Don't Make Fun Of Online Gaming, Not In My Presence, Mister Ma'am

Once upon a time
There was a lonely haiku
Who died of neglect

There's a group of poets out there - they know who they are - who think they can call a poem by a defined term - like haiku, or sonnet, or villanelle - even if they're not following the rules. They think they're awful cool.

If they were really cool, they'd write (or one of them would write, proving that she or he was cooler than the rest of them) a book of poems of all the different kinds of poetry. There's probably more than what's on that list as well. Some really obscure shit. Yeah!

The reason that they don't, of course, is the same reason that they write a poem that looks like this:

Gentle evening rain in air
Washed the weary sun setting clean
Like a washed face over a basin
Getting ready to sleep

& call it a haiku - it's because they're lazy.

Lazy can be revolutionary, though. So perhaps they're cool after all.

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Eight

The difference between a bad joke & a good joke is not something I - & I am not a comedian - or even, some would doubtless say, very funny - it's not something I feel qualified or equipped to discuss. I only focus on this A Joke A Day series because they're just so horribly unfunny that the most easily tickled must scratch their heads in befuddlement just trying to grasp these shabby attempts at humor.

But if, let's say, the difference between how good a joke is received is in the telling, the fine lackadaisical editors (let's assume they exist) must appreciate that the success or failure of their A Joke A Day jokes would benefit from their presentation. As I've mentioned before, there is no evidence - none whatsoever - that there is even the most rudimentary attempt at a basic rewrite of submitted jokes. Someone - possibly even an automated computer program, which looks for keywords like racial epithets & profanity - glosses over them, makes sure they look a little like a joke, safely sanitized, & then rubber-stamp them.

Or else how explain Saturday's A Joke A Day? I reprint it exactly as I received it:

Steve lived in Stated Island, NY and worked in Manhattan. He had to take the ferry home every night. One evening, he got sown to the ferry and found there was a wait for the next boat, so Steve decided to stop at a nearby tavern. Before long he was felling no pain. When he got back to the ferry slip, the ferryboat was just eight feet from the dock.

Steve. Afraid of missing this one and being late for dinner, took a running leap and landed right on the deck of the boat. “How did you like that jump, buddy?” said a proud Steve to a deck hand. “It was great,” said the sailor. “But why didn’t you wait? We were just pulling in!”

I'm not sure if the joke is funny or not. I couldn't get past the glaring spelling mistakes & the weird one-word sentence at the beginning of the second paragraph.

Don't the A Joke A Day people know there are recently-graduated English majors out there who would gladly take a shitty job for little pay with their company? That they could easily edit a joke like this?

Astounding.

Confusion Is Not Sexy

You know what's confusing? Doing a radio show about confusion & then returning home to put most everything you own into boxes that very same say & then, even later, watching strong men - men you've paid - put them in a giant truck & take them somewhere else.

Also, waking up the next day in a different place than where you previously woke up, & finding those selfsame boxes you packed before suddenly filled with tapioca pudding & grief. Then the yellowjackets attack!

That's pretty confusing. Self Help Radio this week confused itself, too. You can join in on the perplexity if you're so inclined. The show is available now at self help radio dot net. So as not to confuse you further, I've broken the show into two parts. Though still confusing, the parts do have certain songs played during their duration - I've listed those below. Click here: part one &/or part two. Part three is only available in outer space.

(part one)

"Confusion" Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry _Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry Sing_
"Confused" Paul Gayten _Gettin' Funky: The Birth Of New Orleans R & B_
"Confused" Dean Martin _Memories Are Made Of This_

"My Confusion" The Elite _Fort Worth Teen Scene Vol. 2_
"Confusion" Randy & The Rest _Fuzz, Flaykes, & Shakes, Vol. 6: Come On In To My World_
"A Whole Lot Of Confusion" The Ethics _Trip In Tyme, Volume 2_
"Confusion All Day" The Petards _Electrick Loosers # 3 (The Rheingold Rampage 1964-1970)_
"Confusion" Thee Mighty Caesars _Surely They Were The Sons Of God_
"State Of Confusion" The Kinks _State Of Confusion_

"Confusion" Lee Dorsey _People Sure Act Funny_
"Ball Of Confusion" The Temptations _Emperors Of Soul_
"Confusion" Chocolate Milk _Action Speaks Louder Than Words_

(part two)

"World Of Confusion" Sylvan White _Africans Unite_

"Confusion" New Order _Substance_
"Get Confused" Fischerspooner _Odyssey_
"People, You Can Confuse" Adult. _Anxiety Always_
"Dazed & Confused" Sofia _Search & Destroy_

"Confusion Fog" Meat Puppets _Mirage_
"Confusion" Silver Apples _Contact_
"Confusion" Sparks _Big Beat_
"I'm So Confused" Jonathan Richman _I'm So Confused_

Moved into a new house today

Had a wonderful show this morning.

Will post it tomorrow.

Maybe it will prove me wrong.

Apologies but I got to see most everything I own taken from one place to another.

In boxes.

I do enjoy writing as though I am writing on postcards.

Man am I tired.

Tomorrow then.

Tomorrow.

Whither Confusion?

You know what's confusing? Spending a day packing because after your Monday Morning radio show you're moving into a brand new house!

Well, not brand new. New to you, though!

That's a lot of confusion. You forget to write in your blog & everything!

Also, you use a lot of exclamation points. When you're confused.

You're not too confused to mention that Monday morning at 7:30 sharpish you'll be on the radio doing your Self Help Radio show about confusion, though. That's at 88.1 fm on the dial in Lexington & online at WRFL dot fm.

You hope the day's not so confusing you can't put it online later at self help radio dot net. But you can't make any promises either.

Wait. Who are you? What am I saying? I'm so confused.

Preface To Confusion: Humid Pub Diagram

Humid Pub Diagram is a natural science presentation prepared by the children of P.S. 4 To The 8th Power from downtown You-Know-Where. While we the undersigned understand that children should not be allowed in any drinking establishment, we did make sure they had no fake IDs and shook each other's hands for a job well done.

Most of the children, it should be noted, had no concept of "death" & only a limited concept of "forever." This is why the choice of magic markers is so important to today's "education" crowd. But the children got lost in the sad, milling crowd of laid-off teachers and we feared for their - & our - safety.

There were too many butterflies & not enough nets, which (it turns out) suited the butterflies fine. Most of the children has enough sense not to stick the fluttering insects in their mouths. Oh, but not Charles! Charles was exhibiting the same traits that serial killers do in television shows. Oh that Charles!

The judges were on loan from different organizations - half from the Miss Sarasota Beauty Pageant, half from the National Science Foundation. While they found the children adorable, it is not hyperbole to say that their poster presentations were shabby, amateurish, and often utterly illegible. Two judges quit in protest!

As the survey ceased & the parents were released from lock-up, two patterns quickly emerged. The first suggested that alcoholic children managed to be only slightly more delightful than alcoholic adults. The second showed with some certainty that humid pubs are never desirable, not even in the driest of climates.

Guru

Have I talked about Sam Harris before? I think the guy's amazing. Here he is answering questions in the second installment of the series "Ask Sam Harris Anything." I don't know what I'd ask him. Actually I do. But I won't ask it here.

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Seven

I confess I didn't read many of the A Joke A Day jokes this week. I may be experiencing a kind of burnout. A couple of them were a little longish, so I just pasted them into a file to access them when I wrote about them, & read maybe the first couple of lines. Half of them were short riddles or one-liners, about as funny as you'd expect. One of them was one of those lists that begins "You know you're a fill-in-the-blank when..." that appears to have been recycled from 1995. But here's one of the long ones I didn't read; enjoy it for the first time with me, will you?

An Accident Report

I am writing in response to your request for “additional information.” In block number 30 of the accident report form, I put “poor planning” as the cause for my accident. You said in your last letter that I should explain more fully. I trust that the following detail will be sufficient.

