My Birthday Show

Self Help Radio's show about my favorite music from 1974 is at selfhelpradio.net for you to listen to. Please do!

Now, it's my birthday so I'm going to go do something goofy, like stick my face in a cake or ride a bike into a wall.

The Last Day I Am A Forty-One Year Old

Interestingly, if I were to die before the end of this day, I'd be forty-one forever. That could happen, you know. How? Well. The various space agencies & amateur astronomers out there could have totally missed a meteor or a rogue asteroid coming straight for Huntington - or maybe they noticed it, but forgot that there were people in West Virginia - & I could be almost literally wiped off the face of the earth. Or I could be killed in a car accident or by a mugger/burglar/hoodlum/homicidal maniac/pet I didn't feed at the right time. Or years of not taking good care of myself - or worse yet, something random having to do with genetics - could cause a stroke or heart attack or blood clot or seizure or total systems shut-down - & I'll have been too busy working on my radio show to have noticed it. Boom! I no longer exist.

That's the problem. It wouldn't be so bad being forty-one forever. I just wish I could exist while I was forty-one forever.

Forty-one was an adventurous year! It began with me in a kind of limbo in Austin (not doing the limbo), & a year later Self Help Radio has a new home on WMUL & I have a new home twelve hundred miles from where I started. We adopted a lovely cat named Bronte who is awesome & even more spectacularly we transported five other pets successfully across four state lines without causing any of them permanent psychosis. I got to actually see the season commonly called "fall" & I got to live in a place where it snows & - you might not believe this - it stays on the ground for longer than a few hours! Astonishing.

Yes, tomorrow's my birthday & my birthday show - 1pm here in Huntington on 88.1 fm & archived later on selfhelpradio.net like always. Listen, or you have to buy me a present.

Whither 1974?

Doing a birthday show is one the longest-running things I've done, although, since my first January Self Help Radio would have been in 2003, I should be at 1975 by now. (I started playing my favorite songs from the year of my birth, which was 1968, on that show. So, the progression would be: 2003-1968, 2004-1969, 2005-1970, 2006-1971, 2007-1972, 2008-1973, 2009-1974, 2010-1975.) What happened?

Magda (who was then my girlfriend but is now my warden) had a friend in town, & I thought it'd be fun for her to do a radio show. I do that. When the next week happened, it wasn't my birthday any longer, so it felt weird, like doing a Christmas show in January or a Halloween show in November.

We continue, therefore, as if we never skipped a year, with 1974 this year. Ye gods but I write the same thing about this each year! Here are excerpts from previous blog entries about this particular annual show:

Whither 1971? "I wanted to do something to commemorate my birthday, especially since my friends, family, pets & insurance agents hardly ever remember it. Or if they remember it, they never commerorate it. If anything, they disrespect it. They set a box of dog poo on its doorstep & ignite it. Then they run away."

Whither 1972? "Also, it's important to note that the majority of the time I spent in 1972, I was four years old, & didn't really have a very good record collection at that point (I had most of the Beatles records, but didn't everyone by the age of four?) so these are records I hold in high esteem NOW, not that I held in high esteem then. Not necessarily."

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

Here's a future entry:

Whither 2010? "Before you put me in the computer to share my consciousness with the World Mind, let me remind you drones that at one time, before the Climate Apocalypse, we actually had computers separate from our bodies, & we 'wrote' in things called 'blogs.' Ha ha ha! It's almost as weird as this thing called 'radio' we had. Yes, a seventy-year-old man is amusing, especially when all that's left of me is a brain & the box of cheese that used to be my heart. Over & out sproglings!"

I found that in a black hole that had lodged between my two top front teeth that I had to dislodge with a floss made of string theory.

On my show, though, I'll be telling you how I went to Germany when I was six. You can't miss that.

Preface To 1974: Did You Know They Have Facebook In Finland?

That's weird. I thought it was cold there all the time & people worked in factories. At least that's what I got from the movie Match Factory Girl, which really is one of my all-time favorite movies, which is actually called "Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö." Which I am assuming is not Finnish for "Facebook."

Probably "Facebook" is Finnish for "Facebook." Finns actually speak English quite well. Here's an actual internet answer to the question I was thinking of asking, which was "How many Finnish folk speak English?":

"Swedish is actually the second official language of Finland, but I found most Finns I met actually spoke better English than Swedish."

