Tunisia! Egypt!

On a blog which is unanimously ignored thanks to the complete & utter lack of notoriety of the radio show which it represents, it is often appropriate to suddenly talk about world-shaking international political events just to spice things up. So today, we'll say hooray for the people of Tunisia & good luck to the masses in Egypt.

You heard me! Self Help Radio is taking a stand for democracy! Down with lifetime strong-man dictators! Up with people!

But wait, are you suggesting this is hypocritical? "Hey!" you say, "if you're so all-fired-up for democracy, why isn't Self Help Radio a democracy? Why is a single tyrant in charge? Sure, you say you take requests, but you don't have to play them! For example, I am always requesting Rush songs. Why come you never play the Rush songs I request?"

(Oh, it's this guy. Crap.)

You are mistaken, straw man sir! Self Help Radio has a long & illustrious history of supporting democratically-run radio! Just ask all the people who probably don't remember the show at all at the stations on which it's aired!

You see, you're going about it the wrong way. Self Help Radio itself is like a single unit in the democracy of radio. What Self Help Radio supports is RADIO SHOWS FOR EVERYBODY! Take the airspace! Take the frequencies! A revolution in radio is available all over the dial!

Yes, you can have your own show in which you play Rush all the time. In the Self Help Radio democracy, at least. Probably not in Tunisia or Egypt. At least not yet.

I'm So Over The Underground

Dateline January 26, 2011: late afternoon. Though the previous night had been marked with an interestingly simultaneous rainfall & snowfall, the deejay woke up this morning to a snow-covered city. A cold day, much like most of the winter, with a foul-breathed dog waking him with whines & then, after he had put on his clothes to let the damn canine out, went to his dog bed & fell back asleep.

The intrepid deejay also wished to sleep, but was instead beset by felines begging for morning food. After obliging them, though he was still bleary-eyed & dozy, the deejay was met by not one but three amazingly foul-breathed dogs who demanded their morning meals. They also demanded he clean up after them, outside, in the snow, after their morning bowel movements. Ironically, it was they, & not he, who got treats afterwards.

The deejay found a quiet moment & he attended not to his own concerns, but to the concerns of the hypothetical (as far as anyone can tell) listener of Self Help Radio. With confidence & an amusing lack of technical ability, the deejay edited from digital recordings his shows of the previous night, as well as the show he had subbed the day before. Sleepily he tried to remember his password so he could ftp the files to his server. One of the cats, impatient at his ineptitude, reminded him & then called him a name not printable in a family blog.

His task finished, his files uploading, the deejay looked forward to a small lunch & perhaps a nap in the gray afternoon light. But no! The dogs needed to void their bladders! & he needed to tell everyone that the shows were available online! What else was there to do, but to let the dogs out & describe his life in the uncomfortable third person voice?

Look! This week's Self Help Radio ("underground") as well as this week's Sugar Substitute (pop pop poppy pop) & as a bonus Monday's WRFL electronica sub (makes all robots happy) are available for listening at self help radio dot net. The deejay will see to the dogs & the cats. You may listen at your leisure.

Going Underground

You may need to wait a bit to adjust your eyes, because it's quite dark underground. Granted, I know a place where there are some phosphorescent lichen that you may even be able to read by, but otherwise, we're not taking any lamps or flashlights or torches. We're going to spend ninety minutes underground the way insects & snakes & gophers & moles do. Then we'll come up & eat people's in gardens. Except it's January. The ground is damp with melty snow. What a bad plan!

That's tonight at midnight on 88.1 fm in Lexington or online at wrfl dot fm. I've archive it tomorrow on the Self Help Radio website, but you should listen live, if only to get all that mud & dirt in your hair & to commune with the rabbits who'll be watching.

I may not have time today to put up the electronics show I did yesterday - I'm still working on tonight's show - but I'll make a mention of it tomorrow if I do, & may mention it sooner on my Facebook page. Maybe you'd want to "like" the show there to keep up? It's not like we have to kiss or anything.

Tonight! Underground! You! Me! No kissing! Promise!

Whither Underground?

There's a secret underground fortress near my home which no one, not even me, knows about. Could it belong to the government? Or given to the Tea Party through Medicare? I wish I knew! But I don't even know there's an underground fortress there! It's a secret, even from me.

