There's Nothing Like A Salt Lick

It's true. Except another salt lick. This is mainly important for all my friends who happen to be birds in cages. Salt licks go a long way with them - even if there's no iodine & the birds get goiters.

Oh god is he still talking about salt? Wasn't he done with that dumbass salt show last week? I guess we should thank god he's not talking about Hurricane Ike.

Salt licks are however incredibly unimportant during this terrible hurricane season.

Oh christ!

I'm not just talking about hurricanes in the traditional "Ike" sense, but also in the non-traditional, non-western "typhoon" sense.

Great. Now he thinks there's something different about a typhoon. Next thing you know, he'll mention tidal waves & tsunamis.

For example, while your standard western hurricane creates tidal waves, typhoons produce what scientists call "tsunamis" (it rhymes with a video game manufacturer whose name escapes me).

Konami?

Hey, it just occurred to me that this is sort of like that "The Word" segment on The Colbert Report!

Oh god, you're right. Look, this whole blog thing - not to mention your own show - is derivative as all hell anyway - why not just plug last week's show & get the fug outta here.

You got it. Hey! Hurricane survivors & everyone else! Go listen to this week's Self Help Radio, which is about salt, yay! over at selfhelpradio.net! It's good for you in exactly the same way a hurricane is not!

Excellent. Wanna get a drink or something?

Yes!

Office Spacing

I moved offices today. That's an excuse. Hurricane Ike may be visiting Austin tomorrow so I need to go home & watch the news obsessively & with perverse glee to watch newscasters get blown around in high winds off Galveston. So I didn't have time today to write some nonsense here & I won't have time now. Instead I am wasting time making excuses.

But! Tomorrow! Self Help Radio is all about salt! & not at all about hurricanes! Although wouldn't it be weird if it were?

VIsit selfhelpradio.net around the time Houston is underwater & enjoy!

Needles To Say

Needles, I say! So sharp to the finger-prick, so hard for the threading! Did you know needles are mentioned over four thousand times in the Christian Bible? Let me rephrase that. Did you know I have written the word "needle" four thousand times all over the pages of my Christian Bible? It's true! Look it up!

But it does say that thing about shoving a camel through a needle's eye in like three of the four gospels. What up with that? Someone call the Roman SPCA! Jesus been shoving camels again! Is that why that Alaska woman hates moose so much? Are moose Alaska's camels?

"Go ply thy needle; meddle not with her," Shakespeare said, but too late! I had meddled with her. & she had thrown a drink in my face. But how it would have hurt if she had had a glass full of needles!

Needles also means hypodermic needles, attached to syringes, attached (ultimately) to Lou Reed. This can be of great disappointment to the uninitiated. I brought my needlepoint kit to a Needle Exchange Program expecting to trade some of my beloved Specialty Needles (I have one which is signed by all the cast members of Scooby Doo) (except Casey Kasem) (Casey Kasem is a douchebag) but instead I was told that I needed to be an IV Drug User or have a special Card which I could get at my local heroin dealer's. What a disappointment!

You are on pins & needles - & not on drugs - if you are nervous about something. Indeed, it seems to me two things are problematic here. One, who spilled all the needles & pins? Why didn't they clean them up? & two, why don't you watch where you're going? It's not like you can't see an entire floor covered in needles & pins! You probably want to live dangerously. I think you're an idiot.

Also, it's impossible, say, if you're needing to mend your threadbare coat, to use the needle on, say, your speedometer. Not to mention a VU meter! Those needles suck!

That's all the needle talk for today. I won't be "needling" you about "needles" further. Ha ha!

Whither Salt?

Salt! Salt! I just had salt on my lunch! What a coincidence!

Many people in the world today take salt for granted. There was a time when wars were fought for salt. People protested occupation by walking to get their own salt. Stores put salt in elegant containers rather than in disposable little square paper thingies. No more I say! We need to return to expensive salt! Valuable salt! Exotic salt! Priceless salt!

Okay, maybe not exotic salt. The people who extol the benefits of weird salt are kinda creepy, & probably also believe in the benefits of electrocuting their nipples when the moon is waning gibbous.

I shall construct a radio show to restore salt to its place of former glory & fame! Good old plain sodium chloride, ye shall be exalted!

At least this week. On Self Help Radio.

Preface To Salt: High Blood Pressure At Low Altitudes

"Blood pressure refers to the force exerted by circulating blood on the walls of blood vessels," says Wikipedia, & then presents to you some awesome terms which medical service folks get to use that no one else does. Note: this has very little to do with salt. I am just obsessing about blood pressure.

This has become more common in recent years, but I've always dug hypertension. It sounds like a super power, yeah? No! It's as bad a thing as real life gamma rays! Wikipedia, do me like your best girlfriend: "Hypertension, referred to as high blood pressure, HTN or HPN, is a medical condition in which the blood pressure is chronically elevated."

Even better, you could suffer from white coat hypertension. As opposed to black belt hypertension, jack boot hypertension, & the always nasty dirty undergarment hypertension, which is what I suffer from for reasons I can't be bothered to explain.

Hypotension is not nearly as interesting, mainly because hypertension sounds like your bodies about to explode & that's so totally Scanners.

Term number two: preeclampsia. Oh, it sounds like something rich white folks on the east coast spend a lot of money to get their kids into so they can go to the best schools, but my bitch Wikipedia knows the score: "Preeclampsia is a medical condition where hypertension arises in pregnancy (pregnancy-induced hypertension) in association with significant amounts of protein in the urine." Extra bonus points from mentioning urine!

Term number third: systole. Wikipedia! Testify: "Systole (rhymes with 'fiscally') is the contraction of heart chambers, driving blood out of the chambers." I know, it's only one of the measures of blood pressure, but doesn't "diastole" sound like the name of a Dutch prog-rock band? One is contraction, the other is expansion. Okay, maybe the prog-rock band would be called Systole-Diastole. But I think that diastole is boring. Systole rocks!

The coup de grace: sphygmomanometer. What the fuck?

Hey Wikipedia! Do it to me one more time: "A sphygmomanometer is a device used to measure blood pressure, comprising an inflatable cuff to restrict blood flow, & a mercury or mechanical manometer to measure the pressure." It comes from the Greek word for pulse, or the layperson's word for "fuckin' know-it-all just tell me which pills I gotta take."

By the way, waiting rooms are weird & it may be just me but there seem to be more women in them than men. Do men just not go to doctors? We don't, do we? We drop dead instead. Go us!

The Mad Rooster & The Dither Hen

That is the name of a short story that a genial fellow named Abraham Meddle was working on, his fourteenth &, he believed, most successful short story, the night he met a particularly embarrassing end while working (as he did his entire life) at the West Bubonic Paper Mill somewhere on or about a more or less empty township in the vicinity of West Texas.

The story was a simple one - a rooster who was not able to afford his meds (due to the Bush Administration's cruel restructuring of the Medicare/Medicaid needs policy) experienced a not unhappy resurgence of his schizophrenia & started to wreak havoc in the hen-house where he spent his idle time. The rooster, while not handsome, was the best the ladies in the house could hope for, but usually only when his demons were under control. When not, he tended to rip his (& others') feathers off their bodies, fly madly at the chicken wire, & issue denunciations of left-wing political candidates in a manner one matron described as "Ann Coulter-ish," which was not fit for polite company.

The dither hen was, as expected, a rather fussy & absent-minded old thing nearing the end of her laying cycle who managed to come up with a way to save the rooster without drugging him (using principles she gleaned from a cross between Christian Science & Scientology) & the body of the short story included inspirational & hilarious descriptions of the treatment & "cure" (Meddle was never interested in clear-cut endings) of the Mad Rooster, & possibly (it was unfinished) the eventual eating of the rooster & hen by a hungry family who were slowly starving thanks to the abandoning of the social safety net under the current administration in favor of "faith-based" initiatives, & the local churches frowning on the dither hen because Scientology is un-Christian & therefore leads its adherents to perdition.

Self Help Radio is glad to be able to summarize unfinished works as part of an ongoing series funded by the Confusion Group in association with Leanr To Rade, the adult literacy group run by dyslexics.

Self Help Radio dedicates its most recent show, Indiepop A To Z # 16, to these tireless advocates of whatever they care about. It's available, as are many other shows which these groups have nothing to do with either, at selfhelpradio.net. You may proceed there now single file.

Overtaxed Friday

Forgive me, loyal stalker, but I am, as the Bard says, "poopty-whoopty," on this, the end of the first week of September. I hope to get something I have heard about - it sounds exotic like a drug - you are able to see vivid hallucinations, all the while your bodies apparently replenishes itself - it's called "sleep" - at some point during the weekend. Because I cannot apparently get any during the week. I don't really know any reliable dealers.

But first & foremost, I will concentrate on this week's Self Help Radio. I believe you'll like it - I've decided to forego the airbreak/song style & present it as a continuous mix. That way I might be able to get to the Indiepop D's before John McCain steal the next election.

Have a lovely weekend & visit selfhelpradio.net tomorrow for yummy indiepop fun.

Like Teeth On Cheese Cloth

I am sleepy. I have been waking up on Thursday mornings to listen to a radio show called The War On Sailing, which is based on a blog I like called The War On Sailing, which is, I am embarrassed to say, where I get about 1/16th of the news I need to make it through the day. But the radio show is on from 5 to 7 am so boy are my arms tired.

He's not very good with his blog, though. So I am not rewarded for staying awake in this manner. But I am thinking of offering him space on the Self Help Radio web page & archiving some of his shows. The host, Vance Chamberlain, is notoriously untrustworthy & once shaved a man because he thought the man's moustache was a danger to himself & others. So whether I can convince him is entirely up to him. My powers of persuasion have been at low ebb. I am thinking of working for the other side, frankly.

There's no reason for you to lose hope, though! Or wait, were you? You had a face that either suggested you were losing hope or that you were chewing some fruity gum & then drank a diet soda & you realized that it was the exact flavor of a cherry Slurpee. Which one was it? You're going to be a pain in the ass until House returns for the fall.

