The Curse Of The Invisible Tent

GARY, Texas – Inebriated Dairy Queen workers hurled rancid milkshakes & aspersions at random livestock & their owners here during increasingly baffling demonstrations this week over bumper stickers & their incorrect placement on parts of the car/truck/SUV/motorcycle besides the bumper.

The Gary, Texas, Sheriff's Assistant Department refused to open its doors Wednesday & old Mr. Johnson's recently repainted barn was mocked in his neighbor's blog.

Demonstrators are calling for "sanity" & "more sugar," but stopped to watch television Wednesday night, since someone Tivoed last week's episode of "CSI" which was the last featuring William Peterson as Gil Grissom. But the crowd, an hour drunker than when the show started, seemed unimpressed with Peterson's replacement, Laurence Fishburne, most famous from the "Matrix" movies.

As the Gary Monthly Informer is reporting on its website today, protesters have been gathering irregularly – and, until recently, not-falling-down drunk – following a heated discussion in a bar about bumper stickers in October. Demonstrators say the crisis could have been prevented if Gail Worth had simply placed her "My Child Is An Honor Student" on her "god-damned" bumper instead of leaving it taped inside the rear window.

The protests subsided during the Christmas season, in part because it cut into the town's drinking time, but other local Avon saleswomen decided to follow Worth's lead. During the bi-monthly Mary Kay/Avon summit at the local Grandy's, demonstrators happened by. Johnny "Boy" Gleason, a local meth entrepreneur, thought everyone was celebrating the inauguration of President Barack Obama & decided to join in.

"I know, it's stupid, it's the middle of nowhere Texas, man," Gleason said. "Everyone here thinks he's a Muslim."

But it was discovered that the event in Washington, D.C., “had absolutely nothing to do with the situation here,” Gleason said Wednesday night, as he urinated on the burned-out husk of Mrs. Worth's SUV. “I have no idea what the hell happened.”

Protesters eventually passed out on some scrub land neared the intersection of 2260 & Sante Fe Street, but not before a group of high-school drop-outs managed to consume (& sometimes toss at passing cars) wine coolers, leftover egg nog, &, very surprisingly, skyr (an Icelandic dairy product). A group of truckers who were sick & tired responded with pepper spray & those little green bibles that just contain the New Testament.

Between 20 and 30 protesters were allowed to sleep it off in a nearby pasture, according to eye witnesses. At least six were thought to be more high than drunk. Two were described by a passing dermatologist as "seriously wasted."

Although many here claim to be expressing anger and sadness over automobile decorations, some townsfolk have noted an unexpected benefit of the protests: They’ve helped pull the town together. According to a letter in the Informer, “It is the first time in Gary's history that an over-medicated high school student can well expect to meet his under-medicated teacher in the crowd fucking shit up at the same time, even while grading standardized tests. Our society is surely hanging by a thin thread and might collapse at any moment.”

If Gary, Texas, succumbs to anarchy, it will be just another failure in what some are calling the "crisis in Texas' smallest towns." Gary has long been the poster child for places it's better to drive through than hang around, but now discussion of surrounding the town with a moat (full of crocodiles) & a barbed-wire fence are gaining more credence from nearby communities, who are understandably dismayed & frightened by this weird turn of events.

Whither Gum?

Los Angeles, 2002. A city under siege. A city under water. The great floods of 2002 submerged the entire Western Seaboard. Movie stars grow gills to continue filming - but mainly in Vancouver. Hollywood is lost forever.

In Atlántico, Columbia, a door slams. A man with guaranteed no relation to but looking an awful lot like Fyvush Finkel reads his local newspaper worriedly. An itinerant soap-box repairman & bastard son to the best friend of the prostitute who serviced the the disgruntled employees fired during the well-publicized Company Snit in 1915 which resulted in the consolidation of power of William Wrigley, Jr. of the world's chewing gum resources, this sensitive & melancholy soul naturally had gum on his mind. He wondered, "Can gum save America's entertainment industry?"

West Virginia, 2013. A state ignored by the country in which it dwells. Years of isolation & self-abuse worry the leaders of the state, who have been starting fires & collapsing mines to get media attention. A door slams.

Whether it's chicle, or whether it's plastic, the ingredients speak to the hearts &/or the minds of the afflicted. Gum! Gum! Can you save us, O Gum? By gum, gum can save us! Three cheers for gum! Just don't get any on your shoes. Spit it into the wrapper & throw the wrapper away. Just like that. Sure. Oh, gross. Just. Just throw it away. God.

This future could be our future. This future might just be your future. But for the grace of gum go we. So have some gum. Have some. Gum. In case you're allergic, try hypoallergenic gum. I just invented it. Tastes like ass, but it's gum. So have some. Gum. Gum. Gum.

Also, gum cures all ills. There. I've said it. Although not all dental ills. I'm not going on record with that one. Gum.

Preface To Gum: What's That On Your Shoe?

An Ode To Gum
by N. Awful Poet

Oh gum! Oh gum!
From whence do you come?
Give me some.
Bubble gum, chewing gum,
Xanthan gum, spirit gum...
Some for eating, with your chum;
Some for adhering, rule of thumb -
I bang the drum for gum gum gum!

Look, I don't want to sound dumb
But for a reasonable sum
Don't be sad! Don't be glum!
I can buy you lots of gum.

I hear you hum -
In the slum with all the scum -
You can't stay mum!
You must succumb!
I will let gum your heartstrings strum!
You can't be numb to the wiles of gum!

No? I can't even give you a crumb
of gum?
You'd say "Yum!"
Oh well, I could say, "How come?"
But I can see you're just a bum
Drinking plum rum.

Can I have some?

Long Weekend, Short Story

I am a sleepy man as I have been in meetings all day & also went to bed late all night. Woke up early, too, & generally did not sleep well. Dreamt of covering my hands in plaster. Or getting my hands covered in plaster. Because of touching a fellow who was covered in plaster. Who kinda reminded me of Daniel Johnston. Without the menthol cigarettes.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. I'll be waking up early again tomorrow to help my friend & ex-lawyer Dick Dickenbock do another four hour shift on KVRX tomorrow. From five to nine am. You can listen online or on radio at 91.7fm. Why does he need my help? I dunno. He can't seem to do them by himself. I think he gets paid by the American Disabilities Act to do radio or something. His disability? Born without irony. It's a sadness.

Then I'll run home (on my sore ankle) & work on tomorrow's Self Help Radio, which should be on the website sometime in the early evening. I've been sleepy, you see, & sleepiness is not conducive to timeliness. Ask Rip Van Winkle! If he's awake.

Have a happy long weekend! I'll write again when we have a new president!

Whither 1973?

Please note: this article was supposed to appear yesterday, but, due to unforeseen laziness (well, we would have seen it coming if we had been paying attention), it appears today. Our apologies if it still smells a little Wednesdayish.

I was five years old, officially, in 1973. My family, which had been fatherless since '72, was living in some poverty in an apartment complex on Kingsley Avenue in Garland, Texas, a growing suburb of Dallas, then numbering about 80,000 souls. My two oldest siblings were able to fend for themselves, being out of school & stuff like that, but that left my mother & me & three brothers & a sister. To this day I can't imagine how my mother managed it, although I do know the older two brothers still at home worked some.

I have no specific memories of being five. I do remember, in hazy contours like a screen-shot of a movie fade-out, the design of the apartment complex, although those memories mingle with others from my early teens when I had a paper route that brought me back there. I wish I could remember playmates, smells, actual events, but I only have stories I've been told over & over, mostly embarrassing, some outright awful.

I think you're supposed to start kindergarten at five, & if so, I definitely did not. One of the stories that I don't remember much about is that I was taken to kindergarten every day for a week & I screamed until I was taken out. It was decided (ah, the innocence of the school system before No Child Left Behind) that I could skip kindergarten if I couldn't handle it. This kind of pissed off my little brother, who had to go to kindergarten the next year when I, despite some hesitation, made it through the first day of first grade. He has never forgiven me. I think it was another in an endless supply of proof that I was valued more than him.

As noted above, these days have a kind of sepia tinge, & I do wish I could go back there & have a look around, see what things did in fact smell like & feel like & look like. I wonder if I'd be reminded of certain sensations, or if it would all seem strange & new.

Whatever else was going on the world in 1973, the five-year-old me paid absolutely no attention to.

Preface To 1973: A Year That Is Also A Prime Number Is A Wonder To Behold

You know what prime numbers are, yeah? They're natural numbers which have only two divisors, themselves & one. (A number like 12 has six: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12. A number like 2 has two: 1, 2. So 2 is a prime number.) Human beings have been fascinated by prime numbers since they had a little leisure time to while away with mathematics. I like them for no apparent reason, which is all right by me.

In a week, my age becomes a prime number, too. I'd like to attach (for the hell of it) some numerological significance to being that age, but as I look over my life I realize that prime number years weren't necessarily the best years of my life. This last year, for example, for all of its changes & weirdnesses & what-not, was a pretty good year. & it wasn't prime, not hardly. So the "prime is primo" theory doesn't hold water.

Prime numbers get more & more rare as we count up. But there are twenty-five of them in the first hundred natural numbers. One in four is a prime number! That's awesome. Here they are:

2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97

1973 was a pretty good year for music, something I'll explore this weekend. But it was even cooler for being the 297th prime number. (297, by the way, is not a prime number. Its divisors are 1, 3, 9, 11, 27, 33, 99 & 297.) It's really hard, by the way, to count a list of numbers. My brain now aches.

Hooray for prime number 1973! Hooray for math geekiness!

Clipped Nibbles

I woke up this morning with the Buzzcocks in my head. Wait. That came out weird. Let me rephrase that. I woke up this morning & Steve Diggle & Pete Shelley were sticking their tongues in my ear.

That's an example of a common bit of humorology that professional & unprofessional funny folk often employ when trying to make people laugh. The "punchline" (as the philosophers call it) comes from the person expecting the talker (in the above case, me myself) to weasel out of an embarrassing slip of the tongue by quickly denying the possible naughty connotations thereof. Instead - & what makes it funny - the talker (still in this case, me) confirms the more disreputable meaning & therefore thwarts expectations, creating what in many circles is called hilarity.