I am an amateur radio operator. On the day of the accident, I was working alone on the top section of my new 80-foot antenna tower. When I completed my work, I discovered that I had, over the course of several trips up the tower, brought about 300 lbs. of tools and spare hardware. Rather than carry the now unneeded tools and materials down by hand, I decided to lower the items in a small barrel by using a pulley, which fortunately was attached to the pole at the tip of the tower. Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the top of the tower and loaded the tools and materials into the barrel. Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to insure a slow descent of the 300 lbs. of tools.

You will note in block number 11 of the accident report form that I weigh 155 lbs. Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the tower. In the vicinity of the 40-foot level, I met the barrel coming down. This explains my fractured skull and broken clavicle.

Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley. Fortunately by this time I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold tightly on the rope in spite of the pain. At about the same time however, the barrel hit the ground. The bottom fell out of the barrel. Devoid of the weight of the tools, the barrel now weighed 20 pounds.
I refer you again to my weight in block number 11. As you might guess, I began a rapid descent down the side of the tower. In the vicinity of the 40-foot level, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles and the lacerations or my legs and lower body.

The encounter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of tools, and fortunately only three vertebras were cracked. I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on the tools in pain, unable to stand, and watching the empty barrel 80 feet above me, I again lost my presence of mind.

I let go of the rope…

Is that a joke, or is someone reporting the blow-by-blow of a slapstick scene from a silent movie? How odd.

I felt quite guilty having wasted you time with that strangely detailed attempt at some kind of humor, so I will make matters worse by reprinting yesterday's A Joke A Day, which is shorter, but which I also didn't read. You can go at anytime, you know.

Little Johnny comes downstairs crying.

His mother asked, “What’s the matter now?”

“Dad was hanging pictures, and just hit his thumb with hammer,” said little Johnny through his tears.

“That’s not so serious,” soothed his mother. “I know you are upset, but a big boy like you shouldn’t cry at something like that. Why didn’t you just laugh?

“I did!” sobbed Johnny.

To me, the funniest thing about this joke is not the predictable punchline, but it's this line:

His mother asked, “What’s the matter now?”

I love the implication that Johnny is such a whiny little shit that his mother's first reaction, when he shows up in tears before her, is to ask, "What's the matter NOW?"

At least that's how I read it. That's funny!

Signs Of Following

Self Help Radio today featured the theme "follow me" in which a lowly deejay made a desperate attempt to rally a group of like-minded folks to his cause!

Er. Not really. It was mainly a show about "following," with an expert reading (from a book about leadership) on how to be a good follower, & also a brief discussion of when following goes bad, which is called by law enforcement professionals everywhere by the trademarked name of "stalking."

The show - which has few followers - is available on the following website: self help radio dot net. I split the show in two the better to follow you: part one is here, & part two is here. Following this paragraph & a closing, there are two related lists containing the songs played in each part. I hope you are following this!

(part one)
"Follow Me" Gainors _The Best Of Red Top Records_
"Follow Me" Lyme & Cybelle _Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, Vol. 3_
"(Hey Babe) Follow Me" Grumbleweeds _The Electric Asylum, Vol. 3_

"Follow Me" The Fruit Machine _Circus Days UK Pop-Sike Obscurities 1966-1970_
"Follow Me Home" Crumb _Evenings & Weekends_
"Follow Me Away" Jasmine Minks _Another Age_
"Follow Me Follow" The Idle Race _Back To The Story_
"Follow Me" Jumprope _Just For A Day_
"Follow Me" The Softies _It's Love_

"Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" Bob Dylan _Biograph_
"You're Following Me" Perry Como _The Essential 60's Singles Collection_
"I Will Follow Him" Little Peggy March _The Very Best Of Little Peggy March: The Essential Singles Collection 1962-1968_
"Being Followed" Eugene Mirman _The Absurd Nightclub Comedy Of Eugene Mirman_

(part two)
"I Will Follow" U2 _Boy_
"The Follower" PragVEC _PragVEC_
"Following Her Around" Sprites _Starlings, Spiders, Tigers & Sprites_

"I'm Following You" Jimmie Noone _1929-1930_
"You I'll Be Following" Love _Love_
"Following" The Bangles _Different Light_
"Following You" Chumbawamba _Un_
"Follow Me Into The Hills" Kathryn Calder _Are You My Mother?_

"Dedicated Follower Of Fashion" The Kinks _Greatest Hits_
"My Love Will Follow Me" Vivian Girls _My Love Will Follow Me_
"Follow" Eric's Trip _Love Tara_
"Of All The Lost Followers" Department S _Is Vic There?_

Whither Follow Me?

There are three kinds of people:

The leader leads. The follower follows. The loner is alone.

There are maybe more kinds of people:

The sneak pretends to be one of the above but is really another, though mostly a sneak. The fool thinks he or she is one category he or she finds "superior" or "better" but really, it turns out, is exactly what he or she fears most. The hypocrite is just a hypocrite, of course.

There are even more kinds of people:

The dreamer forgot to wake up to be put into the above category. The junkie was probably one of the above, but is now somewhere enjoying some grade-A Afghani heroin. The blogger is mainly a follower but spends a lot of time writing about different kinds of people in a mad attempt to be relevant.

There are even different kinds of radio shows:

The commercial radio show is created by robots who are fed by dollars & sadness. The non-commercial radio show is made with the actual blood of its programmer, unless it's a non-commercial public radio show, in which case it's the blood of that guy who does Prairie Home Companion mixed with genetically modified blood from Archer Daniels Midland.

Self Help Radio pretends to be a loner but actually is a devout follower of the great WRFL. You can listen to the Self Help Radio show entitled "follow me" tomorrow morning at 7:30 am on that station, which is at 88.1 fm on the dial in Lexington, & is online at wrfl dot fm all over the world. If you miss it, you can listen later at self help radio dot net.

Did you follow all of that?

Preface To Follow Me: Don't Follow Me To Cincinnati

Do you remember trying to learn how to spell stupid English words that didn't sound like they were spelled? If you didn't, ignore this. If you did, well, you can ignore this, too, but you might sympathize with my dumbass recollections.

I remember having to figure out - not with mnemonics, not exactly - simple ways to spell words correctly when I was a kid. For example, "Mississippi" was sung in a kind of sing-song in my head that probably owes something to the Mickey Mouse Club theme. Words like "Wednesday" & "friend" were mis-pronounced in my head so that I could remember how they were spelled - wed-NES- day, or FRY-end. (That "i before e" rule came later, & was mainly helpful for words like "ceiling.") Methods like that meant that I had to remember not to pronounce them the way I said them in my head.

Worse still were the words that I mispronounced continually until some kind soul - usually but not always a teacher, who was expected to do so, but surprisingly often it was something impersonal, like a song or a television program - corrected me. I remember that I pronounced "metropolis" - capitalized, the home of Superman - as "met-ro-pol-is" rather than "me-trop-O-lis" until I saw the first Superman movie. I was also convinced that the Yo-sim-i-tee Sam in the cartoons was different than the Yo-suh-might Sam in the comics - until my sister I think told me I was stupid & I was able to see how "Yosemite" could be pronounced the proper way.

I am thinking about this because, now that I live just about an hour away from Cincinnati, & every damn time I try to spell Cincinnati, the spell-check reminds me that it has two ns & only one t, not the other way around. & as I am going to Cincinnati, & I wanted to write about it, I am being forced to correct that mistake over & over during this post.

The poor schoolchildren trying to remember how to spell this city they live in! I think there is probably a sizable portion of Cincinnati who just can't spell Cincinatti, though Cincinati is the city they've lived in all their lives. Cincinnati, not Sinsinatti.

Building Up A New Home

(The title is a Shriekback reference.)

I am going to be busy today because yesterday the wife & I signed papers to buy a house here in Lexington. As a friend on Facebook said, "I guess you're going to stay." Yes, we are.

We're officially moving in after my show a week after next so there should be no interruption of the shabby, last-minute-feel of Self Help Radio. I just wanted to say hooray!

I'll let you know when we have our first house party.

