Buh

This blog isn't much, & it's not even the only blog I have, but I hate that I've been neglecting it. I'm just very busy. Do you want to know WHY I am so busy? Because I have been designated by the Planet's Corporate Overlords to officially Pay Attention to the Dying American Culture. Can you imagine how long that takes? I can barely keep up with my dogs when they're telling me all about their day (apparently there are at least fifty different ways to nap) - now I have to keep a little notebook (which keeps getting filled up, which I then have to feed to the Evil Troll that guards the Magic Treasure at the Center of the World - remind me to tell you about that dipshit some day) documenting the things that indicate that America - & really, Western - culture is on its last legs. I mean, why couldn't I just be in charge of the reality television division? But no, it's all of it. Books, movies, music, television, blogs, facebook posts, myspace drivel, cheese shop flyers, messages sent by traffic lights into schizophrenics, all of it. I am documenting the Decline of Our Way Of Life.

Between that & work, I don't hardly have any time to write in this blog. I'm sorry.

I still have a little time to do Self Help Radio. There's a new one tomorrow. It's another indication of the sorry state of our culture, I know. I have to write it in the notebook.

Whither Hospitals?

I'm sure there are a billion good reasons why I wanted to do a show about hospitals, but of course no reason that would land me in a hospital, which I (thankfully) haven't visited in many years now, I believe it was an ER visit in erm perhaps 2003. I'm sure however that I have hospital visits in my future (don't we all) even if it's the last place I end up because of an accident. But none of that is important until Saturday when I put the show together. Because right now, I have something special for youse at selfhelpradio.net!

That's right, it's Luxuriator on Local Live! But none of those links lead to the show (which also features an interview with the band done by ME), only this one. So go listen & enjoy the flourishing of smart & independent music in Austin!

Or I swear to god I'll put you in the hospital!

Preface To Hospitals: I Spent The Day In A Hospital In College Station

It's true. But it wasn't a human hospital. It was an animal hospital. Or an animal clinic. It had an emergency room. Does it make it a hospital if it has an emergency room? It had doctors. Oh, oh! & it had a dentist! That's why we were there!

Oh, & it's "we" because it was Magda & me. & three dogs. Our three dogs. Not just three dogs we picked up at the 290/21 intersection. We didn't have room for them. Plus, I thought they looked kind of shifty.

Anyway, our youngest (mine & Magda's), he's a dwarf beagle, & there's something I'm not smart enough to understand about dwarf beagle teeth (or, truth be told, normal beagle teeth) (though of course no beagle is normal, am I right?) so we needed to take him to the special dentists at Texas A&M.

That's why we were there. He got his teeth cleaned at a dog hospital.

I bought a book about spelling & read it in the dog hospital lobby. Then drove home in the misty rain.

Valentine's Autopsy

Lieutenant, the manufactured holiday went smoothly this year. Less romance, because of less presents, because of less money. Pornography was reported to have been watched in staggering numbers, mainly with rue but also perhaps with regret. Flowers bought reportedly died much sooner than in previous years, although alcohol consumption enabled many to dispute the fact. Singles bars, online dating sites, & church socials on the date all filed reports about a thin, slightly acrid-smelling layer of membrane-like goo which covered everything, from participants to party favors. We sent samples to the lab. We should be hearing from them shortly.

One strange thing, your honor, which I hesitate to bring before the court - well, this thing called Self Help Radio. While not a suspect, Mr. Help Radio apparently has an obsession with the manufactured holiday which has manifested itself in producing obscure "radio shows" about the subject on or about the day of the manufactured holiday every year for roughly six years now. Recommend cursory listening to "Valentine's Day" show of 02142009 (subject "boyfriends") in order to assess possible involvement in manufactured holiday. Please advise.

Also, Sarge, we got you this box of chocolates & a dozen tea roses. The department's consensus is that we love you.

A Valentine's Geegaw

Because I love you, please visit the Self Help Radio Website tomorrow for a special Self Help Radio show & Self Help Radio Extra mix - the show will be nothing but a continuous blast of music for about ninety minutes featuring nothing but songs about boyfriends. No annoying Gary blathering, just lots of songs about loving your boyfriend, hating your boyfriend, wanting a boyfriend, not wanting a boyfriend, your boyfriend cheating on you, you cheating on your boyfriend - all for Valentine's Day. What luck! What fun!

I hope to have it up for you first thing tomorrow, but you know, the best laid plans of the worst laid men... Or how does that go?

So even if you don't have a valentine - & I can't anymore, because I'm married - you can have a Valentine's Day show from Self Help Radio. Yay! It'll be like chocolate, only without all the teeth-rotting.

Whither Boyfriends?

Because it's Valentine's Day & I have to do a show about SOMETHING.

That's the straightest answer you'll ever get out of me. & yeah, what the hell, we'll do girlfriends next year.