Unfortunately, as the boy who cried wolf will tell you, this bit of humoristics should be used with moderation. Otherwise people will spit on you. Or rip your head off & take a shit down your neck. I've seen it happen. On an open-mic night. It wasn't pretty, & it smelled awful.

I did employ this humoroid (as the Baptist ministers call it) in last week's Self Help Radio. Some time during the show. I don't have an exact time. You can use your checklist & redeem the finished sheet at any S&H Green Stamps Depot. Should you be so lucky. By all accounts one of us must. Why not you?

Slept Through Friday

Umm? Oh, hi. I spent the day preparing for my colleague Dick Dickenbock's sub show tomorrow morning on KVRX, 91.7 fm, kvrx.org, from 5am to 9am. So listen. I'm going back to sleep. I mean, work.

Facebook Reprint

I wrote this last night as a response to one of those lists that people make you do on Facebook. (Yes, I'm on Facebook. The wife pressured me. If you want to be my friend, you can find a Gary Dickerson & Austin & viola! You can learn all the lies that are my life.) I thought it was funny so I thought I'd reproduce it here. Please to enjoy.

5 Things You May, May Not, Or May Really Care To Know About Me

Rules no one agreed upon: Once you've been tagged, you are being purposely made to feel guilty if you don't write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, outright lies, especially shameful acts, or experiences other people had or that you read about in a book which you would desperately like to claim as your own. At the end, you must choose 25 people to be tagged, unless you don't know 25 people, which of course you don't, but luckily you've accepted a lot of friend requests, so fill that shit up. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I think you have nothing better to do. I certainly didn't. Observe:

1. I am not an amphibian.

2. In the movie of my life I will be played by someone who hasn't been born yet. Also, that actor will be a hologram.

3. I think it's perfectly natural for a grown man to play with a ball of string. Yes, on the bus. What are you looking at?

4. That uncomfortable queasiness you feel whenever I'm around? It's all me. Sorry.

5. In tender moments, I am unquestionably asleep.

6. More often than not, there's a song going on in my head that is much, much louder than whatever nonsense you're talking about.

7. I have masturbated to poetry. Poetry written by a woman, of course!

8. I have masturbated while writing poetry to a woman.

9. I can read in the dark. Just not words.

10. While I understand the devastating physical drawbacks associated with it, not to mention the societal implications of my actions, the ruined lives, the devastated families, the billions of dollars lost by lack of productivity & extensive hospital visits, I still advocate enforced glue-sniffing in America's middle schools.

11. My left hand hates my right hand. My right hand has no opinion either way about my left hand. That makes my left hand hate my right hand all the more.

12. I am deeply offended by excessive onomatopoeia. Oh, & it's excessive when I say it's excessive.

13. I firmly believe that there's no such thing as a free lunch. However, I think snacks should not only be free but compulsory. Also, I believe that if you're clever enough to save your snacks for lunch & can save lunch money that way, you're awesome.

14. It took many years (& some difficult & painful trials) to correct my misconception but I for the longest time labored under the misapprehension that it was the smell of kevlar & not its tensile strength that stopped bullets. My deepest appreciation to Officers Johnson, Livermore, Goodstone, Royce, Turington, their widows & their families for their extraordinary help with this matter.

15. Part of the reason I enjoy being on the radio is that I am very visual person.

16. Billboards are communicating to me & to a select few (you know who you are) how deeply disappointed Satan is in our continual inability to utterly & completely fuck shit up.

17. My wife is our marriage for the money.

18. My wife is not very good with money.

19. The Bible is the yummiest book I have ever fed to a goat.

20. No matter how hard I try, my wedding ring does not charge when I put it next to my Green Lantern brand Power Battery. No, not even when I say, "In brightest day, in darkest night, no evil shall escape my sight, let those who worship evil's might, beware my power, Green Lantern's Light!"

21. In regards to certain hurtful things I have said in my life about William Faulkner, I can with a heavy heart admit now it's really because he returns my correspondence to him unopened & unread. & that just hurts. I know he has a Nobel Prize & all, but, I mean, it's not like he's written anything for years. Okay. Okay. I'll let it go.

22. Fact # 22 about me is still sealed by the courts. You can try a subpoena, but I was a juvenile at the time & anyway there's no one else left to talk about it but me.

23. I will not be deterred from my incredibly solid belief that a presidential election was held in Ghana on December 7, 2008, at the same time as a parliamentary election. Nor can anyone sway me from my firm conviction that, since no candidate received more than 50% of the votes, a run-off election was held on December 28 between the two candidates who received the most votes, Nana Akufo-Addo & John Atta Mills. & though I run the risk of seeming like a fool to my friends & colleagues, I will maintain to my death that Atta Mills was certified as the victor in the run-off election on January 3, 2009, by a margin of less than one percent.

24. Call me a prude if you must, but anything you say to another person while you are urinating or defecating is not really worth saying.

25. I believe sarcasm is boring. Also, irony is dead.

Whither An Ordinary Show?

The late, not-so-great philosopher/accountant Marmaduke Garfield once wrote, "We shall be happier in our employment & our daily lives should we endeavour to exist as though in extra-ordinary times." I have never really agreed with anything less. Let me be clear - you may be extraordinary, & your pets are probably extraordinary (compared to humans, not necessarily to other pets) (& certainly not compared to my pets), & you may have extraordinary experiences all the time - but most of us don't. For many people, my mother included, the most extraordinary thing in their lives is Self Help Radio. I mean, why can't all radio shows be that good?

It has made me sad, as steward of this show, which doesn't "believe the hype" about itself. (It also doesn't "play against type.") (Nor does it "Put that in its pipe & smoke it.") So when the show was approached by the local peasantry eager for a respite from its unrelenting quality, it balked. Then it stalked out. It walked the walked & talked the talk. It chalked up the criticism to vicious rumors. It was, in short, in denial.

Listen, I said to my radio show, which was emitting a slow, soft hum, like a television with its clothes off. Listen, I said. Let's just have, for once, an ordinary show. (It ignored me.) Just an ordinary show. (No response.) A simple, plain, ordinary show. (Not even a nod in my direction. I had to break out the thesaurus.) A commonplace, conventional, familiar, garden variety, generic, modest, no great shakes, normal, pedestrian, plain, prosaic, quotidian, routine, run-of-the-mill, undistinguished, uneventful, unexceptional, unremarkable, usual, white-bread, workaday show. Can we do it just once?

Well, as you know, Self Help Radio loves synonyms. It said, "Oh all right!" Then it confided in me: "You had me at quotidian."

Let's hope the show doesn't change its mind before Saturday.

Preface To An Ordinary Show: Meetings Are So 2008

In the meeting, this afternoon, the Most Important Boss said: "Celery sales are down! Who shall be the one to sell the shares?"

No one dared raise their bloody marys. Yet the most ordinary of salespeople, Milton Bardley, coughed ever so slightly, in a non-offensive way, into the uncufflinked shirt which his mother had failed to wash for a fortnight.

The room gasped. One spousal hire even choked on her canape. The Most Important Boss said, "Who is it? Who wants the high salary gained by high celery sales?" He thumped a fist on the desk, which was made of something a lot like oak, only artificial.

Milton was queasy, but he feebly responded. "It is I," he sort of peeped, "Milton Bardley, quality control assistant for Accounts Backup & Mutual Department, sir. And," he added, "a big fan of celery."

"You can't sell celery short, Breadloom!" thundered the Most Important Boss. "Nor slowly! Celery must be sold with celerity! Accelerate the celery sales son!"

Milton had had four little strokes in any many little minutes, but he said, "Certainly sir the celery shall sell itself."

"Cover me in cheese spread & call me a cracker," said the Most Important Boss. "You've gotten something on your soiled trousers, Bartleby! Celery selling itself! Cut out the middleman! Bypass the farmer's market! Door-to-door celery sales!"

To the moment he died, which was about fourteen minutes later, Milton Bardley considered this the most wonderful moment in his life. He couldn't begin to think of the comic books he'd be able to buy on his new salary. Alas, his ordinary heart gave out under the extraordinary pressure, & he might have been saved, except the Most Important Boss also experienced an explosion inside, when his brain exploded from a violent tumor, & as he collapsed to the floor, the still Most Important Boss took Milton's idea with him into death.

The end.

A cautionary loop brought to you by Self Help Radio.

Halloo Noo Year!

In the fiery grape-leaf fields of Corsica, several uneducated philanthropists this past week burned an effigy in effigy, thus setting the pace for the groundless & baseless foundation of what most people (though not all persons) have taken to calling "2009." A small but wearisome minority have not yet succeeded in their campaign to call the new year 1492 2.0, but an unsuccessful attempt to lobby the so-called political parties of Sweden pretends to have made some headway.

Self Help Radio wishes nothing but goodwill to the scrappy but lame 2009 & reminds it that its library books were due, like, last year. In the absence of abstention, 2009 will be with us for a few more months, a sorry testament to how truly anemic years that are not prime numbers can be. (Hello 2011! When will you shave us?) Never you mind. The storehouse of environmental poisons will keep us on our toes. As long as we have toes. QED.

In this spirit, the not-quite-as-wealthy-as-they-were-this-time-last-year corporate masters who sanction with some embarrassment Self Help Radio reluctantly announce that it has been renewed for another twelve months. You can witness (in audio form) their shame at selfhelpradio.net. You are encouraged to do so. Be not afraid! It can be cleared up with a little ointment.

Happy new year!

She's The One I Love

I'll be (mostly) away from a computer all day tomorrow, so I figured I'd write in this here blog here here here so I don't miss a day. I feel awful about missing a week. I don't think I have slept a wink since last night. & is it really sleep when large quantities of alcohol make you lose consciousness? I think Socrates said it best when he said, "Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz."

Two weeks later, the scorn you chose to shield me with still raises hackles. Did you put your answering machine on repeat just for me? Or was it your voice mail? Excuse me if I am not as rabid with the latest tautologies as you are. At least I can watch a Don Cheadle movie without feeling dirty. Can you say the same? Can the ghost of James Stewart say the same? Can Jimmy Stewart's ghost say anything? Would it be a cute semi-stammering drawl with a reverb effect? Oh the things you let on!