Which reminds me, two more studios passed on the script I have been pretending to write for Self Help Radio: The Radio Show: The Movie. Surprisingly, even after a long liquid lunch, they want to see a script! I even mentioned ninjas, boobies, zombies & boobies! Ah well. Back to looking for a home on the radio. Tell me if you see any signs up. I'm going to call Vance Chamberlain & pretend to be Condoleeza Rice. It'll make him howl.

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 16?

Jus' continuin' the series, kind sir. Please leave me in peace whilst I listen to the jangly pop. Thank you.

Man! I'm hungry! It's a good thing I don't have pica. Not only that, it's a good thing that I, as an older male, don't even have the chance, short of a brain short circuit, of contracting pica. That's a relief. I might still get cancer, you know, or diabetes, or the good ol' epizootic. But no pica for me!

Still, I have to wait till I go home to eat, for three reasons:

1) As a vegetarian, my options in the world around me are limited. Not as limited as when I became a vegetarian in 1986, but still.
2) Since reading Fast Food Nation, a book I cannot recommend more highly, I don't eat fast food. That dwindles my already small pool of available eateries. & I don't really want to go to a restaurant alone. I would feel lonesome. The waiter would spill coffee on me.
3) If I eat without the love of my life, I am likely to get a beatdown. Seriously. She's always hitting me. I think she likes to hurt me. Ow! Oh shit! She's able to punch me psychically! Ow! She's mean! I hope I get a brain tumor & it causes me to get pica!

I know. I'll go find some gum. Meanwhile, I continue listening to the jangly pop. You're bound to be pleased.

Preface To Yet Another Indiepop A To Z: Blood Tests

Blood tests are obviously very helpful. According to a very helpful web site, "blood tests are used to determine physiological & biochemical states such as disease, mineral content, drug effectiveness, & organ function." So of course a very helpful thing to do. However, the same very helpful website states: "Although the term blood test is used, most routine tests (except for most haematology) are done on plasma or serum instead of blood cells."

Is that so! Why not "plasma tests"? As someone who's naturally scared of needles entering my veins & drawing out my precious, precious water of life, I would much prefer someone getting rid of smelly plasma than delicious blood. Plasma is the rind of blood. You can test as much as you want!

Blood tests, they are telling me now, involve taking the blood first, & then, through a process of deceit & guile, getting the plasma from the blood, & then feeding the blood to the stray dogs that congregate outside the clinic, unless someone at the clinic wants to take the blood home for their own pets. This seems far more reasonable & forward-thinking than the other, more wasteful clinics where the blood is taken for granted & left out on a dish by the kitchen window to cool & spoil.

My own interest in blood tests is none of your business (or even your interest), so I refuse to make a big to-do stinkeroo about them here in this general forum. However, I will have any & all phlebotomists out there to understand that my veins are my veins, & they will not be trifled with as if they were mountains with minerals in them for your personal enrichment. That's all I have to say on the subject except this:

"Ow! Watch where you put that needle!"

Laborious Day

Greeting on what I hope is a "day off." I like to consider it "possible nap time." Although I probably won't get to nap.

What I do get to do is remind you that Self Help Radio was only a little sleepy when I interviewed the great Mr Impossible (tm) for the Impossible show, which was made available to your grubby little computer hands on Saturday over at selfhelpradio.net. Please enjoy. The reviews are pouring in here at SHR central, although they're reviews of "Hamlet 2" & not the Impossible Show. Therefore it would make no sense to share them with you.

If you had to labor on Labor Day, those of us who are just taking laborious breaths thank you. You made it possible for us to enjoy yet another hot, sticky, unpleasant late summer day, while another hot, wet, unpleasant hurricane threatened the lives of our neighbors in the gulf region. Hooray for you! Hooray for holidays!

Interview with Mr. Impossible!

O boy o boy o boy o boy o boy!

Self Help Radio is going to be impossibly awesome this weekend because I have just found out that - hold on to your haunches - I'm going to get a visit from the legendary Mr. Impossible! Star of stage, screen & informercial, first into battle & the last one to leave the movie theater after the credits fade, hero, father of nine, singer, songwriter, dancer, sport-fisherman, painter, sculptor, poet, movie critic, did I say dancer?, business executive, doyen of international finance, Nobel Prize nominee, husband, part-time homemaker, Santa Claus for the poor, political arbitrator, conservationist, auto enthusiast & amateur photographer Mr. Mother Fucking Impossible will be on Self Help Radio!

Don't even ask me how I made this happen. I'll tell you, though. Mr. Impossible is in town to speak to at-risk youth about California & he was having a long liquid lunch at my favorite local sandbar, the Blather, & I of course noticed him - although he doesn't wear the cape when he's having lunch! - & I offered to buy him a drink. I was nervous, thinking everyone does that & also that he might think I was coming on to him. He said, "A drink? You can buy me lunch!"

Oh wow!

We talked - well, he did, mostly - about everything - well, mostly about him - & I told him I did this little podcast & he was like, "I love the new media! What does it pay?" I told him it didn't pay anything - not even attention - but he was such a trooper - he liked my show so much! - that he promised to stop by tonight if I made him dinner & bought him a case of Cold Duck!

As you can imagine, I'm nervous as a school kid on the first day of Home Economics class, but I'll get a fabulous interview out of him. It'll be awesome! Do listen tomorrow to Self Help Radio for a show full of impossibly great music as well as an interview with Mr. Impossible!

PS - are you doing anything Saturday night? Might I suggest a benefit for KVRX, Student Radio for the University of Texas? It certainly looks like fun, & it's a great cause!

Strengthening Gustav Heads For Jamaica

Why does the new Gustav want to go to Jamaica, anyway? You've heard his rants & raves about reggae - "It all sounds the same!" he'd bellow, banging his fist on the table like a Khrushchev wishing for a shoe. Hey! He doesn't like hot weather, either!

But he's changed. You've all seen it. He used to be a one-hundred & forty pound emo kid named Jack. He seemed to like it. & yet, as some of you recall, it was a couple of years ago, watching some "news report" on a "news channel" about a baseball player & his alleged steroid problem, your friend Jack turned the recorder on & watched the "before & after" pictures again & again. The last time you saw him like that, you'll recall, was when you got really stoned & watched "Atomic Cafe" with him, & he tried to build his own atom bomb, & he somehow imagined that, if he could get his lead gloves on some uranium, he could enrich it in a process he thought was like enriching white bread. "I'll add vitamins to the radioactive goo!" he'd shout, in-between muttering to himself & falling asleep watching an infomercial about night-blindness.

He changed his name after the steroid documentary, & he changed his life. Whether he got some or not, you don't know. "It vill be easier to get zan uranium!" he told you after drinking an entire bottle of Jagermeister on a dare, in that fake accent he's adopted since the name change. That was the last time any of you saw him until he emerged months later, weighing forty pounds more, all the extra pounds in the grotesque muscles, & missing a neck.

Speaking of drugs, he never much liked pot, either. So why Jamaica? As well, he's not terribly religious, but wasn't he raised Mormon? He'd have absolutely no interest whatsoever in Rastafarianism. It's a puzzler.

You have to admit, though, it's not like he's more likable as "Gustav" than he was as "Jack." Perhaps owing to the mysterious disappearance of his neck, Gustav doesn't talk as much as Jack. Gustav spends a lot of time paying attention to all the new things his body is doing, not complaining to anyone who'll listen why the Hollies are underrated or why Brian Wilson's return to music destroyed commercial rock in the 21st century. Gustav seems to coo a lot. Kissing his muscles. Stuff like that.

& since he doesn't drink, you don't have to worry about him haggling over a check. He's not more likable, but he is, you guess, more tolerable. But why go to Jamaica?

Oh. Oh damn. It's just a Reuters headline about a hurricane. Never mind.

Whither The Impossible Show?

What is & isn't impossible - which is to say, what is & isn't possible - is neither a simplistic dualistic demarcation nor a tritely glib adolescent conundrum. It is, actually, at the very core of an exciting new philosophical slash scientific movement, Impossible Physics.

What makes this different from, say, Science Fiction? Good question! Science Fiction as a genre is in fact possible - it already exists! Haven't you seen Star Trek? It's on the television like all the time! & did you know that people write a lot of Science Fiction books that never get made into movies? It's true! So Science Fiction is possible. It's also probable.

But Impossible Psychics does not exist. Not even my naming it as an "exciting new philosophical slash scientific movement" can make it exist. For one thing, I barely exist myself, so any pronouncement or discovery I make is negligible. I could cure cancer & simply by virtue of being me, it would hardly get noticed. Until, say, someone found the cure by accident & took credit for it. I might get to be a footnote then.

That's why I am the perfect spokesperson for Impossible Physics. I couldn't be less influential, I couldn't be more ignored. Impossible Physics has zero chance of existing as long as I am in charge of promoting it. Which, by the way, I'm not. Which can't help Impossible Physics at all!

By the way, I was just guessing up there - you know, using the fancy-pants language & saying stuff like, "a simplistic demarcation of philosophical conundrum." What a load of hoo-ha! See, Impossible Physics can't have a core because it doesn't exist! It can't exist! The moment it exists, it ceases to be Impossible, so it's never Impossible Physics!

Look, let me explain it to you. Wait, better yet, I'll do Saturday on my show. That's cool. Visit me there. I got a lot of splainin' to do.

I leave you with the new slogan of Self Help Radio: "Anything's Impossible!"

Preface To The Impossible Show: It's Just Impossible For Me To Write In This Blog Today

Sorry about that.

Wait. What just happened?

Cartography For Fun & Profit

ITEM! Stores in America are failing at a slightly humiliating rate! What does the future hold for future entrepreneurs of the future? How bearish can the market bear?

ITEM! Banks won't loan money to just anyone anymore! How will the homeless afford their McMansions now? Can Christopher Nolan's powerful Batman franchise save us?

ITEM! In spite of all the money he has raised, "Batman" is still unrecognizable to my computer's spell-check!

ITEM! I can't remember what I was talking about! Oh yes! The failing United States economy! Boy I'm glad I didn't quit my job when I thought I had to quit my job! I'd be working at one of those Starbucks that they're now closing down!

ITEM! Yes, I have no professional qualifications & would end up working at a coffee shop!