That kinda came out the wrong way. You knew what I meant.

Damn.

Preface To Valentine's Day 2009: Boyfriend No More!

If I am no longer a boyfriend can I successfully do a show about boyfriends? No! Because the minute I got married, all the memories of being a boyfriend vanished! Wait, that's not true. Yes! Because all my years of being a boyfriend added up to the experience of being trapped into marriage! Damn, that makes no sense. No! I am boyfriend no more! Yes! I was boyfriend before husband, & lo I could be there again!

But I'll try. I'll try to remember the blissful uncertain unmarried state called "Boyfriendliness." "Boyfriendship." "Significant Otherness." "Significant Otherwise." "Insignificant Otter." Stuff like that.

& it's not so hard, in the end, because there are lots of songs about it. That's helpful. There are many more songs, in fact, about the travails of being a boyfriend than the travails I went through as someone or other's boyfriend. For example, I was never another boy's boyfriend, & I have some songs about that. So. My own experience is useless. It is the songs that speak through the mighty megaphone that is "Self Help Radio." Huzzah!

Still, being a boyfriend isn't all that different from being a husband, except, of course, the chains are a lot heavier. Also, the gruel is less salty. Then there's making the bed. That is the worst. [Voices trails off, spouting ridiculous & embarrassingly sexist oversimplifications.] [So you know what to expect this week.] [Just saying.]

Valley Churl

I'm so busy I feel sleepy all the time. Actually, that's not only true, that's the introductory dialogue for a series of pharmaceutical arias I am composing for the "Drug Opera" I am writing thanks to my grant from Pfizer. Who says art is dead? Pfizer says art is dead!

Where was I? Oh, I spent the weekend down at the ranch in Self Help Radio Valley, population wow. Did my show from there live, actually, to the emus that live next door after they escaped from someone's failed get-rich-quick plan or another's cockeyed scheme. They're very nice but tone deaf. & they don't so much dance as come at you menacingly & steal your cheese fries from your hand. They're not nearly as melancholy as the cattle, though. Those damn Morrissey-worshippers get mad if I play anything peppy. & let's not talk about the goats & their obsession with metal. (That's a pun.)

Anyhoos, you can listen to the show at Self Help Radio Dot Net. You have an official invitation. Also to my ranch in Self Help Radio Valley. If you can find it. & if you bring cheese fries.

Not At Library To Say

By these shackles I wear around my pants, I say to you I SHALL BE FREE!

Sorry, I've been reading a lot of comic books lately. I think I might have also had a dream about Jack Kirby last night. Ah well.

Here are things I'm planning this weekend. I am planning on not getting stabbed. (That's ongoing.) I am planning to finish this week's Self Help Radio by the middle of the day tomorrow, before it gets stabbed. I'll be holding the teleprompter for the freaky Vance Chamberlain for his "The War On Sailing" radio show on KVRX on Sunday morning. I plan to stalk you on Facebook, so really, stop sharing everything. That photo of you with the puke in your hair? It's not cute.

Um. I plan to eat cheese fries with my nephew tonight, then to regret eating those cheese fries because of all the beer & jalapeños I washed the cheese fries down with. I plan to scold my dogs & praise my cats. I plan to read something I'm supposed to read although I probably won't. Somewhere in there, I plan to fall down a flight of stairs just to say I did. Or not, to say I didn't. I also plan at one point to get exasperated & say, "I've only got two hands!" Maybe during a card game? Who knows?

I'm not trying to impress. You got something better? What're you going to do that's so exciting?

Sheesh.

Whither Valleys?

Lee Majors hater step off!

My name is Gary & I spend a good deal of bad time every week working on a podcast which I call Self Help Radio. (Yes, you can listen to it at selfhelpradio.net.) Every week something is something that I something something somethinged. The show stays fresh & new by eating weird fruits & watching exercise shows on demand. One day, it must've been in my sophomore year of college, I realized that what I was most of the time was depressed. At that very moment, somewhere far away, Huey Lewis (of Huey Lewis & The News) took a great big shit that looked & sounded eerily like Billy Joel. On my desk at home, a Stephen R. Donaldson book began to decompose at thirty-three times its natural rate.

Which is not to say y'all can't hate Lee Majors. Y'all just better not be doin' it round here.

Two days after my apparent wedding I was visited by two federal agents designed as evangelicals. It was days before Christmas & I was about to go skeet shooting. The past week's Self Help Radio had had an uncommon theme, if I recall correctly & I don't, whereas the theme the previous week had been all commonalities. These communist Christians were completely unable to sense that my worldview sounded funky while their attempt to add the "personal touch" to proselytizing stank. We became fast friends & even faster enemies - when I grabbed my skeet rifle you should've seen them run! Har har har!