What does that say about Swedish? In Finland, I mean.

I am feeling bad I forgot to write in the blog on Saturday. Technically, it's Saturday night, as I've been awake all day, but I'll count this as Sunday because the days have officially changed. Luckily no one reads this, or else I might be taken to task. Whatever that means.

I did a google for "Self Help Radio" & found a Finnish Facebook page. It's very weird. Or have I been drinking in front of the fire again? Who knows? Who cares? Good night Helsinki! I'll remember you in my memoirs!

A Million Miles Of Radio Show Begins With A Single Download...

Today's Self Help Radio, which features lots of songs talking about "a million miles" & therefore can be considered millions of miles long (although it's only ninety minutes) (which is kinda funny because people are always thinking that "light years" measure time, not distance, & who can forget the hilarious blooper in Star Wars where Han Solo can make "the Kessel Run" in "under 12 parsecs" ha ha I can't but if you want to read Star Wars nerds defending their sensei George Lucas from what was obviously a mistaken understanding of what a "parsec" is you can do that here but anyway I must be the first person in the history of whatever-the-fuck to confuse a "mile" as a unit of time oh what a dumb douche-nozzle I am!) anyway that aside was too long so I'm going to have to start again.

Today's Self Help Radio, which features lots of songs talking about "a million miles" & therefore can be considered millions of miles long (although it's only ninety minutes) is now available to be listened to as is its tendency once it's recorded at selfhelpradio.net. Please do so. I now have to go listen to every record released in 1974 to remind myself which were my favorites. See you Saturday!

One To The Zero To The Zero Zero Zero Zero Zero Miles

Eep, did I put too many zeroes in the title? A million is a one with six zeroes. Self Help Radio is a show with one zero. Me.

I've got probably a million songs stuck somewhere in my head which would help if I had to walk a million miles because it would take me a long time to walk a million miles & let's face it I'd probably want to sing some of the songs more than once.

I only have ninety minutes so don't expect a million songs but do expect to hear songs that cover millions of miles. You know where & when it happens. You don't? It's at 1pm at 88.1 fm on your radio dial (that's WMUL here in Huntington) archived later at selfhelpradio.net like I always do.

Be there or you better be a million miles away, bub.

Whither A Million Miles?

A million is a lot of miles. It's also a lot of dollars, & tears, & dreams. But this week the concern is the million miles. Man! That's a lot of miles!

A million miles is more than a million kilometers, although it's important to point out that in a million miles there are more than a million kilometers. Whoa! I know! Didn't that make your head hurt? Ouch. I feel like watching television for three hours to calm my brain down. It's that flippin' trippy!

A million miles is so much that, unless you're an astronomer or are piloting a spacecraft, it's not a useful measure. So you probably use it as a metaphor, or a large number that expresses an impossible goal. It's nice & round. You could just as easily say "a million kilometers" (or, if you're in America, you could say "a million meters" or even "a million millimeters," because Americans have no idea what the Metric System means) but it doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely. Or how about "nine hundred ninety-seven million, three hundred ten thousand and seventeen miles"? Just as impossible to imagine, but good lord, it took me seven minutes to type that! Imagine how long it would take to say!

As usual, the police showed up at my door & made me listen to all their records & they said, "Do you have any more Honey Nut Cheerios?" I had to tell them my wife had eaten them all, but they still beat me senseless with their bras & panties. & then it was Bible reading. Oy gevalt! In any event, there's a court order about the show this week. You know how it goes.

Preface To A Million Miles: Cabin Fever

I know, I'm always quoting the Wikipedia around here (& by the way, some time between now & several months ago my browser, which spell-checks everything as I write it {so there's really no excuse when I misspell something}, decided that "Wikipedia" was not something misspelled) but here's what they say about cabin fever:

"Cabin fever is an idiomatic term for a claustrophobic reaction that takes place when a person or group is isolated &/or shut in, in a small space, with nothing to do, for an extended period (as in a simple country vacation cottage during a long rain or snow)."

Or in Huntington, West Virginia, when it snows for an entire week? Please note this isn't a real fever, like Rheumatic Fever or Dance Fever.

"Symptoms include restlessness, irritability, forgetfulness, laughter, & excessive sleeping, distrust of anyone they are with, & an urge to go outside even in the (less miserable) rain, snow or dark."