ITEM! But there's no need to panic! Let Self Help Radio panic for you!

ITEM! Yes, the "Panic" show of the Self Help Radio is available for listening to at this very moment! Four out of five dentists recommend it rather than toothpaste for listening to! & really, it's only because I just know four dentists! The fifth dentist didn't want to be my friend! What an asshole!

ITEM! To listen, just push the panic button! Help is on the way!

Bob's Your Uncle's Best Friend

There are little labels sitting on the table. Next to a girl called Mabel - she's the subject of this fable - & she receives a cable from The House Of The Seven Gables about the Tower of Babel. Mabel isn't able to decipher the labels - she's wearing her Aunt Grable's sable. Over her head. Dreaming of Fee Waybill.

If she had only read the labels, she would see censure, condemnation, denunciation. For the labels are not for record albums or mason jars filled with dried herbs, they're not for notebooks or Christmas gifts, no, they're for Self Help Radio. In particular, the Blog Writing Department.

It's no secret that fed-up employees quitting, retaliatory firings, chemical castration, & sudden infant death syndrome have haunted the Blog Writing Department of the Self Help Radio Corporation since its inception. But the reader - readers if Mom is near a computer - is used to at least five days of derivative, unfunny, unhelpful blog entries. But this week! Well! All that the Blog Writing Department could manage since Wednesday was that asinine Dr. Seussian thing up there. Mabel at a table with labels! What are we, magpies?

& Monday. What happened to Monday. "Busy at work"? They work in a Blog Writing Department!

The Management wishes to extend an apology to the fine reader of this blog-type device & wants to reassure you that, thanks to a well-placed call to the dying Robert Novak & extraordinary rendition, those Blog Writing Department "creatives" won't be disappointing you any more.

There may be a slight delay in tomorrow's "Panic" show - no more than a day - but that's not the Blog Writing Department's fault. Self Help Radio host Gary Dickerson will be in Motorcycle class. Don't ask.

Just don't ask.

Our apologies for this week! Our promises for the next! Our kingdom for horse!

Whither Panic?

For the rough & tumble, ready-to-wear man or woman on the street, panic is not an attractive proposition. It sullies the mind & wrinkles the closely-knit boundaries of circumspection & polite conversation. Furthermore, panic rarely if always delivers the goods as highly placed as "shouting fire in a cramped theater" (to quote the Supreme Court with a flourish). Mostly, the panic that one (or two) may feel is personal & inconvenient & has only slightly a lot of inherent comedic possibility than the average public display of hemorrhage.

Take, for example, the tale of Paula Piperview, a criminal defense attorney obsessed with defending strippers, hookers & gay-porn actors (not necessarily in that order, although wow! what a trial that would be!). Ms Piperview was possessed of what her parents called "a genetic predisposition" toward panic attacks whenever she heard a description, however censored, of sexual practices. Though her partners at the not really all that prestigious law firm of Barback & Hooptie urged her to go for safer fare, like arson, perhaps, or driving while intoxicated, Ms Piperview insisted (on the advice of a radio self-help host, actually) of "confronting her fears head-on." Interestingly, the nervous sweats she often got in the court room were interpreted by the simpletons in the jury as tears, & the chest pain & shortness of breath garnered lots of sympathy, so Ms Piperview won more cases than not & became sought after by the very clients who caused her attacks. Psychologists call this "a feedback loop," because of the official announcement that "irony is dead" at the year-end conference in 2003.

Another fine example is James "Jamie" Leggings, a short order cook who was forever searching for the proper medication to handle his chronic ennui. Panic attacks were often when first adjusting to a new prescription, & yet Leggings would not stay on the pills long enough to acclimatize his body to the drug. Fearing (understandably) that he might be a "panic junkie," Leggings started a chapter of Panickers Anonymous in the Duluth area & had a massive panic attack on the first meeting night in anticipation of a large turnout. Luckily three people on their way home from an unsurprisingly awful Blue Man Group show found him before he gnawed his tongue off.

These cases, though typical, are not typical of the panic-sufferer's experience except as anecdotal, & later, when there are enough of them, statistical evidence. Indeed, as Dr Corn Matherson of Lower Arikaree River College (Kansas) has opined, "While it's easy to make light of people, because they're all so damned foolish & self-important & just plain sick in the head - sick, I tell you! truly fucked-up beyond salvage, surely - the fact that so many people panic indicates that human beings will continue to be tedious for decades more."

Later in the series (concluding here) we'll discuss probable causes of panic & we'll panic a little ourselves, as deadlines approach & the sad surfers return home from the hurricane season, hungover & lonesome until Christmas, or their suicide - whichever comes first.

Preface To Panic: Nerves & Apologies

Weaselschnitzel! That's what you should call me! I got too caught up at work & stuff & didn't write in this blog yesterday. I am a weaselschnitzel! You should color my hair red & call me candy corn! Dilapidation would be too good for me!

Truth is, I've been a little panicky about the end of August, for, when August goes, so too do all my dreams. Or so I sometimes imagine. I am stuper-stitious about August, because August the month was named after the William Faulkner book Light In August which was named a hell of a long time after the disappeared month left a hole not only in my calendar, but in my heart.

Still, we continue with the Self Help Radio shows though the tide has turned & then turned away. I struggle to keep up, but no one, nay, not any one, nay I say! nor hears my cries for closeness & recommendation. That said, a mildly entertaining show about chairs exists now & for a while at selfhelpradio.net. Perhaps you would enjoy it, in exactly the same way you have never enjoyed the sound of a falling tree.

Also, the power of the Self Help Radio does often confuse & contort, so folks who imagine a show about panic will cause panic (when just the opposite is intended) are the same who imagine a show about chairs will hurt all chairs. Some chairs were naturally harmed during the making of the show. This cannot be avoided. But the show is NOT anti-chair. Self Help Radio must needs always be a celebration. Or a chance for a diversion. Either way.

I am sorry I missed yesterday. Please accept this lovely inedible gift basket from The Imaginary Shop as a token of my affectation.

Distinctively Automotive Reactions

As promised: the August Self Help Radio Extra mix is up for your listening-to enjoyment. Please hire me to make mixes for your supermarket or retail establishment. I can make old ladies blush under their rosacea. Unless that's not what you want.

As threatened: tomorrow's Self Help Radio will be about those stalwart defenders of democracy, chairs. Yes, chairs. Imagine where America would be sitting if we didn't have chairs! We'd be standing, that's where! & what true American could stand a world without chairs! Not this reclining patriot!

See you tomorrow then. Get some sleep. You look a little, I dunno, ragged. Oh wait. I'm seeing my reflection in my monitor. Holy shit!

The Worst Joke Ever: A Chronology

I got into a habit in the last century where I would get a lot of free email accounts, then subscribe them to some "daily affirmation" or "joke-a-day" service because, in those days, the accounts could be suspended in they were not used. A million of those "free email" sites came & went, sadly. My favorites were muslimonline.com (I so wanted to be christ@muslimonline.com, but someone beat me to it) & startrekonline.com (although of course the best emails there were already taken - even yoda@startrekonline.com!). Of course, I took to reading the daily whatevers (I'm not proud), & I have two thoughts about them, since I checked one of my remaining accounts just now & it's still subscribed to one of those daily email services.

The first thought is: some of those daily emails are pathetic, some are just saccharine & unbearable, none are helpful or interesting to people who have IQs with more than two digits, but at least one was downright scary. It doesn't exist any more, but one I subscribed to could have been called "The Scariest Possible Conclusions Drawn From Daily Bible Verses." I don't have any of them saved, alas! (the account disappeared - maybe I was cute & subscribed it to my muslimonline account!) but here's a paraphrase:

TODAY'S VERSE: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind, it is abomination." Lev. 18:22
TODAY'S LESSON: You must kill all homosexuals.

Not that unsubtle, of course, but scary enough for me, & I've seen most if not all of the seven billion kinds of religious craziness, to go, "Whoa!" Day after day. It was awesome!

The second is: those joke of the day emails are painfully lame. I know some so-called comedians & even their slightly exhausting attempts at funny ha ha are brilliant compared with most of these. I just wish they'd steal something from a book. It makes me sad. Here was today's (paraphrased):

A dude stole a bird. He ran afowl of the law!

Seriously. They used a few dozen more words, but that was the joke. & it's like that most every day!

I spent a little free time today working on the August Self Help Radio Extra. I'll put it up tomorrow. I'm sure you can't wait. Meanwhile, I'll be starting a Self Help Radio Joking Affirmation Of The Day email list soon enough. Sign up for it at your own peril.

Whither Chairs?

This week's Self Help Radio is dedicated to the loving memory of Alfred "Thorny" Swaller, the most famous man in the world ever born without a heinie.

For years young "Thorny" watched as other kids, kids with rear ends, were able to do all the fun things that he could not. Among the joys denied "Thorny" were: flatulence, ass-slapping, defecation, buggery, pinchy-pinchy, mooning, &, of course, sitting. Alfred "Thorny" Swaller was one of the few young men in America who never, ever used a chair.

"There are many delicate & painful consequences involved in being born without a posterior," says Dr. Leonard Felch, a leading specialist in the treatment of birth defects. "Nature will re-route your waste expulsion mechanism to wherever it can. Which can be disgusting."

But why, Dr. Felch, couldn't "Thorny" sit?

"Most of all, his condition caused the body to lean forward when he walked, & so he tended to remain upright when possible. Or lean. 'Thorny' was a leaner. Trying to sit might 'bow' his body in such a way that it would not only have been quite painful but it may have made it impossible for him to get back up without help. & 'Thorny' was fiercely independent."

Three months ago, the forty-five-years-young "Thorny" Swaller wrote an email to the Self Help Radio offices, then in exile in Kitchener, Ontario. The letter, which cannot be reproduced because it was illegible, touched the staff of the well-regarded but under-nourished radio show, who determined to make a show for "Thorny" before he died. Unfortunately, Alfred "Thorny" Swaller died, ironically enough, from prostate cancer, which the doctors had missed, because they had assumed he either didn't have a prostate gland, or it was simply some place else. Oh he had one.