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Six

It was not a loquacious week for the A Joke A Day crowd. The shortest "joke" was only twenty-three words long, while the longest was thrice that at seventy-six words long - the seven "jokes" averaged thirty-six words in total, which meant they were basically either one-liners or smart-ass responses. I am not an accountant, of course, though I do take a little pride in today's America that I know basic math (when so few truly do). I also know that math may have little to do with what's funny, even if what's funny sometimes follows a formula. I merely mention this because it seemed to me that the A Joke A Day crowd were being weirdly economical with their clumsy stabs at humor this week.

Here's their shortest "joke," which was probably stolen from an ex-Saturday Night Live performer's stand-up:

You know you're getting old when your best friend tells you he's having an affair & you want to know if it's catered.

Ho hum. The others just as dull, although probably guaranteed to make the average twelve-year-old giggle.

My favorite amused me because it reminded me... Well, here, here's the joke:

A customer sent an order to a distributor for a large amount of goods totaling a great deal of money.

The distributor noticed that the previous bill hadn't been paid, so he asked his collections manager to leave a voice-mail for them saying, "We can't ship your new order until you pay for the last one."

The next day the collections manager received a collect phone call, "Please cancel the order. We can't wait that long."

I don't really understand the need to add the collections manager to the joke; the distributor could have easily made the phone call & streamlined it somewhat (also, since this is the longest joke of the week, it could really have brought their average down) (since it seemed like brevity was the soul of their awkward stabs at wit this week).

However, I like this joke because it reminds me of a wonderful Marx Brothers routine from Animal Crackers. The script in detail is here:

http://www.marx-brothers.org/whyaduck/info/movies/scenes/ravelli.htm

But in particular it's this exchange, with Chico being Ravelli & of course Groucho being the legendary Captain Spaulding (Mrs. Rittenhouse is Margaret Dumont):

Mrs. Rittenhouse: You are one of the musicians? But you were not due until tomorrow.
Ravelli: Couldn't come tomorrow, that's too quick.
Spaulding: Say, you're lucky they didn't come yesterday!
Ravelli: We were busy yesterday, but we charge just the same.
Spaulding: This is better than exploring! What do you fellows get an hour?
Ravelli: Oh, for playing we getta ten dollars an hour.
Spaulding: I see... What do you get for not playing?
Ravelli: Twelve dollars an hour.
Spaulding: Well, clip me off a piece of that.
Ravelli: Now, for rehearsing we make special rate. Thatsa fifteen dollars an hour.
Spaulding: That's for rehearsing?
Ravelli: Thatsa for rehearsing.
Spaulding: And what do you get for not rehearsing?
Ravelli: You couldn't afford it... Heh... You see, if we don't rehearse, we don't play... And if we don't play... That runs into money.(*)

You can see the resemblance. Chico Marx would cancel an order because he knew he couldn't wait the length of time it would take for him to pay the previous order. But, come to think of it, he'd probably find a way to get them to send him the order even though he hadn't paid. He was pretty smart for a dumb fellow.

(*) If you haven't seen the movie, you should keep reading past this. The punfest that follows is amazing.

How The Other Half A Show Lives

"Half a show is better than none" - proverb uttered by someone who never heard Self Help Radio.

Look, don't go off half-cocked. I have half a mind to tell you what I think, if only I weren't half in the bag. Or a half-hearted half-wit. Look, if you give me half a chance, I will prove to you that getting there is half the fun. Though my better half tells me the show is half-baked.

Both halves of the Self Help Radio "half a show" are now available at self help radio dot net. Half number first is right here while the second half is sitting here. The two halves have been fleshed out below.

Is the show half empty or half full? It depends on your attitude, dude.

(half one)

"Half As Much" Hank Williams _The Complete Hank Williams_
"You Can't Go Halfway (& Get In)" Bailes Brothers _Roots 'N' Blues: The Retrospective, 1925 - 1950_
"Meet Me Half Way" Arbee Stidham _Chicken Shack Boogie Vol. 6_

"Halber Mensch" Einsturzende Neubaten _Halber Mensch_
"England, Half English" Billy Bragg _England, Half English_
"My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe" Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band _Cornology_
"Half A Century High" Phil Ochs _Tape From California_
"I Cut Myself In Half" Kleenex Girl Wonder _Ponyoak_

"Alexander The Swoose (Half Swan Half Goose)" Doris Day _The Complete Doris Day With Les Brown_
"Halfrabbit Halfdog" Deerhoof _Halfbird_
"Half Man Half Mole" Chris Knox _Songs Of You & Me_

(half two)

"Half Breed" Ricky Nelson _The American Dream: The Complete Imperial & Verve 1957-1962_
"Half Angel" Jack Moore _Teen Town USA, Vol. 2_
"Half A Boy & Half A Man" Nick Lowe _Basher: The Best Of Nick Lowe_

"Half A Person" The Smiths _Louder Than Bombs_
"Half A Life" Love Spit Love _Love Spit Love_
"Half Dead" The Mountain Goats _Get Lonely_
"Half My Heart Beats" Smittens _The Coolest Thing About Love_
"The Origin Of Love" John Cameron Mitchell _Hedwig & The Angry Inch_

"Half Dead" Louis CK _Chewed Up_
"Can't Go Halfway" The Harmonettes _Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil-Up_
"Half The Time" Flashing Lights _Where The Change Is_
"Half The Time" Bohemian Vendetta _Enough_

Whither Half A Show?

Important questions asked about tomorrow's show!

1) Will the show only be half as long?
2) Were you ever a halfling when you played Dungeons & Dragons in high school, you geek?
3) Is it six of one, or a half dozen of the other?
4) What is your half-life?
5) When you say "halve" does it sound like "have" or do you pronounce the l & the v & sound particularly pretentious?

The only answers I know!

1) Self Help Radio is on tomorrow morning (August 1st) from 7:30 to 9am Central Time on 88.1 fm WRFL Lexington.
2) You can listen with any old radio in the city, but if you're not in Lexington, you can listen online at wrfl dot fm.
3) I will put the show up later in the day of course at self help radio dot net.
4) If you're up early, my pop show Sugar Substitute will be on from 6am to the start of Self Help Radio.
5) All of the above!

Preface To Half A Show: A Story About Drugs & Drool

The boy was going to try salvia for the first time. Specifically, Salvia divinorum, often called "diviner's sage." He had never tried any hallucinogenic drugs before, not human made nor natural, & since salvia was legal (for the time being) in his state, it seemed a good idea to start (if starting is what he was doing) with it.

The boy's girlfriend was a little dyslexic, so when he texted her that he was going to try salvia, she naturally read it as "saliva" & began to worry about him. She thought perhaps he might be developing some kind of fetish, something both her mother & that psychiatrist on television had warned her about. She wondered if there were a fetish in which people liked to be drooled or spat upon.

Of course there was! So she told him she'd leave him if he tried saliva. He tried to explain to her that he was talking about a psychoactive plant, but all she could imagine, from reading up on spitting on the internet, is either him getting her (or, worse yet, another girl!) to spit on him, to suck all the saliva out of his mouth, or (she shuddered) him wanting to spit or drool on her!

They broke up; she had begun to find him quite horrible to think about. Then the salvia he purchased from a friend turned out to be the wrong kind, so he didn't get to have a first great drug experience after all.

Bill Finger's Last Days

If you're at all a fan of The Batman, you should probably know who Bill Finger is. He basically co-created the character & many of the caped crusader's villains & supporting cast, & wrote many of his early adventures, & is now virtually unknown outside the comics community.

Within the comics community, he is honored as a hero. There's even an award created in his name to honor people who have contributed great things to the comics world but were not sufficiently honored in their day. (The 2011 winners are discussed here.)

There are a few biographies of him online, & all note that he died, quite young, at the age of 59. He was fired, one suggests, from DC Comics because he asked for health benefits. Another one notes, "He died poor & without any official heirs to continue his fight for credit. Since then, in the comic book industry, being 'Fingered' has become slang for being denied credit for one's contributions to a story or character."

I assume he was in poor health, in addition to being poor (he wrote a couple of movies & also for television, so he seemed to have lots of work), but I haven't read anything about his final years. Fifty-nine seems very young. Especially in a field where some of the worst-treated creators lived into their eighties.

