I Make Excuses, Again

You haven't been wondering, but I haven't either, yet I still ask the question, "What happened to Self Help Radio Extra?" Didn't I used to do them once a month? But I haven't done any since the summer! What the fuck?

The truth is, I started doing the Self Help Radio Extra mixes a while back, when I was still in Austin, & found I was listening to a lot of music that would not necessarily be played on Self Help Radio any time soon. It was a chance to do a sort of freeform or indiepop show without actually having one on the radio.

Then, when we moved away, I began doing Sugar Substitute, & doing an extra mix became a little redundant. It was worse when I started deejay at WRFL because I also sub a lot of freeform shows. I don't like to repeat myself & play the same songs over & over. Not that anyone would notice but me. If I were going to do a Self Help Radio Extra, it would need to be, for me, something different from the radio shows I was also doing.

The last Extra I did was kind of a remake of a previous radio show, & although I think it's a fun mix, I regret it a little, since I don't really want to repeat myself. Although I have now repeated myself saying I dislike repeating myself. Good lord. & now it's October, almost November, & I don't imagine I'll make another one this year. Unless I can come up with a different idea for an "extra."

Do you miss it? I don't believe you if you said "yes."

But there's the answer: Self Help Radio Extra is being neglected. But it's not going away or anything. I'm just probably going to ignore it some more.

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Seventeen

I'm not sure I can go on much longer with this series. I'll just put that out there right now. I would love to report "The week of A Joke A Day this week was good!" or even "The week of A Joke A Day this week didn't make me feel at all like vomiting all over my computer screen!" But no. It was another week of neutered jokes, jokes written for the average five-year-old, & the obligatory misanthropic man/woman nonsense.

Thursday's joke involved a salesperson calling a home, getting a child, frustratingly asking for the mother (who's not home), then asking for anyone else at the house, to which the child replied, "My sister is home." The punchline, of course, is that the sister is younger than the child on the phone. Ho ho.

Fridays' joke involved a car accident with a dotty elderly woman (naturally). You can deduce the entire joke from the weak punchline: "In exasperation, the man turns from his smashed car and says, "Officer, I would have been HAPPY to give her half of the road --if she had just let me know WHICH half she wanted!!!!"

Four exclamation points. That's like someone laughing after they've told a joke to let everyone know it's time to laugh.

Saturday's joke was a slight reversal: an elderly man tricks a fellow at the grocery store into buying his groceries. That clever coot sure showed that young upstart! (That's my way of saying the joke was probably stolen from a 1930's comedy short.)

Sunday's was a hunter joke. It's sad enough that we live in a society that still has people who hunt. This one, probably the best joke of the week, turned the tables on the hunter. Here it is in full:

In the middle of a forest, there was a hunter who was suddenly confronted by a huge, mean bear.

In his fear, all attempts to shoot the bear were unsuccessful. Finally, he turned and ran as fast as he could. The hunter ran and ran and ran, until he ended up at the edge of a very steep cliff. His hopes were dim.

Seeing no way out of his predicament, and with the bear closing in rather quickly, the hunter got down on his knees, opened his arms, and exclaimed, "Dear God! Please give this bear some religion!"

The skies darkened and there was lightning in the air. Just a few feet short of the hunter, the bear came to abrupt stop, and glanced around, somewhat confused.

Suddenly, the bear looked up into the sky and said, "Thank you God, for the food I'm about to receive..."

I suppose the ellipsis is there for you to wait for the laughs that will probably never come.

Monday featured a woman who took the television remote from her husband when he refused to go shopping with her. The joke turns bleak when she returns home & he beats the hell out of her. (At least I assume. It stops before that.)

Tuesday's joke was another kid's offering, one you've heard from every child you've ever known, but which is never as funny as it was in the second grade:

Q: What do you call cheese that's not yours?
A: Nacho cheese!

Wednesday brought us another "man vs. woman" joke. It is discovered that, when pricing brains for transplant, women's are less expensive than men's because they are "used." Ha ha snort.

It's weeks like these that make me regret taking up this terrible mantle. I'd be better off examining "A Prayer A Day."

The Flow That Shows

Among the things one often thinks about that do flow - rivers, tears, blood, lava - one does not often think of Self Help Radio. The stumbling, often shabby radio show has also been known to fail at running, skipping, hopping, bouncing, sliding, rolling & let's just say for the hell of it rocking. So why did Self Help Radio advertise itself this week as "a show that flows"? Does it really want to embrace irony like some hipster douchebag?

As Winston Churchill never said, "Some men strive for irony, & some have irony thrust upon them." I am not sure what some women strive for, but I fear that if I started to talk about what gets thrust upon them, I will become embarrassed & have to leave.

The show does seems to have lots of songs about flowing, as might be expected, even if they don't flow well together. It's now resting safely at the Self Help Radio web site. Even worse, I broke up the flow by separating the show into two parts. Part one is available by clicking "part one" there. Part two is the same except you need to click "part two" at the beginning of this sentence. What is flowing (or not flowing) through those parts is listed below.

I'd ask you to just go with the flow but I'm not sure there's any flow in this show. Oh heavy sigh.

(part one)

"Flow" Incense _Fall Into The Glowing Fade_
"Feel Flows Free" Guitar _Sunkissed_

"Let Your Love Flow" Ray Charles _Wish You Were Here Tonight_
"Let It Flow" Jimmie Spheeris _Isle Of View_
"Steady In The Flow" Rosemary Haddad _Coming Hohm_
"Let It Flow" Elvin Bishop _Let It Flow_

"Let It Flow (Do You Like Scratchin'?)" KRS-One _Buffalo Gals: Back To Skool_
"I Feel Like Flowing" Apache _The Original Flava Unit_
"Let The Funk Flow" EPMD _Strictly Business_

(part two)

"Flow Forever" Rakim _The Master_

"Flow" House Of Love _Creation Soup Vol. 5_
"Everything Flows" Teenage Fanclub _Everything Flows_
"Bloodflow" Smog _KVRX Local Live Vol. 10_
"Contraflow" The Fall _The REAL New Fall LP Formerly Country On The Click_

"Melodic Flow" A.M. Sixty _Big As The Sky_
"Let It Flow" Cheeky Monkey _Four Arms To Hold You_
"Ebb & Flow" Julie Ocean _Long Gone & Nearly There_
"Wreck My Flow" The Dirtbombs _We Have You Surrounded_
"Cash Flow" Cash Pussies _99% Is Shit_
"Tears Begin To Flow" The Spiders _Chicken Shack Boogie Vol. 4_

Whither A Show That Flows?

I honestly don't know where this show came from. I created a folder on my Mac's desktop where I threw some ideas in there & suddenly it showed up on my queue. Most of the time, a theme suggests itself to me - I can at least say that I was interested in something & made the decision to make it into a show. But "a show that flows"? What the hell?

I know "flow" is used often in a musical context, especially in hip-hop, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking of doing a show of songs that demonstrated some vague notion of "flow." I also wasn't watching a river flow, or lava flow, or blood flow, or tears flow. & I hardly ever go with the flow. So I don't know from where flow flowed.

All I know is there will be a stumbling attempt to do a show about flows tomorrow on WRFL, the regular Self Help Radio time, 7:30 am, until 9:00, on the 88.1 frequency, or you can listen live online at wrfl dot fm. (This is a direct link to the WRFL .pls file if you don't want to go the website.) & of course you can listen any time after tomorrow at Self Help Radio: The Website.

It's not a terribly auspicious beginning of my tenth year. Eek!

Preface To A Show That Flows: 1200 Posts OMG!

Excuse me while I cut & paste for my own amusement.

I started this blog on 09/12/06.
176 days later, I reached post # 100 on 03/07/07.
158 days after that, I reached post # 200 on 08/13/07.
149 days after that, I reached post # 300 on 01/09/08.
138 days after that, I reached post # 400 on 05/26/08.
141 days after that, I reached post # 500 on 10/14/08.
162 days after that, I reached post # 600 on 03/25/09.
186 days after that, I reached post # 700 on 09/23/09.
149 days after that, I reached post # 800 on 02/19/10.
154 days after that, I reached post # 900 on 07/23/10.
143 days after that, I reached post # 1000 on 12/14/10.
& finally, 158 days after that, I reached post # 1100, at 05/21/11.

