't know when they were recorded. All arranged in a single mix that makes it annoying if you don't like that one song in the middle, but convenient for listening to on iPod or burned to CD or given wrapped-up digitally as a present to your Aunt who thinks an mp3 is a brand of Soviet-era assault rifle.

Again, that's Self Help Radio Extra. I really want to say "You're welcome," but I'll wait for you to listen. Then you can tell me what you think. I'll be sitting here. Whittling. Yes, I whittle. I'm from the South. My father was a sharecropper's son. Whittling was mandatory for youngsters like me. Go, listen. Look, I'm making you a whistle.

Whither Regret?

I regret that I am in Dallas & can't write in my blog today. Wait. What?

Preface To My Penultimate Show On KOOP: Yes! I Got To Use The Word Penultimate!

I mean, how often do you get to use the word "penultimate"? Most people prefer "next to last," but not only does "penultimate" sound way cooler than "next to last," but it reminds everyone that the meaning of the word "ultimate" is "the very last." So the next time you see "Billy Joel - The Ultimate Collection," hold the record companies to their promise! No more Billy Joel collections ever!

Oh, tis a sadness to be approaching the end of my KOOP times. I feel blue. But I look forward - to other radio stations in the universe, to those pesky podcasts which, at last count, almost a few folks have downloaded. & then I look back - & it seems like KOOP is giving me the finger - wait! It's apparently just scratching its face. Whew!

There are so many wonderful stories & experiences that I had at KOOP, I am sure. I have obliterated most of them, of course, with heavy drinking & short-term memory loss incurred by a desperate need I have to impress the women by breaking beer bottles on my head. But my record number of concussions in one four-hour period surely reflects the joy given to me not only by being a part of what is truly a crazy-ass experiment in community radio, but also by the crazy-ass listeners who for whatever reason kept coming back to my show, listening, calling, calling again, still listening, calling, calling into the night, calling even when I am at home & not on the air any longer, continuing to call into the wee hours, calling, calling, hey!, I got caller ID buddy, be aware of that, you freak!

It's the penultimate time you'll get to hear me on that radio station! Pass it on! Use that word all the time until people get annoyed with you. You know you wanna. Come on!

The Podcasts Begin!

Yes, even though I was unable to be on the air on Friday (where, I am told, the noble Justin produced a fine Self Help Radio show!), I did manage to make a show, along with my pal Mike, & it is now a sweet, sweet podcast, located (as they always shall be) at selfhelpradio.net. You can listen to it & to the other installments of the Indiepop A To Z series there. & why wouldn't you? Are you too busy enjoying This Week In Science? I thought not. Wait. Are you? That's one of my podcast rivals!

I am thinking of changing my show's name to "This Week In Self Help Radio Radio." But it is really on the lowest rung of my consideration, so I probably shouldn't have mentioned it. It's right below "Getting a tattoo of Richard Dawson on my inside left thigh" & "trying heroin for the third time." I don't really have the space in my schedule for changing my radio show's name.

Go! Listen! I am just making noises because I don't want to have to go to this meeting I'm supposed to go to! Don't let me keep you!

Sheesh.

3 Shows To Go! (Slight Return)

Yes, there are three more Self Help Radio shows on KOOP. I'm doing the last two. Today, the wonderful Justin from the House Call fills in with a show all about tools. Do tune in at 4:30 pm Austin time on the 91.7 frequency & online at koop.org. It'll be awesome!

& I'll be back for my penultimate show on KOOP next week. Have a lovely weekend!

Self Help Radio vs The World

What an amazing title! Imagine, this tiny little radio show taking on something so big & scary & full of pollution like the world! That includes you, & every animal, & every hotel, & every bottle of Coca Cola! Why would this tiny little radio show want to do something like that?

Oh it isn't. It's just being grandiose. The main mouthpiece behind Self Help Radio, that queer fellow called Gary, he - & by he I mean I - subbed KOOP's world music show World Beat on Sunday. That's all. It's now available for your listening pleasure.