Anyone know how Bill Finger lived his final years? Any information out there?

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Five

I could talk, & have talked, & will talk a lot about the A Joke A Day jokes which are so monstrously unfunny that you're genuinely surprised when there's an A Joke A Day joke which actually makes you chuckle. But I think it's mainly in the telling - some of these "jokes" actually have a joke in them - they're just so shabbily constructed, it's like listening to a child try to tell a sophisticated story. They miss nuance, they have no sense of timing. It's a rambling mess.

I suspect the reason for this is that the jokes that the A Joke A Day team gets are submitted, vaguely approved (if that), & not in the least edited before the daily submission is shot out to the subscribers. It's amazing to me that there's not one person on the A Joke A Day staff who has enough of a sense of humor - & basic copy editing skills - to spend a thoughtful five minutes cleaning up a joke. As it stands, most of the A Joke A Day jokes come across as the slurring funnies a moderately inebriated person will tell to a crowd of strangers on a dare during an open mic night.

Some of the A Joke A Day jokes are jokes that have been told before (usually better), but this joke, from Sunday, sounds a little familiar, don't you think?

Joe, a college student, was taking a course in ornithology, the study of birds. The night before the biggest test of the semester, Joe spent all night studying. He had the textbook nearly memorized. He knew his class notes backward and forward. Joe was ready.

The morning of the test, Joe entered the auditorium and took a seat in the front row. On the table in the front was a row of ten stuffed birds. Each bird had a sack covering its body, and only the legs were showing. When class started, the professor announced that the students were to identify each bird by looking at its legs and give its common name, species, habitat, mating habits, etc.

Joe looked at each of the birds' legs. They all looked the same to him. He started to get angry. He had stayed up all night studying for this test and now he had to identify birds by their LEGS? The more he thought about the situation, the angrier he got.

Finally he reached his boiling point. He stood up, marched up to the professor's desk, crumpled up his exam paper and threw it on the desk. "What a ridiculous test!" he told the prof. "How could anyone tell the difference between these birds by looking at their legs? This exam is the biggest rip-off I've ever seen!"

With that, Joe turned and stormed toward the exit. The professor was a bit shocked, and it took him a moment to regain his composure. Then, just as Joe was about to walk out the door, the prof shouted out, "Wait a minute, young man, what's your name?"

Joe turned around, pulled up his pant legs and hollered, "You tell me, prof! You tell me!"

If it sounds a little familiar, it's because it's something of a riff on the famous "Do You Know Who I Am?" urban legend. (You can read about it here.) In it, a student outsmarts a professor who doesn't know who he is by sticking his blue book in a stack of them & leaving.

This joke attempts to recreate that urban legend but fails, as the student will. Why? Because the professor can either identify the student by his crumpled-up exam he threw on the desk, or he can simply fail everyone who didn't take the test. The student made the grand gesture for nothing. He would have been better off trying to take the test. Especially if the other students were as confused as he was & he was graded on a curve.

(& by the way, if you'll allow me to overthink a dumb joke, you might have some idea of a bird's species by its size. Also, what a gruesome idea for a test. All those dead birds!)

There was one joke I thought was actually funny this week, so, credit where it's due, I present it here, unedited, as it appeared in my inbox on Tuesday:

There were two guys working for the city. One would dig a hole - he would dig, dig, dig.

The other would come behind him and fill the hole - fill, fill, fill.

These two men worked furiously; one digging a hole, the other filling it up again.

A man was watching from the sidewalk and couldn't believe how hard these men were working, but couldn't understand what they were doing. Finally he had to ask them.

He said to the hole digger, "I appreciate how hard you work, but what are you doing? You dig a hole and your partner comes behind you and fills it up again!"

The hole digger replied, "Oh yeah, must look funny, but the guy who plants the trees is sick today."

You May Already Have Won!

Or, you may already be winning! What have you won, you ask. What are you winning? This week's Self Help Radio! A show entirely about winning!

It's such a winning show that it can be hosted by a loser like me. How's that for "winning the day"? No? Ah well, you can't win 'em all.

The show is above "place" & "show" at selfhelpradio.net. I have lovingly divided it into two exciting halves, the first half of which is here while the second half is looking at itself in a trophy over here. The songs in each half are below.

Congratulations on being a winner! I wonder what that feels like.

(part one)
"The Winner" Gregory Isaacs _The Winner: The Roots Of Gregory Isaacs 1968-1978_
"We're A Winner" The Impressions _The Very Best Of The Impressions_
"Let's Win!" Alex Ebert _Alexander_

"I'm A Winner" Diana Ross _I'm Still Waiting_
"All Right OK You Win" Mikki Wilcox _Memphis Belles: The Women Of Sun Records_
"A Winner Never Quits" The Elgins _The Golden Era Of Doo-Wops: Lummtone Records_
"Can't Win" Richard Thompson _Amnesia_
"Win Your Love (For Me)" Sam Cooke _The Man & His Music_

"Charlie Sheen Winning (Awesome Vatican Assassin)" Ithinkimessedmyself _Charlie Sheen Winning (Awesome Vatican Assassin)_
"Gonna Keep On Tryin' Till I Win Your Love" Marvin Gaye _That's The Way Love Is_
"Give In, You Just Can't Win" Tammi Terrell _Come On & See Me: The Complete Solo Collection_

(part two)
"Can't Win" The Invincibles _The Best Of Loma Records: The Rise & Fall Of A 1960's Soul Label_
"You're A Winner" Harold Andrews _Moaning, Groaning, Crying: A Galaxy Of Soul_

"Win" David Bowie _Young Americans_
"You Have Yet To Win" Holly Golightly _Truly She Is None Other_
"A La Fin Tu Gagneras (You'll Win In The End)" Jocelyne _C'est Chic! French Girl Singers Of The 1960s_
"I Won" The Sundays _Reading, Writing & Arithmetic_
"The Boy Who Can't Win" Three Finger Cowboy _Hooray For Love_

"You Win Again" Hank Williams _The Complete Hank Williams_
"You... Win!" Beardyman _I Done A Album_
"The Winning Team" Patton Oswalt _Feelin' Kinda Patton_
"You Just Can't Win" Them _The Story Of Them Featuring Van Morrison_
"A Quitter Never Wins" Larry Williams & Johnny Guitar Watson _Right Track: The Best Of Okeh Northern Soul_
"Everybody Loves A Winner" Dandy _The History Of Trojan Records Vol. 1_

Whither Winning?

Because Charlie Sheen kept saying the word, & I kept hearing it on The Soup, & it entered my brain & I thought, "That'll be a good theme!"

Will it? I dunno. You be the judge. Tomorrow morning at 7:30 am on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington, online everywhere at wrfl dot fm. I'll archive it of course later at the Self Help Radio website.

(If you're up earlier, listen to Sugar Substitute from 6 to 7:30. It's good!)

You're a winner if you listen. That's how it is.

Preface To Winning: I've Actually Never Seen That Show

This funny thing happened in the Onion AV Club this past week: a new ad for the old Charlie Sheen show (now starring Kelso from That 70's Show, who is making a lot of money from it) appeared & the Onion guys asked everyone to make fun of it. & so they did.

The idea for this week's show popped into my head a few months ago when they were making fun of Charlie Sheen a lot on The Soup but I confess I've never actually seen the show. As much as I love Duckie, I can't really say I've followed Jon Cryer's career, though I am happy when child stars still have careers when they're as old as I am. (By the way, I don't have a career, & also I was not a child star. I think that just makes me a wastrel.)

But since I watch The Soup, I did get to see Sheen say "winning" over & over, & it seemed like a good idea for a theme. It's kind of simple. I think I'm supposed to explain this tomorrow. Fuck. Now what will I write about tomorrow?

This was written on Witstream a while back & it sort of sums up how I feel about that show that made Sheen enough money & ego to implode the way he did, thus ruining a cash cow that he could have milked for at least five or ten more years:

I Almost Forgot: The Rain!