I just want you to be peripherally aware that tomorrow, my first Self Help Radio of 2009 will appear, & I hope you'll sit with your family around a roaring campfire & sing all the nice songs that the nice folks (not those assholes in Nice) have such the nice reaction to. & it'll be like I am there with you, a cigar in my pocket & some loose change down the front of my blouse, secretly wishing I could hold your hand like in the old days & stare up into the planets, & then burning myself on the fire because I fell asleep again, so comforted am I by your clammy paws.

& why aren't you my friend on Facebook anyway? You never loved me.

Giraffe Ate My Homebook

Happy New Year! Now I gotta re-do my stupid Self Help Radio web page. Thanks Father Time!

Powerful forces who monitor my ever other move would have sent this note if I had deigned to read it: "Mr Help Radio, we who control you every other thought & the bowel atrocities besides not only hoard water & make passionate love to giant squid, but we also carry an advent calendar which tells us thus: where is the December Self Help Radio Extra? Not that we would download & read such orifice pornography, but we believe in the sanctity of the space-time continuum & also in the ever-expanding puffiness of the Shatner Neck. Please correct this by New Year's Diary or we'll have to borrow your tambourines & not return them on time. Love, the Overlords."

Alas! My recent adventure in Africa haven't nor willn't make it possible to explain not only the horrors of elderly baptism, but also (if not including) how an unexpected victory at a North Dakota arm-wrestling competition (mavel tov!) made it virtually implacable that I continue to fulfill the December obligations to which I have been acclimatized. My deepest apologies. January is as always on a totally different platter. Stay lubed!

Will you ever love me again? If not then, when?

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 18?

2008 was a persistent cough with an intermittent sore throat. 2008 was to laugh. 2008 daren't, & most certainly 2008 mayn't, especially after we all agreed, don't let's 2008! A pox on all 2008 houses, & then a lot of us didn't own them anymore.

2008 sat in a pool of its own waste, yelling wildly at all the other years, but somehow sounding both more petulant and mewlish. 2008 was too cute by half. 2008 could never decide what to wear, so looked both foppish & unkempt. 2008 could barely pay attention, & paid nearly no mind.

2008 held its breath & still never got what it wanted. 2008 pratfell but wasn't funny anymore. 2008 was the year that cried "Wolf!" to a tired world. Every old idea 2008 recycled would have been cheaper to manufacture new.

2008 had wagged & snarled like a dog. 2008 fantasized more & more & dreamed less & less. 2008 took pills for all sorts of things: to focus on its standardized tests, to be better at sports, to keep the blood clots from forming in its legs, to see colors in the night sky.

2008 was not sure what it wanted to be when it grew up. 2008 lied to everyone about its sexual prowess. 2008 needed a shower & a shave &, toward the end, everyone agreed, was letting itself go. The impression 2008 left was slight, like finding a cut on your body & not remembering when you got it. Still, 2008 lost a lot of blood.

2008 gained weight but wasted time. 2008 wrote lots of bad poetry because hardly anyone wrote poetry to 2008. What a hypocrite 2008 was! What a sad sack of shit 2008 was! What a bleary-eyed malcontent 2008 was!

We all had mostly decent times with 2008, but the bad times were really, really bad. Now none of us can really come to grips with 2008. 2008 stole more than a year from all of us. We can help feeling, right before 2008 disappears, that somehow 2008 owes us big time. & yet. We know we'll never collect.

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 18: My Thoughtless Dismissal Of Christian Heavy Metal Causes A Shitstorm

A new year. A cloud of poisonous smoke. A level five ogre with a plate of recently spoiled luncheon meat. A book of non-sequiturs. Three Irish setters named "O'Seamus." Everyone who will ever love you. Some who will not.

A rented coat rack in a drifter's squat in Bakersfield in 2008. The next-to-the-last day of the year. You're there. I'm there. Not surprisingly, Montana governor Brian Schweitzer is there. The following are the words recorded in the angels' notebooks:

You: Sexy.
Me: Remunerative.
You: Cavalier.
Me: Sandwich-board wisdom.
You: Fifteen points!
Me: Hollywood swinging.
Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer: The Governor will carry out the executive power vested by the Montana Constitution and faithfully execute the laws of the state. In so doing, the Governor's Office will ensure that the state government continues to live within its means; that is, with existing taxes collected equitably and no additional tax burden on its citizens. The Governor's Office will ensure that the programs and budgets of state departments are sustainable and operated efficiently and fairly. The Governor's Office will protect the social capital of Montana, its families, businesses and communities by the judicious use of state resources and effective delivery of state services.
You: What he said.
Me: What he did.

A breeze ruffles a sports jacket which, if it lives long enough, will become fashionable for the last time in 2015. There is something like fear in the air. It's the scent of fast food french fries scalded with lard. The governor trembles.

You: I wish there were still three pickles left.
Me: Devil-may-care.
You: Must I wait for love?
Me: Ne'er-do-well.
You: This painful burden I carry.
Me: Brother-in-law.
Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer: Terre de nos aïeux. Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux. Car ton bras sait porter l'épée, il sait porter la croix. Ton histoire est une épopée, des plus brillants exploits. Et ta valeur, de foi trempée, protégera nos foyers et nos droits. Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.
You: I'm glad to hear it.
Me: Take it back.

Soon, night has fallen & it can't get up. The stars over the ocean step lightly, lest they be caught in a cross-current of mud, blood, beer & obscure human-tested pharmaceuticals. In the distance, a door slams.

You: Boys to men.
Me: All for one.
You: I'll be sure.
Me: Wrecks in effect.
You: Hair metal?
Me: No, no. Glam.
Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer: What's a governor got to do to get some decent alcohol in this fucking town?
You: Roger Clemens?
Me: Clarence Clemons?
You: Clemons, Iowa?
Me: Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

A new year. Or maybe. No. No. It'll be a new year. Watch your step.

How Self Help Radio Changed 2008

Self Help Radio didn't help get Barack Obama elected President of the United States. Self Help Radio did not help India get to the moon. Self Help Radio was not involved in the death of [insert someone you like who died in 2008], although Self Help Radio did write an awful lot of poetry about that person three weeks before the death. Self Help Radio might have said something to offend the economy, but who will blame us for that?

Self Help Radio changed 2008 but being such a powerfully insignificant force for change. Self Help Radio may have been like the beating of a moth's wings that, thousands of miles away & decades later, causes a New Yorker to sneeze & infect a subway car with Mad Cow Disease. Science will find & dismiss a causal link soon enough, but for now, let the conjecture stand: even though you have no idea it exists, & probably never will, Self Help Radio is a miniscule force for change in your life.

(The actual ranking may be in the low high twenty thousands. But the actuaries are hogging the stats. They're still trying to prove that Self Help Radio kills the unborn at a higher rate than other radio shows.)

What does this have to do with pornography, you may ask? The number of Self Help Radio-themed pornographic series remained constant in 2008 (there were none), but where there's room for improvement, there's also room to dance. & Self Help Radio danced more than the average radio show in 2008. Radio shows are notorious wallflowers, so this may not seem to be important, but that's what they said about the Piltdown Man & look what kinds of hijinks ensued during that dance contest.

It's not too late to enjoy the last Self Help Radio of 2008 to glean for yourself what Self Help Radio knows to be true. Visit selfhelpradio.net & make yourself believe what you ought to know you believe. Which is, Self Help Radio is. & most possibly shall be.

Oh, Bollocks!

I'm sorry, friends. It's been a busy week. So can I take the week off from writing in the blog? Thanks!

This week's show is my favorite music (minus the electronica) from 2008.

If you're in Austin (or not), you can listen to my buddy Dick Dickenbock play lots of bluesy Christmas music on Blues At Sunrise this morning on KVRX from 7 to 9am (Texas time) & then, later, all kinds of Christmas music from 7pm till 1am (I think). That's on the 91.7 frequency. & live at kvrx.org. Maybe he'll let me archive it. But probably not.

See you Monday!

A Very Self Help Radio Christmas 2008!

Before I sign off this blog until next Monday (I gotta get married this weekend, don'tcha know), I have prepared, a week early, this year's a Very Self Help Radio Christmas. It's live for your listening & Santa-sucking-up pleasure at selfhelpradio.net. You're welcome. Now stuff my stocking!

& last year's Christmas show is still available for listening to if you are so inclined. & why not? Aren't you just a little gay for Christmas carols? I thought so.

See you in a few days! Have a happy pre-holiday weekend!

Whither A Self Help Radio Christmas 2008?

Ho ho ho! I've said on this blog & in the privacy of my own head that I don't really have any supernatural beliefs, so why in the world would a weirdo like me enjoy Christmas? The truth is, I don't. I don't give gifts, I don't get gifts, I don't enjoy anything consumerish or consumery or consumer-oriented. But. It's sad to admit this.

I love Christmas music.

Not just the funny or ridiculous stuff - & of course I like the ridiculous stuff - but even the schmaltzy stuff. Of course you have heard all the really, really overplayed stuff. But I don't play that on Self Help Radio anyway. I just play the stuff I've been digging around for for the past year. & surprise, surprise! There's a lot of great stuff!

Not only that - but you'll get it early. I'm not going to be around this weekend for Self Help Radio, so my Christmas gift to you comes a week early - tomorrow!

& I don't like giving gifts. Well, except to you.

Preface To Christmas 2008: Santa Pictures!

Hooray! It's drunk Santa!

Or is this drunk Santa?

Hey! Why is Santa so scary? I mean, he's really, really freaking me out. I wonder, has anyone ever done scientific research about this?

Whatever. The dude has sure been around a long time. But maybe it was Thomas Nast who invented him, so there's really nothing to be scared of. Unless. Oh god. Was it Coca Cola?

No? Whew. Boy, Christmas is weird.

Blood Pudding

How to Christmas polka, part one: Find someone to Christmas polka with. It's not entirely clear if one must wear Christmas polka dots, nor what exactly those entail. Dots of some sort. Maybe green & red. Next hire the best-rated Christmas polka band in the county. Perhaps there is a polka magazine which rates polka bands in your area. If not, fair enough. Perhaps there's some sort of telephone directory. Look under "polka bands." Lots to choose from? No? How about "bowling alleys"? All right, polka band. Polka partner. Next plan a Christmas party. Booze is essential. Friends are not. Booze makes a lot of good friends. In general. For short periods of time, but you only need a couple of hours. Polka bands can run you into some money. Christmas polka bands will gouge you. Believe you me. Booze, band, partner. Need polka lessons? Easy. "Polka For Dummies." Huzzah!