I haven't slept more than usual, but I can tell you, my dogs are plotting something. It's just in the way they TALK BEHIND MY BACK.

"Cabin fever can also be known as a term for a lack of sexual intercourse."

Ha ha ha. What?

"The phrase is also used humorously to indicate simple boredom from being home alone."

Nyah.

"An 1820 reference is to an actual fever, common in Ireland, resulting from eating watery potatoes during wet years."

Now that's more like it! Eating watery potatoes during wet years! You can't make that shit up. Or you can, & then put it in the cabin fever section of Wikipedia.

I'm not implying I have cabin fever. It's just still very snow-covered outside & I don't think I've left the house in four days. But I have plenty to do - I'm working on Self Help Radio for you!

Vulgar Boysenberry

It had taken him forty-three minutes just to say something slightly clever to her; now that he had her attention, & she stared with her deep green eyes in his blinking peepers, what was he going to say?

Perhaps this describes you, or someone or other you know. Not likely do the members of a species like ours, which is described by our cats & dogs as "here come those primates again," easily swing through the trees of life like we owned the place. No, indeed, it behooves us & becomes important if not commonplace to have what many if not most would call a plan of action. Here then is a threshold parallelogram which we daresay may one day serve as a simulacrum of the course to steer to free you of the filthy waters & harsh desert nights of rejection & abjection. You may even consider this, due to the serious nature of our newly-crapped-out decade, first in a series:

1) Cards & letters are all but useless in moments of sheer decision. Learn adorable ways to hem & haw.
2) Do not rush romance unless you can afford generous quantities of moderately-priced & delicious alcohol.
3) If the partner says a tattoo is not necessary, this is an easy "out" & not as many presidents have told us in their State Of The Union messages a "dare."
4) Bleached teeth frighten thieves.
5) No one really carries around their money in bags with dollar signs painted in green on the side. Really? Really.
6) Hand holding may be a lost art, but do not imagine that foot-whipping nor thigh-tickling share the same room in the Mansion of Glorious Petting. They do not. They live in the Creepy Third-Floor Apartment Of Sado-Masochistic Awkwardness.
7) Let's return once again to the societal glad-handling called the "gentle reminder."
8) Love poetry? More like love pottery!
9) Tears should not be accompanied by either screaming or clawing. If you find it such, you also have an explanation as to why the local constable is asking you to put your hands behind your back.
10) Something about an omelet is both nasty & ridiculous. Be careful.

There is much more, including illustrated guides detailing pugilism in the Mid-Atlantic States, but all this talk about washing our socks demands a swift response in a neighborhood forum. Memorize the pertinent parts & conceal the rest from your parents & high school art teacher. & wait, please, for a sober knock on the door, which is the return, & the doom which shall consume you.

A Bite Outta Life

Though the weather here is wintry,
& the snow is on the ground,
I gathered an armful of musics
& made my way downtown

To old Marshall University,
& WMUL,
Though I did forget my gloves
& it was cold as hell.

& I did Self Help Radio
& Dickenbock Electronics, too,
& now I've put both shows online,
The better to share with you.

Please have a listen if you like,
Or if you haven't heard them yet.
They're in the regular place I put them,
self help radio dot net.

Enjoy & thanks for listening!

Whither Biting?

Here are three things I did not know before I started to do a Self Help Radio show about biting.

1) An "overbite" (which is to say a "misalignment of teeth &/or incorrect relation between the teeth of the two dental arches" or in the Fancy Dan way of saying it a "malocclusion") can be caused by mouth breathing.

2) Some insect "bites" (because some of them, you know, are stings, which don't require a mouth or teeth-like things to "bite") cause symptoms lasting up to two years &, to make matters worse, the "bites" are sometimes diagnosed as cancer.

& 3) From the wikipedia: "School age children, those older than 2 & a half years, who habitually bite may require professional help."

Okay, the last one I didn't know but could have figured out on my own.

So! A Self Help Radio about biting! Tomorrow at 1pm on 88.1 fm WMUL & later archived on selfhelpradio.net. It's my way of taking the first bite of the new decade!

Oh god I can't believe I said that.

Preface To Biting: A Gentleman's History Of Teeth Marks On The Neck

The audience here at the Self Help Radio are ambivalent about love bites. Here's what some of them had to say:

Audience member # 1: "Aren't hickeys normally found on the neck of adolescent girls?"