It's such nice rain, even in the summer. Did I talk once upon a time about the rain also in West Virginia? Such rain you've never seen in Texas. This is true: I believe that the whole American southwest such as it is is being desertified. (My spellcheck is telling me there's no such word as "desertify" although you can find many Googly articles on "desertification." Which, by the way, there's no such thing as.)

Anyway, Texas is turning into a desert like New Mexico & Arizona & it's too bad 'cause parts of the state are really quite nice. It just doesn't rain there like it does here. The rain there is mean, it comes with loud thunderstorms & usually happens at night, since it's just too hot in the day. (It's different in Houston, which is basically a swamp, so we'll ignore that part of Texas in this discussion.)

I like the rain in this part of the world. It does cause flash flooding & there's still thunder & lightning, & of course many meth labs have been accidentally washed away due to poor planning, but it's much nicer than the rain in the desert, which mainly pisses off the poisonous creatures there & is about as useful as a mirage.

Which reminds me, I am not a meteorologist & also I have no real idea what I am talking about. Mainly I just enjoy watching the rain. I also walked through the rain today. It was nice.

No, I haven't been drinking. Why would you ask such a thing?

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Four

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

This was going to be a "credit where it's due" sort of post, since yesterday's A Joke A Day was actually one of the best jokes I've heard in the past ten years, but then this A Joke A Day appeared today:

A man placed an ad in the classifieds: "Wife wanted."

The next day he received a hundred letters.

They all said the same: "You can have mine."

Really? Would the joke be as funny if it had been "Husband wanted"? Not in this sexist society.

Seriously, if men dislike their wives so much - & considered them property which they can give away - why get married in the first place? For sex? Don't you imagine that the same sort of man who feels his wife is property & would humiliate her by writing a letter "offering" her to a complete stranger (indeed, one who's apparently desperate enough to advertise for a spouse) would find it not at all a problem to have sex with a prostitute, bringing home all manner of sexually-transmitted diseases?

Fuck them, & fuck men who think of women this way.

The category, by the way, is "men vs. women jokes." The Good Old Days.

In the interest of fairness, here's the good A Joke A Day, which I must've heard at least ten years ago, & I've edited it somewhat so it's actually told well:

A driver, speeding down the highway, was pulled over by the Highway Patrol. This officer was young & had about six weeks on the job.

The officer approached the driver’s window & said, "License & registration, please."

The driver noticed the officer was a rookie. "I'm sorry, officer," the driver said, "I no longer have a license. I lost it as a result of too many DUIs."

Taken aback, the officer said,"Then can I see your registration?"

The driver replied, "Um, all right, but it's not my car - I stole it about an hour ago. Still, I think I saw it in the glove compartment when I put my gun in there."

"A gun? In your glove compartment?" The officer took a step back.

The driver sighed. "Yes, officer. I had to kill the woman who owned the car before I stuffed her in the trunk."

The officer drew his gun on the man & said, "Do not make a move." The driver complied while the officer called for back-up. He was a bit hysterical.

Ten minutes later the driver is surrounded by Highway Patrol officers & local cops. A police detective approaches the man & says, "I'll need to see your license & registration."

As the driver slowly reached above his visor & pulled down his license & registration.

The detective looked them over; they checked out. He said, "May I look into your glove compartment, sir?"

The driver agreed. The detective slowly looked into it. There was no gun.

"Sir," the detective said, "please open your trunk."

The driver complied. The detective checked it - there was no body in it.

Puzzled, the detective approached the driver. He said, "Sir, I am confused. The officer who pulled you over reported that you did not have a license or registration, that you were driving a stolen vehicle, that there was a gun in the glove compartment, & that there was a dead body in the trunk."

The driver looked at the detective & said, "Yeah & I'll bet he told you I was speeding, too."

Not A Show About Nothing

But a show about zero. That's the number zero. The one that's the average of -1 & 1. Not nothing. A show about nothing would be somewhat different. Though people do use the word "zero" to mean "nothing." This is a show about the integer zero. Its history, its lives, its loves, its hopes & dreams, its crimes & its redemption. The lost years it spent in exile, the great years when it returned. Something like that.

More or less.

The zero songs are below in an unnumbered list. It may be the only unnumbered list which contains many zeroes. The show is nestled happily at http://www.selfhelpradio.net. You can listen to part one here & you can listen to part two here. What is in the two parts is listed below.

(part one)

"My Hero, Zero" Bob Dorough _Schoolhouse Rock: Multiplication Rock_
"The Mighty Zero" Meat Puppets _Mirage_
"3, 2, 1 Zero" Les Sheriff _Punk En France_

"I Got A Zero" The Fantastics _This Is My Wedding Day 7"_
"I Was Zero" Sage Francis _Li(f)e_
"Zero Zero Zero!" Sam Phillips _Omnipop_
"This Is Zero" TV 21 _A Thin Red Line_
"Less Than Zero" Elvis Costello _My Aim Is True_

"Zero Hour" The Plimsouls _DIY: Shake It Up! American Power Pop II (1978-80)_
"Ground Zero" Shirts _Street Light Shine_
"Back To Zero Now" Tommy Keene _The Real Underground_

(part two)

"Zero Degrees" Drag City Super Session _Tramps, Traitors & Little Devils_
"Zero" Deathray _Deathray_
"Saved By Zero" The Fixx _Reach The Beach_

"Zero G" Willesden Dodgers _First Base_
"Zero As A Limit" Human League _Reproduction_
"A Day Called Zero" The Sugarcubes _Here Today, Tomorrow, Next Week!_
"Absolute Zero" My Favorite _Love At Absolute Zero_

"Super Zero" Linda Draper _Little Darla Has A Treat For You, Vol. 23: Summer 2005_
"What I Learned About Zero" Capsules _Someone For Everyone_

Whither Zero?

Yes, I am back from my brief visit to Dallas, in which I got to see many members of my family, I got to meet my niece's new sprog (a great-nephew) & saw some old friends who were kind enough to interrupt their lives to see me.

But I love eating food so I am not going to talk about the trip, or tomorrow's Self Help Radio (for which I am going to be ill-prepared) but instead make three recommendations.

One, if you're anywhere near a Z Pizza chain (there's one in the suburb three times removed from Dallas called Flower Mound) (I kinda wish I could've seen the flower mound there, I might have actually liked the place) you should enjoy their vegan pizza. It's awesome. We had it in Columbus but it's too far away from us these days. I wish there were one nearby - the vegan pizza at the local Mellow Mushroom is nowhere near as good.

Two, there's a lovely vegan Chinese place called Suma Veggie Cafe that has the most awesome vegan buffet ever. I can't recommend it highly enough. Oh. My. God. It's a reason to visit Dallas. When all other reasons suck. (Ignore the negative Yelp reviews. They don't know what they're talking about.)

Three, okay, the best reason to visit Dallas is for the best Ethiopian restaurant I've ever been to, which is called Lalibela, a place so great I named my car after it. (I finally got to tell them that - they were very flattered.) I don't eat meat so I can't speak to the carnivore dishes, but all the vegetarian stuff is so wonderful. I ate there last night & am still full.

Yeah, so Self Help Radio is about the number zero tomorrow. It's on at 7:30 am Monday on 88.1 fm in Lexington & all over at the world at wrfl dot fm & of course archived later on the Self Help Radio website. Do listen! Zero will be your hero!

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Bloodier

I will be visiting my momsie in Dallas for the next three days so I have to apologize for three things:

1) I may not be posting anything here. I'd be more concerned if I thought you cared. Since I know you don't, I'm still sorry. I do try to be consistent, even if I'm consistently inconsistent.

2) I may actually be posting things here. Who knows? It may be late, in a hotel room that only gets Fox News on the television, & I may have nothing to say. Sorry about that in advance.

3) Monday's show, which is about the number zero, may get zero preparation. That may seem appropriate but I would feel pretty awful if that were the case. My apologies in advance if the show sucks.

It's humorous, though. It's been muggy here in Lexington, & has gotten up into the mid-90s, but it's in no way as awful as Dallas. Here's the forecast:

Thursday: high of 99 degrees
Friday: high of 99 degrees
Saturday: high of 101 degrees

Here's Lexington for the next few days:

Thursday: high of 85 degrees
Friday: high of 86 degrees
Saturday: high of 86 degrees

There really is a difference. What a time to go see fambly!