They do say, though, that it's amazing, & goes all the way to the Daniel Boone National Forest, where it then gets cranky. That's dozens of miles away! So it's not only deep, but wide. & if there were in fact a secret underground fortress (who would know? no one!) it might also be decorated with posters of pretty people with the haircuts you want, like in barber shops. How they would smile! & there smiles would be like fluorescent lights, illuminating the long passageways into & out of Eastern Kentucky.

Journalists would like to know who owns the secret underground fortress, & also who maintains it, since it is rumored to be very clean. Except no one knows about the secret underground fortress, so there's no one they can ask. & although most journalists aren't afraid to just make things up, they are afraid that someone will know they're making things up. & who would believe there was a secret underground fortress near my house in Lexington, Kentucky? People would say, "You're journalists, not sci-fi writers! Come on!"

You might be asking me, how do I know about the secret underground fortress? Have I seen it, since it's near my house? No, of course not! I don't even know it exists! It's a secret, after all. The truth is, I have no idea what you're talking about. Do you know how much money it would cost to build & keep up a secret underground fortress? You would need a lot of gold - like, a Fort Knox of gold. & Fort Knox is like 80 miles away! In the other direction!

The only thing I do know is that Self Help Radio this week is about all things underground. Also, that I will be subbing one of WRFL's electronica shows tonight at 6pm - 88.1 fm in Lexington, online at wrfl dot fm. The studio there is not underground. Not yet.

Preface To Underground: How Low Can You Go?

What is the farthest underground humans have gone? Do you know? Me neither. Hooray for computers!

According to Wikipedia: "As of 2008, the deepest mine in the world is TauTona in Carletonville, South Africa at 3.9 kilometers (2.4 miles), replacing Savuka Mine in the North West Province of South Africa at 3,774 meters (2.3 miles). East Rand Mine in Boksburg, South Africa briefly held the record at 3,585 meters (2.2 miles), & the first mine declared the deepest in the world was also TauTona when it was at 3,581 meters (2.2 miles). The deepest mine in Europe is Pyhäsalmi Mine in Pyhäjärvi, Finland at 1,444 meters (roughly 9/10th of a mile)."

The deepest cave in the world is the Krubera Cave (also known as Voronya Cave) located in the Arabika Massif of the Gagrinsky Range of the Western Caucasus, in the Gagra district of Abkhazia, Georgia. It's 2,191 meters (1.4 miles) deep - & that's its deepest explored point. You can read more about it here.

The deepest I've gone - I dunno - maybe it was the Paris Catacombs. I read that they're a mere 22 to 65 feet beneath ground level, in a space of more than 600 acres, with an official tourist route of about three quarters of a mile, but it sure felt like I was in the bowels of the earth. Maybe it was because all those skulls were also there.

Proof!

Clown Nightmare

I dunno why I want to share a video with you - I never have before - I have a different blog over at Tumblr (selfhelpradio.tumblr.com) where I post music videos that I am liking - but something about this silly gag reel - which doesn't have many gags but contains many images of the commercials I saw over & over when I was a kid - has fascinated me. Do they still make these sorts of commercials for kids, with characters from McDonald's in some sort of narrative form? I hardly ever ate at McDonald's when I was a kid, but not because I didn't like it. My mother didn't drive & there wasn't one within walking distance. I would have, though, mainly thanks to these commercials.

The End Of 1975

Last night, when I did this week's Self Help Radio, which was my favorite music from 1975, I got a very nice surprise. A deejay recruit named Galen came by to be trained. He had been scheduled to be trained the previous night, but had (understandably) mixed up the days. "Come by Tuesday at midnight" usually means "Wednesday morning," not "Monday morning." Technically he was wrong, but the error was perfectly natural & I was glad to help. He was a good guest & I hope he learned something about how NOT to do a radio show from my example.

He also was twelve years away from being born in 1975. I am so old.

The show ran a little long to accommodate very lengthy & awesome singles by Television & Pere Ubu - their first singles, by the way - but you should listen all the way through. The show's at self help radio dot net. It's wearing polyester & it seems to have an itchy nose, because it's scratching at it & sniffling a lot. Weird.

Enjoy!