Audience member # 2: "It's what you get from having a vaccuum cleaner for a mate. If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, 'Wow, she's like a hoover..'"

Audience member # 3: "It seems to me, & I should know, for despite my erudite language skills I am actually a thirteen year old boy, that 'love bites' or their subset 'hickeys' are generally used to establish claim or possession. In addition, in cases of infidelity on behalf of the cheating party, it can creating embarrassment or jealously on the part of the cuckolded party."

Audience member # 2: "What'd he say?"

Audience member # 4: "It's just a way for insecure people to prove to everyone else that they are in a sexual or physical relationship is all."

Audience member # 5: "Not only that, but they're easy to spot, especially if your skin is pale. Though they can be covered up by wearing turtlenecks & scarves I guess."

Audience member # 3: "Or foundation, powder or concealer. That is, if one wishes to hide them."

Audience member # 2: "I just can't understand a damn thing he says."

Audience member # 6: "Alls I know is, it's seriously tacky to show up at school with one."

& that's all there's time for on the Self Help Radio blog with the Self Help Radio audience. Tune in tomorrow for demonstrations & uncomfortable moments between friends!

A New Year! A New Decade! Same Old Self Help Radio!

Teams of experts paid untold amounts of money taken surreptitiously from your pocketbooks & wallets worked "around the clock" (actually, during regular business hours with a liberal amount of smoke breaks) to determine what you, the Self Help Radio listener, would like to hear on Self Help Radio in the year of 2010 (which, as you probably know, is supposed to be pronounced "twenty-ten" not "two thousand ten" because someone said so & gave some specific reasons for it) (although the monkeys in the office are very fond of "two oh ten"). Extensive surveys were taken, phones were tapped, the pulses of America & certain parts of the world where it was considered safe were taken, many other things were done in the passive voice, to gather copious amounts of data to put in shiny new computers with embarrassingly large hard drives strangely filled after only a few days with lots of porn & illegally downloaded mp3s (although, to be fair, the porn was probably also illegally downloaded), & that data over too many to count long liquid lunches, brunches, & afternoon teas was analyzed, categorized, amortized, plagiarized, simonized, looked straight in the eyes, checked, double-checked, triple-checked with a cherry on top, & sent out to get some more booze because stocks were dwindling.

Self Help Radio is proud to announce that the data showed one particular insight that can't be ignored: no one's really listening to Self Help Radio!

So the show will continue on the same way it has since its inception. Since no one will mind.

Happy new year!

The Last Thing I'll Say All Year

It's true, I won't write in this blog again until it's a new decade. Or will it be? I forget who gets to decide that.

However, you may enjoy this week's Self Help Radio along with this week's Sugar Substitute which contain three hours of indiepop music because they continue my "indiepop a to z" project which is still at letter "e" & will never make it to Sesame Street now. The shows are available at selfhelpradio.net & are waiting patiently for you to play them at your New Year's Eve party. I would rather you invite me. But if you just want my radio show, I totally understand.

Please have a safe & happy New Year & don't be a weirdo & get yourself hurt. That would make me angry. & I look stupid when I'm angry.

Thanks for reading & listening in 2009! See you next year!

Friends In Town A-Visitin'

...so there's no time to write anything in this blog that no one reads. Still, I feel obliged to say:

TOMORROW!
SELF HELP RADIO!
1PM on 88.1 fm WMUL!

followed by
SUGAR SUBSTITUTE!
2:30PM on 88.1 fm WMUL!

both shows CONTINUE the INDIEPOP A TO Z!
(we're in the E's!)

both ARCHIVED LATER
at SELF HELP RADIO DOT NET!

SEE YOU THERE!

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 23?

Yeah, yeah, more indiepop - three hours of it in fact - as Self Help Radio starts & Sugar Substitute continues the countup of indiepop bands/musicians with the letter 'e' starting their names (in the case of musicians, their last names) (I should have been a librarian).

But look! A decade review that I can wrap my head around! Hooray!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/collections/classic-jon-stewart-videos

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 23: The Top Ten Decades Of The Decade!