Spy World

This blog entry about today's Self Help Radio is in code. Please refer to your Self Help Radio Spy Decoder Kit which I hope you've already sent your box-tops in to receive. If you haven't, please eat more Self Help Radio Brand Super Sugar Marbles cereal & then hurry back as this note will self-destruct in five minutes.

Defying the KGB, the CIA, the FBI, MI6, the Inspector Closeau Society (I imagine that's what the French call their international espionage agency), Interpol, SHIELD, Checkmate, & any other number of national, international, extraterrestrial & fictional spy organizations, Self Help Radio proudly broadcast its devastating expose of the world of espionage. No one was safe! Moles were exposed! Duplicitous deals were uncovered! It was worse than Wikileaks!

Actually, I just played a lot of songs about secret agents & stuff. The songs I played are below. The show is back at headquarters with Miss Moneypenny at self help radio dot net. It is divided in two parts & you must have the proper clearance to listen to both. Part one is at planning; while part two is at execution.

Remember, if you get caught listening to this show, I will deny I ever made it. But thanks for listening anyway!

(part one)
"Sooperspy" Madd Inc. _The Ikon Records Story_
"Espionage" Los Straitjackets _¡Viva Los Straitjackets!_
"I'm A Double Naught Spy" Perpetuated Spirits Of Turpentine _Aliens, Psychos & Wild Things Vol. 3_

"The James Bond Theme (Brian Gearwhore & Alex Xenophon Remix)" Leroy Holmes _Electro Lounge: Electronic Excursions In Hi-Fi Stereo_
"Sock It To 'Em JB" Rex Garvin _Sock It To 'Em Soul: 60s Club Soul Classics_
"Mission Impossible" James Taylor Quartet _Acid Jazz Movie & TV Themes_
"I Spy (For The FBI)" Luther Ingram & The G-Men _Foxy Devil 7"_
"Number One Spy" Syd Dale _Cinemaphonic Soul Punch - A Selection Of British Library Music 1970-1976_

"Agnes" Mike Russo _Atomic Platters: Cold War Music From The Golden Age_
"Man From U.N.C.L.E./The Spies" Al Caiola _Ultra-Lounge, Vol. 13: TV Town_
"Secret Agent Man" Johnny Rivers _The Best Of Johnny Rivers_

(part two)
"Theme From Get Smart" Hugo Montenegro _Come Spy With Me_
"Secret Agent Man" Devo _Duty Now For The Future_
"Model Spy" Cinerama _This Is Cinerama_

"Je Serai Espionne" Baxendale _You Will Have Your Revenge_
"The Avengers" The Laurie Johnson Orchestra _The Avengers & Other Top Sixties TV Themes_
"Agent Double-0-Soul" Edwin Starr _Soul Master_
"Spy In The Lounge" Dusty Trails _Dusty Trails_
"The Last Of The Secret Agents" The Revillos _Wireless Recordings_
"Spy School Graduation Theme" Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet _Sport Fishin'_

"I Spy" Beat Happening _1983-1985_
"I Spy" Earle Hagen _Ultra Lounge Vol. 7: The Crime Scene_
"Russian Spy & I" Hunters _Pebbles Volume 25: The Continent Lashes Back - Holland, Part 3_
"My Baby Loves The Secret Agent" Detroit Cobras _Seven Easy Pieces_
"Spy Chase" Bruno Nicolai _Easy Tempo Vol. 7_

Whither Espionage?

Can I say at the outset that this blog entry is a cheat? I didn't have time to write it on Sunday, so I am writing it very early Monday morning, though I am pre-dating it so it appears to have been written on Sunday. You might never have actually known, since you probably don't even read this blog, but I had to confess. I'd make a terrible spy.

I was more charmed when I was a kid by superheroes than spies, although I guess I thought James Bond was pretty cool, & enjoyed cheesey sixties spy stuff when I saw it in repeats on the TV. I took everything like that very seriously, & in ninth grade I wrote the first few chapters of a "spy book" in which I & my nerdy friends were all characters. One of those friends - we were probably never friends, but I suppose he tolerated me - was downright offended by my characterization of him, though I thought I was being flattering. Nerds! I swear.

I do think his code name was "Egghead." Tee hee.

I wrote it in pencil & I still have it somewhere, though time has smudged it a lot. I don't really want to reread it. I am happy to have the past fade away as most of it is meant to do.

Um, I'm supposed to be talking about espionage. I'm not much of an expert on it. I prefer mystery novels to spy novels, & much of the tongue in cheek of the Bond movies or the Avengers feels very dated to me now, although, as I mentioned above, as a child it wasn't kitschy or silly to me, I took it very seriously. Perhaps that's why I find the music so compelling - I'm not looking back with a smirk but taking it seriously.

I don't know. Hey, do you know the best way to find out if the FBI has a file on you?

Preface To Espionage: The Spy Movie Who Loved Me

As always, Self Help Radio is a little late in the game, which is following the celebration of cheesy spy movies, which are movies made in the sixties on the heels of the James Bond success, which culminated in the late nineties/early aughts with the spoofs with the Saturday Night Live people that I confess I never saw. Also at the time, David Gedge of the Wedding Present made a couple of records as "Cinerama" which attempted to incorporate the production music sounds of the sixties & seventies into a more poppy milieu. Indeed, even at old KOOP radio, there was a show called - er - I've forgotten it now! - I know I subbed it - I'll have to look it up - Cinemaphonics that's it! - which is also the name of one or two of those collections of production music - which played nothing but music in that vein, & was pretty popular.

& now, too many years later, Self Help Radio does a show about espionage.

I guess it's not that bad. I could be doing a show about singing cowboys. Sixty years after their heyday.

This spring I did manage to watch (or re-watch) the first three Sean Connery James Bond movies. I had intended to watch them all in a row, but something distracted me. Probably something I hadn't seen before. I understand their charms. I will try to convey some of their charms in the radio show. But you won't get to see all the gadgets I will have with me. Not on the radio you won't.

Top Celebrities From Garland, Texas

Rats, I see I still haven't made the list of Top 5 Celebrities From Garland, Texas, which is a shame not only because I'm not at all a celebrity, but unlike Celebrity No. 5, who is called "Leann Rimes" - someone I've never heard of - as well as Celebrity No. 1, Mike Judge, whom I have heard of - unlike both of them I was actually born in Garland.

Indeed, though it's apparently devoted to the "Number 1 Celebrity From Garland," Mike Judge's wikipedia page doesn't even mention the city of Garland at all.

The other three, one a performer in a country music band I've never heard of, one a basketball player with an awesome nickname (also someone I've never heard of), & the last an American sitcom star from the 80's, all seem to have been born in Garland & thank the gravelly-voice lord they made it out of there.

I'm a little surprised, actually, at how few famous people have come from what I have often referred to as "the armpit of the Metroplex." There are a lot of people there. But maybe I ought not be surprised. It seems a wonder that people ever make it out of that place. My mother's been trapped there since the early 1950s. Most of my siblings have hardly been anywhere else. It frankly takes an extraordinary amount of energy to reach escape velocity from Garland's gravitational pull.

Have you ever heard how Douglas Adams advises one in the art of flying? He says, "There is an art, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground & miss." To miss the ground, one must be distracted at the moment before one hits. That seems to have been my way of getting out of Garland. I was caught up in the whole "go to college after high school" business & didn't notice I was leaving the city forever.

To be the non-celebrity I am justly not celebrated for today!

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Three

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

Occasionally, on our dog walks, I tell my love Magda one of the A Joke A Days that I have recently received. But I realized something when I was trying to relate a recent A Joke A Day - I almost always have to rephrase - almost reconstruct - the joke from the version in the A Joke A Day email. Take this one, for example, which was Monday's A Joke A Day:

A lawyer was cross-examining the doctor about whether or not he had checked the pulse of the deceased before he signed the death certificate. "No," the doctor said. "I did not check his pulse." "& did you listen for a heartbeat?" asked the lawyer. "No I did not," the doctor said. "So," said the lawyer, "when you signed the death certificate, you had not taken steps to make sure he was dead." The doctor said, "Well, let me put it this way. The man's brain was in a jar on my desk but, for all I know, he could be out practicing law somewhere."