It's 147 days later - & I've probably made a mistake somewhere, because I count 1714 days up there but it's been 1859 days since the blog began. DON'T LET ME DO MATH. ESPECIALLY NOT IN MY HEAD.

Now back to working on the radio show...

Omigosh! Nearly Twelve Hundred Posts!

Holy crap. Tomorrow will be the one thousand, two hundredth entry on this blog. It's kind of exciting it's happening around the same time as my ninth anniversary, although it's only a coincidence they somewhat coincide. I wish I had thought of a blog at the same time I thought of doing the show, but I didn't know whether I'd be doing a show like Self Help Radio for very long. It's a little like dating the woman I ended up marrying. I hadn't dated anyone for very long in many years. So too with the radio show - who could've known it would last almost a decade?

This blog is just a little over five years old. Tomorrow I'll bore you with my accounting but assuming that it's been five years & one month, the goofy math I did suggests that 1200 posts over 1855 days (I multiplied 365 {the days in a year} times 5 {the years the blog has existed} plus I added 30 {for the extra month}) averages out to me scribbling on the blog about once every day & a half. All the more remarkable because I really have nothing to say.

Especially since entries like this are really just time wasters. Place holders. Stalling, if you will.

Oh, & I'm not trying to create suspense or anything - tomorrow's 1200th entry will not be exciting or important in any way. That hasn't happened before - why would it happen now?

Silly!

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Sixteen

Though I am a negative person, who sees the worst in everyone, who expects the worst from the world, I find I hardly ever have a problem praising goodness & being excited about something original or noteworthy. That's why I am presenting this quite punny A Joke A Day joke in its entirety. I believe it's a good joke.

A couple lived near the ocean and used to walk the beach a lot. One summer they noticed a girl who was at the beach pretty much every day.

She wasn't unusual, nor was the travel bag she carried, except for one thing. She would approach people who were sitting on the beach, glance around, then speak to them.
Generally, the people would respond negatively and she would wander off, but occasionally someone would nod and there would be a quick exchange of money for something she carried in her bag.

The couple assumed she was selling drugs and debated calling the cops, but since they didn't know for sure they just continued to watch her.

After a couple of weeks the wife asked, "Honey, have you ever noticed that she only goes up to people with boom boxes and other electronic devices?"

He hadn't and said so.

Then she said, "Tomorrow I want you to get a towel and our big radio and go lie out on the beach. Then we can find out what she's really doing."

Well, the plan went off without a hitch, and the wife was almost hopping up and down with anticipation when she saw the girl talk to her husband and then leave. The man walked up the beach and met his wife at the road. "Well, is she selling drugs?" she asked excitedly.

"No, she's not." he said, enjoying this probably more than he should have.

"Well, what is it, then?" his wife fairly shrieked.

The man grinned and said. "Her name is Sally and she's a battery salesperson."

"Batteries?" cried the wife.

"Yes," he replied. "Sally sells C cells by the Seashore."

Only one quibble. The famous tongue twister, a pun upon which is the whole raison d'etre for this joke, is "she sells seashells by the seashore." Why did the person telling the joke need to name the girl Sally? Wouldn't the last line be even more funny if the punchline were just, "She sells C cells by the seashore"?

It would, but then, if that were the case, it just wouldn't be A Joke A Day.

The Ninth Anniversary Show

Yes, Self Help Radio has been on the air for nine years. The other night I counted roughly (well, I was drunk) over 450 (that's four-hundred-fifty) episodes of Self Help Radio over the years, or (as I do the math) about fifty episodes per year, which means either I'm pretty dedicated or I really should learn to enjoy vacations.

For this anniversary, I revisit a theme that I first tackled in 2004, & looking back over that playlist, I feel like back then I was phoning it in. No "Telstar"? No "Space Junk" by Devo? I must have thought of the show the night before! That's the cool thing about revisiting a theme - at least for me - I can try to revisit a theme with all the musical knowledge I've gained (&/or lost) in the intervening years.

I also made shirts for the show! Congrats to John, Kay, Chris & Ethan for winning. & during the week of the show, you can "like" my show on its Facebook page & then like the appropriate comment there to be eligible for a drawing to win a shirt just for being a Facebook friend. It's a happy anniversary all around!

The show is not in a degrading orbit, but at my degraded website, self help radio dot net, & of course it's been in a space collision, so it's in two parts. Part one is hurting toward the International Space Station. Part two is being hassled by a gang of micrometeors. The songs they're singing are mentioned below.

Here's to nine more years! Or months, really. I'm not greedy.

(part one)

"Sputnik I" T. A. Benham _Voices Of The Satellites_
"Beep Beep" Tom Glazer & Dottie Evans _Space Songs_
"The Sputnik Story" Bill Thomas __The Ultimate 50's Rockin' Sci-Fi Disc: American Sci-Fi Songs From The 1950s_
"War Of The Satellites" Man Or Astroman? _Postphonic Star Exploration_

"Telstar" The Tornados _It's Hard To Believe It! The Amazing World Of Joe Meek_
"Satellite" Teresa Brewer _Miss Versatility_
"Satellite Of Love" The Velvet Underground _Peel Slowly & See_
"Satellite" The Aluminum Group _Pelo_
"International Space Station" Figurine _Transportation + Communication = Love_

"Sputnik II" T. A. Benham _Voices Of The Satellites_
"Sputnik Kiss" The Revillos _From The Freezer_
"Satellite" Robyn Hitchcock _Eye_
"Satellite" Kicking Giant _Halo_

(part two)

"Satellite" Magnapop _Mouthfeel_

"Sputnik (Satellite Girl)" Jerry Engler & The Four Ekkos _That'll Flat Git It!, Vol. 6_
"Satellite # 2" Carl Mann _Carl Rocks!_
"Big Red Satellite" Hasil Adkins _The Wild Man_
"Sputnik's Down" Folk Implosion _Take A Look Inside_
"My House Is A Satellite" The Shapes _Songs For Sensible People_
"Mix Up The Satellites" Guided By Voices _Earthquake Glue_

"Explorer 1" T. A. Benham _Voices Of The Satellites_
"Satelllliiiiiteee" Flying Lotus _Cosmogramma_
"Space Junk" Devo _Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!_
"Satellites Like Butterflies" The June _Green Fields & Rain_
"Worry Satellite" South Ambulance _South Ambulance_
"Satellite" Luscious Jackson _In Search Of Manny_

Whither Space Junk?

Today is the day of the official ninth anniversary of Self Help Radio, which went on the air with no incident & probably no listeners, on 91.7 fm, KOOP Austin. It was a Wednesday at 2pm. The first theme I did was "The War Show," since around that time then-president Hurk W. Burk was talking about war, war, war, with Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. I was certain my little radio show could bring peace. No, I wasn't.

Anyway, it's nine years later & the one consistency (besides the show's basic ineffectual nature) is that I've been doing theme after theme - something like over 360 of them - & only repeating myself on rare occasions, like this week. I've decided that on my anniversary shows I'll repeat an old theme & so I shall!

I did a show about "space junk" in January of 2004. I remember loving the idea but not having nearly enough songs about satellites, which are the predominant "junk" humans put in space. I played some songs about meteors & comets, but I wanted songs about Sputnik, damn it! & yeah, I forgot all about the Tornados' "Telstar." Not this time, though.

Tomorrow morning, then, at 7:30 am, celebrate nine years (it's the pottery anniversary) of Self Help Radio. In Lexington, it's on the 88.1 frequency, but you can listen anywhere at wrfl dot fm. & if you want to celebrate later, by yourself, with the windows down, I totally understand & I'll put the show up at the Self Help Radio website.

Remember, tomorrow I'm giving away Self Help Radio special ninth anniversary tee shirts designed by my logo's creator, Austin artist extraordinaire Suloni Robertson. I'll also be giving a couple of shirts away to people who "like" my Facebook page, if you won't be listening in real time.

But if you're listening in the morning, can you bring the cakes & booze? I'm bringing the space junk music, after all.

Preface To Space Junk: Junk In Space!

There are lots of articles online about space junk, which is stuff we humans have sent into space which is now just cluttering up the place. It's not just satellites that no longer work - it includes trash we've left up there, & paint chips that have come off the space shuttle, & hatches blown off space modules. & these pieces of junk orbit the planet at around seventeen thousand miles an hour.