1975 in 2010

Tonight - in just a couple of hours actually - jeezus I better get ready - Self Help Radio explores the year 1975 in the subjective way that, well, it's the songs I liked from records that came out that year. It's not much of a history lesson. You will not learn, for example, that in 1975:

* NASA cloned the first astronaut to land on the moon!
* Disgraced Richard Nixon spent the majority of the year playing with himself!
* Elvis Presley had something to say & only Las Vegas would listen!
* Someone you know who would never admit to this wore awful clothes & did too much cocaine!
* War raged!
* Words were exchanged!
* A good time was mainly had by people in the so-called "developed" countries, while the majority of the planet lived a short, sad, terrifying, painful existence!

Really it's just about the music. Although I may share stories from when I was seven. Isn't that worth the price of admission alone? Also, the price of admission is free. On the radio at 88.1 fm in Lexington, on the line at wrfl dot fm every place in the world that the internet is on the line.

I'll archive it tomorrow on the Self Help Radio website if you can't listen. But if you don't listen, how will you know why I'll never ask Ricky Gervais to host again?

Whither 1975?

Every year during my birthday week, I travel back in time to play music from my favorite records from a particular year in my life. I started in 1968, & now, seven years later, I have found myself in 1975. I didn't have a blog for the first few years I did my show, since they weren't invented yet (or maybe they were, but I didn't know about them, which is kind of the same thing, isn't it?) so there aren't entries about the first three shows I did. But for the next four, there are!

Here's Whither 1971?

Here's Whither 1972?

Here's Whither 1973?

& here's Whither 1974?, where I quote from the previous three. I will do it again next year until this blog disappears up its own asshole. (Note: there are some who would argue that this happened already, quite a while ago. If they knew this blog existed. Which they don't. You either!)

It was a tolerable year for music - Dylan released his last great record, Blood On The Tracks, for example - but if you look at some year-end lists, you see a lot of bloat. A LOT OF BLOAT. I mean Pink Floyd/Led Zeppelin flavored bloat. Something was going to have to give. & it would. Next year is going to be awesome.

This year will be nice, too. 1975. The century at the three-quarters mark. Vietnam over, Nixon is disgrace. The 70's in full bloom. I wasn't paying any attention to it, of course, but I was seven. It wasn't my fault!

Preface To 1975: New Year's Eve, 1974

I don't remember much about my seventh year on this planet. When it began, I was in second grade, which was a much more comfortable time for me than first grade, because in first grade I proved to be a good test-taker & reader & the powers-that-be wanted to move me up a few grades. That terrified me. Nothing like that in second grade! Still getting good grades, but just one of the kids by then.

I remember my second grade teacher was named Mrs. Chumley, & I enjoyed her class. I seemed to have a few friends, & in the classroom there was a bathroom for one, which I preferred to "men's rooms," which my mother told me were filled with perverts. I didn't want to meet a pervert!

I have two particular memories. One day, I brought all my comic books to class. All my comic books fit in a giant paper grocery bag. I don't know why I did, I just did. Someone probably asked to see them. Maybe they didn't believe I had as many as I said I did. Maybe it was my friend Robbie Spangle. I dunno. It wasn't my friend Dale Smith, who was my best friend in first grade, & who had the best action figure collection I'd ever seen - he told me he had outgrown them. We were no longer best friends.

Also, at some point in the class, someone discovered the word "upchuck," to mean "vomit." For a very short time, until Mrs. Chumley put a stop to it, some of us would say "chuck" every time anyone said "up." As someone generally bored in class, I liked the idea of waiting to hear the word "up" to shout "chuck!" first. But, like I said, Mrs. Chumley told us to stop, so we stopped.

I do know we were probably still living in the Lockwood Arms, an apartment complex which is not call that these days. In fact, it's not entirely there - it was composed of two squares, each "side" with two floors of apartments, with a courtyard in the middle with a pool & a laundry room in each, plus areas for children to play, & at the "corners" were entrances from the parking lot that surrounded the two buildings. The facades faced the street, Kingsley Road. As I said, it's not entirely there - a fire some time ago resulted in one of the "sides" (to be precise, the far left one, if looking at the complex from the street) being demolished. I don't believe there were any plans to repair or restore it; nowadays I'm sure the apartments are government housing for the poor. Which they still have in Texas, for the time being.