When you read that, don't you get the impression there's actually a somewhat decent joke in there somewhere?

Might that mean that the A Joke A Day folks could employ some decent editors? I suppose they might, if the whole site - the whole operation - weren't treated as an afterthought.

As an update from last week's A Joke A Day, in which the site which tries so hard not to offend managed to let an offensive slur for Asians & Pacific Islanders slip through: I did write the info address on the site & mention the racial slur, but so far, a week later, I have received no response. I did try to find the joke on their website, but it's not easy to navigate & a search for key phrases found nothing. Since the site is entirely user-created (ie, they rely on submissions for content) might they have banished a jokester on my complaint? I wish!

By the way, if you really want to see how far they - a purveyor of humor, you understand - try so hard not to offend, you should see the "categories" they've invented to make sure their jokes are "politically correct" & "clean." George Carlin is rolling his eyes in his grave.

Rat-A-Tat-Tat America!

Happy Independence Day! Self Help Radio has never landed on July 4th on the calendar before, so of course I had to do a show about America. Though there are some songs about the Fourth of July too. & some girls in Greenville, Texas, singing the Star-Spangled Banner in a way that might not please your ears.

There are fireworks exploding all around right now, & my pets think we've moved to Iraq, so I'd better put this up before the day is done & we're no longer independent. The show is celebrating its freedom at Self Help Radio on the web, which I would call the Website of the Free except I have to pay for it. The show is divided into two parts (no, not "American" & "The Rest Of The World," although maybe next time...) with part one right here & part two right over here. The songs I played & which part they're in are below. Remember to listen from a safe distance! Self Help Radio can explode at any moment.

Okay, probably not.

(part one)
"Fireworks" Grady Tate _Schoolhouse Rock: America Rock_
"Three Dates" Jon Stewart _The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Presents America: The Book_

"Yankee Doodle Dandy" James Cagney _100 Years Of Cinema: 40 Classic Performances_
"Fourth Of July" Galaxie 500 _This Is Our Music_
"Fourth Day Of July" The Washington Squares _Fair & Square_
"4th Of July" X _See How We Are_

"Democracy" Leonard Cohen _The Future_
"The Star Spangled Banner" Gospel Girls Of Greenville, TX _Jesus Made Me Do It, Vol. 2_
"Star-Spangled Banner" Culturcide _Tacky Souvenirs Of Pre-Revolutionary America_
"An Open Letter To The Youth Of America" Conception Corporation _Complete Conception_

(part two)
"I Am A Real American" Rodd Keith _I Died Today_
"American Eagle" Bruce Haack _Listen Compute Rock Home: The Best Of Dimension 5_

"This Land Is Your Land" Woody Guthrie _This Land Is Your Land: The Asch Recordings, Volume 1_
"Power & The Glory" Phil Ochs _All The News That's Fit To Sing_
"The Great Compromise" John Prine _Great Days_
"Coming To America" Me First & The Gimme Gimmes _Have Another Ball_
"Rockin' In The Free World" Neil Young _Freedom_
"America Is" Violent Femmes _Add It Up (1981-1993)_

"America" Fast & Dirty _Live From Our Pants_
"That's America" Bruce McCulloch _Shame-Based Man_
"America The Beautiful" Ray Charles _Genius Of Soul_
"God Bless America" Peter Donner _The Talent Show_

Whither America?

I've probably mentioned this before, but in the many years I've done Self Help Radio, I've not received a lot of constructive criticism. (Does someone calling me during the show & screaming YOU SUCK!! into the phone count as "constructive criticism"? Then maybe I've received a lot of it...) But during one of my previous radio station's peer evaluation processes I did get some nice comments from someone who didn't do a music show & who seemed actually quite puzzled about one aspect of the show, which was:

The reviewer didn't understand why I did the themes I did when I did the themes I did.

In other words, why do a show about cheese on April 4th? Is that National Cheese Day? (Isn't every day National Cheese Day? No? Call your Member Of Congress today!)

Initially that bothered me, but upon reflection I understood her unhappiness. Most radio shows busted out the themes only on holidays, like Christmas or Halloween, or on anniversaries like birthdays or deathdays. The arbitrary quality of the show probably has turned folks off now & then.

In other words, the raison d'etre of Self Help Radio troubled the reviewer.

I think about that review on weeks like this one, when my show happily falls on a big-time national holiday. No confusion here! It's the first time Self Help Radio has fallen on the fourth of July, so it would be dumb not to do a show about America.

So let's do it. Tomorrow morning at 7:30 am on 88.1 fm WRFL, available online at wrfl dot fm. I might make it through the day & put the show up on the Self Help Radio website - but you'll have to check to see. I may have Firework Fatigue.

Preface To America: Those Thirteen Colonies

That's a dumb joke, isn't it. The "preface" to America is the colonies from which it rose. Har har.

A long preface, though. Almost as long as we've been a bona fide country. Like, nearly two hundred years. & we're really only about 222 years old.

I wonder how many people think that the United States, like Yankee Doodle, was born on the fourth of July?

Well, it wasn't. The colonies declared their independence from England & King George The Fatty on that day. We celebrate that.

Though Self Help Radio will be celebrating America, not independence. So maybe I thought it America's birthday.

Oh well.

Self Help Radio Extra June In July

Oops, I forgot to mention yesterday (which was the last day of June) that I actually managed to put together a Self Help Radio Extra mix (which I forgot to do in May) but it's still there even though it's the first day of July.

Also, this month's (last month's) Self Help Radio Extra is kind of a repeat of an actual former Self Help Radio show, which aired on October 5, 2007, & was a tribute to Marc Bolan & T Rex. (You can see the playlist here.) It's basically just T Rex covers with a couple of songs that celebrate Marc Bolan & his work. I've added I think nine new covers &/or songs from the original mix, so it's not entirely a repeat. Let's call it an update.

The show is available on the Self Help Radio Extra page. It's under eighty minutes so it can fit on a compact disc, if you still use them, but it's also an mp3 so you can put it wherever you can put mp3s, which is anywhere. Oh, & it's all music, so you don't have to hear me jabber on about how much I love Marc Bolan.

Although if you do want to know how much I love him, I did do an entire radio show in tribute to him, plus this mix, plus I named my male cat after him. That's him in the picture on this page. Like Marc Bolan, my cat Bolan loves to boogie.

Below is the list of songs you can hear. I hope you enjoy!

Self Help Radio Extra June 2011: T Rexstacy

"Gonna Listen To T. Rex (All Night Long)" Burnt Ones _Black Teeth & Golden Tongues_
"Children Of The Revolution" Neon Indian _Children Of The Revolution_
"The Slider" Gavin Friday from _Shag Tobacco_
"Cosmic Dancer" Idle Hands _The Heart We Broke On The Way To The Show_
"Mambo Sun" Bongos from _Drums Along The Hudson_
"Telegram Sam" Bauhaus from _In The Flat Field_
"Fist Heart Mighty Dawn Dart" Ty Segall _Ty Rex_
"Marc" Louis XIV _Illegal Tender EP_
"Life's A Gas" Shockabilly _Vietnam/Heaven_
"Hot Love" Elf Power from _Nothing's Going To Happen_
"20th Century Boy" Three Johns from _Live In Chicago_
"Rip Off" Dim Stars _Dim Stars_
"Celebrate Summer" Paybacks from _Harder & Harder_
"Jeepster" Sex Clark Five _Strum & Drum_
"Solid Gold Easy Action" Department S _Is Vic There?_
"Baby Strange" Big Star from _Nobody Can Dance_
"Baby Boomerang" Shins from _House Full Of Friends_
"Let Darkness Fall" Licorice Roots _Licorice Roots Orchestra_
"Get It On" Kramer _Great Jewish Music: Marc Bolan_
"Buick MacKane" Nikki Sudden _Groove_
"Ballrooms Of Mars" Richard Barone _Between Heaven & Cello_
"Mystic Lady" Lloyd Cole _Morning Is Broken_
"By The Light Of A Magical Moon" Mars Arizona _Hello Cruel World_
"Light Of Love" Molotov Combo _Resurrection Of The Warlock_

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Two

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

But I'm not sure how long I'll be able to sustain a "series" like this, since the average A Joke A Day is pretty lame. Moreover, unlike most humor, it tries so desperately hard not to offend.