It's such a problem that there are several agencies, like the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies which is tasked to tracking & making sure stuff up there doesn't run into spacecraft or the International Space Station or anything we send up there (like currently functioning satellites). Here's a little animation to give you an idea what it's like up there. They say they're tracking 22,000 objects up there.

It doesn't just stay up there - lots of times the orbits degrade & the space junk returns - & you get news headlines like "Satellite Heading For Earth" & "NASA Satellite Falls On Canada: No One Hurt".

If you didn't want to click the little movie up there, here's a similar image from the European Space Agency:

Ninth Anniversary Coming!

That's right! It's been approximately nine years since Self Help Radio began! Actually, it's officially eight years & three hundred & sixty three days, since Self Help Radio first went on the air on October 9, 2002. The management at KOOP radio immediately regretted their error but were too nice to say anything about it.

When I do my anniversary shows, I revisit an old theme - adding music I've discovered since the show aired, & sometimes tweaking the theme a bit - but this anniversary I'm doing something else that's special: I'm giving away tee shirts!

I've asked the original designer of the beat-up Self Help Radio bear, Suloni Robertson, to make a ninth anniversary version, & so she has. You can listen to show Monday for a chance to win!

I'm also going to give a couple of shirts away on my Facebook page, but you have to "like" the show to win. More information about this - & a preview of the new design! - will be forthcoming.

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Fifteen

Sadness in the house of A Joke A Day! The death & dying of "jokes" causes a funereal atmosphere that may infect your own mailbox! Unsubscribe now!

The misogyny continues:

A guy walks into a bar and orders a shot of whisky. He gulps it down and peeks into his shirt pocket. He orders another shot of whisky, gulps it down and peeks into his short pocket. He orders a third shot and does the same thing. After the sixth shot, he asks the bartender for the bill, pays and starts to walk out.

Curiosity gets the better of the bartender and he says to the guy, "Excuse me, but I noticed that every time you drank a shot, you kept looking into your pocket. I was wondering what's in your pocket."

The guy slurs, "Well, I have a picture of my wife in my pocket. I keep drinking until she starts to look good."

Should we laugh at the drunken man for his choice in unattractive mate? Or should we pity evil time which ages women, turns them into wrinkled shrews that require poor husbands to supplement themselves with the demon rum in order to simply share a bed? In the world of the A Joke A Day misogynist "joke," a husband picks a wife for her looks alone, unwisely foreseeing that age will take away the facade that makes her harpy-like personality bearable. Ha ha ha ha!

But women are all gold-diggers anyway, right, A Joke A Day?

Dear John,

I have been unable to sleep since I broke off our engagement. Won't you forgive and forget? Your absence is breaking my heart. I was a fool, nobody can take your place. I love you.

All my love,
Belinda. xxxxoooxxxx

P.S. Congratulations on winning this week's lottery.

Let's hope John reconciles with this obvious greedhead so he can make jokes about her once she's grown prune-faced & old!

There was one slightly clever joke I liked this week. It was this one:

TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?

DONALD: H I J K L M N O.

TEACHER: What are you talking about?

DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.

A possibly true story!

-----

If you're reading this today, Thursday the 6th, & you'd like to hear me sub WRFL's classic rock show The Belfry, you can do so from 4 to 6pm Lexington time on the 88.1 frequency, or you can listen online at the same time at wrfl dot fm. But I have to listen, you don't. I understand your reluctance.

Whither Come Home?

Have you always had a home to come home to? Apparently about one in every two hundred Americans is either homeless or finds themselves homeless every year.

Oftentimes on Self Help Radio, a particular phrase is explored - the show has explored songs with the construction "here i/you/he/she/it/they come(s)," for example. This week you'll hear nothing but songs about coming home. Mostly as a command: "come home!"

If the show were more popular, & you were abroad, or had otherwise abandoned the show, & the show knew it, the show might advertise itself with "Come home to Self Help Radio!" Self Help Radio, alas, is no one's home, so coming home to it is by definition impossible.

A lot of people spend a lot of time at WRFL, so it feels like home to many people, & to many radio shows, like Self Help Radio. Listen to Self Help Radio playing songs about coming home in its current home tomorrow (that's Monday) morning at 7:30am. You can listen in Lexington at the 88.1 frequency or you can listen online at the WRFL web site.

Actually, Self Help Radio is lucky enough to have two homes. It works at WRFL but rests at its own web site, self help radio dot net, where tomorrow's show will come home to later in the day.

Either way, please listen!

Preface To Come Home: Self Help Radio Come Home!

"Self Help Radio, Come Home!" was a popular so-called art-house movie made in Texas in 2004 as a sequel to the equally obscure but no less popular film "Self Help Radio."

In the film, which is based on the novella of the same name, the poor but proud Dickenbock family come upon hard times & are forced to sell their radio show, called "Self Help Radio," to the evil Duke Of Clearchannel. However, the plucky young radio show is unwilling to be apart from its owner, young Dickie Dickenbock, & sets out on a long & dangerous journey from the Duke's home in far-away Los Angeles to its home in Austin.

Also included is the gripping courtroom scene where the evil but well-funded Duke Of Clearchannel sues the pants off Richard Dickenbock & his family for breach of contract. Many critics call the pantsless Dickenbock family the highlight of the movie.

Surprisingly, no one "Self Help Radio" series sequels have been filmed.

Just Flying Over The Earth Today

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Fourteen

The laughs fail to continue!

Okay, one joke made me smile this week. It was this one:

A man walks into the psychiatrist's office with a zucchini up his nose, a cucumber in his left ear, & a breadstick in his right ear. He says, "What is wrong with me?" The psychiatrist replies, "You are not eating properly."

I'm sure it was old the first time Henny Youngman told it, though.

One "joke" puzzled me this week. It was this one:

Frank was madly in love with Susan, but couldn't get up enough courage to pop the question face to face. Finally he decided to ask her on the telephone. "Darling! He blurted out, "Will you marry me?"
"Of course, I will, you silly boy," she replied, "Who's speaking?"

Perhaps you understand why it's funny. I don't know if it's supposed to be absurd, or if we're supposed to laugh at the poor lovesick man's predicament, or if it's hilarious that the woman appears to be desperate & promiscuous. None of those things actually make it funny, but perhaps whoever approves the "jokes" for the A Joke A Day mailing list thought it looked like a joke, so he/she/it sent it along.

This "joke" was utterly ruined by an uncaught spelling mistake:

A teacher asked students to bring old staff, 1 kid came with his grandpa.

That's the risk when you text in a joke!

I Admit I Meant To Be Mean

I don't want to be mean, as I have a houseguest, but I do need to put this week's show, which is about mean people, on the web. I meant to do it earlier but at the time I didn't have the means. So I am being rude & doing it in the meantime.

The show is not at all mean, but may help you deal with mean people. That's not a promise. Nor a threat. It's just a thing. The show is at its normal place at self help radio dot net. The show is in two parts (contents of which are listed below) & the parts have been carefully named part one & part two.

(part one)

"Mean Old World" Sam Cooke _The Man Who Invented Soul_
"Mean World" The Mighty Mellow Tones _Heavy On Doo-Wop, Vol 10: Crystal Ball Records_
"Mean Man" Dreamtones _The Fargo Records Story_

"A Man Is A Mean Thing" Barbara Perry _Goldwax Northern Soul_
"Boys Can Be Mean" Sugar & The Spices _Girls With Guitars_
"Mean Woman Blues" Roy Orbison _The Definitive Collection_
"Mean Man" Betty Harris _Saturday Night Fish Fry: New Orleans Funk & Soul_
"Mean When I'm Mad" Eddie Cochran _The Eddie Cochran Box Set_
"Mean Old Devil" Bruce Haack _Rough Trade Shops - Electronic 01_

"Mean Mr. Mustard (take)" The Beatles _Anthology 3_
"Mean Time" Blue Aeroplanes _Weird Shit_
"You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" Thurl Ravenscroft _How The Grinch Stole Christmas_

(part two)

"Mean To Me" Billie Holiday _The Legacy Box 1933 - 1958_
"What Makes You Treat Me Mean" Speckled Red _Complete Recorded Works 1929-1938_

"Mean Talking Blues" Woody Guthrie _Hard Travelin': The Asch Recordings, Vol. 3_
"Jimmie's Mean Mama Blues" Jimmie Rodgers _The Singing Brakeman_
"A Boy Named Sue" Johnny Cash _At San Quentin_
"Mean Mama Boogie" Johnny Bond & His Red River Valley _Hillbilly Boogie_
"Treat Me Mean, Treat Me Cruel" Conway Twitty _The Rock & Roll Years_

"Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean (Nashville Version)" Ruth Brown _Night Train To Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1970_
"So Mean To Me" Little Milton _The Chess Story, 1947-1975: Vol. 9 - 1960-1961_
"Mean To Me" The Stranglers _Black & White_
"Don't Be So Mean" Madd, Inc. _Up From The Grave_
"Mean Ole Gal" Little Esther & Johnny Otis _Even More Mellow Cats 'n' Kittens: Hot R&B & Cool Blues 1945-1951_
"Mean Woman Blues" Buddy Raye _I'm Just The Other Woman: MSR Madness # 4_

Whither Meanie?