A "regime change" at the Self Help Radio offices brought down Scooter Lothario, executive in charge of thematics, who already was in trouble because of the "Dynamite" show debacle (TNT is not dynamite! Stupid stupid stupid!), & he was replaced by sentimental favorite Silver Fredlington, who promptly decided that the next show, regardless of theme, be dedicated to Swaller.

Fredlington was fired earlier this week when it was discovered the show would be all about chairs.

Nonetheless, this week's Self Help Radio is dedicated to the loving memory of Alfred "Thorny" Swaller. Here's hoping that, wherever you are, you can finally sit down.

Preface To Chairs: Have A Seat!

There was once an increasingly violent discussion between two friends about punctuation. In particular, the taller of the two friends was telling the shorter of the two friends that the shorter of the two friends used the exclamation point way too often to suit the taller of the two friends' taste. The taller of the two friends told the shorter of the two friends that the continual gratuitous use of the exclamation point pissed him off.

"Really!" said the shorter of the two friends. The taller of the two friends started hitting the shorter of the two friends & did not stop until the shorter of the two friends could now be called "the friend who was now a bloody pulp."

"My God!" said the friend who was not a bloody pulp under his breath when he realized what he had done to his friend who was now a bloody pulp. "I can't believe I did that just because of an exclamation point!"

The New Yorker noted that "this story is amusing enough for pleasant company at cocktail parties, ski lodges, & barn burnings." The original writer of the tale, Savage H. Puncture, while agreeing with the review, quickly point out that the reviewer, summarizing the tale, left out the important ending & its import. In fact, there were two more paragraphs about a quizzical chair who watched the two friends with interest, especially when the blood began to be spilled.

Puncture's final paragraph told us that the chair did not get the same joke the reader of the tale should, & that that was sad, because it meant that chairs had no sense of irony. Chairs could be used ironically, or placed ironically, or discussed ironically, but they did not themselves understand the irony of a man angry at exclamation points using them when he realized where his anger led him.

Savage H. Puncture himself was murdered by a friend who didn't like his writing at all.

A Wealthy Of Sharing

Hey! I had to wake up this morning early for the first time in thirteen years! It was awful! It's all dark outside & my girlfriend's still in bed with me! It was just so unseemly!

Why did I wake up so early? It was to listen to my former barber & current pal Zeke Moonshine as he subbed one of KVRX's great shows, Heliocentric Hootenanny. Zeke was there with his untrustworthy sidekick Boy Howdy, who's weirder than a square egg. I went ahead & archived the show over at my Self Help Radio page, since I liked it so much. Or I would have, if I had heard it. I fell back asleep because I couldn't find a way to remove my pillow prematurely from my head. It would've been like abortion or self-mutilation or something.

Might I also remind you, if you're visiting the Self Help Radio so-called web site, that this past week's Self Help Radio, about blossoms & blooms, is available there for however you want to play with it. It's a good show, & you'll learn all about flower pinching. Or are you brave enough? Hmmm?

Hurrah! I am done with this blog entry! Now I need to go stand outside in the painful August heat & see if I can keep my eyes open by burning my lower eyelids so it hurts for the upper lids to touch them.

Olympic Scandal!

It's true! There's shame & scandal involving the Olympics! But not the shame & scandal you'd expect! No - NBC, which is showing the Olympics on the teevee over the next three hundred days, is pre-empting the best thing on television this summer: new episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent!

Look, I am as sad as you are of the fucked-up Chinese government & how they treat their people, & I wish & hope that somehow the word could get out & life could get better for the Chinese. But you know what? NBC doesn't care. Most certainly our government doesn't care. & what's worse, we owe the Chinese government a shitload of cash money. NBC is doubtless under strict orders not to get too "moral" or soon they'll be renamed the Nanking Broadcasting Company. I am sad & I wish & I hope but you know nothing is going to change because of the goddamned Olympics. The only thing sports changes is sweat into dollars - mostly for people who don't have to break a sweat.

With that all said, why can't I see new episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent instead? Mike Logan is leaving again! Eames is still mad at Goren! I still have a difficult-to-explain-to-my-girlfriend crush on Wheeler! Why celebrate & obfuscate the oppressive Chinese regime when more important things are happening in my imaginary emotional slash crime fighting life!

Look, I know they're shown on USA. I make sure I record them from USA. But my bullshit cable company doesn't have USA in high def. So the only chance I'm going to get to gaze longingly at Vincent D'Onofrio - er, I mean, Julianne Nicholson - in crisp, scarier than life video, is when it's shown on the bullshit local NBC affiliate. You get me? I've been taping one episode, then waiting eight days to see it in high def. & now the motherfucking Olympics has fucked that up for me.

I protest. I protest vehemently. Also, I won't be watching the Olympics grand opening sale-a-bration tonight, no. I'll be working on tomorrow's Self Help Radio, which is all about blossoms & blooms, something they know nothing about in China, & it'll be available tomorrow afternoon exclusively at selfhelpradio.net. But it'll be sad. For there will be no high def Law & Order: Criminal Intent for it to look forward to when it is done.

Weep for me! Weep for China! Weep for this world of fucked priorities! But mostly, weep for me. Seriously.

Saaaaay, Should You Be In North Carolina Or Something By Now?

Wow, I thought you'd never ask! If there weren't already an elephant in the room here with us, that would be the elephant in the room! (The elephant wants a peanut.)

No one but you cares, but I'll write about it here anyway. You'll recall that my lovely squeeze, Magda, had made plans to get her PhD this summer (she got it, a doctorate in whiskerology) (note, I started dating her because I thought she said "whiskeyology") (I'm an idiot) & had found a post-doc at Duke University, which is in North Carolina. I did lots of stuff in preparation for this - I drank more, I left my show & the radio station which kindly aired it, I began to make preparations for leaving my job, & I also drank more. A major freaky thing I was doing was mentally preparing myself to leave this place I've lived more than half of my life. I was riding the bus & going like (in my head, not to the drunk next to me) "This is the last time I'll ride the number 343 home from the comic convention!" Stuff like that. I wanted to be as supportive to Magda as possible, & I was definitely excited about going somewhere else.

The way things went, though, was somewhat different. We travelled to Durham in June, & toured the Duke campus, & visited the free-roaming lemurs in the Duke Forest, & had a swell time in that city built smack dab in a forest. But on the second day, Magda was deeply unhappy. We had one of those patented couple-related "long talks." It took a long time. I think we were up until 4am. I think she ate all the donut holes they had left at the nearby Kroger. In any event, she wasn't sure she wanted to be an academic. She had been complaining all during the writing of her dissertation of wanting to do something else - most often she mentioned being a veterinarian - rather than being a full-time anthropologist. I knew the only important thing was her being happy, so I let her argue with herself with only minor input, being devil's advocate for whatever position was winning at the time. It's only been a couple of months now, but it feels very blurry to me. It was a long night.

She decided not to take the job & to return to school to become a veterinarian. Luckily I had not quit my job or else I might have ended up in North Carolina on the bum circuit. She'll need to take two years of catch up classes before she gets to vet school, so I suppose she can reconsider at that time. But frankly I think she'll do it. The chick likes being in school.

I have kept doing Self Help Radio as a podcast (in case you haven't noticed) but it probably won't return to the air for some time. Worry not, though! There are other surprises in store! The Self Help Radio family of broadcasters & alcoholics is ever-growing & you can watch the weirdo progress at regular intervals at selfhelpradio.net!

& as for me, yeah, I'm still in Austin. Sorry to disappoint that guy on the corner of 51st & Cameron who thinks I stole his spot. Dude, I was just crossing the street to urinate into the Home Depot concrete! I always carry a sign that says, "US VETRAN GOD BLES!" It reminds me of dear old dad. Or dear old mom. Or someone dear & old.

That's why I am still here. Why are YOU still here?

Whither Blossom & Bloom?

Tee hee, the title of this post could be "Wither, Blossom & Bloom." I should change it. I won't change it.

Well, Tropical Petulance Edouard (now known as Tropical Fart Reoutard) didn't hardly bring any rain to Austin so I was excited about nothing. But it did make the place more humid than a heavy breathing factory (you know, a factory whose product is heavy breathing... no? isn't funny? all right) & it encouraged me to press on with what is truly a bizarre subject for the middle of a nastily hot summer: blossoms & blooms!

Y'know, folks who want to complain about Self Help Radio (which always seems like more than have listened to it) (although, of course, the number of both is tiny) (though your presence here makes it all worthwhile, wink wink!) seem to mostly have a problem with the fact that only sometimes do I do explore timely themes. In other words, since the show this week is on the 9th of August, why don't I do a show about telegraphs, since on that date in 1892, Thomas Edison got a patent for one? Or how about a celebration of Kurtis Blow (it's his birthday) & old skool hip hop? Or maybe just a show about nines, since it's the ninth? It doesn't have to be nonsensical. Like "blossoms & blooms" in the middle of summer, months after the last blossom has bloomed, & the last bloom has blossomed!

I appreciate this criticism. It would be fun indeed to have that sort of show, where people could check in on particular days & be all like, "Yay! This is the anniversary of when some rock star died in his own vomit, so Self Help Radio's all about regurgitation!" But, alas, my mind doesn't work that way. It latches on to ideas & thoughts & develops them whether I am incredibly drunk or not. Eventually they suggest something to me. I've worked to have certain "regular" shows, but the shows that generally give me the greatest joy are the shows have a timelessness about them - they're shows about something, & that something doesn't require that you be fixed firmly in some spot in time to appreciate them. At least I hope so. It could be I'm just spinning my wheels.

Something blossomed in my brain a few weeks back about blossoms & blooms. I said, "Bloomin' hell!" (in a fakey English voice) "I've got to do me a show about that!" Then I fell on my face &, as I began to choke a little on my own vomit, I thought, as I passed out, "Also, regurgitation might be a good theme for a show..."

(Separate note: big ups to Austin EMS crew Alpha Tango Bravo. Thanks for not removing my tongue when I refused to stop swallowing it!)

Preface To Blossoms & Blooms: Let's Talk About The Weather

What is the nooz telling us about Austin's weather?