The place looks like this now, from the air, according to Google maps:



I never knew the two "squares" were not of equal size. Obviously, the one side that's missing is on the right in this photo. As well, it appears they filled in the swimming pools, which I've seen before in Garland, to avoid liability & upkeep.

Also, the name has changed, to Orchard Square, which is no surprise - it pays to be "under new management" I suppose.



This is a picture of the empty side. What's fascinating about this - why it fascinates me, anyway - is that I'm pretty sure we lived in an apartment in the building that no longer exists. I remember being able to look out the window & see the little row of shops, including my favorite, Z's Pizza - across the way. I also thought I remembered a parking lot, but I don't think there was one after all. There is one now, & people can park where once I laid my head, more than thirty years ago:



We moved - just a block over, to another apartment complex - some time during my seventh year, & I know & remember this because I associate the places I lived with the grades I was in, & I didn't live in the Lockwood Arms when I was in third grade. But perhaps I can reminisce about that next year.

Does The Cat Want Her Medicine?

You knew a cat once, your family had known the woman who owned her, she wasn't a relative, but you visited her enough that she was familiar, wow, she had one sick cat. That woman would say, "Does pretty want her medicine?" & you thought, the stupid cat doesn't want any medicine. It doesn't know any better. But then the cat would actually look better after she got the medicine, & you'd have to wonder, did she know she felt better because of the medicine, did she understand the cause & effect? Some animals did - that's how you could train them.

You were at that impressionable age when you thought every example was the perfect example, when you thought the types you met were the only types that existed. You'd hear snatches of conversation that made absolutely no sense so you'd twist them around in your head until they made your kind of sense. Like that man who made the comment about "the next door over, past the railroad tracks." You got it into your head that a town's limits were circumscribed by railroad tracks. You finally got brave enough to tell your observation another kid & he said scornfully, "What did they use before railroads? Moats?"

You wanted things to go on forever. You got sad when, looking at a map, you saw roads ending, dead-ending or worse, changing names inexplicably. Maybe that's why the cat freaked you out. You kind of thought it would be sick forever, & if it weren't aware of the way the medicine helped it, it would be afraid of the medicine all the time, day after day. That sounded like some kind of torture. But, you know, it couldn't be torture if the cat were feeling better.

You never asked if medicine sometimes didn't work, or its effects wore off. You learned that, maybe, on some television medical drama years later.

The First Tuesday Night Show

Reviews are in! No one listened.

What?!?

Well, no one who reviews my radio show listened. They always wait for me to send promo copies. They're used to freebies.

Hey! I am now giving you a freebie, which is last night's show in its entirety, not including the part where the paramedics had to give me activated charcoal & pump my stomach. (I took a different pill for each song.) (Don't worry, they were all sugar pills.) (In different colors, like in a 64 color crayon box.) You can listen at self help radio dot net. There's also a new episode of Sugar Substitute. Surprisingly, it's hosted by a paramedic pretending to be me!

Enjoy listening. Please see possible side effects on the label.

New Timeslot! New Show!

Self Help Radio debuts in its new timeslot tonight at midnight on 88.1 fm WRFL. You can listen online or you can listen live or you can wait until some time tomorrow & I'll put it up at self help radio dot net.

The show tonight is about pills. Nothing terribly specific, just those little things that deliver medicine (prescription, over-the-counter, or illegal) to us. There might be some impressive insights. There might also be some good advice. I think the entire family should listen.

I'm pretty excited. A new timeslot! Wowee!

Whither Pills?

The shocking prevalence & undermining of authority in today's drug-rich environment has chilly echoes in radicalized youth-group professionals from perhaps earlier times. Nowhere is this more exorbitant than the so-called organized lower echelons of contemporary underground middle-class & highly addictive group-think considered over-arching in academic & possibly non-governmental bipartisan think-tank publications peer-reviewed by the leftovers of the field. What makes these impressionable, individualized youngsters suffer so from the audaciousness of hegemonic assumptive "big pharma" protocols, invariably resulting in the catastrophic mendacity of hitherto capricious annihilation of what some have called & indeed the media has invested great time & effort presenting to the world at large but also the mute, alienated American electorate which continues to be co-opted by savage, dispassionate, ultimately deceptive ruling & golden class? Indeed, shouldn't the quotidian, medicated & fabricated youth of this great land of ours, so tirelessly vocal about freedom & savings, whose dependence on foreign-born resentments & what retired military men refer to humorlessly as cavalcades & collages, wouldn't this be the pitch-perfect time that, as the course of human effluvium sets gelatinously into intellectual flotsam & psychological jetsam, so tragically recycled over & over again whether by hyperbole or concatenation, bringing to the fore & also to the aft the consequent & subsequent quintessence of failure, fury & fulsome pessimism? Sorrowfully, but with a glint of the future, we put in the pills we force-feed our progeny the character assassination of both metaphorical & memetic procrastination, the sum of multiplicatives & derivatives we ignored but scribbled salacious slogans upon, our triumphs upended like statues coiled & sun-baked; this, then, is the asymptote of the medicated generation, orange with small printing like a pharmacy bottle, which we purloined as child-proofed, but finally handcuffed, as fin de siècle, patented & trade-marked innovation.