"Mean People Suck" says a popular (once popular?) bumper sticker. It was also a movie with James Franco in it. In this article written for a life coaching website (for reals), it concludes "mean people don’t suck... their attitude does. Don’t take it personally!" You can oftentimes find quizzes online with questions (& choices like):

Who's etched in your memory as being the meanest person you've ever had to deal with?

An Ex!
Someone I thought was a Friend!
Lawyers!
Police!
Bill Collectors!
A Teacher!
My Parent/s!
A Stranger!
Someone not listed here!
A Boss or Supervisor!

(Bosses & supervisors, take note - you're less than "someone not listed here.")

You can buy tee shirts with the slogan on it.

Just like "chicks dig jerks," "mean people suck" appears to be a cliche Americans (maybe others) enjoy. But do mean people deserve to be celebrated on a radio show?

That's for you to decide. Listen to Self Help Radio tomorrow (that's Monday) morning at 7:30 am on the 88.1 frequency on Lexington radio or online at the wrfl.fm frequency if you're pretending your computer is a radio. If you're being mean about it & just won't listen, the show will be archived on the Self Help Radio website later in the day.

Mean people will probably come off pretty badly, but then, they always do. & yet they usually get everything they want.

Preface To Meanie!: Why So Mean?

What do you mean you're not mean? You're the meanest person I've ever met! If you take the average of all the people in the world, you're way meaner than the mean! & I mean that.

The word mean has lots of meanings (pun intended) & I hope to get to the bottom of how the definition "selfish in a petty way; unkind; cruel, spiteful, malicious" relates to "to intend to convey or indicate" & "to act as a symbol of; signify or represent." I know, one's a verb & the other's an adjective (the "mean" meaning "average" is a noun) but surely they're related. Aren't they?

I especially like the slightly old-fashioned (but prevalent in lots of blues songs) meaning of "mean" that's "low in social status; of humble origins." "Mean" can also mean "humiliated or ashamed" (just perfect for blues songs!) & "in poor physical condition; sick or debilitated," which I've never heard anyone else say ever.

I didn't mean to suggest you were mean in that first paragraph. It's not what I meant. I don't know what I meant. I might just have been acting mean.

& by "mean" I meant "excellent; skillful," as in "He plays a mean game of bridge"!

Gone To Boomslang!

I'll try to write in this blog the next couple of days but it may be tough - it's the third annual WRFL Boomslang Festival starting tonight & continuing all through the weekend. Here, let me put up a banner-like thing taken from the website to show support!



I'll be volunteering at the Cosmic Charlie's first show tonight, so you should come say hello. & enjoy the weekend - a lot of people - a lot of them volunteers - helped put this together. It should be a blast.

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Thirteen

Oh you know. The week was all like:

Did you hear about the two radio antennas that got married?
The wedding was terrible, but the reception was excellent!

& then it was all like:

Vicky was at a business conference. During a break, she decided to call home collect. Her six-year-old son picked up the phone and heard a stranger’s voice say, “We have Vicky on the line. Will you accept the charges?” Frantic, the six-year-old dropped the receiver and came charging outside screaming, “Dad! They have Mom! And they want money!”

& then it was all like:

Okay, so a Texan rancher comes upon a farmer from Maine. The Texan looks at the Mainer and asks, "Say, how much land you think you got here?" Mainer: 'Bout 10 acres I'd say." Texan (boasting): Well, on my lot, it takes me all day to drive completely around my property!" Mainer: "Yep, I got one of them trucks too."

Oh, & something insulting to a particular place/person/thing made it through, doubtless pissing off one or two U of Michigan fans:

Q. Why do University of Michigan graduates hang their diplomas from their rear view mirror?
A. So they can use handicapped parking.

Ho hum.

(Do they really call people from Maine "Mainers"?)

Whispers Gettin' Louder

I don't know how to make whispers in plaintext. I was thinking just little dots, like ...... , but that usually indicates a loss for words. I do know how to make whispers on the radio, & I in fact played a lot of songs about whispers today which, strangely enough, had very few whispers in them. It seems like it's all right to talk about whispers using your normal everyday voice. In fact, some people even scream about whispers.

I like the word whisper because it is basically onomatopoeia, & that's a figure of speech everyone loves. The whispering that the show did is listed in song form below, & you can find the show at the Self Help Radio website where I have divided it into two parts: part one & part two. They have better names that than but I can't say them out loud - come closer, I'll whisper them to you.

(part one)

"Doo Wop Whispers" PBNJ Buchanan _Speak Up!_
"Whisper" Pelle Carlburg _The Lilac Time_
"Mr. Whisper" Dory Previn _On My Way To Where_

"Whispering" Joni James _Put On A Happy Face_
"The Words That I Whisper" Sal Mineo _The Complete Epic Recordings_
"Whisper Not" The Florentines _él: The Legendary B Sides_
"Whispers (Gettin' Louder)" Jackie Wilson _The Very Best Of Jackie Wilson_
"Whisper You Love Me Boy" Chris Clark _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 8: 1968_
"Whisper" Morphine _Yes_

"Heard Your Whisper" The June Brides _Every Conversation: The Story Of The June Brides & Phil Wilson_
"There Is No Sun" Jay Reatard _Watch Me Fall_
"Wallpaper Whispers" Seashells _Sunshine Eyes_
"Chinese Whispers" Melys _Suikerspin_

(part two)

"Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)" Acumen Nation _Newer Wave_

"Reduced To Whispering" The Shirts _The Shirts_
"From A Whisper To A Scream" Elvis Costello _Trust_
"Cries & Whispers" Polyrock _Polyrock/Changing Hearts_
"Whisper Whisper" The Postelles _The Postelles_
"Do You Whisper?" Dressy Bessy _Holler & Stomp_

"Whispering Pine" Doris _Did You Give The World Some Love Today Baby_
"Whispering Weeds" Frank Black & The Catholics _Black Letter Days_
"Whisper" Kickstand _Kickstand_
"The Whisper Of Your Mind" The Lilac Time _Astronauts_
"Forever Whispers Secrets To Me" Celestial _Crystal Heights_

Whither Whispers?

/whisper

Just between you & me, I was a loud kid. In third grade, the teacher had a little throw rug she kept in the corner which she called the "bicker rug" where she put children who were talkative or noisy (in fact, because I hardly ever got into fights, I had no idea that "bicker" meant "fight" until later on - I thought it meant "rambunctious" or "loud"), & where I often found myself. Only years later, after I met people who were quite loud as adults did I realize I chatted up a storm because I was insecure & wanted attention. My voice was high, then, so it probably made things worse.

Now that I am older & even more insecure, I'm not very loud, because I don't want anyone to know how insecure I am. But I don't whisper a lot, either. My voice is naturally quiet these days, which is a shame because I live with partially deaf beasts & wife. If I had a dollar for every time my wife has said, "What was that again?" I'd have a bunch of dollars. Which I'd give to her to clean out her ears.

I often whisper on the air to create a feeling of intimacy between me & the listener, if such a person really exists. It's more a stage whisper, though, not the sort of whisper that gets shushed in libraries or movie theaters.

I am in whisper mode now, though, because it's imperative that you listen tomorrow at 7:30 am, either on the 88.1 fm frequency in Lexington or online at wrfl dot fm, because I will be whispering further information about whispering directly to you.

Though, now, that I think about it, I'll also be archiving the show later that day at self help radio dot net, so maybe it's not that imperative. I didn't have to whisper after all.

No, no. I did.

Preface To Whispers: Speak Up!

Is whispering sometimes louder than normal speech? This odd Facebook page thinks so.