Even though the Self Help Radio shall for all intents & purposes continue its doomed-to-failure-&-irrelevancy indiepop countup/countdown this week, it also intends to jump onto the end-of-the-decade bandwagon by announcing as many end-of-the-decade lists as it can possibly stuff down everyone's throats without really having to really think about it, much as in every other end-of-the-decade list out there. Here are some of the lists the Self Help Radio shall explore in the coming last few days of the year:

• The Top Ten Whoopsy-Daisies! of the 2000s!
• Ten Trends In Trend Forecasting Of The Last Ten Trendy Years!
• Top Forty Or So Times You Were Fucked Six Ways To Sunday By Your Government &/Or Its Corporate Masters Since 2000!
• Celebrity Zombies - How They Outpaced Celebrity Lycanthropes in the 2000s!
• The Most Shameful Acts Of Ignominy & Chagrin Each Embarrassing Year From The Mortifications Of 2000 To The Indignities Of 2009!
• The Dead Gods Of The 2000s!
• The 21st Century: Ninety More Years Of This Shit?!
• Who Hit What & How (But Never Where Or Why) In The 00s!
• Fifteen Strange Things Tom Selleck Did Or Had Done To Him This Century!
• Tackle A Pope, Throw A Shoe At A Dickwad: A Small Guide To Successfully Assaulting World Leaders From This Decade!
• Was This The Decade Of The Self Help Radio? Of Course Not!
• Cover Me! I'm Going In! To Take Pictures Of Celebrity Corpses & The Women Who Love Them!
• You Gained Weight This Decade! So Did We!
• Hush Hush! The Thirty-Seven Secret Stories Of The 00s Which Were Completely Missed By Conspiracy Theorists Because They Are Actually Plausible!
• They Didn't Die: A Comprehensive List Of People You Thought Died Sometime Between 2000 & Now, With Pictures Of Them Holding Recent Newspapers To Prove It, & Angry Emails From Them To You Because They Find The Whole Thing Rather Insulting!
• Pain Pain Sadness Pain: Ten Years Of Unsettling Memories!
• Can It Get Any Worse? A Special Prognostication!
• & Probably A Lot More Because We Want To Make A Lot Of Annoying Lists!

Do join us as we say goodbye to another decade arbitrarily cut-up & assigned a meaning which we'll have to live with the rest of our days. The nostalgia is just being born!

What Did You Get For Christmas?

I got a rock.

Twas The Night Before The Night Before Christmas...

& I just got an email that had the subject "she tugs the shit out of his cock & he fucking loves it!" Ah, 'tis the season!

Well, you can listen to "A Very Self Help Radio Christmas" & a Christmas episode of Dickenbock Electronics with you & yours (or alone, like I will, with a loaded gun & bottle of Jameson) now on the Self Help Radio website. It's guaranteed to clear the house of family visitors when they're outstaying their welcome.

Please have a safe & happy season & thanks for listening to Self Help Radio. It's the best gift I get all year round.

X-Must

Do you remember the first time you were strangely yelled at for referring to Christmas as "X-Mas"? I do, actually. I was working in a 7-11 on the late shift (11-7, if you must know) during my third year of college (so, twenty years ago) & there was a very tall, very cute, frizzy-haired hippie girl who'd come in to shoot the shit with me (& get free stuff, because she flirted with me), & her name was Monet. For reals! I think I even once asked to see her ID, & it was her real name.

I don't remember working there past Christmas of 1989, but at some point I surely must have been behind the counter when there was something - a plea for donations on a plastic container, a magazine, some sign from the management - that read "X-Mas," & Monet came in, like she did, late at night, quite drunk, wanting some soda from the soda fountain or something, & she saw the "X-Mas" sign & went ballistic. "They're trying to take the Christ out of Christmas!" she yelled at me. "I hate that!" & in that drunken way drunk folks have when they're pretty drunk, Monet expounded on her theory, surprising me because I just didn't know that tall, frizzy-haired, cute hippie girls who came into 7-11s on weekend nights as drunk as priests could be religious as well.

Did I tell her that the X really means Christ as it is based on the Greek spelling of the name? Nah. I didn't know that then. I didn't really care. Even though I was madly in love with the woman I was dating at the time, I appreciated cute chicks spending time with me, even under ridiculous circumstances.

Maybe I'll tell this story & others equally goofy tomorrow at 1pm on WMUL - 88.1 fm in Huntington - & later on of course archived on selfhelpradio.net - for my annual Christmas show, called (of course) a Very Self Help Radio Christmas. Do tune in. You know Monet won't be.