Preface To Pills: I Refuse To Have One Of Those Little Boxes Which Organize My Pills By Days Of The Week

For one, I have a hell of time getting them open. How do people do it? Do they just live with the broken fingernails?

For two, I only take one pill a day. I'm not that old. It's just one pill. I take it daily. I can remember that.

For three, I do take a vitamin, too, but I do it mainly out of habit. I'm pretty sure it doesn't help. Like, I got a sore throat recently, & I didn't miss taking my vitamins. What the fuck vitamins? I thought you had my back.

For four, okay, maybe, if I have to take more pills, if as I get older I have to have more pills, maybe I'll get one of those box things. I'll burn that cart when I've built the horse.

For five, I think I might actually have one. I just don't use it. My wife probably got it from a bank or something & asked me if I could use it. It might still be around somewhere. I was just like, fuck this, it's only one pill. Plus a useless damn vitamin.

For six, I mean, seriously, useless damn vitamins, what the hell?

For seven, for eight, for nine, for ten.

I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with anything. It's like an argument in the back of my head where no one, not even me, gives two whooping hoots about my health. But still. I don't really like those daily pill box things. Like this:



That image, by the way, is called "teacher-appreciation-pill-box.jpg". Can you imagine the excitement that teacher had when he or she got that for "appreciation"? "Thanks for everything, teach! You're old & you obviously need to take a lot of pills & even though my parents are entrusting you with my education we definitely feel your 'senior moments' prevent you from managing your medications!"

For eleven.

Intros

I am pretty awful at keeping things organized, which is a terrible confession from someone who does a radio show centered around themes. This morning I woke up wondering, how many introductions have I made for my radio show? I have been doing the show for over eight years - one might assume I've done as many intros. It's true, I have - though I actually should have done nine. I'll explain - & I'll share.

The first intro was slapped together quickly but I think it was done by the time of my first show in October 2002. I have a tape recording of that show, but I don't have a digital copy, so I can't check.

You can listen to the 2002 intro here.

I didn't like it much - I felt like I could do better. So sometime in 2003, I made another intro. I liked this one so much I kept it for a couple of years. I hadn't remembered that, so it surprised me.

You can listen to the 2003 intro here.

One thing I never liked about my intros was me singing "Self Help Radio." (My wife, however, completely disagrees.) So I got my friends Suloni & Michelle to record themselves singing it. You can hear that in the intro I started to use in 2005.

You can listen to the 2005 intro here.

I think that, by this time, KOOP had instituted "seasons," which meant that the schedule would change in May & November. I like me some arbitrary reason for mixing things up, so I began to make new intros in May. This hasn't really changed - even after I left KOOP, I have tended to make a new intro annually, around May.

You can listen to the 2006 intro here.

The 2007-2008 intro was the last intro I did for KOOP, & the last time you'll hear me say their call numbers. Fun fact: at some point someone realized that KOOP had gotten its license in Hornsby, Texas, & not Austin, so later intros (not this one) say, "K-O-O-P, Hornsby Austin," to be legal. We got a lot of calls about that. I wonder if they still do.

You can listen to the 2007 intro here.

I went into the wilderness & began podcasting in 2008, & created a brand new intro to celebrate that. Though I would have made a new intro anyway.

You can listen to the 2008 intro here.

& though I landed in West Virginia in the summer of 2009, I wasn't sure about radio there & figured I'd keep podcasting no matter what. Though I later added a legal ID to it, here's the podcast version of the 2009 intro.