But is whispering bad for your vocal cords when singing? Apparently not. How do I know? Because someone asked that question on Yahoo! Answers. He asked: "I heard that whispering can damage your vocal chords slowly. I whisper sing songs that I know by heart. I sing death metal vocals and I need to know if this is bad for you."

He sings death metal vocals & he wonders if whispering is bad for him? Anyway, the answer is here.

Is whispering rude? The Busy Mama thinks so!

Something else that may be rude is me telling you that I'm going to be on the radio this evening playing hip hop from ten pm to midnight Lexington time. You can listen in Lexington on the 88.1 frequency or you can listen anywhere at wrfl.fm. It's not that important, so I thought I'd whisper it at you.

But Have You Heard About Boomslang?

I took a nap this afternoon because I subbed someone's show this morning from six to nine am & didn't get to sleep last night before one am so I got roughly three hours sleep & by the way I am still tired.

The show that I subbed included the amazing WRFL Surf! & one person on the Facebook page described my deejaying as "Inanity personified..." If only they had been commenting on Self Help Radio, I could have used it as a quote for promotion! Ah well.

Anyway, Boomslang is a music festival held every year (at least for the past three years) by WRFL featuring an eclectic mix of independent, obscure, or fill-in-the-blank bands, including the first Queerslang, which seems pretty cool. I am only vaguely involved in it - I have volunteered for busy work, & will volunteer during the festival - but I had my first Boomslang anxiety dream while I napped. At some point during the dream I realized it was a week until Boomslang, & woke up feeling only slightly relieved. I mean, it's only a week away!

If you're in or near Lexington, the festival may be worth your while. It's basically Friday through Sunday, at a small number of venue, not as crazy as SXSW, & it does look like maybe next week will be quite lovely. Read more about it at Boomslang fest dot com. I'm convinced there's something there for you - & most probably more than a little something!

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Twelve

Well, you learn something new every A Joke A Day A Week.

Did you know, for example, there is a sub-category of jokes called "Genie Jokes"?

There are! In fact there's a whole page (okay, probably more) on the internet for them, at weirdity dot com slash genie. Indeed, you can find genie jokes on such diverse topics as "Miscellaneous Genies," "Well Meaning Genies," "Anti-Men & Anti-Women Genies," "Rocket Science Genies" (I don't really want to know), "Friends & Genies" (doesn't that sound like a DH Lawrence book?), "Tough Cookie Genies," & of course "Smutty Genie Jokes" - need I point out they're "(Adults Only)"?

Here's what it says "about Genie Jokes":

Genie jokes vary around the premise that the subject finds a bottle/brass lamp/similar antique, from which, by chance, the Genie is liberated after a long incarceration. Usually, the joke illustrates the stupidity of the fortunate, or the risks of careless use of language. Occasionally, & worth collecting, are those that give the Genie his revenge for imprisonment or other ulterior motive."

One of this week's A Joke A Day was in fact a genie joke, which went:

Married couples, both 60 years old, were celebrating their 35th anniversary. During their party, a fairy appeared to congratulate them and grant them each one a wish. The wife wanted to travel around the world. The fairy waved her wand and poof - the wife had tickets in her hand for a world cruise. Next, the fairy asked the husband what he wanted. He said, "I wish I had a wife 30 years younger than me." So the fairy picked up her wand and poof - the husband was 90.

Of course, in typical A Joke A Day fashion, the "genie joke" - it was labelled as such - didn't have a genie in it, but a fairy. Which is, as you might imagine, not exactly the same as a genie, although to be fair, a genie wouldn't just appear to "congratulate" a "married couples" which was just two people.

Is it a very good joke? Perhaps it's in the telling. Here is the way the joke appears on the Genie Jokes website, under the "Anti-Men Genies" section. Please note that someone has taken care to make sure the joke is well-written & has some internal logical consistency. Unlike, you know, the drivel that passes for A Joke A Day:

There once was a couple who had been married for many years ... happily married. They had met in their teens, it was love at first sight. Their families got on well, their friends approved ... they married young.

After bringing up the kids, they decided to take a cruise before planning a long and happy retirement. They could afford a five-day short trip around the Mediterranean. The cruise gave them a day wandering around the gift shops of the Greek island of Santorini.

In the back of a dark, almost deserted store, the wife found a dusty old lamp. She gave it a quick polish, to see what it could look like ... and out popped our friendly neighborhood genie.

"I usually give just one wish", said the genie, "but I can see that you two are a couple still in love after all these years; you may each have a wish."

"Oooh!" said the wife, "I'd like to be on a proper ocean cruise ... somewhere in the South Pacific".

And in an instant, she was gone, wafted off to her dream ... maybe she meant to include her husband, but these wishes tend to be taken literally.

"And you, sir?", asked the genie.

Conscious that he was alone, and the world was at his fingertips, the husband thought long and hard ...

"I'd like a wife thirty years younger than me", he eventually decided.

And in an instant, he aged thirty years, and the genie disappeared.

Moral: Wish for what you will ... but be careful if the genie is a woman.

A better joke, although I could do without the ellipses... & the moral.

Can A Radio Show Relax?

Relax? RELAX? Who can relax in this day & age? In this time of confusion & crisis? Only hipsters can relax! & they do it ironically!

Self Help Radio relaxed today, though, enough to make a show about relaxing. Can't relax? I can't blame you. Perhaps there's something relaxing in today's show for you. If not, you should do what I do: rely upon alcohol & drugs.

The show in its entirety is at the Self Help Radio website. It's been divided into two soothing parts: part one will rub your feet while part two plays music on a zither. Or something. Probably not. What's in the two parts is below.

(part one)

"I've Got To Learn To Relax More, Yo!" Innerstance.Beatbox _All Little Boys Do Silly Little Dances_
"Lighten Up Again" Mocean Worker _Mix & Match_
"(Relax) You Will Think You Are A Chicken" Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet _Sport Fishin'_

"Take It Easy" Fats Waller _1935 Vol. 1_
"Relax-Ay-Voo (with Line Renaud)" Dean Martin _Memories Are Made Of This_
"Relax Max" Dinah Washington _Swingin' Miss 'D'_
"Relax" Elvis Presley _It Happened At The World's Fair_
"Relax & Mambo" Machito & His Orchestra _Sabroso: The Afro-Latin Groove_
"Take It Easy My Brother Charlie" Kahami Karie _Kahami Karie_

"Relax" Bobby Conn & The Glass Gypsies _The Homeland_
"Relax" Calvin Harris _Ready For The Weekend_

(part two)

"Relax" The Dandy Warhols _Come On Feel The Dandy Warhols_
"Rush To Relax" Eddy Current Suppression Ring _Rush To Relax_

"You Gots To Chill" EPMD _Strictly Business_
"Relax Baby Be Cool" Serge Gainsbourg _Aux Armes Et Caetera_
"Tomorrow Never Knows" The Beatles _Revolver_
"Relax" Petra Haden _Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out_
"Unwind" The Rosebuds _The Rosebuds Unwind_

"Relax Your Mind" Leadbelly _Leadbelly's Last Sessions_
"Relax & Take It Easy" Tommy Duncan With The Ranger Trio _Atomic Platters: Cold War Music From The Golden Age_
"Never Relaxed" Daniel Johnston _Songs Of Pain_
"I'm Gonna Take It Easy" Gabriel Brown _Roll & Tumble Blues - A History Of Slide Guitar_

Whither Relax?

I am so exhausted while preparing this radio show with the theme "relax." I drove (with the wife & the dogs) to Atlanta yesterday to visit a friend from Austin who happened to be in Atlanta for his birthday. I had read that the visit would only take a six hour drive, but stupidly assumed the drive would take us through Nashville, & so added ninety minutes to the journey by driving through Atlanta. Then, today, I drove back. The right way, though, up I-75 through Knoxville.

We did manage to eat some amazing vegan food in Nashville at a place called The Wild Cow. Oh my invisible friend in the sky, their vegan reuben was amazing. They also had beet hummus. I had previously heard you couldn't beat beet hummus, & I was right.

In Atlanta we ate Ethiopian food at a place called Desta. Though they didn't serve the food in a traditional way, the place still made amazing Ethiopian food. It was spicy in all the right ways. The most charming thing that happened is that a Latino working there, asking us if we wanted more injera, said, "Do you want more tortillas?" We loved that.

I give them both hearty shout-outs & don't give shout-outs to any asshole drivers who apparently don't know the rules of the road. A long drive with dickwads on the road is the opposite of relaxation.