But I wasn't destined for the movies or for horseplay. When my resume came back unopened, I wondered - aloud, yes, but quietly, as if I were in a library or a mongoose cafe - why Barack Obama wouldn't want me in his cabinet, or at his table, or living in the storeroom above his garage. There are many reasons in life for a man to feel his masculinity wasn't manly enough, & time is literally the great emasculator, but at that moment I realized that not only was I destined to live alone for at least the times of my life that I was by myself, but also that a political viewpoint is no substitute for an articulated skeleton.

& as for dear, dear Mr Lee Majors. I'm no fool. I know there are major Lee Majors haters. I went through the same thing in my Caldecott-prize nominated children's stinker called "Having T with Mr T: Reforming Television's Hard-Core Bruiser for the Spongepants Generation." Mr. T haters die a suspicious death. Lee Majors haters live in no fear. That's how great is the kindness & sleepiness of the Lee Majors. Bless him.

& bless us all, everyone!

Preface To Valleys: Lee Majors

Here's what a fellow named Ed Stephan wrote (on the IMDb) was the "plot" of the television series "The Big Valley," which aired in the mid- to late-sixties, & starred one of childhood heroes, Lee Majors: "Victoria Barkley heads her adult brood on the Barkley Ranch in California's San Joaquin Valley, near Stockton, in the 1870s. Heath is the illegitimate son of Victoria's husband Tom (who is dead at the time of the series). Bank robbers, horse thieves, revolutionaries & land grabbers keep the Barkleys hopping." Revolutionaries! I need to see this series again.

I love Lee Majors in the same way I love Mr. T & Evel Knievel, simply for his role in "The Six Million Dollar Man," which left an indelible imprint on me as a kid. Add to it that he played "The Fall Guy," a show that I never understood was supposed to be a comedy (that's how awful it was) & then of course he was married to Farrah Fawcett, who was supposed to be pretty so as a kid I thought she was pretty, well, there you are: a cool hero to my pantheon.

Not only that: his characters always had cool names. On "The Big Valley," he was Heath. (Also, he was a bastard, which I maybe didn't know exactly what that meant, but what the hell, it was fun to say.) On "The Six Million Dollar Man" he was "Colonel Steve Austin." Even on "The Fall Guy," he was "Colt Seavers."

Each of his three major television series - one for the 60's, one for the 70's, one for the 80's - lasted at least one hundred episodes. For "The Six Million Dollar Man" he also did three TV movies. Besides William Shatner (who of course became an icon by playing Captain Kirk & also made Star Trek movies, so he's kinda in a class by himself), is there any other cheesy television action show actor who was as long-lived with three television projects? I can't think of one...

Hooray for Lee Majors! Wow, he's about to turn seventy years old! It was fun to see him on "Weeds" this last season. Maybe someone should tell David Kelley to get him on "Boston Legal." I'll go write a letter now.

Like A Ton Of Tricks

This is my not-clever day. Nothing I do today will be clever. I won't write anything clever, nor will I, should you by chance run into me on the street on in the late-night drinking bars, say anything clever. The most clever thing I did today was wake up in time to feed the animals. That's as clever as I got. Not very clever, I know. I mean, Jesus! Look at the title of this post. That's not only not clever, it's a stupid pun that doesn't make any sense.

Do you want to know WHY I'm not clever today. It's easy. I out-clevered myself doing last week's Self Help Radio. It's well-known that I do the show only because of some incriminating evidence my corporate warlords have about my sinful past - & it's also well-known that I am mainly a tax write-off for them, although recently I've been touted as a community service project as well - "See how well the mentally challenged can do radio?" Knowing all that, there's virtually no reason for me to ever be clever for Self Help Radio.

But it sometimes happens. Don't believe me? Go listen to Self Help Radio for last week. Just do it. Then you decide. It's up to you.

This offer not valid with folks who've never found anything I've done to be clever.

The Ungainly Return Of "Self Help Radio Extra"

Yes, yes, I missed it in December, but in my defense, I got married, divorced, married to a bigamist, divorced from reality, married someone who wasn't divorced on a reality show, & fell asleep at the wheel. But now! At the ass end of an historic month in a year that is not a prime number, here's this month's Self Help Radio Extra, featuring stuff by the Guild League, The Secret History, Cruiser, Indurain, & other music that see-saws between indie pop & indie rock in a slightly lopsided manner which indicates I get very little sleep & don't help myself when I don't close my eyes. Go listen to the mix now! It's like Self Help Radio but without all my dull airbreaks.

Speaking of closing my eyes, that's the next Self Help Radio, available all over the place tomorrow afternoon at you-know-where. See you there & have a nice weekend!

Whither Close Your Eyes?

I don't like that subject line. It doesn't, as they say, parse. Not even in the mouth of a nonsense-king.