Monday the 4th of August was the 42nd day of triple-digit heat so far in this Austin summer, with readings of 100-105 degrees all over, from the Hill County to counties east of I-35. Self Help Radio's own Self Help Gary has reported that it's well over one hundred degrees in his pants, with possibly higher temperatures in his car, where neglected bottles of soda have been known to bend, fold & weep.

Monday's high matched the number of over 100 degree days Austin experienced in 2000, but was like a crying little girl compared to 1925 with 69 plus-100 days & 1923 with 66 (in the days before air conditioning!). But of course Austinites weren't coddled whiney-butts then. They weren't afraid of a little goddamn sweat. For 69 days. Also, they died of cholera & influenza all the time. When they weren't lynching people a little darker in skin tone than them.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. The National Weather Service, that august bureaucratic body, notes that Austin averages eleven triple-digit days a year, but everyone has already forgotten that it rained all last summer so that totally brought the average down. It's always really hot in Austin in the summer. That's all.

As I came out to go to work today, I noticed it wasn't as hot. Why is that? Motherfucking tropical storm Edouard, that's why! We're going to get some rain! Hot damn! Just remember, gentle reader: "Turn around, don't drown." & peep these awesome flood facts:

BANG! Six inches of water will reach the bottom of most passenger cars, causing loss of control & possible stalling.
CRASH! Twelve inches of water will float many cars. So size does matter.
SPLASH! Two feet of rushing water will carry off pick up trucks, SUVs & many other vehicles. & surely it will serve them right! Gas-guzzlers!
SWOOSH! Cars can become death traps because electric windows & door locks can short out when water reaches them, trapping occupants inside. Of course, if they're death traps, they'll also trap death inside. Which is bad news for the occupants.
CLANG! More Texans die in floods than any other severe weather event. When we have weather, it freaks us out.
& finally:
KA-BOOM! Most flooding deaths can be avoided if drivers turn around instead of driving into water across a road.

I am about to encourage that people who want to go out in the rain to follow instead my own advice, which is, when the weather's bad, dance! That's right: "Get down, don't drown!" Because we're all in the fourth grade in we can't remember anything unless it rhymes.

Wash us all away Edouard! It's too frickin' hot here! & it's been too long since I've seen any blossoms & blooms!

Quest Stars!

After a week of avoiding stuff, I am happy to get back on track & simply ignore stuff. What? You don't know whatof I speak? For shame! Fie & kerfuffle! You are now instructed to visit selfhelpradio.net to listen to last week's show. It is all about avoidance, & since you are no longer allowed to avoid it, you must therefore do whatever the opposite of avoid is. Yes! You must confront it! You must seek it out! You must face up to it!

As I said, though, since the themes that make up Self Help Radio make up also my made-up life, I tend to live them up until the moment I do my show. Then I must turn around & begin again. So last week I avoided everything. This week I am blossoming. Next week I will sit in a chair. But just because I live my shows in the way that so many of you choose not to doesn't mean I miss them or have great regret & rue once they're done. Indeed! I am glad to be done with avoidance. It seemed like such a waste of time.

Now, I live in a tightly prescribed circle of work commitments & looming mental ward incarceration, so I am generally free of the sort of annoyances that cause unhappiness for you who interact with more than half a dozen folks a day. So I didn't have as much to avoid. Since I work in a bureaucracy, work avoidance is part of the daily schedule. Since my relationship is stable (mainly because the girlfriend is busy not avoiding stuff), I don't have to avoid difficult talks about "the future." I avoided mentioning all this last week, but can't now. The truth must blossom & bloom!

Go now, & listen to the Self Help Radio show from last week! It will help you avoid whatever you want to avoid!

No Mourn I Thee!

I love reading reviews, & I especially love reading reviews that disagree with my opinion. I think they round out my views, because often someone hates a part of a movie, a book, an album, that I totally didn't notice or didn't really care about. In some cases, really good criticism causes you to think about your own criticism, in the same way that open-minded religious folk will compare & contrast different belief systems when confronted with someone else's faith.

& I am not averse to labels - sometimes they're the best way to get you in the door of the small room of understanding. So I'll describe music as "indie pop" or "post-punk" & it's fine as far as it is - although you can sometimes get into trouble with folks who hate that. Describing Pere Ubu as post-punk, for example, might make someone who knows the timeline correctly note that, actually, Pere Ubu began before punk. But in that case, it's not necessarily a chronological description, it's about a sound... But never mind.

Yet I am just as liable as everyone else to be put off by specific labels - labels which are like warning signs about thoughts or ideas I don't agree with. A book I was really interested in reading, which apparently has been getting decent reviews, was described in a negative review as being funded by a "neoconservative think tank." It turns out this is true, the author got a grant from a neocon group. I immediately began to lose interest. Then I started to think about what this made me think about the author - did I believe this person was so weak-willed & greedy that he'd produce whatever the right-wing group wanted him to produce? Did I imagine it always happens this way, money trumping free thought?

I certainly believe every human being has his or her price, & that it's always embarrassingly low. But my point in bringing up criticism is this: if I can read different opinions & not be swayed away from my own, why couldn't I read something from someone who had no affiliation with a deluded money pit but who took the cash offered him? Even if he were corruptible, I'd at least have some information to consider. (& this person is a scholar, not a right-wing blowhard who's better known for being on television or on the corporate dole.)

It may be because he is in fact a scholar with some well-received books under his belt. I personally can't stand what can best be described as the Jerry Springer school of heated debate - it's just too sad to hear someone talk about what they think about the government or god or society without really having any information to back up their idiotic assertions.

I experienced a great bad example of this on the recent 30 Days episode about same sex parenting. A retardedly religious woman opposed the gayness of the two obviously good parent gay men, & neither side bothered to ask her just why homosexuality offended her so. They took it as read that her religion opposed man-on-man action (& though she was a Mormon, she could easily point to the Bible's anti-gay stance) & she just said she opposed it. It was a waste of a very long hour.

A simple chat with anyone who's actually studied the Bible would've made her look like a fool for blindly parroting homophobe talking points. & the same goes for the gay men - their "live & let live" attitude is relativistic quicksand. A slight change of the wind in our nation & their kids are taken away & they're locked up in camps to "cure" their gayness. They may be buoyed by gay liberation's astonishing successes in the last decade, but they haven't really paid attention to how tenuous freedom is. You think they'd know better.

Ah well. What's that? You think I am writing all this to avoid making my show for tomorrow, which is about avoidance? Nonsense! You're only saying that because you don't agree with me. Say! Who funds you?

Link Cookies, a pram

Say! This is a Thursday. Do you have anything Thursdayish to tell me? All you ever do is stare at those schematics. It gives you a vaguely vacant look, like a supermodel or a heroin addict taking a driving test. What he gave you wasn't so much criticism as a meager expression of disappointment - & could you blame him? Every time someone tries to get through your defenses, you circle your wagons. "I'm a rough draft," you say. As if that means anything outside of the newspaper trade!

We were reminiscing about growth & hitch-hiking when, out of the blue, you-know-who started asking for volunteers. I was eating a banana at my steel guitar lesson & no one seemed to be thinking of me. That's when I thought of you - all the time & energy put into the wrong receptacle. Like someone using Google to spell-check. I confess I never learned barre chords for this very reason.

I expect you're wondering why I dally, why I make conversation like this if there are hard feelings. Time to time I do think there aren't so much hard feelings as flaccid feelings. Feelings that can't get hard unless there's chemical help. You should encourage these feelings to stiffen up. It might make you feel a little more Thursdayish. Or able to conceive Thursday thoughts. It would be worth your time.

Some sample Thursday thoughts:

- Christ in a bucket called fish, will this day ever end?
- Of all the Thursdays in the world, why did this Thursday have to be the last day I am allowed to work here?
- This morning... This morning is not good enough.
- Did the Vikings leave more than their teeth marks on the coast of Scotland? Why or why not?
- It's only a fire on the porch. Go back to bed.
- Did you leave the OH MY GOD HAVE A LOOK AT THIS DISTURBING SLOW MOVING POLICE CAR!

I look forward to next Thursday. Although not for the same reasons you think I do. Do I?

Whither Avoidance?

Was Bartleby a shirker? An essay by Tommy Titmouse, age five.

In re-reading Melville's seminal short story, "Bartleby the Scrivener," with my little brother Timmy, I am bemused at the total inability of the titular character to understand even the minutest basics of the capitalist system. Indeed Timmy, who has only begun reading Marx's Capital, grasped the inherent dynamic between personal freedom versus market forces. Bartleby, by proclaiming with terse vapidity his opposition to any ideas of his own, comes across as a layabout, a wastrel, a slacker, & a shirker.

Can we, in these days of nation-transcendent corporate interests & transformative free trade, afford to allow the labor force to so blithely renege on what is assuredly a social contract? More information would be required, of course, & it would be helpful if perhaps Melville had provided ancillary documents, like Bartleby's resume, & perhaps commentary from previous employers. Yet if we are to believe in the maturation of the employed through incentives that only the market can provide, we must empathize with his supervisor's boundless optimism in utilizing someone who surely came with more caveats than praise. When business fails, it can rarely be said to be from the sanguinity of the owners of the means of production!

How to prevent such unhappy outcomes in the labor force? Surely a system of rewards coupled with healthy slogans, perhaps from the works of Adam Smith, would suffice for the average earner. But Bartleby was worse than a Luddite; a wooden shoe thrown into a cogwheel would be more fundamentally fixable than a stubborn dolt refusing to do his work! & unemployment is frankly too generous for the likes of Bartleby; when a hireling causes profit loss through non-cooperation, the punishment ought to be more severe.

Perhaps a critic of my polemic might say, "Didn't Bartleby suffer as you would have him do? Did he not die?" Ah, but he did so first by breaking the law (a right surely reserved only by the most international of consortiums) & then requiring a social network (ie, the police & the criminal justice system) to shelter him as he destroyed himself! As the late Charlton Heston might have said, a firing squad (in an event publicized & attended by his fellow scriveners) would have been quicker, cheaper, &, I daresay, more just.

Indeed, Bartleby was a shirker, & his sorry tale should be as a parable for all who wish the wheels of industry to run smooth & true. I rest my case.