Where in the world can you listen to it? I bet you know! Yes, it's over at selfhelpradio.net. Like it always is. Every damn time. Go! Enjoy! Have fun!

Whither Tools?/Whither Indiepop A To Z # 14?

This is a two tracked explanation of the two Self Help Radio shows which will happen this week. Please do not adjust your browser. Everything is working exactly as planned. Take it away!

I am allowing the young Justin to handle Self Help Radio this week because a) he is able & b) I can't do it. But I can't go a whole week without a radio show. Damn my work! That would be madness. It's one of the last Self Help Radios on KOOP & my work says "No! Gary's gotta be here to justify his bureaucratic existence!" I also haven't visited my never-ending Indiepop A To Z series since late last year. They're so hateful here. It seems entirely appropriate to do so now, for two reasons: 1) to do a radio show when I cannot, in the form of a podcast, & 2) to do something of general interest so as not to "compete" with the Self Help Radio show subbed by Justin. My heart is broken. His show will be listened to by the regular Austin listeners. Yet my heart is heartened (after all) because I think Justin will do a fine job hosting Self Help Radio. My podcast will be downloaded by a drunk guy in Ukraine looking for free mp3s of Cinerama songs. I have requested that he do a show around the subject of "tools." & then quickly forgotten. Why is that? But isn't Self Help Radio really radio for people like me, people who need radio primarily if it is radio prepared & created by them themselves? Because, frankly, Justin is a manly fellow, with fine muscles & strong shoulders. If not that, what is it? & frankly I am a girly boy, with too much pretty hair & a slightly womanly walk which accentuates my wide feminine hips which, in a different world, would bear beautiful children. I cannot say, I am too close to the subject matter, in the same way a koala cannot be critical of the eucalyptus, or the way a walrus cannot talk shit about the rocks on which it suns. I am a little afraid around the implements which the more masculine of my gender use to make & repair things. But I will make my podcast, & I will load my podcast. My entire life I've been a little too afraid to ask about them. I just fucking dare you to download & listen to it. I have secretly conspired therefore to have Justin educate me without exposing myself as the sissy I fear the world sees me as. I just fucking dare you! Justin will vindicate me! I just hope my daring you isn't too pushy. So you had better pay attention. I do expect people to download my silliness.

Preface To Tools/Preface To A New Podcast

What do I talk about this week? Do I talk about the excellent young Justin's doubtlessly excellent covering of Self Help Radio (he's doing a show about tools)? Or do I talk about a podcast I will be making because I can't not make something like a radio show for even one little week? Or should I just show a video of what looks like a kitten with a theremin?

Instead, I think I'll take this moment to address what many in the Self Help Radio community are calling "tax day." As someone who has never failed to pay his or her taxes every other year or so, I find myself troubled by the turncoats & pests who feel that taxes are bothersome or otherwise cumbersome to the loathsome & the winsome. Surely our Founding Brothers & Sisters, who wrote extensively on the subject, never conceived of "taxation with representational art" as unfit for projects & protests! It's right there in the Constitution! Article you know, Section of course!

But this points even further to a more difficult conception of American society today in the 21st century today. Which is this: with all the consumer options we have before us, who really would choose to buy the governmental services on offer with the standard tax dollar? Very few of us, save some of the elderly without disposable income, as well as those for whom a nationwide flat tax appeals to their flat heads. Indeed, it's the crux of the material! Yet by requirement we save the embarrassment of unrequited requitedness. Quite!

I haven't got the hair nor the breadth to discuss the argument that goes on between bald Libertarians & shaggy-maned Contrarians, but you can well imagine that the hours spent on community radio alone making grand pronouncements, not to mention the money spent on shampoo & conditioner, could fill a phone book. I wanted rather to alert you, on this Taxing Tax Day, to the iambic pentameter being spent by the greatest truly minds of our or the next generation. For more information, please see a kitten possibly playing a theremin.

Man! Sudafed makes you have the coolest thoughts!