What is relaxation? Find out tomorrow morning (that's Monday) from 7:30 to 9am, on the 88.1 frequency in Lexington, & online everywhere else at wrfl dot fm. If I'm not too relaxed after the show, I'll archive it at the the Self Help Radio website.

Chill out. Listen!

Preface To Relax: How Do You Want To Relax Today?

I'll be taking a relaxing drive to Atlanta today. There I shall relax with my friend Joe, who's turning 44 today, which is 1/15th of 666. He's got so long to go.

I'll be back in time to do a show about relaxing, don't worry. Seriously. Chill out.

Poor, Burning Texas

As you may or may not have heard, my hometown (well, the town I lived in for over twenty years, & the town where I did most of my radio) of Austin is very close to a gigantic fire that's burning just thirty or so miles to the east of it. The city of Bastrop has basically been evacuated & much of the lovely Bastrop State Park has burned down.

Here's a terrifying video of some of the fire & how fast is spreads:



This site has maps of the fire & information about it. Two people have died. 38,000 acres have burned. 550 "structures" (I'm assuming that is some kind of weird euphemism for "homes) have been destroyed.

Friends in Austin - all of whom are safe, thankfully - report that the air smells like smoke, & that in some places there have been ashes coming from the sky. & of course there's this famous picture of the Austin skyline & the smoke to the east.

It's all terrifying, & all the more strange since it's been cold & rainy in Lexington the past week. I am very grateful for social media, which has allowed me to keep tabs on people without being a worry-wart & a buttinsky. Mostly I'm glad people I know are safe, as I am sad for the folks who had to be evacuated & who lost their homes. I take no pleasure in noting that most of them probably supported Rick Perry for governor, even as he cut funding for fire departments by 75%.

It's a Texas thing. You wouldn't understand.

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Eleven

Are you tired of me being so negative about the unfunny A Joke A Day service? Do you wish that I'd just unsubscribe & go back to writing nonsense only vaguely related to my radio show? Do you understand that I am just talking to myself?

If you answered "meh" to any of the above questions, you're more eloquent than I thought.

This week actually had a joke that was told to me a long time ago by one of my nieces or nephews. Probably a nephew. Told poorly, but charmingly nonetheless. I give you, then, a pretty good children's joke as told by someone who submitted it to the A Joke A Day joke subscription service:

A panda bear walks into a bar & orders a sandwich. The waiter brings him the sandwich. The panda bear eats it, pulls out a pistol, kills the waiter, & gets up & starts to walk out. The bartender yells for him to stop. The panda bear asks, "What do you want?" The bartender replies, "First you come in here, order food, kill my waiter, then try to go without paying for your food." The panda bear turns around & says, "Hey! I'm a Panda. Look it up!" The bartender goes into the back room & looks up panda bear in the encyclopedia, which read: "Panda: a bear-like marsupial originating in Asian regions. Known largely for its stark black & white coloring. Eats shoots & leaves."

I corrected the misspellings in the joke. I remember there was a chick at KVRX whose email address was eats.shoots.and.leaves@whatever.com. She was not, to my best recollection, a panda.

Why does a bar have a set of encyclopedias?

A Day Of Labor Day Show

It's a Monday, it's a holiday, who am I to be contrary, why not do a Labor Day show about working? If I'm still on Mondays next year maybe not, but for right now, it seemed a good idea. & it's also appropriate that I, who don't work, should have to "work" on Labor Day.

So here are some songs for the beleaguered workers of the United States, & the world too, & although I mention it in the show, I want to share with you my favorite quote about work, from Andre Breton: "There is no use in being alive if one must work. The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own life's meaning - that event which I may not yet have found, but on whose path I seek myself - is not earned by work."

The show works in two parts, which are labelled helpfully part one & part two. What's in each part is listed below.

(part one)

"Welcome To The Working Week" The Methadones _21st Century Power Pop Riot_
"Working Man's Song" The Falcons _United Artists Doo-Wop Vol. 4_
"Work, Work, Work" Lee Dorsey _Ride Your Pony/Get Out Of My Life, Woman_
"I'm A Hard Workin' Man" Abner Jay _Swaunee Water & Cocaine Blues_

"The Work Song" Tommy Hunt _Dancing 'Til Dawn_
"Sixteen Tons" Tennessee Ernie Ford _Workers & The Workplace_
"Bracero" Phil Ochs _There But For Fortune_
"There Is Power In A Union" Utah Phillips & The Entertainment Workers IU 630, IWW _Don't Mourn, Organize! Songs Of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill_
"There Is Power In A Union" Billy Bragg _Talking With The Taxman About Poetry_

"I'll Do Anything But Work" Ray Charles _The Swingtime Records Story_
"You Won't Get Me Workin'" Symon Grace & Tuesday Blues _Quagmire Volume 3: Being A Compendium Of Olde-Time Killer Punk Selections From The 1960s_
"Work Is A Four-Letter Word" The Smiths _Girlfriend In A Coma_
"Working Man Is Proud Of A Job He Hates" Onion Radio News _Onion Radio News_
"Work Today" Lightning Love _November Birthday_

(part two)

"Never Work" Mekons _Retreat From Memphis_

"Go to Work You Jerk" Benny Bell _Go to Work You Jerk_
"Whistle While You Work" Louis Armstrong _Disney Songs The Satchmo Way_
"A Hard Day's Night" Peter Sellers _A Celebration Of Sellers_
"Housework" Carol Channing _Free To Be You & Me_
"Working In A Coal Mine" Devo _Pioneers That Were Scalped: The Anthology_
"The Worker" Fischer-Z _Word Salad_
"Work" Lou Reed & John Cale _Songs For Drella_

"You Gotta Go To Work" Rex Griffin _American Yodeling 1911-1946_
"Workin' Man Blues" Merle Haggard _Down Every Road: 1962 - 1994_
"Work" Spizz Energi _Spizz Not Dead: 1978-88 Decade Of Spizz History_
"Shift-Work" The Fall _Shift-Work_

Whither A Day Of Labor?

Since my show is now on Mondays - & since I hope it'll be on Mondays for a while - I have to get used to the preponderance of holidays that fall on Mondays. Memorial Day, President's Day, MLK Day - & of course Labor Day. So maybe it'll be a "regular feature" of the show that, on Labor Day, I do a work-related show.

This year, it's about work. That's all. You can hear the show on a day you may not have to work at 7:30 am tomorrow morning, on the FM dial at 88.1 in Lexington & the surrounding villas, & online at the WRFL web site everywhere & then some.

I'll archive it later at self help radio dot net because of course you'll sleep in. I don't get to, but you do.

Preface To A Day Of Labor: You Have To Work On Labor Day?

Hey, I'm not the only one. & really, Self Help Radio isn't really work. Have a look at this link: Ten People Who Have To Work On Labor Day.

No, it's not names like Betty, Benny & Bob. It's types of professions, like police, correctional officers, nurses, wastewater treatment plant operators, & air traffic controllers. You know who's not on that list? Convenience store workers. Fast food workers. Community radio station volunteers.

In fact, this article points out something you might not have known about those folks (well, not the radio volunteers - we do it for free):

For millions of workers, Labor Day is another day on the job... The law actually does not require employers to pay any wage premium when they force their employees to work on Labor Day, or any other national holiday. This means that many of the people grilling burgers at fast food restaurants, staffing the checkout counter at convenience stores, or cleaning the bathrooms in hotels, get the same hourly pay when they are forced to work on Labor Day, as they do any other day of the year.

They get no compensation whatsoever for being separated from their friends and family on a national holiday. According to data from the Labor Department, 25.5 million workers do not get any paid holiday time, meaning that they either get the holidays off without pay, or they are forced to work at their regular wage. Similarly, 22.2 million workers have no paid vacation at their job.

Some places do offer time & a half as an incentive for folks to work on Labor Day. WRFL, for example, gives me my regular hourly wage, which is nothing, plus two times that, & a pat on the back. But I have worked at shitty jobs - like in a video store & a gas station - & they paid me time & a half on holidays.

Not that they were nice guys - they simply knew no one would work if they didn't. But in those situations, I was just a kid who didn't really need the job. What if I did?

You should ask, if you visit a convenience store or a fast food jernt on Labor Day, if the folks are getting time & a half. Especially if you get the day off.