Adds little Timmy Titmore, age three & a half: But Bartleby was cool!

Damn it Timmy!

Preface To The Avoidance Show: How Can I Get Out Of Writing In My Blog Today?

A note from Gary's mother:

To those nice people who read the increasingly ridiculous Self Help Radio blog:
Although he no longer lives at home, my son Gary is not well today. He woke up with a bad taste in his mouth & a bad outlook on life. He refused to eat his sauerkraut & sausages for breakfast & looked a little green under his gills. Even though it's been at least two decades since he's had to attend high school, he missed his bus & refused to hitchhike as I always tell him to do. Instead, he went back to his room & crawled under his covers, curled into a fetal position, & refused to tell me he loved me like he should if he really loved his mother.
Therefore he's not able to write in his blog today. He's not getting any dinner either.
Yours,
Gary's Mother

(It'll be harder to avoid writing in this tomorrow...)

That's Not My Cat!

For the sake of enjoyment, just refer to Friday's Self Help Radio Blog entry (which is below this one), & replace every reference from a "hat" to a "cat." Hilarity will most certainly ensue.

Here's an example rib-ticking entry:

I described my cat & even included a photograph in the ad in which I mentioned I had lost my hat. This looks nothing like the photograph. Granted, the photograph was in black & white, on newsprint, but, even so, here - look! - this is the picture of the cat, that is the helmet-like headgear object you are attempting to return to me

Do you see? A cat is nothing like a hat, which creates absurd incongruities which can only make one laugh!

Please note, while this works with most things that rhyme with hat (cat, rat, mat, gnat, vat, bat, DAT player), it generally doesn't work with things that rhyme with cat which are not nouns (like fat, unless you mean the animal products some gross people cook with) or even past tenses of verbs (like spat, unless you mean the thing that horse riders put on their boots). The absurdity is diminished by the incongruity. It is funnier to think of someone mistaking one thing for another thing instead of someone mistaking one thing for a quality. No one has that kind of sense of humor.

Well, you've certainly taken all the fun out of this exercise. If I were you, I'd just forget all about this & mosey over to selfhelpradio.net & listen to this past week's show, which is about whales. No more of this hat-cat-chat-drat stuff. You obviously don't have as refined a sense of humor as I had heretofore believed. Hrrummph!

That's Not My Hat!

Sir, I must object. This hat you claim to be returning to me - it's not my hat!

First of all, my hat has no ornamentation of any kind. It's just an average trilby. It doesn't have flashing lights or whirling colors or beeping noises like this hat here. It has not electronical components nor does it run on solar power, as I am assuming this hat does, with those panels on the sides. It does not have a video screen on its elongated visor, as it has no elongated visor. This, sir, is not my hat.

Second of all, & I do not mean any disrespect when I point this out, but this really shouldn't be categorized as a hat. It's more helmet-like. Not many hats cover almost the entire head, & have a chin-strap beside. Nor do have as many accesories as this device you have hear. Nor are most hats made out of polymers - usually they're cloth, or cloth & plastic. What you have there, people call those helmets. Not hats.

Third of all, I described my hat & even included a photograph in the ad in which I mentioned I had lost my hat. This looks nothing like the photograph. Granted, the photograph was in black & white, on newsprint, but, even so, here - look! - this is the picture of the hat, that is the helmet-like headgear object you are attempting to return to me. Do you see, sir, as I hold them side-by-side, that they don't really look like one another? They are in fact very different - they have virtually no commonalities.

Fourth of all, I do appreciate that you apparently came all the way from the wilds of Bastrop to return this hat to me - although how it could have gotten there I don't know, as I lost it at a restaurant in Clarksville - I confess I don't know why you imagined there would be a reward for the return of a hat. I didn't say I would give a reward, & if I did, it wouldn't be ten thousand dollars. That's all seventeen kinds of ridiculous!

& finally, sir. In spite of all you've done, even if it was for material gain, it truly was a kind gesture to try to return a stranger's hat, & although I feel I've gone out of my way to avoid making you angry, it certainly was uncalled for for you to urinate on my lawn. On my lawn chairs. On my pet puppy Wiggles. On my pet rocks. You are a bounder sir! A bounder & a cad! Which are rare traits in a good (or shall I say mediocre) samaritan.

Ah! Now that that's taken care of, I must sit, daydream about my hat, & wait till tomorrow for this week's exciting Self Help Radio episode. I hope it'll be about hats!

Ah! It's about whales! What fun! Whales love hats!

Christian Bailed

Bad pun! Went to see "The Dark Knight" at the "IMax" so couldn't write in the "Blog."

Forgive me. There'll be more nonsense tomorrow. You have my pants on it. & what is a man without his pants?

Erp.

Whither Whales?

Yes, you don't have to ask, I've never seen a whale in real life. Maybe from an airplane - I have vague memories of seeing a school of whales in the Atlantic when I was a boy on my way to Germany the first time - who knows if that really happened - but I've never even been to Sea World or some other water park. Or have I?

There's a truism in the history of life on this planet that human beings, once they came around in sufficient numbers, killed off, over time, the largest mammals. There used to be mammoths & saber-toothed tigers, of course, but also giant sloths & horses & mice for all the hell I know. Once dinosaurs were abducted by the evil space felchers from the Andromeda galaxy, mammals were all like, "This is our world now. Talk to the paw." & they got as big as they could get. & from the looks of it (ie, the fossil record) they did it quickly.

But it took us humans nearly no time (geologically speaking) to dispatch them. The last great giant mammals left are elephants, rhinos, hippos, & of course the whales. (I don't count morbidly obese Americans.) & yeah, we're killing pretty much all those off. There's no reason to point blame: we're all involved. We're blubber fuckers & we know it.

The scariest thing I've heard is that, because of all the damn boats (tankers, liners, submarines, battleships, etc) we have in the water, it's too noisy for the whales to communicate over long distances any more. Apparently, before the advent of the steam engine, a whale could start a chat in the South Pacific that could be heard in the North Atlantic. & it didn't use up arbitrary "minutes." But that's all done.

I'm totally bumming myself out. But wait, there's more! Did you know there was "an enormous island of trash twice the size of Texas... floating in the Pacific Ocean somewhere between San Francisco & Hawaii" ? It's true!. I mean, really. What must the whales think of us? Besides being scared shitless, I mean?

The whales will be fine once we run out of oil & kill ourselves off. I just hope it happens to us before it happens to them.

Preface To Whales: 'Whale' As A Verb

We all know that "whaling" is the hunting of whales, much in the same way that monkeying around is the hunting of round monkeys. But why then does the verb "to whale" include this definition (from the Oxford English La-di-da):

1. trans. To beat, flog, thrash.

Examples:1801 G. HANGER Life II. 162 Whaleing a gentleman is but a vulgar revenge. 1884 ‘MARK TWAIN’ Huck. Finn iii, He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me.

In recent times we seem to have added the preposition "on," I guess to clarify, especially when referring to heavy metal guitar solos - "he was really whaling on that guitar, dude!"

But where did that meaning come from? Were there perverted seamen (that sounds perverted!) who would thrash the whale once its giant carcass was pulled onto the ship? Were they whale-fuckers? Does blubber feel really good when... But I've gone too far again.

To return: I am not an etymologist (or even an epidemiologist) but I do enjoy trying to figure out where words come from. Some are easy, some are not. Says the OED:

Of obscure origin. Commonly regarded as a spelling of WALE v.1, but there are difficulties of form, chronology, and meaning. (I'll say!) Perhaps orig. = to thrash with a whalebone whip

Aha! The old "whalebone whip" gambit! That may have worked in Indiana Jones & The Belly Of The Whale (or it might have been Star Wars 2: Guts On Fire) but it won't work here! Whalebone whips my blowhole.

Unfortunately, there's nothing else I can find online (other than the obligatory "origin obscure") so I'll have to make something up. That's right. I'm allowed to do that. Because I have a blog. On the internet.

Here's my explanation:

Back in the day when sailors used to hit each other, & things, with great force, they needed a word for it. "Hit" was boring & "thrash" is what the captain & other officers did to them. They had yet to invent the word "thwack," & "strike" sounded too union-y. So one day, two sailors who shall remain immortally nameless were beating the crap out of each other - some might say "whaling" on each other - when a big whale, the biggest they'd ever seen, came out of the ocean & then went back in with a big ker-splat! of its tail on the water.

"Dude," said sailor one. "Did you see that whale whaling on the water with its tail?"

"Dude!" said sailor two, "you just invented a verb!"

Sailor one was all like, "I'm so Shakespeare," & sailor two started whaling on him.

They passed the word around to their rowdy crew, & soon it was commonplace among the sea dogs of the world. In time, as they came ashore, so did the lucky word. Not so lucky, though, for our inventive sailors, though. A few weeks later, when the captain found they had spotted a whale & not called out, they were hanged.

There! You have your etymology. Now go & spread it amongst the people of this world!

Watering One's Lawn - Source Of Hope Or Regret?

It's mid July so it's time once again to check on our Drought Monitor. Oh hooray! Austin is teetering between "Extreme Drought" & "Exceptional Drought" & I spent a couple of hours watering my poor dry lawn last night. What an asshole I am! Furthermore, what a bunch of assholes live in my neighborhood! Because everyone was watering their god damned lawns last night. Didn't they know we're experiencing an Extreme Drought?

There's a lot of staring at ground & sitting on porch when one's lawn is dying or dead. The history of our lawn is a sad one. When we bought the house three years ago, we had one more tree than we currently do. Not because we chopped one down, oh no no no. The tree died. It could have died of old age (can you imagine that trees dry of old age?) or we could have not watered it enough in the Quite Awful Drought of two years ago, but however it went, it did die. & the back yard its stump still resides in is pretty much dead too. So I watered. How could I know the Drought we're having is almost Exceptional?

Here's something you never hear from people living in apartments or with their parents or in places that have no lawns: "If we install a sprinkler system, it'll increase our property value." & what will our property be worth in a world with little or no water? People will be ripping our sprinkler system out to drink the drops in the rusty pipes. Then they're break into our house to drink the water in our toilets. Property value will be for shit.