Tomorrow: How to Christmas polka, part two: emergency room etiquette.

Today: want to hear what I think is the neatest electronica to come out in the past year? Easily done! Visit selfhelpradio.net right now! Download! Listen! Electronic polka? Maybe not.

One Final Thought About A Weekend Full Of Cold Medicine

Too much isn't a good thing.

Or: maybe I should've had that flu shot.

Remember! Tomorrow Self Help Radio presents my favorite electronic songs of the year! Happening in the afternoon at selfhelpradio.net. Listen if only to hear how fucked up my voice sounds!

The Self Help Radio Email Archive Project: Submission Seven

Written for a young lady (not named Jane Jameson) in the spring of 1996. There's a sad story here, but I won't put it in here. Needless to say, I invented the "brain gophers" for her & this is the first time I've shared them with anyone but her. I hope she forgives me!

-----

Denver, 1999. In the fairly civil Civil Engineering Lab of the famous Jane "Overpass" Jameson, sewage system designer to the stars, the Civil Engineer confronts Specula, leader of the Brain Gophers.

"What do you want?" says she. "Batteries not included."

"A cup of tea would be nice," Specula responds. Not even a little chagrined.

Pouring tea, Jane realizes that all these years just the hint of flowing liquid would make her have to go the bathroom. Even reading such a sentence, or a wonderful poem mentioning the lovely cascade of an elegant river, would trigger her urination fixation. She thinks she might need some sort of bladder control device, & thinks about designing one.

"Brain Gophers, despite what our name implies (& we didn't name ourselves, Ms. Jameson, our parents did)," says Specula, "don't need brains. We don't have brains. We certainly don't want human brains. We like to dig in them, it's true, but we'd rather have cake. Lots of it. With sticky candies on top. And a thin layer of candle wax & grime. And perhaps a little song."

Jane's ears perk up. "A bunny hop song?" says she.

"Of course not," Specula fumes. "A Brain Gopher song."

Jane consults her World Almanac. Nothing there about Brain Gophers. She watches a little TV. Still not a thing about Brain Gophers, not even on the Discovery Channel. She reads the complete work of Henry James, who, she realizes too late, actually just seemed to have a gopher up his ass, not in his brain. She comes back to find the Brain Gopher beating himself in a double-blind game of of Stratego.

"I have no song," she says, realizing the world is doomed & she made need to start packing, "but I have a rhyming couplet."

"Hit me," says Specula.

"Okay," says Jane. She clear her throat, which hasn't felt well since March of 1996, and intones:

"No one ever can begin to explain
Those pesky gophers of the brain
But we can use lemon juice on that stain."

"That's not a rhyming couplet!" the Brain Gopher snarls. "That's a rhyming triplet!"

"Would you like an overpass with that?" asks Jane.

Whither Gary's Favorite Electronica 2008?

Ah. cold medicine. How kind you are to those of us whose noses are rubbed red from incessant blowing! You have let me see, through the cotton & fuzz in my head, such winsome colors & marmalade skies. That is why I am proud that this week's Self Help Radio will be a tender & thorough explication, exploration & explanation of my friend the cold/sinus medication.

[Uh, Gary? No, no, it won't. - Ed.]

Who said that? Holy fuck me! Is the cold medicine talking to me again?

[No, Gary, it's me. Your editor. - Ed.]

Ed.? Ed.? Who's Ed.?

[Remember, fifteen years ago, when they pulled you out of a Bombay slum where your vacationing parents had left you with only a sign that read "Help Me - Victim Of Chernobyl"? I was part of the team who put your back together. We wanted to make you bigger, stronger, faster. We had the technology. Instead, we found you liked to do radio. I was asked to keep an eye on you & make sure you could string proper English words together in a sentence. - Ed.]

I don't remember any of that. Is it true?

[What's true is true if you think it's true, Gary. - Ed.]

I think I should up the dosage of my cold medicine!

[& I think you should make sure that this week's Self Help Radio is your pick of your favorite Electronica of 2008. - Ed.]

Favorite electric cold medication!

[We would have made so much more money off you if you had just let us replace your brain with a barrel of monkey. - Ed.]

Monkeys on cold medication!

Preface To Gary's Favorite Electronica 2008: What's So Bad About Robots?

Warning: I am still cold-sick & am full of difficult medications. So before I tell you why robots will eventually enslave us & make us into no better than toasters for their sick fantasies, let me assure you that I am as lucid as the old mill stream. Or if I could put it in limerick form:

    There once was an inveterate drummer,
    Whose lack of teeth made him a gummer,
    Hoof & mouth disease
    Had killed all his fleas
    But they couldn't kill his neighborhood plumber.

I drifted off there for a second. What was I saying? Something about the nascent probability of orbital decay? That old party fluke? I never! Still, when it's balmy out, the medication makes me feel the strangest pure joy. I should like to blow my nose exclusively in the shower. We wait, don't we, for the many ways to bend & unbend.

Still not convinced? Exhibit R: robots! They may seem lovable now, but doesn't a knife seem nice until it's cutting your jugular? Could I say the same about scissors? & David Duchovny?

I trust you'll vouchsafe my godspeed as I away? Very well. Damn, this is good cold medicine.

I'm So Cold For You

It's true. Despite another wonderful Self Help Radio in the can - last week's Birthday Show is being celebrated by virtually everyone who ever had a birthday - which may explain why all the robots hate it - damn you robots! - as I was saying, despite being flush with triumph at making another show which is better than most of the other shows being made by anyone within a three hundred foot radius of me (you know, because I have a restraining order against all other deejays - which of course makes segues at the radio station very difficult), I caught a cold this weekend. It sucks.

It may not be simply a cold. It may be what savvy medicos are calling "a sinus infection." Wait? What's that? If it's a sinus infection I may need antibiotics. Antibiotics are heavily promoted by the wealthy & powerful Evolving Germs lobby. I hear that politicians pay to not go to their fundraisers. Anyway, I don't want to see a doctor, so I have been chewing on some kind of cold/flu/sinus medication & it's the daytime formula so I can't even sleep.

You know why my friends are telling me to do? They want me to snort salt water. I'm not kidding. They say it's an old-fashioned way of curing a cold. I imagine it's a new-fangled way to destroy the mucous lining in your sinus cavity. But what do I know? My head feelings like it's filled with cotton. But salt isn't a powder I will snort, sorry.

Wait! Stop reading this blog! I'm still infectious! Sorry! So sorry about that!

Happy Birthday To You!

Are you Bhumibol Adulyadej, Sheldon Lee Glashow, Little Richard, Joan Didion, Calvin Trillin, J. J. Cale, Peter Pohl, José Carreras, Morgan Brittany, Krystian Zimerman, Doctor Dre, Wayne Smith, Shalom Harlow, Amy Acker, Nick Stahl, Shizuka Ito, or Chris Solinsky? Are you at all like them? Because they have one thing in common, & it's not that they've all seen the business end of Dick Cheney's Saturday Nite Special. No, today is their birthday!

& do you know what? Everyone, even insomniacs & reincarnated douchebags, has a birthday! Especially but not including my lovely Magdalena, the only woman in the universe who has not gotten so tired of my shit that she's kicked my teeth in! Since she has a birthday (it was this past Monday, by the way), & since she's so important to me, it follows that all birthdays must be important to me. Go ahead, give me a logic puzzle, I'll solve it.

So tomorrow's Self Help Radio will be all about birthdays - not just Magda's, but yours, too. Listen to it now or save it for your birthday week. What do I care? I mean, I do care!

Something smells like a microwaved baked potato. (Which is, of course, weird. Why bake a potato only to microwave it?) I'm getting the hell out of here.

Listen to Self Help Radio tomorrow in the afternoon exclusively at selfhelpradio.net. It'll sound as good as a birthday cake tastes. You have my recorded word on that.

The Self Help Radio Email Archive Project: Submission Six

Today's remembrance is from a silly email I wrote to a silly woman with whom I might have once had the chance to have a silly relationship but it fell through due to silliness. I am just posting excerpts of silliness.

The email was called "The Mlik Chocolate Melts In Your Hair, Not In Your Hamster"

She told me she was sad, & I wrote this:

You obviously haven't heard The Antacid Song!

Antacid, antacid
You don't understand my tummy
Antacid, antacid
You think I am a dummy

Just because I eat high heels
& travel with the acrobats
& skip all buffet meals
Doesn't mean I won't get mad

At my
Antacid, antacid
My stomach thinks you hate it
Antacid, antacid
He wished I never ate it

Just because I read real slow
& have a complex about cheese
& married an Asian ice flow
Don't mean I can digest grease

Oh,
Antacid, antacid,
Can't we all just get along?
Antacid, antacid,
I mean, in spite of this song?

Now, *that's* sad!

[Later, I write:]

For example, I am having this conversation with you in my head right now:

Me: Hey! Don't eat that!
You: Why not?
Me: It's a bug with staples all in it!
You: I know, I put them there.
Me: But why?
You: He has a soft exoskeleton.
Me: But aren't you going to eat him?
You: Perhaps on a kaiser roll.
Me: Won't the staples get in the way?
You: Does the toothpick in the Schlotsky's sandwich get in *your* way when *you* eat it?
Me: I take it out first.
You: You do?
Me: You're afraid of it getting all runny!
You: Take that back!
Me: You won't eat a runny bug! You won't eat a runny bug!
You: I'll kick your fag ass if you don't take that back!
Me: My fag ass?
You: You have a very homosexual behind.
Me: You think?
You: So do dachsunds, though.
Me: You just said that because they're called "weiner dogs."
You: You have no faith in my abilities, do you?
Me: I take it back.
You: Your faith?
Me: What I said about the runny bug.
You: Why?
Me: It won't get runny, it'll get mooshy.
You: Not with staples in it.

See? Piece of cake!

Whither Magda's Birthday Show 2008?

There was an old fellow who lived down by the river. He spent the day taking pictures of the water with his mobile phone. He was a lonely sort. He never had anyone to send the pictures to.

In the night he liked to tap on a keyboard with the computer off. He pretended the croaking of the frogs was lyrics to his spasmodic beat. He would never really admit this to anyone. He spent most of his time in his own head.