Here's the A Joke A Day I got yesterday, which is a perfect example of two really dumb aspects of the A Joke A Day joke, one of which is the desire not to offend:

A man with a wooden eye was very sensitive about his eye for fear of people making fun of him. One day this man decides to go out & have some fun. So he goes to a bar & orders a beer. Then, out of the corner of his eye he sees a woman with a flat face. He thinks,” Well, she wouldn't make fun of me because she would understand how I feel." So he finally gathers up the courage to talk to her, he goes over & asks her, “Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?" & the woman answers, “Would I!!!" (Wood Eye) The man, obviously offended, screams, "Flat face!!!" & storms out of the bar.

Have you ever heard anyone described as having a "flat face"? I haven't, & when I googled the term, I got first & foremost www.flatfacefingerboards.com, a website for (it says) "all your fingerboard needs," & this definition from the Urban Dictionary: "Racial slur aimed at Asians & Pacific Islanders."

This may undercut my point - it certainly seems offensive - but I don't think it's a common term, & I don't think that the editors of the A Joke A Day mailing list knew it was anything but a euphemism for the word they really should have used, which is the deeply offensive term "ugly."

(By the way, according to this article, humans all have flat faces compared to the apes from which we evolved.)

I don't know why they didn't use the word ugly, but then again I don't know why teachers these days refuse to fail kids. There are surely ugly people, & being one myself, I think it's fine to note such things. I hope I have qualities that balance my lack of physical attractiveness, just as I'm sure some very pretty people are as shallow as a petri dish. The word "ugly" would not offend me, & I don't think it would offend most self-aware ugly people.

(I was just thinking I should send them an email about the "flat face" thing. Do you think they'd issue an apology?)

The other aspect is the incredible condescension they display when telling these jokes. The set-up is utterly ridiculous - who has wooden eyes? Dolls, I suppose, but no one else. But I understand the hoops a joke must go through to get to its pun. However, the average A Joke A Day so distrusts the intelligence of its reader - who, you know, has subscribed to a joke that it needs to make perfectly clear - in the middle of the joke - its painfully obvious pun. I repeat:

“Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?" & the woman answers, “Would I!!!" (Wood Eye)

I confess the A Joke A Day compilers don't always do that - if the pun is a homonym, for example, they'll simply use the appropriate spellings - like if someone in the joke says "right" but the listener hears "write," they'll use the spelling the speaker understands. But in a situation like the one above, they will usually (& literally) spell it out. Because they imagine their average subscriber is dumb as dirt.

Which we may be. Since we might be offended by the term "ugly."

Did You Remember To Listen?

As alcohol & age dull my faulty memory, I take the time to go on the radio to play songs about remembering & also to remind you that your memories are nowhere nearly as accurate as you think they are. I can't even say for certain that I remember doing that this morning on the radio, even with a recording. My brain operates according to rules that I don't remember agreeing to.

In case you forgot to listen, the show (which frankly wasn't all that memorable) is now available for your listening pleasure when & if you remember to listen at the show's website. I remembered to divide it into two parts, & part one is where this link leads you while I think I put part two behind this link. I may forget before I finish writing this, but if I remember, the songs contained in both parts will be listed below.

(part one)

"I Remember, I Remember (Thomas Hood)" Tim Pigott-Smith _Poetry Please: The Anniversary Edition_
"Remember" Durutti Column _Someone Else's Party_

"Remember" Air _Moon Safari_
"Do You Remember?" Doktor Cosmos _Cocktail_
"Remember?" Lali Puna _Our Inventions_
"Remember Me" Rita Pavone _Hey! Look What I Found! Vol. 9_
"Remember (Walking In The Sand)" Shangri-Las _The Shangri-Las & The '60s Girl Group Garage Sound_
"I'll Remember" The Kinks _Face To Face_

"I Forgot To Remember To Forget" Elvis Presley _The Sun Sessions CD_
"Something To Remember You By" The Gentlemen _Chicken Shack Boogie, Vol. 6_
"I've Got Dreams To Remember" Otis Redding _The Otis Redding Story 1962-1967_
"Remember When" The Four Tops _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 8_
"Remember Who You Are" Sly & The Family Stone _Back On The Right Track_

(part two)
"Dates To Remember" Gary Owen _Put Your Head On My Finger_

"Remember" John Lennon _Plastic Ono Band_
"Do You Remember" Tyrannosaurus Rex _The Definitive Tyrannosaurus Rex_
"I Remember You" The Ramones _Hey! Ho! Let's Go: The Anthology_
"Remember Me" British Sea Power _The Decline Of British Sea Power_
"Remember (Christina Rossetti)" Diana Quick _Poetry Please: The Anniversary Edition_
"You Must Please Remember" Morrissey _Dagenham Dave_

"Do You Remember" Talulah Gosh _Backwash_
"I Remember" The Visitors _Miss_
"Remember" The Boyfriends _The Boyfriends_
"Remember Me To Her" St. Christopher _Dig Deep, Brother (1984-1990)_
"Sometimes I Remember" Pernice Brothers _Yours Mine & Ours_
"Remember Me, Remember U" Teach Me Tiger _Thirty Forty Fives Vol. 1_

Whither Remembering?

Memories fade & are usually unreliable. Eyewitness accounts are often widely different. Yet we place a huge importance on the process of remembering, & sharing memories - or doing things that create shared memories - is one thing humans enjoy most.

There's a wonderful word, which is a whole other theme, but I can talk about it here, which is "nostalgia," which illustrates the point I am meandering about above very well - it's a yearning, a longing for days past, which many folks remember as much better. A perfect example, which Bill Maher often points out, is people in the United States who wish for the "better days" of the 1950s or before - all the while forgetting (or maybe not?) that there were a great number of Americans back then who were treated as second-class citizens & not allowed basic rights.

(As I wrote that, I realized I could have meant both African-Americans & women!)

As someone who, when his brain was working perfectly fine, used to worry about losing memories, about not being able to remember my life in all its dreary minute detail, I would now horrify the younger me by not caring very much. I lose words when I talk, I have forgotten whole swaths of time, & it doesn't bother me as much as it should. & I know why - it's because I understand that memory itself is unreliable.

I often say - well, let me illustrate what I was going to say with a story. An old roommate was reminiscing living with me about fifteen or twenty years ago. He said, "What I remember most is that you never threw away shampoo bottles - there were always half a dozen nearly empty shampoo bottles around."

I remember no such thing, but that doesn't mean I remember differently. It could certainly be true. So I said what I often say these days when I don't have memories that align with the memories of other people - I said, "It certainly sounds like something I'd do."

You might not remember, but Self Help Radio's show about remembering is on tomorrow morning (that's Monday the 27th) at 7:30 am on the 88.1 fm frequency in Lexington, & online at wrfl dot fm - but if you do forget to remember, it'll be put on the Self Help Radio website at self help radio dot net. I always remember to do that.

Preface To Remember...: You Remember Wrong

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

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

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

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

The Self Help Radio iPhone App

Does not exist.

But if it did, what would it do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

A Trip To The Suburbs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whither The Suburbs?

Suburbs may require their own haikus.

Suburbs have their own ideas of cheese.

Suburban living has its own special brand of angst.

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

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

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

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

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

Preface To The Suburbs: Where You From?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being An Oblate Spheroid...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Age Of Self Help Radio Began This Morning!

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

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

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

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

(part one)

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

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

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

(part two)

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

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

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

Whither Ages?

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

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

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

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

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