Home Sickly

A weird spring cold in Texas gave me a weird spring cold in my head so I am home today doped up on things to make me sleep & not sneeze all the time. How appropriate that the week I can't do a show, my body lets me get sick. Hurrah!

So instead of wasting time wondering what sort of nonsense I might write of a Monday, go listen to last Friday's show about gravity at selfhelpradio.net. I know you're a fan of Isaac Newton. You need not be ashamed any more.

Achoo. Groan.

3 Shows To Go!

I know, you're all planning your big "end of the show" party, like you did at the end of "M*A*S*H," "Seinfeld" & "The Big Valley." (Where I come from, "Big Valley" parties were fucking awesome!) But can I point out there are three big differences?

1) My show isn't ending. I'll continue with delicious podcasts dispensed at selfhelpadio.net. I'm just leaving KOOP. They'll be fine. I'll be fine. Nothing is ending. It's just changing.

2) You can be reminded about the podcasts by reading this blog or by sending me an email to remind you when a new show is posted. Think Hawkeye Motherfucking Pierce would have done that? Or that Kramer guy? Nope. Both of them would've used the n-word, although Alan Alda would make it seem like it was Groucho Marx using it.

3) I am only doing three more Self Help Radio shows, but there will actually be *four* more Self Help Radio shows! That's right, the dashing & handsome Justin who does the House Call before my show, will be subbing for me next week, doing a show about "tools." Ha ha! Can you imagine there being three more "M*A*S*H"s, but someone stepping in & adding a fourth? You can't! That's because we're so damn weird!

4) Did I say there were three differences? I guess I did. I don't know why I've numbered this as "4)" but I suppose it's a difference. Next week, I'll make a podcast. You heard me! So there'll be two Self Help Radio shows, one on the radio, one on the computero. Insert snarky comment about Lee Majors &/or Barbara Stanwyck here.

So tune in to Self Help Radio today at 4:30. Learn about gravity. From someone who has no gravitas at all. & who is famous for falling down all the time.

Aren't You Funny

I know, these sorts of things are just someone's opinion (I for one would have had a LOT more Mr. Show & a LOT less Saturday Night Live) but if you want to be amused, do have a look at nerve.com's 50 greatest comedy sketches of all time. It's an amusing distraction.

What would I have included that's not there? The possibilities are endless, really. For one, the Chicken Lady sketch from Kids In The Hall I would have added is not the one they pick. I like the one - which is the first Chicken Lady sketch I ever saw - with the blind date with Dave Foley. "I'm a chicken lady & I love life!" "I didn't think you meant it literally..." But so much of what they did was so absurd that it's only funny because it's so damn weird. That's awesome.

Which reminds me - League Of Gentlemen, anyone?

As for Mr Show - I have so many of those episodes memorized, it would be hard to say. But I'd leave out a couple of those dull SNL sketches for Thrill World & Druggachusetts because, frankly, they're funnier.

I can't believe they missed the single funniest SCTV sketch ever - Night School Hi-Q. Lugubrious!

& there's nothing from the Ben Stiller show? Really? I think that the "MTV Music News" sketch (I said kill Doug Szathkey!) would have been a great companion piece to the In Living Color Vanilla Ice parody. & what about Die Hard 12? Oliver Stone Land? Woody Allen's Bride of Frankenstein? Cape Munster?

Lists like this are always woefully incomplete, because tastes are different. But maybe you'll find some funny there for yourself.

Whither Gravity?

Here's what a weirdo Isaac Newton was: Read ten strange facts about Newton. Are they that strange? I mean, come on. It was, what, the seventeenth century? Shit was fucked up then. Everyone I've known who was able to see the world a different way than everyone else was completely batshit crazy. It makes sense that, in a world where there are a substantial number of batshit crazy folks, a handful would be brilliant. Sadly, the majority of them become religious or political. Luckily some of them become scientists.