You can listen to the 2009 intro here.

Which brings us to the one I currently use, which has the WRFL legal ID attached. I'll be changing it come May - I almost changed it to reflect my brand new time slot this coming Tuesday, but restrained myself - but if you listen to the show, either in Lexington or from the website, this is how it always begins:

You can listen to the current intro here.

I should mention it took the better part of an hour to find these. Even if you don't enjoy listening to them, at the very least I have them organized. I wonder how long it will take to mess them up again.

Another Collection Of Alphabetized Indiepop

It's true! The thirtieth episode of the Self Help Radio original production of "Indiepop A To Z" - a rather pointless & probably unending series brought to you by the makers of Self Help Radio themselves - himself - whatever - is now available for your cataloging pleasure at self help radio dot net! The show is guaranteed to fit appropriately in your head or Self Help Radio will personally refund ninety minutes of your time! IMPORTANT: Please read the fine print before asking for a time refund. I'd hate for your lawyers to have to talk to my clocks.

Speaking of meaningless business, I need to point out that, because Self Help Radio is moving (next week) to Tuesdays at midnight, I will be moving the days that I write stuff no one reads in this blog. New blog entries will happen Saturday through Wednesday authorities permitting. Also, if I remember. It's so hard. Plus I'm going out of town on Saturday. Why does this blog have to be so hurtful & take up so much of my time? It's like an obligation imposed by the courts!

Please enjoy this week's Self Help Radio & also the rest of the week. 2011. What a weird idea.

Is It 2011 Yet?

I've been living in a bubble. Because of jet lag, I think the wife & me fell asleep the afternoon of New Year's Eve & didn't wake up until Saturday morning at eight. At which point, I believe we let the dogs out, yelled at the cats, & went back to sleep.

But it's MONDAY for sure, so that means tomorrow's TUESDAY for sure which means SELF HELP RADIO for real. I think I might have mentioned that it's my last early morning show. At least for now. Also at least if you don't call "midnight" early morning. Which I don't. I call it "late night." I'm going to have a "late night show." If I had anyone to talk to, it'd be a "late night talk show."

That's next week. Right now I have to finish working on tomorrow's show (which is the continuation of the "Indiepop A To Z" series, & we're at the dog end of the Fs) & maybe then take a shower. Or perhaps I should shower first. Do you think if I don't, my show will smell funny? That would suck.

It's tomorrow morning on 88.1 fm WRFL. You can listen live. I will be lively. Or you can listen later, when I put the show up on self help radio dot net. I will do that as soon as possibly. Or you can not listen at all. But that's so predictable. Don't be so predictably.

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 30, Dude?

Blah blah, thirtieth episode of interminable indiepop a to z, blah blah, almost done with the Fs, blah blah blah.

Hey! You know what's cooler than cool? You know how I've been doing Self Help Radio at like way too early in the morning for anyone to even notice I've been doing a radio show? Well, that's going to change. It is! Starting on the 11th (not this week, but next) Self Help Radio will air on Tuedays nights at midnight! (That means, you know, Wednesday mornings at midnight, but it's more fun to pretend it's still on Tuesdays.)

That's pretty bad-ass right? I mean, right? Right!

But before then - the first Indiepop A To Z of the year, & a new Sugar Substitute. This Tuesday morning, 88.1 fm, WRFL. One last night all-nighter for me!

Beefheart

While traveling to Australia, I heard the news that the world had lost another genius (I understand, this will keep happening the longer that I live). Though he hadn't made music for nearly thirty years, Don Van Vliet - Captain Beefheart - had made enough music to fill most of our heads with wonder until we disappear into the void ourselves. His was a strange, difficult, complicated gift, adding to the rock & roll idiom ideas beyond its immediacy & passion - though Beefheart had those too - ideas perhaps more suited to jazz or classical music. I confess, it was hard to get into him, but when his work clicked, it clicked into place as if it had belonged there all along.

I did my sorry best to celebrate his life with his songs & others' interpretations of his songs, on a sub show on WRFL Thursday. You can listen to it here. Even if I didn't manage to show off a fraction of his brilliance, I hope it caused someone listening - or someone still to listen - to want to seek his work out more. It's what a deejay usually wants.

How grateful I am I live in a time where his music has been preserved for me to listen to as long as I can!