The Sickliest

There might be some irony in the fact that I did a Self Help Radio about sickness & then, a week later, caught a cold (*). While that is certainly some powerful cause & effect, it might also be that thousands of students from all over converged on Lexington & some of them brought viruses & germs with them from god-knows-where, & a small but significant portion of them came to the radio station & talked on the same microphone that I used on that Monday morning a week ago. In any event, I am fortunate I could take the time this week to goof out on Sudafed & make my mouth sticky with cough drops. I am feeling a little better today.

I can't remember the last time I had a cold, but I also don't remember sickness well. I remember getting a cold in Huntington over a year ago, because I just went to bed at that time until it went away. It also came right after a radio show, but it was at the end of the semester, not the beginning. It was a harder cold than this one, but I knew the proper treatment: take medication to make me sleep & wait until it went away. Anyway, I thought I'd use this blog as a place to mark when I get sick so I could see if I am declining in my old age.

So. I caught a cold August 30, 2011. I did not die.

I did manage to make dinner for my lovely wife last night - it was chili, it was awesome - but because of my sinuses laying on my face like an iron skillet, I couldn't taste anything. I did appreciate the texture & my tongue reported it was spicy. But that's all.

How did I know it was awesome? My wife told me so.

What, more Sudafed? If you insist. Zzzzzzzzzzz.

(*) I am thinking of doing a Self Help Radio about winning the lottery to test my radio show's power.

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Ten

The A Joke A Day folks continued their incredible losing streak this week with more sexist jokes about wives loathing their husbands, with motorists trying to fool cops, with boring proto-Dilbert office-work-sucks style jokes, with "hilarious" children (they say the fuckiest things!), & with jokes written by comedians new to the planet. But this one struck me as peculiar, & although it is part of the A Joke A Day system, it feels more like it's supposed to be true, doesn't it?

Insurance Company

A Charlotte, North Carolina man, having purchased a case of rare, very expensive cigars, insured them against .... get this .... fire. Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of fabulous cigars, and having yet to make a single premium payment on the policy, the man filed a claim against the insurance company. In his claim, the man stated that he had lost the cigars in "a series of small fires." The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that the man had consumed the cigars in a normal fashion. The man sued ... and won!! In delivering his ruling, the judge stated that since the man held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable, and also guaranteed that it would insure the cigars against fire, without defining what it considered to be "unacceptable fire," it was obligated to compensate the insured for his loss. Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the judge's ruling and paid the man $15,000 for the rare cigars he lost in "the fires." After the man cashed his check, however, the insurance company had him arrested... on 24 counts of arson! With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used as evidence against him, the man was convicted of intentionally burning the rare cigars and sentenced to 24 consecutive one year terms.

Needless to say, there's nothing true about this, & it appears to have actually started out as a joke, but made its way, through retelling online, into "urban legend" status. As the page at snopes.com explains:

As to whether there could be any truth to the legend's premise, insurance policies are generally written so that deliberate actions on the part of the policyholders cannot trigger payouts. Furthermore, destroying your own property isn't arson, as long as the act isn't intended to defraud anyone. If a court had already ruled that the insurance company was required to pay, then obviously no fraud was committed, and thus the burning could not be considered arson.

Not so funny now, eh, Mr. A Joke A Day?

As a bonus, I give you this week's Non-Joke. Oh, it looks like a joke. It even has a certain rhythm like a joke. But is it a joke? No! It's A Joke A Day!

A new miracle doctor was in town. He could cure anything and anybody, and everyone was amazed. Everyone except for Mr. Smith, the town’s grouch So Mr. Smith went to this 'miracle doctor' to prove that he wasn't anybody special. So he goes and tells the doctor, "Hey, doc, I have lost my sense of taste. I can't taste nothing', so what are you going to do?"
The doctor scratches his head and mumbles to himself a little, then tells Mr. Smith, "What you need is jar number 43."
Jar number 43? Mr. Smith wonders. So the doctor brings the jar and tells Mr. Smith to taste it. He tastes it and immediately spits it out, "This is gross!" he yells.
"I just restored your sense of taste Mr. Smith," says the doctor.
So Mr. Smith goes home very mad. One month later, Mr. Smith goes back to the doctor along with a new problem, "Doc," he starts, "I can't remember!"
Thinking he got the doctor, the doctor scratches his head and mumbles to himself a little and tells Mr. Smith, "What you need is jar number 43..."
Before the doctor finished his sentence, Mr. Smith fled the office.

More Indiepop! For You!

As you know, a long time ago, thinking I might live forever, I came up with the notion, thanks to the folks who maintain the band pages at TweeNet, that I could make a few nice radio shows playing indiepop bands from a to z. I decided to include bands they didn't, & also, just to make it interesting, some bands who I thought influenced indiepop in some way. Now, thirty-three episodes later, I am still on the letter G, & will die (I know it) before I get to the letter S.

Ah well. I think it's a lot of fun to research & try to be as complete as possible, & I hope it's fun to listen to. To get as much done as possible, I hijacked the freeform show that precedes Self Help Radio (which I also do), called Sugar Substitute, so I could play three hours of indiepop today, from Gentle Tuesday to the Gol Gappas. It's a lot of fun music.

The show is therefore in FOUR parts instead of two, since it's two shows divided in two. The entire show is at Self Help Radio dot net, of course, but the individual links are as follows:

Indiepop A To Z # 32, Part I
Indiepop A To Z # 32, Part II
Indiepop A To Z # 33, Part I
Indiepop A To Z # 33, Part II

What's in each section is below. Remember, the previous editions of Indiepop A To Z can be found on the Self Help Radio Archive page. In case you want to check my alphabetization skills.

Indiepop A To Z # 32 Part I

"I've Never Been So Poorly Insulted In My Life" Gentle Tuesday _I've Never Been So Poorly Insulted In All My Life 7"_
"Weathershow" The Gentle Waves _The Green Fields Of Foreverland_
"Fluid" The Gerbils _Are You Sleepy?_
"Color Vibration" The German Measles _A German Joke Is No Laughing Matter_

"Geek The Girl" Lisa Germano _Geek The Girl_
"I Like It" Gerry & The Pacemakers _The British Invasion: A History Of British Rock_
"Isolated" Ghost Society _The Back Of His Hands, Then The Palms_
"Painting By Numbers" The Gifted Children _Painting By Numbers 7"_
"Favourite Song" Gigantaur _LemonLime Volume 1_

"Alone At The Pier (with Rose Melberg)" Gigi _Maintenant_
"Renaissance Girl" Gilroy _Renaissance Girl_

Indiepop A To Z # 32 Part II

"Goldfish" Ginger Bottles _The Sound Of Leamington Spa Vol. 6_
"Frances & The Dancing Fairies" Girl Alliance _Summer In Berlin_
"The Soundtrack Of Your Life" A Girl Called Eddy _Tears All Over Town_

"Warm Around You" Girl Of My Best Friend _Warm Around You 7"_
"Circus" Girl Of The World _Wonderboy_
"Please Wait While We Try To Connect You" Girlboy Girl _Fresco_
"Smoke Ring Cool" Girlfrendo _So You Are Here Again, Shadow?_
"Lust For Life" Girls _Album_
"Never Enough" The Girls At Dawn _Never Enough_

"Getting Nowhere Fast" Girls At Our Best! _Pleasure_
"When You Cry" Girls Names _Dead To Me_

Indiepop A To Z # 33 Part I

"Ride My Star" The Girl With The Replaceable Head _Ride My Star EP_
"This Is Love" The Gist _This Is Love_
"It's Raining All Of The Time" The Git Shields _A Chance To Shine_

"Today... Please" Glaring Surge _Just For A Day_
"Paper Airplanes" The Glasses _Birdsongs, Beesongs: Eardrums Spring Compilation_
"No Reason" The Glee Club _Mine_
"Stars Above" Glo-Worm _Why Popstars Can't Dance_
"New York Boy" Gloss _New York Boy_

"Punish Me With Kisses" The Glove _Blue Sunshine_
"Streets Of Your Town" The Go-Betweens _16 Lovers Lane_
"Go Between's Gig" Go Go Charlton _Beaucoup Schlager_

Indiepop A To Z # 33 Part II

"Vacation" Go-Go's _Vacation_

"Flight Of Angels" Go Hole _Flight Of Angels_
"Listening To Marmalade" Go-Kart Mozart _Tearing Up The Album Charts_
"I'm Still Crying" Go Sailor _Go Sailor_
"Real Life" Go! Service _It Makes Me Realise EP_
"Your Back Yard" Go Team Throw: The Yoyo Studio Compilation_

"Funny Little Frog" God Help The Girl _God Help The Girl_
"We'll Keep Our Chains" Vic Godard _Long Term Side-Effect_
"Your Future" Godzuki _Your Future_
"Copycat" Going Stagg _Ocean Park Paradox! U.S. Pop Life Vol. 6: California_
"St. Lucy" Gol Gappas _Bellissimo! él Records The Singles_

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 32?