A big storm came one day upriver. It was almost like it was looking for a place to live. Since he didn't do much upkeep on his home by the river, the old fellow was ill-prepared for the tempest's ferocity. He might even welcome the danger.

He couldn't take his eyes off the storm. He sat on the porch for a while until the pounding rain & the heavy winds started throwing clumps of earth & stones at him. Then he sat inside for a while & tap-tapped on his keyboard. The storm didn't stop. The storm, apparently, didn't want to stop.

Living in his own head, the old fellow couldn't often tell reality from what he wanted to believe was real. The storm was something real that had invaded his head. You can live most of you life in your own head. Love is the kindest kind of thing from the outside that gets in.

The old fellow's storm was the way he felt about someone he met in the real world whose smile had dazzled him. The storm could hurt him, he felt, but so far it had just been astonishing, swirling his life around. Too much to feel, too much to see, senses working overtime on overload, the storm in his head called love.

If he could, he would have made a radio show for his love's birthday. Since I can, I do. For the beautiful woman who makes a storm rage inside me just by existing. How could I not celebrate her birthday?

Preface To Magda's Birthday 2008: Why Is This Particular Birthday So Damn Special?

To answer that, I may need to employ verse. This is a song I've been working on for the past thirteen minutes called "High School Band":

  Met a girl from Poland, she was legally sweet
  I gave her my broom so she could sweep me off of my feet
  She took it as a chauvinist dig about how women
    should be the ones doing housework
  & punched me in the face for being a total motherfucking jerk.

I know, it doesn't scan yet, unless Bob Dylan were singing it, but it will once I add more profanity & set it to a totally awesome 1987 beat.

For those of you who think it's way too romantic for the likes of me, I will add that I intend to scream "Kill a cop! Cop a kill!" all through the song in a rad back-up mix-up that will play on a frequency which as well can be heard exclusively by Satanists & Christians afraid of Satanic messages.

All of this for the girl called Magda. Why? What is she? Is she some kind of anthropologist extraordinaire? Does she lay golden eggs? Does she use PowerPoint in ways that shame the common academic? Is this why she gets a Self Help Radio birthday show & no one else does?

Can anyone answer such questions? Or can such questions be satisfactorily responded to with another question? Yes & no, & also yes, but also here's something from the opera Carmen which I believe will further obscure what is truly my clearest of intentions:

La fleur que tu m'avais jetée
dans ma prison m'était restée,
flétrie et sèche, cette fleur
gardait toujours sa douce odeur;
et pendant des heures entières,
sur mes yeux, fermant mes paupières,
de cette odeur je m'enivrais
et dans la nuit je te voyais!

Do you see? Must you see?

Also, I lost a library book on the bus yesterday. If you find it, please get it back to me. I am sad about it.

Ten Berths Below

Someone told me something New Mexico. Someone else suggested something else West Virginia. Someone over there told me something over here Dramatis Personae. All this & nothing more! If & only if there aren't several things you need both off your chest & on your knees. I think we understand each other, South Dakota. If only we didn't have to spend the night in this hell-hole I call your life.

Mother father sister brother gene. How fastidious can you cancel out the last lasting vestige of your earliest unremembered memories? Don't try to bullshit a shitbuller. There's only one exit & that one's blue-balled by the Lord.

The only reason your rationale is crumbling like so much crumbly crumble cake is that you're too caught up in squabble with the rabble when you're too crabby to the cabbie. Look around you! It's as if someone made an entire world from Mary Tyler Moore's tears! You're going to break after all!

If there's therapy, then, my friend Ben, you know you can, within your ken, understand that men, now & then, lose, not win. Listen for example to a The Self Help Radio episode or two. Never you mind thematics - whether dysfunction in the family or hot pants in the cold wash, it forces no pills down the throat to keep you swimming. Just listen. Listen & be ill at ease.

Pony Rhode Island!

I Promised A Treat!

My pal Dick Dickenbock (who is kind of a weirdo) allowed me to let you listen to (if you want) & view (at the very least) his subbing of the popular KVRX show "The Heliocentric Hootenanny" which airs Thursday mornings from 7 to 9 am on (obviously) KVRX 91.7 fm & online at kvrx.org. His show, which was trying to fit the format that the normal (if you can call him that) host follows, is available for your listening pleasure at the selfhelpradio.net place. Please to enjoy.

Also, you know, this week's show will appear in a matter of hours. I should perhaps get some sleep.

Thanksagiven

Happy Thanksgiving! I think I may have some treats for you tomorrow. Stay tuned up.

Whither Dysfunctional Family Holiday 2008?

I mean, what am I, some sort of hypocrite, since I don't celebrate Thanksgiving & I don't go home to be with the family during this long ass weekend?

No, I am doing it for you. You suffer with the family. I will provide the soundtrack.

Silly.

Preface To Dysfunctional Family Holiday 2008: Painkillers Are Our Friends

Look at this remarkable website: http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/family/

It says this: "Our collection of Family Poems describe the special relationship between brothers and sisters, the love for ones [sic] mother or father, the love of a mother for her child, the love between a grandmother and grandfather for their children. Emotions range from the beautiful memories of childhood innocence to the horrible memories of childhood abuse." Oh fucking boy!

& sure enough, it begins. Apparently eschewing good taste for alphabetical order (I approve), the site has as its two top headings "Abandonment" & "Abortion." I should ask these guys to do my show this week!

About "abandonment": "Family is who we look to when we need help. We expect our parents to raise us, our grandparents to love us, and our brothers and sisters to always be there for us when the chips are down. They are our blood and we depend on that connection. When a family member doesn't live up to our expectations we feel abandoned. When a parent, grandparent or older brother or sister puts their needs in front of our own, we feel abandoned and alone. In such a case, we are likely to feel sad, alone and anger." Blah blah blah. Look to family when you need help! They're usually the cause of the problem. Next!

About "abortion": "Abortion Poems. Poems about abortion by Adults and Teens. Poems for Mothers who have had abortions. Poems on abortions and unwanted pregnancy. Poems by teens about abortion. Abortion will always raise strong emotions." & though there are only six poems (six! come on!) in that section, I have to appreciate this dedication, from the poem by Kira which has the immortal line "Abortion is a motherfucker": "This poem is dedicated for anyone who had a abortion and felt remorse afterwards."

I didn't find any poems about unwanted pregnancy, by the way. I shall write some!

I dedicate these poems to you, Self Help Radio listener. Read them to your family this weekend. Oh you know you wanna.

Happy Evolution Day!

Well, I'll be a monkey's nephew, if today isn't Evolution Day! On this day in 1859, Charles Darwin's seminal work "On The Origin Of Species" was first published. Early copies were naturally burned, & (not a lot of people know this) but early great sales were for fundamentalist bonfire circles, who were very happy to take a break from burning Voltaire's Candide for a while. I am happy to report that the fundamentalists then, like the religious today, refused to read the book at all. They were afraid Satan would fuck their brains with his hot, throbbing ideas. & they weren't wrong!

This has nothing at all to do with last week's Self Help Radio, which was all about stillness, & which is still waiting for you to listen to it, trembling imperceptibly, at selfhelpradio.net. Listen!

& happy Evolution Day! See you in hell!

My Heart Stood, Still

So I'm looking around for songs about "stillness" & I am continually faced with the idiomatic fact that the condition of stillness - the lack of of apparent absence of movement - which is asked for in a sentence like:

Damn it, Winston, stop wiggling around! Sit still!

- is a different word (though probably still related, since time & motion are interdependent) than that in a sentence like:

Winston won't stop wiggling! Still, if it means he's happy, he shouldn't sit.

Ack! Anathema to your average theme-oriented radio show! We want specifics, not vagueness! & what's this with cross-part-of-speech behavior? I know yesterday was Transgender Awareness Day, but should a part of speech be able to change its "orientation" with impunity?

Uh oh. I shouldn't have written that. The gerunds are going to be mighty irked. I don't know why I can't keep my yap shut when it comes to insulting grammar. Oh course they're P.C.! That's an abbreviation!

Well, never mind me & my impending lawsuits. Visit selfhelpradio.net tomorrow in the afternoon to listen to a celebration of stillness. It will be peaceful. Tranquil. Other nice words.

I can still promise that, right?

Extra! Extra! Read All About Self Help Radio Extra!

Yes, friends & sailors, it's that time again, the sort-of middle of the sort-of month wherein your faithful spoon-feeder descends on an uncollected mass of songs he's heard lately & emerges soiled but smelly with another Self Help Radio Extra mix.

Self Help Radio Extra is not supported by any unions, trade organizations, chambers of commerce, fraternal conspiracy organizations, record labels, radio lapels, lapel labels, nor elementary school principals, & for that reason we can freely choose what tickles what we call our "fancy" & also probably what you call our "fancy" even though I'm absolutely certain we mean two different things.

No matter! Self Help Radio Extra exists & that's enough for you. Go! Go listen to it now! If not, later! If not, earlier! Just enjoy!

Whither Stillness?

Shh. Can you hear that? Of course you can't. There's no breeze at all. The night. The night is perfectly still.

As is this blog. Shh.

Preface To Stillness: A Slight Flutter

Old school listeners of the old-skool Self Help Radio, when it was in the Wednesday 1 to 3pm slot, will not be surprised that I still keep up with the "Weekly Review" which happens weekly at harpers.org. (I have become a big fan of the magazine, & read it almost from cover-to-cover every month.) I used to read the Weekly Review on the air, for my & everyone's edification, & miss doing it from time-to-time, especially with news reports like this one, summarized in the Weekly Review thus:

A German shoplifter with no arms stole a 24-inch television. “It's hard to believe,” said a police officer, “that the sight of an armless man walking along with a giant TV clamped to his body did not get anyone's attention.”

That's just wonderful. However, the week's news wasn't great for every differently abled felon, as this report shows, summarized in the Weekly Review:

A man in a motorized wheelchair robbed a Space Coast Credit Union branch in Merritt Island, Florida, telling employees that he was rigged with explosives; police caught him ten minutes later and recovered the stolen money from his prosthetic leg.

Space Coast Credit Union? Or Space Ghost Credit Union? I wonder.