Yeah, I think about this stuff. Mainly in the day or so after I successfully finish another Self Help Radio. Did you know that this blog relates somehow to a radio show? It does! & you can hear this last week's show - it was about taxis, & not about watering the lawn - over at the Self Help Radio web site. It's easy, it's fun, & it doesn't affect the Overachieving Drought either way. Well, maybe in some ways. Don't water the lawn while you listen to it!

Gott In Himmel! Der Weekend Kommt!

From the mailbag:

My dearest Flossie,
The kaleidoscope arrived by train today and the Major and myself installed it in the pantry, whereupon (as expected) the neighborhood children came for a scamper. This was a most thoughtful gift and the Major in particular enjoys it when the children horse around, monkeyshine and otherwise jape. He says hello.
You write that your pastoral estate is currently on fire. This is certainly nothing to be ashamed of as half of the countryside is being burned to ferret out communists, socialists, union leaders, traitors, and other dissidents. A cold compress might be the ticket for these warm summer nights. Let me know if you need some extra rags, as we found another dead hobo on the porch this Monday past and we are flush with scraps of cloth at the moment.
Our plans for the late summer, like yours, have been changed by the government-mandated burnings, and so we probably will not visit Malmo to watch the heretics be whipped and thrown onto the fjords. This is a shame because you know Minnie enjoys a little cruelty now and again. It takes her mind off of her crippling syphilis. No matter, we shall find work to do on the manor. The groundsmen suggest rabbit-strangling, but I prefer duck-drowning myself, if only to pass the time.
Do let me know if you want to sit out the fire here. We're only required to burn the attic and the moat this summer, although we may get ambitious and burn the peasants' quarters if we're feeling frisky. The gratitude in their eyes makes the incredible pittance we spend on them so worth it.
Be well. Love from us!
Joe

Thanks for the nice message, Phil. Yes, Self Help Radio is preparing a podcast this week & what a remarkable one it will be. The subject is taxis & the entire show will be recorded in a taxi. Or while I am watching the hit television show "Taxi." It depends on which is cheaper. Renting the show - under five bucks. An hour & a half in a cab - whoa! Well, we'll see. Maybe I can steal a cab. Or maybe I can just call Judd Hirsch. It's not like he's working.

Find out what happens - & listen to some great tunes about cabs - this weekend, in the afternoon on Saturday, exclusively at selfhelpradio.net. Get it while you can - or I may keep the meter running.

Heh. Meter running. That's a hoot.

Animal Plantagenet

Everyone, I know, has a favorite aristocrat - king, queen, prince, princess, lord a-leapin' or lady dancin'. There are so damn many of them it's a wonder that, like fans of boring pop stars, a majority of you go for the same three or four nobles. Too many of you like Ethelred The Unready, if only because you can never get your shit together. Too many of you like modern kings & queens, & I am especially contemptuous of you sycophants who spend too much time worshipping at the moldy altar of the Dutch Queen Beatrix. What, do you think she will share her stash with you? Dude, I'd stick with the hookah pipe of Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz. That crazy bastard knows how to party like it's 1499! (In the year of the Hijra, of course.)

As I was saying, people show little imagination in what I like to call "aristophilia." (I just double-checked to see if I coined the word. Of course I didn't. But that article suggests that it's mainly a love affair with the rich. I mean it exclusively for those with royal blood, & also true obsessives fantasize about having sex with them, too. Even if they're dead. A good aristophile is a good necrophile. Am I right?) With so many inbred blue bloods to choose from - & you don't have to stick with modern ones (though the modern ones are particularly stupid & therefore particularly hilarious). Crack a history book. Watch one of those history channels. Watch every other British movie ever made. You'll find there's royalty aplenty for you to mock, dream about fornicating with, adding to your own lame family crest, & more.

Here's my favorite (of the moment) (I mean, who can have just one favorite regal dumbass?) (Not me!): His name is Fulk I of Anjou. Yeah, where the pears come from. He didn't do much, he wasn't all that important, & like most humans that have ever existed he never once enjoyed the extreme luxury of indoor plumbing, but his name was Fulk. FULK! I know a guy who just had a kid & I pleaded with him, please please please name the kid Fulk!

Fulk loved his name so much he gave it to his kid. His kid, while apparently noted as a poet & an artist, decided not to carry on with the name (which means the selfish shit deprived the French of the possibility of having a King Fulk!) & named his kid Geoffrey Greymantle. As utterly dorky as that name is (I will name my next D&D character just that), I have to give props to Goofball Greymantle because he named one of his sons - Fulk III! Fulk yeah!

That Fulker only had a daughter, but there was later a Fulk IV (his grandson who married like five times!) & a Fulk V (number four's son, whose wife left him to marry the King of France, but who also got to be King of Jerusalem - oh yeah, the Holy Land got a King Fulk!), not to mention a bunch of other slightly noble & non-noble Fulks. But I'm old school. I mean, I like that Fulk III was a "...plunderer, murderer, robber, & swearer of false oaths, a truly terrifying character of fiendish cruelty... filled with unbridled passion, a temper directed to extremes. Whenever he had the slightest difference with a neighbor he rushed upon his lands, ravaging, pillaging, raping, & killing; nothing could stop him, least of all the commandments of God..." - that's awesome! & I like that Fulk IV fought with his brother & twice put him in jail - my childhood would have been sweet if my brothers had been incarcerated - I think I prefer the original Fulk to them all. Otherwise where would they be? They'd be fulked, that's what.

See what fun having favorite counts & dukes & earls & pukes can be? & you're still slightly sad over Princess Di. Shame on you!

Whither Taxis?

People tell me I used to be a friendlier person. Now, they say, I seem a little closed-off, & a little sad. What gives, they ask. Who pooped in your mouth & called it salad?

Don't you think I know how I feel about the world? Don't you think I know that my weird little radio show that's not on the radio isn't like some kind of taxi without a passenger? Like a bus without one of those clumsy wheelchair ramps that take forever to deploy? Like an elevator that smells like vinegar & kills the cockroaches that crawl outside it? Like an escalator with dried ice cream caked forever into its ridges, sticking to your shoes & making you self-conscious as you stare at the pretty girl in the food court? Like a broken-down rickshaw mocking you as you walk, beaten & bruised, to the big Laotian city vowing revenge on the gangsters who robbed you, raped you & left you for dead? Like a baby carriage with a fat baby in it who's gotta be at least four & who sings like Rod Stewart? Like a dolly leaning slightly on an empty soda dispensing machine which rattles when the soda dispensing machine repairperson accidentally closes the door too fast & the noises causes him to drop fourteen dollars worth of quarters on the floor, which people inadvertently start kicking all over the place? Don't you think I know myself?

People tell me that self-awareness doesn't appear to be my problem. They say, why are you so defensive? Who stuck their finger in your ass & called it macaroni?

Don't you think I know that I appear defensive around you? Don't you see that one of my coping mechanisms is to continue doing Self Help Radio no matter who listens or where it is or whatever the fuck?

People tell me that they didn't even know I was a deejay. For the record, I tell them, I've ridden in taxis less than ten times in my life. People then tell me that they've got to go. & they go.

Preface To Taxis: My Taxicab Confession

There's this guy we used to hang with who loved riding taxis & was always interested in riding different services, vehicles, etc., in different cities & countries. He was quirky but he quickly became as dull as the tourists who visit famous foreign places on package tours & come back with obligatory pictures of the Colosseum & the Eiffel Tower, since he never went anywhere except to take a taxi somewhere.

Taxi drivers didn't like him much, mostly because he didn't tip well if at all (how could he afford to? money you or I would spend on hotels & food this dumbass spent driving around!) & he also made fucked-up requests - like, he once took a New York taxi from New York to Washington DC, then took a DC cab to New York. But to be honest he wasn't a very likeable guy. He was slimy, both figuratively & literally - you always got the impression he did the very minimum he needed to not be considered filthy. Kind of "mediocre clean." No one knew why he had this love of taxis. It's like he just found something to do & pursued it. Like those dudes who pick a college major that they think their parents want them to & do it for the rest of their lives.

After awhile, the people who knew him - the people we hung around with - developed something like an allergy to this dude. By that I mean we'd get shit like hives & asthma attacks & cold sweats & stuff whenever he was around. Not only did we begin to avoid him - not answering his calls, making excuses for not seeing him, hiding behind curtains when he came by, refusing to frequent places we knew he regularly went to - I mean, none of us wanted to break out in hives! - but we eventually realized that the same thing happened whenever we were in taxis. You know? We could just sense he'd be there & we'd start to hyperventilate. So we stopped taking taxis. We opted for busses, or walking, or taking our own damn cars.

The last time we saw him was actually on the bus. The dumb fuck simply couldn't afford to take cabs any more. He was living on some kind of disability because of a work-related injury (he actually fell out of a slightly moving cab while on an errand from work) & his creepy personality, his questionable hygiene & his lack of any skills made him virtually unhireable. So there we were, trapped on the bus with him, feeling queasy but also wanting to be nice, & as the bus got on the highway (so we couldn't exit until we were in the suburbs - trapped!) he began to list his woes, & we nodded patiently, sweating a little, wondering which direction would be safest if we had to hurl. When he mentioned not being able to find a job, my girlfriend leaned forward as if she'd been hit by inspiration.

"You can't find work?" she said. "Nope," he said, kind of sniffling. "Jesus!" she said. "It's so obvious! You should be a cabbie!" He seemed weirdly gleeful as he thought about it. He even stopped talking to us, saving me from a night of scratching all over.

Later on, I said to my girlfriend, "Great! Now we can't take a taxi anymore!" She said, "We're haven't taken a taxi in months. But now we know he'll never be on the bus!"

Last I heard he was stranded in Laredo because he took some asshole there but the passenger stiffed him & now he couldn't afford the gas to get back to Austin.

Seppuku

I completely concur with this review of Self Help Radio which I found in this magic blog in my head:

Self Help Radio mixes extravagent aesthetics into everyday life, serving as a spark of excitement in an otherwise dull, suburban existence. Familiar retro influences are recalled but not imitated and result in an original and relevant radio show. However this familiarity like so much on Self Help Radio comes with a twist as five individual characters set about stamping their unique personality onto a radio show.