Actually, it'll be Indiepop A To Z #s 32 & 33. I'm hijacking Sugar Substitute for just such an occasion.

Um, I might as well keep going, right? All those indiepop bands who've been waiting for me to get to them - their name starts with J, or N, or V. How can I stop now?

I'm still in the Gs. I'll still be in the Gs at the end of three hours. I may be in the "golds." But who knows? Not me.

You should listen. It's from 6 to 9am tomorrow morning (that's Monday) on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington. You can listen online at wrfl.fm in anywhere else. You can listen to previous episodes (Indiepop A To Gentle D) in the Self Help Radio Archive.

I promise not to talk about Happy Days anymore.

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 32: Nothing At All About Indiepop

I will be continuing the Indiepop A To Z series this Monday morning - it'll be a special three-hour episode, encompassing both Self Help Radio & Sugar Substitute - but tonight from midnight to three am on WRFL Lexington (that's 88.1 on your fm dial in the city of Lexington & the surrounding horse farms) I'll be playing electronica like I used to do when I did Dickenbock Electronics. I miss that show. Oh well.

Tune in! You can listen everywhere & nowhere at all on the WRFL web site. You can listen to any show on WRFL there. It's pretty awesome.

I must go nap now. It'll be a long night.

I'm Going To Frankfort!

That's right! Tomorrow I will spend what I hope are not very many hours in lovely Frankfort, Kentucky, capital of the Commonwealth. I will be putting up posters in what I hope are friendly shop windows for WRFL's upcoming music festival called Boomslang. I hope I don't get shot!

If your destination is Frankfort, then you should visit the Visit Frankfort web site! For example, did you know that "West Frankfort has more of the family - sit down style restaurants where the whole family can find somet and much more to satisfy any craving."

(Is this strange & wonderful sounding "somet" a Kentucky delicacy? I can't wait to find out!)

What are some of these "sit down style restaurants" on the west side of Frankfort? They have exotic names like "Applebee's" & "Arby's" & "Burger King" & "Chili's" & "Sonic." I'm pretty excited about that!

Oh, the things I do for the radio station I love. Do you want me to send you a picture of me by the capitol rotunda?

(By the way, I've already been to Frankfurt, Germany, where my mother was born. I'm sure Frankfort is just as exciting.)

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Nine

It was the week of the weak A Joke A Day joke. I mean, for a mostly worthless daily dose of unfunny, you seriously can't beat the folks at A Joke A Day. But this week it was like they asked a group of groggy seven-year-olds to come up with the jokes. For example:

A duck walked into a bakery one day & asked for a pork chop.
The baker said, "We aren't a butcher; we don't sell meat here."
So the duck left.
The following day the duck went back & asked again.
This time the Baker said, "No, if you come here again I will nail your feet to the floor."
The following day the duck returned & asked, "Have you any nails?"
The baker replied, "No." & the duck said, "Well, I'll have two pork chops then."

If I honestly thought someone honestly thought it was funny, I might appreciate it. But it's really the sort of joke my friends & I would try to invent when we were in elementary school.

I mean, it's the sort of joke that you have to laugh after you've told it to cue everyone in on the fact that you've just told a joke.

The A Joke A Day people should find a way to incorporate a laugh track.

Bonus unfunny below!

A man goes to an optician asking for help about his shortsightedness.
The optician invites the man to go outside the shop, points to the sun & asks the man what that is. The man somewhat stunned replies obviously: that’s the sun! Thereafter the optician asks: but how far do you want to see?

Thereafter?

Sick Help Radio

Self Help Radio apologizes to anyone who tuned in to today's show, which was about sickness, & got sick. You must have been a first-time listener. Those who have listened to the show before are well aware that it can cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, the sweats, itchiness, swelling, cracking, vague unease, stinkiness, changes in eye color, & opprobrium. & that's true with most any Self Help Radio show, not just today's episode about sickness.

The show today is not available in the pharmacy section of your local supermarket (nor your grocer's freezer), but instead is stocked on the shelves of self help radio dot net. It comes as a two-pack: the first half of the show is in this container & the second half is in this container. The contents of each half are listed below.

I don't imagine it would be safe to operate heavy machinery while listening to Self Help Radio but upon further consideration I don't think it would be unsafe, either. The heavy machinery may drown out the show!

(part one)

"Sick" Beatnik Filmstars _Laid Back & English_
"Sick" Boss Hogg _Boss Hogg_

"Dust Pneumonia Blues" Woody Guthrie _Some Folk_
"T.B. Blues" Jimmie Rodgers _The Singing Brakeman_
"High Fever Blues" Bukka White _The Complete Bukka White_
"Sickbed Blues" Skip James _Blues From The Delta_
"Cold Turkey" John Lennon _The Collection_

"Chills & Fever" Ronnie Love _Whip! Wobble & Grind! 1962-1964_
"Rocking Pneumonia & The Boogie Woogie Flu" Huey "Piano" Smith & His Clowns _Having A Good Time With Huey "Piano" Smith & His Clowns_
"I'm Sick Y'all" Otis Redding _The Otis Redding Story_

(part two)

"The Flu & Nyquil" Lewis Black _The White Album_
"Sick, Sober & Sorry" Johnny Bond _Johnny Bond's Best_

"Malaria" Shriekback _Oil & Gold_
"Stomach Flu" Todd Barry _Falling Off The Bone_
"Cancer Of Everything" Lisa Germano _Geek The Girl_
"In The Sanitorium" Momus _Tender Pervert_
"Still Ill" Smiths _Hatful Of Hollow_

"Touch Me I'm Sick" Mudhoney _March To Fuzz_
"So Sick" Unrest _Perfect Teeth_
"Robitusson" Chris Rock _Bigger & Blacker_
"The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn" The Pogues _Rum Sodomy & The Lash_
"I'm A Living Sickness" Calico Wall _Trash Box: Wild Psychotic Garage Punk!!!_

Whither Sickness?

I am not a sickly person, though I am not entirely a healthy person. My family seems about as medicated (if not more) as the average American, which is a damning statement. I take vitamins & iron to make sure my vegan lifestyle doesn't do me harm, & I take medication for what I am told is a genetic predisposition toward high blood pressure. I can't recall the last time I was really sick.

The wife tells me the last time I had a really bad cold was over a year ago, in the winter, in West Virginia. I seem to remember getting colds all the time in the summers in Texas, where I would constantly travel from 68 degrees indoors to 100+ temperatures outdoors, & back, all day long. I also remember having fewer colds when I was a smoker. But my memory is hazy, getting hazier over time. My brain rewrites constantly.

A show about sickness ought not be a celebration of sickness. We are a very sick world. This week's "Louie" had a riff about how American children eat candy-flavored medicine. I wish I had the ability Louis CK had to put things into perspective in that way. I guess I try. I know I don't do so well.

I'm almost afraid to invite you to the show, but, well, here we go: Self Help Radio's show about sickness will air tomorrow morning (Monday the 22nd) from 7:30 to 9am on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington, & online at wrfl dot fm everywhere there's a world wide web. Later I will hang the finished product out to dry at self help radio dot net.

I did think it'd be funny if I got sick before the show & had to reschedule. But. That didn't happen.

Preface To Sickness: Are You Okay?

I have been looking over this slideshow of US Health Statistics 2010. The actual report is right here. It's a kind of lurid fun read. Americans seem to get less healthy the more their country falls apart around them. I highly recommend a glance at the "at a glance" pdf. It includes wonderful poetic sentences like "The proportion of American adults 20 years of age & over who were obese rose in the 1980s & 1990s. In 2007–2008, about one-third of adults were obese & about two-thirds were overweight or obese." It also has awesome graphs that will make you hungry to look at like these:



I just ate dinner & I feel like I'm starving. What a good American I am!

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?