I just wanted to give a big ups to the Harper's website today. It's a lot of fun. & since I'm a subscribed, I have access to all their archives. Nyah!

Anyone Could Have Directed That Movie

MAN I am sleepy. But my teeth are clean. Or they were clean as of 1pm today. Now I've been chewing gum & drinking soda. But even so, they're cleaner than they were at 12:30pm today. I have the bag with the toothbrush & floss to prove it!

MAN it's been a hell of a day. I spent the morning talking to credit card people & then cable people. If you can call them people. I have to pretend they're people, though, as they know the mystical integers that control my life: the last four digits of my Social Security number. If anyone doubts that we're not one day going to be slaves & laborers for computer overseers, just mediate on the last four digits of your Social Security number. All will be revealed.

MAN it's weird that I keep saying "man." It sounds vaguely sexist. Was there ever a time when sexist was sexy? For women who believe that being hateful & condescending is manly, maybe? I wonder if that has more to do with their self-esteem or their fathers. But I don't wonder too much. It's just a passing thought into which I put very little thought. Still, I need to mix things up.

WOMAN but saying that seems odd. I think I'm going to break into the John Lennon song.

WOMAN I can hardly express my tender feelings & my thankfulness for showing me the meaning of successssssssssss.

Ah well. I've written in my blog. Dooby-dee-doo. Go listen to last week's Self Help Radio show, all about tides. It's just me, Squeaky, & music. How can it be wrong?

Strange Little People, Eating Their Own Cheese

The regular folks at the Urban Dictionary are usually of great help when I need to round out a show. But not this week! Because a "tide" (which the show will be about tomorrow) is a thing about which there is not a lot of confusion, & the idioms that you find with the word ("turning of the tide," "time nor tide waits for no one," even uses like "eventide") have to do with the regularly of the physical process. But how do they define it at the Urban Dictionary?

TIDE, n.
1. What most white Caucasian people smell like. Comes from the brand of laundry detergent they all use, Tide.
Ex. Yo this cracka smell like tide!
2. Good looking person (used chiefly in Scotland)
Ex. That fellow is well tide!"
3. a. To prepare a pile of cut marijuana for use in a blunt, or other smoking preference involving the tuck method or tucking; often done with a credit card.
b. To create a pile of cut weed with a credit card, often preceding a tuck.
(The act of "tiding" was given its name by the resemblence of an ocean tide going back and forth, this is the motion one uses (back and forth) when tiding.)

Okay, the last one is related to "tides." The first one too, though indirectly. Check this one out:

"Tides low, crabs on the rocks"
1) Associated with the verb "to leave." Used primarily when people want to leave a dull party.
Ex. Person A: This party sucks!
Person B: Yeah, tide's low, crabs are on the rocks!
2) An expression alerting others that the person's testicles are itchy & he's about to scratch them, generally used in public.

Just like there are a lot of songs about tidal waves, there are some modern idioms in the Urban Dictionary:

tidal wave, n. 1. A feeling of intense hunger that rushes over you.
Ex. Dude, I just got tidal waved, want to go to an Indian food buffet?
2. A woman's thong visible over the back of her pants.
3. The fat roll that goes up the back of a woman during sexual intercourse from behind.

I have no idea what meaning # 3 means.

But remember! Self Help Radio is new tomorrow afternoon! Visit us at selfhelpradio.net!

The Self Help Radio Email Archive Project: Submission Five

Still trying to charm the girls, I see. I miss writing these kinds of emails. I wrote this for a curly-headed blonde of German descent back in the summer of 1998. It did not end well. It was called:

YOU MAY ALREADY HAVE WON!!

Are you a CURLY-HEADED BLONDE of GERMAN descent? Do you often wish that PORNOGRAPHY were more ARTISTICAL? Do you LOOK BOTH WAYS before crossing your EYES & dotting your TEAS? Say, how much WOOD could a WOODCHUCK chuck at a guaranteed low wage & meager benefits?

If your answer is YES to all these questions (& 47 to the last one), then HAVE WE GOT A PRODUCT FOR YOU!!

First, put down that CHECKBOOK. Put away that ABACUS. Say goodbye to that shareware copy of TETRIS PLUS. Find some other place to store that IMMANUEL KANT reader. Clear your desk of those FISHER FAT-FREE GOLDEN ROAST LIGHTLY SALTED PEANUTS. Wash your hands of that LEFT-HANDED SCISSORS & GLUESTICK combination. Because your WILDEST DREAMS (as seen on TV) are about to come rushing out of your HEAD & into CYBERSPACE!!

Yes, DICKENBOCK INDUSTRIES, the same people who brought you the GLIB REMARK, the ASSHOLISH STARE & the INSOLENT INANE IDEALOGUE, is back with a PRODUCT so shiny it'll put a dent in your EYEBALL; a PRODUCT so tasty it'll make you wish you hadn't had BARBECUED RIBS for breakfast this morning; a PRODUCT so expensive that all three BUSH SONS would have to rob the UNITED STATES of a few billion more to put a DOWN PAYMENT on it; a PRODUCT so delightful it makes sitting in the BACKYARD with a HOSE & a KIDDIE POOL seem like a walk in COMPTON in the NUDE; a PRODUCT so passive-aggressive you'll feel like MOM & DAD never left the farm.

& YOU, , have automatically qualified to be in the ELIMINATION ROUND of the SEMIFINALS of the FIRST QUARTER TEST TRIALS. Send no money now. Or, hell, why not, send money now. You are almost certainly promised a place in the running. Certain restrictions apply. Offer not available to former video store clerks. Please see your lawyer for more details; if you cannot afford a lawyer, the court will appoint one for you.

BUT THERE'S MORE!

Your allowance will double! You'll be able to eat candy without rotting your teeth! You'll play piano like Liberace! You'll slim down to 3 pounds! You'll smell like a gerbil (a relatively clean gerbil, not one kept in a dirty cage utterly neglected by the three under-ten kids in the house). You'll learn more swear words than a Franciscan monk! You'll have enough money for the bus! AND MUCH MUCH MUCH MORE.

Send us your name, address, phone number, times when you & other members of your household are not at home, your measurements, an embarrassing photo, a bit of skin off the back of your neck (for DNA purposes), a sample of your handwriting (writing out "Cosy lummox gives smart squid who asks for job pen" a few times is fine; also, sign your name as you would on a check), your SAT score & your favorite recipe for oatmeal cookies (mm-mmm) to the address below, & wait for your package in the mail!

Oh, , this is indeed YOUR LUCKY DAY!

Whither Tides?

Oh crap! I didn't have time to write in my blog today! I can't explain why I'm doing a show about tides! No time! No time!

Gotta distract you somehow! I know! Watch this video about smelling vibrations!

& I'll see you tomorrow.

Preface To Tides: Spring Or Neap?

Today on the Self Help Radio blog (that's this place): a poem by little Georgie Snark, aged 7, sort of about tides:

There is no tide at the continental divide
Said the man to his bride
She thought he lied so she goodbyed
Though his eyes eventually dried he could not hide
His pride as he sighed
& looked on the bright side
With his future open wide
But his car did collide
With a tour guide in his stride
Though he could have made the auto slide
He took to long to decide
The victim was cast aside
& his safety was denied
The police asked the man why'd
He run the guide over & he replied
"I am like Jekyll & Hyde"
But the excuse he supplied was denied
& at the court where judges preside
It was implied that he would be tried
Where justice would be applied
But as if to deride
The criminal justice system's bona fides
He died.

As awful as that is, here's how I began this post before Georgie sent in his poem:

In conversation with a conservationist, I happened to overhear an overbearing person complaining about plain communication.

You dodged a bullet!

Now More Than Ever Before!

If you can believe it, Self Help Radio has entered the twentieth century - er, I mean, the twenty-first century - with guns blazing & shirtsleeves uprolled. Wait. Is it the twenty-first century yet? I couldn't throw away my 1987 Garfield calendar. That cat is fun-nee!

In any event, Self Help Radio has begun communicating on a more modern level. That's right! We've incorporated the latest improvements in telepathic slang & nanotechnological gesticulation to make every movement & utterance more meaningful than previously thought possible. Skeptical? Cynical? Cyclical? Have you not been paying attention? YOU'RE UNDERSTANDING ME NOW!

In the immortal words of Carol Burnett &/or Freddy Nietzsche, "The last thing at the end of the day is to say you're really fucking sorry about the first thing at the beginning of the next day." Actually, that's not either of them. I think I heard it on Smallville. Or maybe Californication. But that makes the point: we're hip to the happening network & pay cable shows! We are high def & low culture & there'll be no middle ground anymore - we come at you like geese at a cracker. No two ways about it. Idiomatic & hydrostatic. Problematic & slightly grammatical. Tables out, chairs in. No more puzzles - just problems!

We welcome you therefore on the journey that, if we had a lifetime, would have begun earlier. Since we needed time to get our bearings, learn to read, lose our virginity (we wish!), wait for the appropriate technology to be invented, buy a computer, find a radio station that wouldn't make us play crappy music, & stop being so afraid all the time (we wish!), we have a fraction of a lifetime. But it starts now! But what about last week's show? What about all the shows we've done in the last year? Well, visit them if you must, but don't get hung up. That was then, this is tomorrow. Now. Tomorrow now! Today!

Todaymorrow! Right now! & also later. It's a continual process. Morrowday! Something like that. We're working on it.

A Week Day Day Dreaming

What a week. I know, I haven't spent much time talking about Self Help Radio, but then, you haven't spent much time talking about Barack Obama. Or the election. Or people committing suicide by jumping off spaghetti bowls & then leaving notes for the president-elect. So I suppose we're even. Not! You owe me! You owe me big time!

I can talk about tomorrow's show today, however, & that sounds a little like a bumper or whatever you call those things that people play to hype something coming up. A teaser? A French tickler? A Barack Obama? Who knows. Anyway, I will - I promise! - finish the Indiepop Cs tomorrow. You have my word on it. Will I get to the Ds? No. Will I include bands that will make indiepop purists be all like, "Aw, man, the Cranes [or insert any other band name] ain't indiepop!" I will! Will I get a weird email from a person who's not really in a band & who in fact has only made recordings for his myspace page under a band's name complaining that I didn't include his band in "it's rightful place" in the Indiepop A To Zs? I don't imagine I will. Not again, anyway.