I like that gravity is not completely understood. I like that it's a fundamentally weak force, if only because, when you explain that to astrologers, they get all vexed. (You know, "If gravity's so strong why can this little magnet counteract it so simply?") I like those drawing of gravity lines around massive objects illustrating the "space-time continuum." I love listening to the dreamers who imagine we'll beat the speed limit of light by using gravity to "bend" space. Forget all that nonsense about sin & redemption - that's just about control of your thoughts & your person. Close your eyes & imagine a gravity well dipping into a black hole drawing out incredible energies. Hell, close your eyes & imagine launching yourself into orbit on a small moon. You're a super hero in space!

Most songs about gravity are about gravity as a metaphor - either of "attraction" or of rebellion against physical laws. But there are songs, too, celebrating that batshit crazy Newton dude & what he thought up while the city of London was dying of the plague. Yay! One of the last Self Help Radio shows on the radio will be a science show!

Preface To Gravity: What Comes Up Must Not Be Discussed

Yes, it was a picture of a dog barking at Jesus. The dog is a beagle named George. Jesus is a plastic statue in a graveyard. Please stop writing me poems about it!

That's the thing: I don't really mind poems. I like them. I write them myself, in my skin, with a razor & a bottle of Softsoap. & oftentimes, yes, I write them about pictures of dogs barking at kitschy representations of old-fashioned deities. But I don't send them to anyone. I certainly wouldn't send them to you.

For example, why would anyone send this to anyone, especially me:

   You don't love me Jesus
   Because I am a hound
   So I'll continue peeing
   On your hallowed ground

But Gary, is this so bad? Yes. It's bad for two reasons. First of all, George is himself an accomplished poet (as well as an accomplished urinator), so he can write poems from his own point of view when necessary (although he prefers to write from an "everydog" perspective). He simply doesn't need you to write poems from his vantage point. Secondly, it's not a very good poem. It doesn't really capture the essence of the photograph & it doesn't really explain why the dog thinks Jesus doesn't love him. Frankly, it doesn't scan.

What about the free verse poems I'm getting? As always, the free verse is worse:

   Beagle orphaned on crisp sunny day
   Lack a day! Lackadaisical!
   Alone, alone, but wait! alone,
   with nearer my god to thee
   porcelain plastic messiah!

I know, what the fuck?!? (By the way, "lackadaisical" comes from "lackaday," smart guy. What've you been doing, reading the Word Detective or something? Sheesh.) I would have been more impressed if the writer had rhymed something with "lackadaisical."

Enough! The three or four people who read this blog read it to find out if I have gone completely off the deep end, not to hear your poetry about photographs on blogs. Now please, let me write about the topics I'll cover on my show, & leave your poetry to other radio shows that deserve them. That one about the Lake in Minnesota, for example. Write to them.

Now I've got to go & explain this to George...

Torso Pants

My month of April has gotten off to a grand start, how about yours? I am of course talking about the wildflowers! What did you think I was talking about? A hundred thousand dollar bar? Or maybe a grand piano?

I offer, for your edification, a dog in a cemetery full of wildflowers, barking at Jesus:



I should also mention that Self Help Radio started the month of April off with a show entirely about cheese. Mmm, cheese. Did you miss it? Or would you like seconds? Well, the cheese buffet is open over at selfhelpradio.net. Dig in!

4 Shows To Go!

Omigosh! We're in the final stretch! Only four shows to go!

I am going to resist listing famous foursomes - no Fantastic Four, nothing about calling birds - & instead warn you that the best is yet to come. You heard me! You might just fucking love to listen to Self Help Radio on your boring-ass ride home from your sanity-crippling job, & you may be relying on it on Fridays in the same way you used to need to visit a prostitute to be spanked for being very, very bad - but it'll soon be gone, my friend. There'll be another KOOP program. It won't be Self Help Radio.

But even though I'm pretty sure the KOOP program that will occupy the timeslot then will be fine & you'll barely remember, weeks from now, how Self Help Radio loved you long time, I will just let you know - as a kindness, as a public service - it could be an admonition, it could be a promise, it could be a simple piece of information - I must let you know that Self Help Radio is nowhere near meeting its potential. You heard me! The best is yet to come!