Incidentally, I once knew a nonsense-king, long before one of them was chosen to be President of the United States by a group of old people in robes. He always had egg on his face - literally. I never once saw him eating eggs, but there was always some part of an egg - a flake of scrambled, some gooey yolk, even bits of shell - somewhere on his face. Maybe it was his thing. Also, he didn't smell bad. You'd think someone dressed in a crazy outfit acting like a ridiculous monarch might be too insane to indulge in personal hygiene, especially since he had food particles on his face, but he always smelled like a freshly-washed dog from one of those doggy-day-care places. Maybe it was the flea shampoo.

Anyway, the nonsense-king never said things correctly. Not like double negatives, you know, stuff like, "I ain't got nothing." I don't mind that. Nor did he split infinitives or other arbitrary silliness that makes grammarians unhappy. No, he just would construct sentences, simple sentences, that didn't sound right. "I want to isn't it home," he said. Or "This basket is rifening with put it ins." Or "Cross my crackers, I haven't looked since eyes to eyes!" Things that were kind of nonsensical, but you knew what he was getting at. Still. They just didn't parse.

No wonder he was deposed!

What was I going on about? Oh crap! I have to go to the bank. Save a space for me, will you? I don't want to miss this next part.

Preface To Close Your Eyes: Tic Tic Tic

According to OmDict, the "human-edited, online medical dictionary," a fasciculation is "a local & fine involuntary muscle contraction." They are distinguished from "tics" by being "typically visible underneath the skin" but "not strong enough to move a limb." They're also known as "muscle twitches."

A tic is a whole other banana. A tic is (according to Wikipedia) "a sudden, repetitive, nonrhythmic, stereotyped motor movement or vocalization involving discrete muscle group." Tics can move a limb - they can be hardcore. Oh, & there's also a wonderful section on the Tourette's page which talks about "some confusion in media portrayals of tics."

Anyway, back to fasciculations. If you have them, it may be because you don't get enough magnesium. You also may be drinking too much caffeine, or you may be dehydrated, or it may be plain old stress. Don't drink so much coffee! Drink some more water! Close your eyes & relax!

Except when I have twitches, I can't close my eyes. It makes me notice them more. It's a vicious circle.

By the way, does anyone know how to search that OmDict thing? I can't figure it out.

Several Circumstances Later

So I'm sitting outside in the rain with only a dollar to my name looking to hitchhike from Des Moines to any place but Des Moines & I end up in Iowa City drunk, dressed like Gabor Szabo, constructing car bombs with a veteran of one Iraqi incursion or another who's convinced I can help him meet Martin Lawrence if only we can blow up the Royal Gorge Bridge. Some uncomfortable moments of silence occur until he realizes he's got at least half a carton of DayQuil left, & soon enough we're watching some Ben Affleck movie on a portable DVD player in the back of a Madison, Wisconsin, pedi-cab being furiously pedaled by the young hippie on whom my companion has his gun trained. Convinced through imperfect evidence that the world will end if we don't destroy the twin lakes, I drag a carload of C4 into Lake Monona, & he straps two hundred sticks of dynamite onto his chest & descends into Lake Mendota, but curious fate intervenes & I am bludgeoned by two male strippers dressed as cops but with real nightsticks who wanted to skinny dip but didn't want me to watch.

I wake up for reasons best explained by the dearth of cheap pharmaceuticals in a Kenora, Ontario, hospital while a trained monkey lies about my citizenship as I can't fill out the forms with the ink damage to my hands. During a consult which quickly devolves into a heated discussion about Hockey Night In Canada, I hide in a candy-striper's drink-cart & hand-paddle it the 126 miles to Winnepeg, where I am quickly given the keys to the city & a grant to continue my performance art. I blow through the grant double-time because it's Canadian money & am found later in Hollywood sleeping in John Carpenter's office apparently after a failed movie pitch which sounded an awful lot like "They Live" because I was reading the script off his coffee table.

Arrested for vagrancy, I plead nolo contendere & ask if they'd fly Alan Shore from Boston to defend me. I am given an embarrassing psychological exam in front of the tainted potential jury pool for no other reason than to humiliate me, & the judge grants a mistrial then, in an unprecedented move, finds me guilty of "Existence With Malice Aforethought." A brief tour of celebrity chat shows follows, in which I am often mistaken for the guy that brings the weird birds & insects, & Tyra Banks beats the living hell out of me. One residual check after another appears in my mother's mailbox & I discover I am the star of a hit television sitcom in which I have never appeared. John Ashcroft is reportedly a fan.

Stumbling home for a well-earned rest I instead work feverishly to make the week's Self Help Radio, which, for all intents & purposes, is about gum. I finished it on Saturday. It's available at selfhelpradio.net. It still smells a little sweaty. You might want to run it through the washer a couple of times. It's a hard life on the road. I don't apologize for it.

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?