Listen! Listen at selfhelpradio.net! Listen in the afternoon! You won't be sorry. You may feel a little sick. But that's because you'll drink too much tonight. I am not responsible for that. Really I am not.

The Self Help Radio Email Archive Project: Submission Four

Trying to flirt, failing miserably, I make fun of some "Myths & Facts" about STDs-type handout. This email from September 1996!

MYTHS & FACTS ABOUT GARY'S EMAIL

MYTH: Gary's emails aren't serious, so there's no need to worry about them.

FACT: Gary's emails are usually easy to ignore. But that's the key, they *must* be ignored & only a hard-ass attitudinal chick can accurately notice the seriousness of Gary's emails & act accordingly. Email of Gary's that is allowed to go unignored can be dangerous. If its bacteria & harmful desires & ideas spread through the brain & into the vital organs, it can lead to a more severe condition, even possibly sexual contact.

MYTH: Drinking a lot of cranberry juice will counteract the affects of Gary's email.

FACT: While cranberry juice is tasty & leaves your lips all red & sticky, it cannot help you with Gary's email. Only antibiotics, taken as proscribed by a health care provider, & some serious attitude, available only through your self-respect & self-knowledge, can stop the effects of Gary's email.

MYTH: As soon as one of Gary's emails is read, its danger is gone.

FACT: Results of Gary's emails may disappear after the email is read & deleted, but the irritation of ideas & self-understanding (not to mention the back-handed flattery & the saccharin sweetness) may remain in the heart & brain for much longer. That's why it's important to take all of the medication prescribed, sleep with as many other boys as possible, smoke butts & hang out with tattooed & pierced ne'er-do-wells, & admire yourself in mirrors & windows, because although you may feel all right, the sick words that remain in your head can lead to a recurrence of the email's effects.

MYTH: If Gary is able to write such stuff, he may be intelligent (cute, witty, charming, etc.).

FACT: Gary is dumb & ugly. Like you first thought. Duh. Much of his material is a bad copy of things he's read or heard. Reading more, listening to more music, watching more movies, etc., will enable you to catch him in his plagiaristic ways.

MYTH: The flightless hummingbird can go for weeks without drinking any hard liquor, though usually that's because it's working & just doesn't have the time.

FACT: Well, actually, that's true.

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 17?

Who cares? BARACK OBAMA is the NEXT PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES!

I almost didn't come in to work today. What a magnificent moment in my country! What a remarkable thing to happen in my lifetime! It's a hell of a time to be alive.

Sigh.

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 17: Aw, Who'm I Kidding, I'm Paying Attention To The Election!

Damn it! Why couldn't I have slept all day! Polls won't be closing anywhere for hours, & the exit pollers are being more careful because they're afraid they'll get burned. Rats!

Can you believe Obama may well win this? Everyone is predicting victory, but I personally believe that if there's a way to steal an election, the Republicans will find it & do it. Not that I'm terribly partisan, but I find what Robert Kennedy Jr wrote about the 2004 election (& the current one) compelling, & of course the 2000 election was a fucking joke. So. The bets may be on Obama, but I hope people keep voting & I hope that he wins.

I'm quietly working on this week's show, but I can't wait for this election to be over. Egads! Gadzooks! Zounds! Zoiks! Sputter sput sput!

Please Vote!

This tiny blog, which gets an average of no readers per day (I don't count myself, but if I did, it really wouldn't affect the average) (as I am a non-person) (they got the joke, dumbass) (touchy!), still would feel remiss & non-citizen-like if it didn't contain this message:

Please vote tomorrow.

That's all. This blog would prefer you vote for the person that the person who writes this blog voted for (Barack Obama), but this blog would also just fucking LOVE to live in a country where a vast majority of its citizens voted. Who cared enough about the future of their communities, their cities, their states, their federal government, to vote for people they felt represented their views! Surely you'd like that too!

So please. Vote. Or the ghost of Molly Ivins will haunt you.

Or, who'm I kidding. I'd love the ghost of Molly Ivins to haunt me.

Still, vote!

Witch Finds Enlightenment

I hope everyone has a happy lolloween & is able to avoid the dangers of weird-tasting alcoholic drinks & diabetes this weekend. Self Help Radio exists as a public service to enhance & support your Halloween experience by having two shows available for lovers of both witchcraft & zombiecraft. Both are available at selfhelpradio.net. Please to enjoy.

Disclaimer: Self Help Radio does not worship Satan. Satan is, however, a fan of Self Help Radio.

Speaking of suffering, this week's Self Help Radio will help you find Enlightenment. Not The Enlightenment, although that would be a cool idea for a show. No, this week's show feature songs & talk about finding Enlightenment. Drugs are, as always, optional. Visit selfhelpradio.net in the afternoon tomorrow to listen. Afterwards, we'll hang in nirvana.

Have a fun weekend!

The Self Help Radio Email Archive Project: Submission Three

This is a parody of T S Eliot's "The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock" that I wrote in 1997 for a young lady (her name was in the title, but I've renamed it with something other than that, so it won't reflect on her) who, it turns out, hadn't read the original. It did not make her fall in love with me. We had an argument a couple of months later & never spoke again.

The crappy Italian at the beginning was done with something like Babelfish & I have no idea what I meant it to mean. Just nonsense phrases like "My dog is named Sparky" or something.

Enjoy!

-----

The Love Song Of L. Betty Butter

Che cosa vuole con me?
Capelli rosso mi spaventa.
Mi piacerebbe fare il bagno regolarmente.
Qualcuno ha preso il mio dolciumi.
Potrebbe essere il mio cane Sparky.
Per favore lasci io solo.

--

Let me go then, myself & I,
When the evening is sticking against the sky
Like butter & jelly on a cold piece of toast;
Let me go, through certain sodium-lamp-lit streets,
I'm wearing cleats,
Past restless guys with "will work for food" signs
& nothing but dirty thoughts on their minds;
Streets that annoy me like a leering clerk
Soon to be out-of-work
Who think they're asking the obvious question...
Look, don't ask me, 'What is it?'
Let me go & make my visit.

Into the room the toyboys come & go
Talking of Michael Jackson-o

The yellow smog that coats & soothes my window panes,
Yellow cigarette smoke that gets its jollies on my window panes,
Licked its tongue up against my shower curtain,
Gargled the water that ran down my drain,
Let fall upon its back dust from my ceiling fan,
Ran out the open door, tripped into a clumsy leap,
& seeing that it was a warmish January night,
Lay outside my bedroom door & fell asleep.

For that yellow smog that shuffles down the street
Rubbing my back like an irritating boyfriend;
I have no time, I have no time
To wash my face to face the unwashed faces that I meet;
I have no time to murder or create,
No time for all the works & days of hands
That lift & drop their drinks upon my plate;
No time for me, no time for me,
No time for these exasperating repetitions
Or these ridiculous rhymes & revisions,
Before a city bus nearly runs over me.

In the room the frat boys come & go
Talking of Dennis Rodman-o.

& indeed I have no fucking time
To wonder, 'Do I care?' & 'Do I really care?'
No time to turn back & walk up the stairs,
With a rip in my brand new jeans there -
(Someone'll say: 'I see London, I see France...')
My ratty coat, some of this morning's breakfast still on my pants,
My scarf bold & ugly, my school bag full of ants --
(Someone'll say: 'You look stupid when you dance.')
Do I care
About the universe?
I waste a minute (I have no goddamned time)
With decisions & revisions that I will never have time to reverse.

For, let's face it, I've known them all along -
Known the scumbags, dragworms, pretty boys, might-have-beens,
I have measured out my life with skanky men;
I know the voices aching with a lusty croak
Beneath the music of a noisy bar.
So how should I presume?

& I've known their eyes, known them all along --
The shady redness, the dorky color contacts,
& when I get those color contacts out,
When I have accidentally sat on them & crushed them,
& he's weeping like a girl on my bed,
Then how should I begin
To get that crybaby butthead out of my house?
& how should I presume?

& I've known the arms already, known them all along --
Arms tattooed with some other chick's name
(But in the lamplight, misspelled by a nearby flame!)
Is it his underarm smell
That makes me feel like hell?
Arms that grope under my shirt, & into my pants.
& should I then presume?
Or maybe call the cops?

* * * * *

Shall I say, I have stumbled at dusk on lamplit streets
& winced at the lame & tedious come-ons
Of lonely men in tee shirts, leaning out of car windows?

I wish I had a pair of ragged claws
To run across their smirking faces.

* * * * *

& the afternoon, the evening, I get nothing done!
I dream of long fingers,
Sleepy...tired...desire lingers,
I stretch out on the floor, no one beside me.
Should I, after kicking a jerk in his family treasure,
Allow myself a guilty moment of self-pleasure?
But though I have tried & tried, until I wept,
Though I have seen an ex-boyfriend's polaroids of me on the Internet,
I'm no porno babe -- I know what's the matter;
I have seen the options that come in my direction,
I've seen the eternal Footman watch me dress with an erection,
& in short, I was pissed off.

Let's face it, it's not worth it, after all,
After the burgers, dutch treat, & malt liquor,
Among his bar-buddies & their girlfriends all a-snicker,
It just wasn't worth while,
To have faked my friendliness & my smile,
To have gotten so obnoxiously smashed
& began smashing all their empty faces,
Saying, 'I am Jesus, come back like I said,
Come back to show you all, I will show you all' -
If one guy, puking on the pillow by his head,
Should say; 'That chick's not funny at all.
She's not funny at all.'

& let's face it, it wasn't worth while, after all,
Not a bit worth while after all,
After the sunsets & magazines & the city working on the street,
After the phone calls, after the email, after the 'I left my coat at
your place, I can get it at four...'
& this, & so much more? --
Are you understanding just what I mean?
As if my life were just nerves in patterns on a movie screen;
It would simply not have been worth while,
If some guy, getting his coat at four
& settling down on my sofa, arms wide, should say:
'You're a funny chick, after all.
You're pretty funny, after all.'

* * * * *

Fuck this! I was meant to be Lady Macbeth, I know I was;
Not a cute little coed, one that'll do
To stand next to a leading man, steal a scene or two,
Be his pillar, his 'better half'; like some easy, squirmy fool,
All smiles, glad he still wants to sleep in the same bed with me,
Pie-making, Redbook-reading, Oprah watching & shy;
Happy for the 'Wives' Night Out,' but glad, at times, to cancel,
At times, I mean, pretty pathetic --
Almost exactly, at times, the average American girl.