You'd hate to miss it, now, wouldn't you?

So make sure you either bookmark the Self Help Radio home page or send me an email to be reminded of the podcasts. Because you will regret missing it, in the same way you regret that last glass of whiskey every night around 2:30 am. Or you'll regret it the way I regret that last glass of whiskey. It tastes so good but it hurts so bad.

If you must listen on the real radio with real radio waves, then fine: today at 4:30, a show about cheese. Delicious!

Does Humor Belong On The Radio?

Dunno, but you're not as funny as you think you are. Nor am I as funny as you wish I were. Or will be. Or may be. Or.

Once upon a time - not too long ago - seriously, it's what they call "the recent past," which is I suppose the antonym of "the near future" now that I think about it - anyway, a programmer (who may or may not have actually been a medical professional) called Dr Debra did a novelty show. She did it mainly on the interwebbing, but fortunes changed, stations caught fire, & she got an fm slot on Wednesday late mornings.

Alas! Life takes its toll! The whims & phlegms of fate sadly forced the doctor to move her practice to the untamed wilderness some have called Oklahoma. What to do? Well, some valiant KOOPers have attempted to take her place until the end of the season. & God help me, I am one.

You can listen to my sub show from yesterday at the Self Help Radio home page site thing. There are songs about medical conditions, songs about bananas, & a song about a famous Basset Hound, among other things. Ha ha! I say. Ha ha!

Will I be asked to step in again? Is there any penalty for impersonating a funny doctor? Who knows? Oh the winds & phlegms of fate!

Whither Cheese?

Seriously, you have to ask?

You've obviously never heard my radio show.

Preface To Cheese: The Rot That Changes Lives

Oh, it's true. You can smoke your own cheese. But making it? Is making your own cheese what you really want to do?

The way (not the whey, thank you) I feel about cheese is similar to the way most people who eat meat (I don't eat meat) feel about killing animals themselves. Most every meat-eating human you know could never, never, never kill a cow & process it to make themselves a burger. They just couldn't. Luckily, they can go to their local McWendy's-In-The-Whatabox King. Someone else somewhere else did the dirty work & even better, it doesn't look anything like a cow!

Similarly I with cheese. I couldn't make it. It would be hazardous to my eating of it. & I love cheese. Not all cheese types, & not all the time, but cheese as a delicious idea oh yes I love.

Hey! I might be able to make processed cheese, if all it took was mixing human-made chemicals in a test tube & then baking some possibly edible polymer. Mmm. I'd color it funky colors, too. Neon blue cheese anyone?

Damn, talking about this makes me hanker for a hunk o'cheese!

A Layman's Guide To Videos About Sleep On Youtube

I am sitting here at work trying to get some project-related stuff done & for some reason I am listening to Woody Guthrie. It's making me feel weird. Partially because it's tropical outside. Partially because it's always weird to hear someone call Jesus Christ "a working man" in a song. That dude never worked a day in his life. He lived off the trust fund his dad set up for him.

Anyway, there are three things to say today, & the first of them is to say there are three things to say. Wait. That can't be right.

The second is: if you missed last Friday's television theme song spectacular, you can hear it again (as I've been saying) in reruns (har har) over at selfhelpradio.net. I call it the TV Show but it's really just a bunch of weird covers of television themes. It's like remembering your childhood with a lot of other people's memories.

I also wanted to make sure that YOU know that after I finish my run of Self Help Radio on KOOP, I am continuing the show as a podcast. How will you know? You never come to this blog! You don't write me anymore! When was the last time you invited me over to your house for drinks & dancing? Since we're obviously not as close as we used to be, maybe you should send me an email & tell me to remind you when I post new podcasts. One lousy email. & I don't drink all your whiskey.

I swear there were three things I wanted to say. Maybe the last was me saying that there were three things but obviously I'm dumb & I forgot the last one. Or maybe I just thought it was three because it's handy to have three things to say at any given time. Oh well. Back to Woody Guthrie. Damn these dust storms!