Now ANYONE Can Do It!

They couldn't before, but they can now! What was stopping everyone previously has subsequently been removed! The obstacles placed in the way have been cleared! The road is open & therefore it's smooth sailing from now on! Nothing stands in their way! Nothing can stop them now! They have cleared a path! Straight on, through the horizon! Hooray for them!

Of course, the only thing truly stopping them was their own fears & doubts, as they could have done it at any time. Yet they didn't, & there are many reasons for it, but all reasons led back to their own perceived failures & insecurities. A sense of failed strength led to a sense of failed desire, which accounted for the blocks & hurdles which seemed to bar all action.

But no more! No more excuses! No more lies! No more hesitation! No more prevarication! No more obfuscation! No more lack of imagination! No more recrimination, remonstration, commiseration! This is the time! This is the place! This is the moment! This is the hour! This is the day! This is the point in time when the realization hits: anyone can do it!

Sometimes, though, such self-assurance burns itself out like a cheap firework. But not today! Now that self-evaluation is justified. Goodness gracious, anyone can do it! From the lowest high to the loftiest filth! It is within everyone's reach & grasp. I swear. I promise. I dare. I admonish. Better than hopes, cheaper than dreams - anyone can do it!

Now if I could only figure out WHAT. Oh well. It's enough that I've assured everyone they do it. Stay tuned to Self Help Radio for developments.

The Curse Of The Invisible Tent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whither Gum?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Ode To Gum
by N. Awful Poet

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

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

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

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

Can I have some?

Long Weekend, Short Story

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

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

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

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

Whither 1973?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hooray for prime number 1973! Hooray for math geekiness!

Clipped Nibbles

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

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

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

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

Slept Through Friday

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

Facebook Reprint

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

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

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

1. I am not an amphibian.

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

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

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

5. In tender moments, I am unquestionably asleep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

17. My wife is our marriage for the money.

18. My wife is not very good with money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whither An Ordinary Show?

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

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

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

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

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

Preface To An Ordinary Show: Meetings Are So 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The end.

A cautionary loop brought to you by Self Help Radio.

Halloo Noo Year!

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

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

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

Happy new year!

She's The One I Love

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

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

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

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

Giraffe Ate My Homebook

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

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

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

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

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 18?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Self Help Radio Changed 2008

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, Bollocks!

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

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

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

See you Monday!

A Very Self Help Radio Christmas 2008!

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

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

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