I grow bitter, I grow strong...
I'll wear the bottoms of my trousers long.

Should I get my hair cut tomorrow? Do I want to eat this peach?
I want to make my own clothing, loose & flowing, & walk along the beach.
I want to hear the mermaids singing, each to each.

I really think that they'll sing like me.

I can see them riding seaward on the waves
Their red hair (why not?) like the white hair of the waves blown back
As the wind blows the water white & black.

I will then linger in the chambers of the sea
With sea-boys wreathed with seaweed red & brown
& if other human voices try to find me, then, they'll drown.

Whither Enlightenment?

The Most Unenlightened Person On Earth was enjoying a half-pint of ice cream while having a good portion of his life's happy memories erased by watching a crappy sitcom on cable television. Of course, he had seen this same episode several times before, so he was, in a sense, writing over the happy memories of seeing the episode the third time, but, since he never memorized anything unless he absolutely had to - telephone numbers, that Wordsworth poem in tenth grade, all the lyrics to Jay-Z's "99 Problems" - that particular section of his brain, softened & spongy from disuse, carelessly slopped the new short-term memories over other saved memories, rather than putting them in a neural processing queue, as the standard cranial model tends to do.

Halfway through the sitcom, the Most Unenlightened Person On Earth began experiencing gastric discomfort because he had eaten, for the last two weeks, at nothing but American fast food joints. Due to their unregulated status, the "restaurants," as they were misleadingly known, regularly served their patrons at rather low cost food that was as close to being spoiled, rotted, rancid, unwashed, inedible as legally possible, if the laws about the food were enforced, which of course they weren't. The Most Unenlightened Person On Earth was however used to food poisoning & also used to spending long hours on the toilet, where he passed his time & the indigestible portions of his most recent meal (an astonishing percentage of it) reading magazines with pictures of scantily-clad women in them & old Stephen King books he had enjoyed when he was younger.

He hadn't visited a doctor, outside of an emergency room visit last summer, in many years. He did not know that he had a significant E. Coli infection, that his brain harbored something similar to the mad cow virus, that he had Type II Diabetes, & that his heart was beating irregularly due to his growing weight. He drank some antacid to settle his stomach, smoked a joint, ate some popcorn & a baloney sandwich, & fell asleep masturbating to a commercial for a video series in which obviously sleazy men ask obviously inebriated women to show the camera their breasts.

The next morning, the Most Unenlightened Person On Earth woke after a more-than-microscopically small black hole had passed through the center of the earth, &, on its way back into space, at an unthinkable speed & smallness, had ever-so-slightly travelled the length of his body & broke down its cellular structure along the way. He gasped his last gasp as the sunlight seeped in through shuttered windows, & the last thing the Most Unenlightened Person On Earth saw was blood behind his eyes & a night's worth of indulgence littering his coffee table.

& he was not Enlightened.

Preface To Enlightenment: A Cautionary Tale

There was once a terrible man who had sores everywhere, even on his tongue. He lived alone in a perfectly square house that was painted the color of scabs. His undergrown yard refused to even support dirt or stones. Broken cast-off mechanical parts littered poisoned ground like fossils of an extinct robot species. He was also a hateful fuck, with never a kind word to anyone & more grousing & grumbling than small talk. Scary, nasty, disgusting, foul, smelly, ill-tempered, disease-ridden, shunned, loathed, as sinned against as sinning.

& he was the neighborhood's Bodhisattva.

What the hell? It's true! No one could possibly be enlightened because this motherfucker was too unpleasant to be around. But what about compassion? What about charity? This was obviously some kind of loophole. Something about his presence cast a pall over everyone else's attempts to escape the cycle of suffering & rebirth. For someone who was supposed to be helping out, he turned out to be a real douchebag.

This happened, of course, a very long time ago in a place not unlike our own but very different. The rules were more or less the same & the path then, as now, had eight folds, like a complicated record album for stoners in the sixties. Still, the lesson is more or less unclear - the questions were, as always, never entirely answered to anyone's satisfaction.

& oh yes, that hairy, pot-bellied Bodhisattva died & attained Nirvana. The rest of the townsfolk, though, died of the same plague he was doubtless carrying around with him, & they had to do it all the fuck over again.

Halloween, My Halloween

I have been invited to a Halloween party on Friday. I know what you're thinking. What! Someone actually invited Gary to a Halloween party!?! Technically, it's not true. I have still not been invited to a party ever. My record remains smirched. Technically I am to go with my girlfriend, who likes me despite the fact that I am no fun at parties & who knows where to find me when I am curled up in a ball weeping & pouring bourbon into my wounds.

I know what you're thinking. What! Gary has a girlfriend!?! Let's not go there.

The point of writing this is not to amaze you with some weird knowledge that someone actually wants me at their party. It's that it's a Halloween party & I have to dress up as something. But what? Everyone knows my standard Halloween get-up: "Dude Who Doesn't Dress Up For Halloween." But that might mean I'm recognized, which would eventually lead to me being dragged outside & beaten repeatedly with the floated keg. I don't want that. The place that rented the keg doesn't want that. My doctor wants that, because he really, really wants to take the family skiing this winter. But really, I don't want that.

What should I go as? Should the costume be subtle, like "sensitive poet dressed as a Byzantine patriarch from the Middle Ages"? Or something Kirby-esque, like Galactus? Or something cute, like a bunny or bear? I have no idea. I'm not good at it. Frankly, I'm surprised I remember to dress myself in the morning. & that's in more or less regular clothing.

Can you help? If not, can you stop helping? If not that, can you do what I'm doing right now & listen to this year's Self Help Radio Halloween show, which is all about witches?

Witches! That's it! I'll go as Paul Lynde!

Halloween, A Week Early

It has been a long week, I'll grant you. You may be suffering from Election Fatigue. You may have worked on a podcast, a radio show, & a mix for your friends. You may have taken a test after a bomb scare. You may have drank a little too much just so you you could enjoy Smallville like the people it's written for. You may have been beaten up by transients at a bus stop because you made snide comments about their terrible impersonation of Keith Olbermann. You may have accidentally woken up in the middle of the night with a knife to your girlfriend's throat screaming something about James Spader & post-operative trans-sexual pirates. You may have done all these things, you may have done none of these things. It's been a really goddamn long week, that's all I'm saying.

Today I was listening to songs about witches & getting all spooky on the bus ride. People were mad - the cauldron was still hot - but I sat it on top of a wheelchair, & bus drivers absolutely love operating that wheelchair lifter-upper thingie, so I was allowed aboard. I did have to pay fare for the cauldron, though. That was weird. Luckily I had just added the "eye of toad of newt of bat" so the whole bus soon smelled like ass. I made some friends today, my friends. I made some friends today.

The upshot of this downward spiral is that tomorrow, parked near this very space where you read, will be this year's awesome Self Help Radio Halloween Show, which is all about witches. Which witches? Sandwiches? No! Witches that cast spells & cackle & cruelly use their potent femininity to emasculate the men who foolishly disregard their true power. Kind of like a fourth grade teacher, now that I think about. Or at least like my fourth grade teacher. Mrs. Harris, I wonder if our suspicions that you drank the blood of migrant workers was true?

Do visit selfhelpradio.net & enjoy a Halloween treat. & make sure you listen to last year's zombie show while you're there - I'll keep it up only one more week!

Have a good weekend. Stop dreaming about James Spader! He's so not worth it.

Yes he is. No he isn't.

Agh!

October Surprise!

Okay, it's not really a surprise, but I did get the month right, & it's the right time of the month for this month's Self Help Radio Extra! But, you say, what is there "extra" about this Self Help Radio Extra? Is there extra cheese? Do I get extra bonus points (apart from the regular points I get with regular Self Help Radio)? Is Self Help Radio Extra extra filling without all those extra calories? Is Self Help Radio Extra like a super-sized version of the show?

No. What it is is a mix of songs I've been listening to approximately the length of one CD (I know, no one uses CDs any more, but I need some sort of framework or else I'll just play four hundred songs in a row) mixed especially by me for your listening pleasure. Unlike the regular Self Help Radio, Self Help Radio Extra has no Gary-voice, no Gary-commentary, & only a slightly Gary-ish touch usually around the beginning. The rest is Gary behind the scenes, playing songs I hope you like. A mix of new & old indie. Stuff like that.

Self Help Radio Extra. For you. Get some.

Whither Witches?

I know it's considered pejorative to use the word "witch" these days when referring to a deeply misunderstood & roundly persecuted group of people (most of whom, of course, were never witches, just people - predominantly women - scapegoated because they were on the fringes of society). I am not a religious person, nor do I believe anything supernatural, so I not only can't feel that even if someone were called a "witch" that they either had super powers or they were somehow offensive to a belief system that called her or him a "heretic." In the same way that I did a Halloween show about zombies last year & was in no way casting aspersions on the bloodthirsty dead, so too this year I am playing with a fictional idea, like the spell-caster who cackles with her sisters about Macbeth's fate or who pals around with a friendly dead kid.

I mean, come on! Human beings have killed & continue to kill thousands of folks because they imagine they are witches! How could I celebrate that? Shame on you for even thinking that!

Having secured myself from all possible criticism from my large Wiccan fan base (hi Mom!), I just want to have fun in a secular, ridiculous Halloween-y manner. One year I did vampires, the next I did zombies, this year it's witches. Next year, when people have written enough songs about Sarah Palin, I can do a really, really scary Halloween show. But for this year, it's witches.

But I'll definitely talk about witch hunts & witch trials & the butt-ugly ignorance that causes people to burn people alive, especially when they know they're not guilty, as surely some of the Inquisitioners & sober townsfolk who passed ridiculous judgments in those days did. & I'll also tell you some easy-to-follow, approved-by-Martha-Stewart spells you can cast to get you through these troubling economic times. They won't work, of course, but they're cheaper & more healthy than my current solution, which is to drink myself blind while reading as many articles as possible about it online. My liver hurts. Also, my brain.

Halloween comes on Saturday this year! On Self Help Radio! & it's all about witches!