Though recorded at Dickenbock Studios in Austin, Self Help Radio returned to its hometown of Garland, Texas, to write Self Help Radio. With its signature down-to-earth narratives forming intelligent and sharp observations about romance and life one might get an impression of a radio show with its feet firmly on the ground. However the airbreaks aren't in a vacuum but instead are set into groups of songs that suggest the moment someone's eardrums first vibrated to pop music in their bedroom at the age of nine. With super producer Richard D Dickenbock (the Dickenbocks, Dick & the Dickenbocks, The Richard Dick Dickenbock Experience, Dick & Richard Dickenbock) at the helm Self Help Radio is moving, effortly and upwards, to those giddy stratospheres that are rightfully theirs.

What a great review! You want to hear the show they're allegedly talking about about up there? Then go listen to a show selfhelpradio.net - this past week's show is waiting for you to take it home & love it like a stepchild. Or better!

A Weekend Of Unattractive Hair

Confirming smart suspicions, which were all he had to go on, young Buck Disposable ventured a godawful guess about the Pants Project that, unfortunately, caused an uproar of uproarious laughter amongst his callow colleagues & kept the normally cool cucumber quiet for the rest of the colloquium.

Buck had never once in his life married any non-vertebrate - although he did once propose to his fern, & to be fair the filicophyte was looking damned sexy at the time - but he did have a bad habit of divorcing nearly every human he did marry. The amount of money he spent on his various ex-whatevers kept those wretches in plenty of fish food, but it kept Buck lean, mean & lacking steam. Witnesses & his affable biographer Notorious Rex have testified to the fact that he began his slippery slide into homicide about this time.

Buck Disposable lost the job at the Pants Project, & the Lawn/Garden Furniture Supervisor job at the Target-Mart, & Sexy Skool Lunch Koordinator gig for Unbelievably Gay Films, & finally ended up working as a Junior Stamp Counter for the United States Post Office. He was busy defacing a recently released Jesse Helms In Drag stamp when he accidentally opened up a National Rifle Association flyer - & the flyer opened up for Buck a whole new world.

Since you know the end of this story, it doesn't bear repeating, but it is the five year anniversary of that exciting slaughter today, & while the survivors & the relatives of the victims insist on digging up Buck's corpse & kicking it for seven full hours, & while his handgun advocate pals prefer to just fire into Buck's corpse repeatedly for hours after that, we here at Self Help Radio thought it would be helpful to catch up on the once infamous, but now barely famous, actors in the Buck Disposable saga - just to let you know "where are they now?"!

- Sara Meal, Buck's steady girl at the time, is still unable to play the piano without prompting.
- Postal Supervisor Clark "The Sorter" Donaldsonovich was in the hospital for a year after the shooting. Doctors told him that they couldn't remove the three bullets around his spine without killing him, which was sort of untrue; the doctors were really tired that day & Donaldsonovich was kind of an asshole. Donaldsonovich is still unable to walk, but the dude just won't shut up.
- "Grandma" Mel Thurb, Buck's hostage for the first twelve minutes & the one who held him hostage for the last twelve minutes, graduated last year from the Police Academy to become the world's oldest female cop at the age of ninety-four. The douchebags who put up those annoying billboards that say "[Insert Quality Here] - Pass It On" were about to put her face all over the country when, during her first stake out, she had a massive stroke & died.
- Newsman Rim Tussert, who covered the affair for nineteen hours, was all set to become a national news reporter for NBC when executives couldn't stop giggling over his first name, ending his career. He now mows lawns in Phoenix.
- Notorious Rex, official biographer of the bloodbath, is writing another goddamned book about it. We can barely fill a blog entry, but this guy... Sheesh.
- You'd think that little Dickie Snead would be much bigger than he was at the time, but he's still runty & smells funny. Maybe at the ten year recap. Weird.
- The fern is looking hot.

More information may or may not be available on this week's podcast of Self Help Radio, available tomorrow (Saturday the 12th), in the afternoon. Please to enjoy.

Bent Barman Blues

I am in the middle of making a new Self Help Radio Extra for your listening enjoyment. How do I do this, you might wonder? Well, if you were me, this is how you would be doing it:

You would do what you always do, which is listen to music pretty much all the time. You have heard this weird thing that people apparently do, which is put music they already like on their mp3-playing device, but you don't do that - you get stuff & you digitize it to listen to it at every possible moment - while on the bus, while napping at your desk, while walking from bus stop to nap. Your mp3-playing device is the crucible in which your radio & other mixes are made pure! So you do that for a couple of weeks. Songs that you like are stored in the back of your mind which, unfortunately, are not always immune to alcohol & its evil erasing ways, so you try to occasionally put them on a playlist for later study. You call this playlist "shrextra." You don't know why.

Then, when you've gathered a few &/or it's time to make a mix for your friends at the Self Help Radio web page, you listen to the songs anew & then you think of other songs to add in (music is a conversation, after all) & after a time you'll notice you've filled some arbitrary quota - voila! Self Help Radio Extra!

As I said, it's not done yet, but by the end of the workday, you'll see a new mix at on the Self Help Radio Extra page. Do listen & enjoy. Not that I wouldn't do it if you don't listen, but I like to think I'm doing it for you.

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 15?

Do you pants ever seem to be making fun of you? Please take that question in whichever way you want as long as it's not the naughty way. Oh, also the weight-issue way. Hadn't thought of that one.

The writer of this blog is trying very hard not to refer to himself in the first person.

What? Oh crap! The Blog Annotator has invaded the Self Help Radio blog!

The writer of this blog is trying to take your attention away from the comment above. The Blog Annotator shall repeat:

The writer of this blog is trying very hard not to refer to himself in the first person.

What's wrong with that? A radio show is not a person, & sometimes (like in this case) the person who does the radio show is really only half a person. Maybe five-eighths. Whatever. The meaning is clear.

The Blog Annotator does not know about this meaning of which you speak.

Take for example one of Blogspot's "blogs of note" or whatever (which Self Help Radio has never been noted for, thanks Blogspite), Cooking With Amy. This is a site with recipes & pictures of food. A quick count yielded over forty uses of the first-person pronoun on the first page. It's a page about cooking! It's supposed to just have directions & lists of ingredients!

The Blog Annotator takes your point. However, the Blog Annotator has checked the first page of this blog & found the use of the first-person pronoun on the last week's worth of posts to number over seventy. The Blog Annotator points out that this blog is supposed to be a supplement to a weekly radio show.

You're a real douche, you know that?

You're an egotistical pansy-assed pseudo-intellectual whose browser cache hasn't been emptied in weeks.

Yeah? Well then you're a son of a virus & a pop-up viagra ad left to grow like scum on a Fox News web site nurtured by the fevered clicks of delusional assholes who daydream of ass-fucking the President while the Vice-President shoots them in the face.

.......

God nothing to say to that, Blog Masturbator?

Um. The Blog Annotator is stunned & overwhelmed by your graphic insult.

Damn right!

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 15 - You'll Never Catch Me In Those Tired Shorts!

When you read about Tonga - & why wouldn't you? - you learn a lot of things that you might not ever have learned & further will never ever need to learn again. For example: Tonga and nearby Nauru have the world’s fattest populations. Also: 70% of Tongan women aged 15-85 are obese. & then: Tongan women are known for being skillful jugglers. Amazing!

Before you dismiss this as meaningless trivia, which it is, you may want to pause & reflect on how little you know about the world. Do you remember how stupid you felt at a recent gathering when someone corrected your assertion that Europe was a country? "Next to Italy, I think," you said. There was not a chance of getting laid that night & you knew it. Or what about the recent events in Columbia? Didn't you say, "I thought Columbia was that place where the two goth kids killed everyone." Sure, you let people think you were joking - nice save! - but that's only because you have a reputation for being monstrously unfunny. Don't you ever want to have sex again?

If you must learn about the world, why not start with Tonga? It's a very quiet pursuit - short of some irritating folks who may believe that "Lost" is filmed there, no one really cares about Tonga. Except, of course, the people who live there. But what's the chance you'll ever meet someone from Tonga? About as much a chance as meeting someone who's ever heard of Tonga! Just by learning a little about Tonga, you'll automatically know more than pretty much anyone. & you'll finally get to know how that feels.

You might want to stay away from this guy, though. He will most certainly know more about Tonga than you do. Not that you travel in the same circles, though - just be careful.

Tonga is only the beginning, you know. You can learn about all kinds of stuff. Some of it may actually be interesting. Then you'll know all kinds of stuff. & then - let the loving commence!

Voicemail To Voicemail

Long three day weekends are never wasted by naps. The same is true with long, boring college classes. Naps are essential components of life, even if you're not very good at them. Which some of us are not. But perhaps someone can tell us how to nap. I don't know about you, but reading that thing made me sleepy.

Something that might keep you awake is this past week's episode of Self Help Radio, which had the improbable theme of "Saturday Night." You can listen to this show here & no matter what day it is, you can turn your it into Saturday night. I can say that another way. No matter what time of day it is, you can turn it into Saturday night. I can't say it any other way.

Since I work during the week like some people I know, I often cannot commit to the napping process. This makes me all forty-two kinds of sad. I consume large qualities of caffeine which is luckily available in easy-to-urinate soda bottle flavors. I occasionally wander out from the frigidaire air conditioning into the "real world" which in the summer in Texas is about three degrees cooler (Centigrade or Fahrenheit, it makes no difference for this hyperbole) than the average temperature of Hell, & the effect is much like an accidental belly flop in a public pool. (By the way, we called those "belly busters" when I was a kid, & trying to find images or videos of that online was a bust. Instead, "belly buster" seems to be a synonym for dieting. Or a chain restaurant in California. Or both.) I try to take seconds-long cat naps at the desk which make me seem drunk & stupid. Sometimes these things help, sometimes they don't. Mostly they don't. God I am sleepy.

I can't think of anything more to say about naps. But I have run out of time to leave you voicemail. I meant to leave you voicemail so you could leave me voicemail. I wanted to ask your something. No I can't. But don't call back right now. Call me back when you're sure I have remembered what I was going to say.