Claim to fame: Your source for that one 3D Picnic song's lyrics

After a decade of having the blahg the main thing it has had to show for existing is being referenced as an authority for the world's largest corn dog. There are other posts that get a reasonable number of hits as well, certainly, but the corn dog is the star.

However, I've found that something else distinctive I've done with it is when years ago I took the time to transcribe the lyrics to a song. With the many websites that focus on song lyrics you'd think there'd be no way I would need to go to such effort, but with the relatively obscure L.A. band from the late '80s/early '90s called 3D Picnic their catalog didn't appear to garner attention on such sites. But their quirky punk roots rock was right up my alley.

Back in January of 2011 I posted the lyrics to their song "Charles Thinks About It" which is rather blithely optimistic in its tone (unlike much of the music from that era) during a time when I would post snippets of lyrics in a "Lyrics du Jour" segment (which was no daily). With that song, however, I was inspired to include them in their entirety. It just seemed worth doing, even though it involved that old school method of listening to the verses over and over.

Our wacky language: It's enough to give up its meaning

As regular readers know, I was never a linguist but I do find the topic of language development to be of at least passing interest. Not of sufficient interest to do exhaustive research, of course, but enough to ruminate on something for the next few minutes.

I paid attention in life to an extent that allows me to know the difference between possessives (such as its) and contractions (it's). I'm not suggesting that is at all an impressive intellectual feat; I'm merely identifying it as a bit of knowledge that, experience tells me, distinguishes me from some other people (who appear to have difficulty consistently distinguishing which is which).

Lest you start to think this will be a scathing criticism of those who seem to fail to make the effort to learn such things, let's step back a moment and consider what our language requires of us all.

Father stays on Facebook; domestication of the dog continues unabated

Recently a friend on Facebook posted that he moved the app to the last screen of his iPhone, out of a desire to have it take up less of his time. Then he shared a link to an article posted on the ABC News site titled "Mom Deletes Facebook From Phone and These 5 Things Happened" (because unless a story is in list form no one will read it). I clicked over and read it (gleaning the gist of how the writer had an almost addiction-based relationship with social media), then left a comment on my friend's post "#6: Mom writes self-congratulatory article."

Then he perhaps jokingly responded he expected a Dougression about that. But instead, I give you this:

That comment was, of course, a glib reaction. Undoubtedly, there was probably some element of subconscious envy on my part fueling that, given the writer got her piece on a major news site and I just have my intermittent posts on the blahg here that get read by 12 people (because I'm not inclined to write in list format). However, it's also merely the sort of response that fit in with the amount of time I had in that moment to say something pithy (and perhaps hold a modicum of being worth read by the other friends of this friend who may see it).

These new-fangled car seats: How did any previous generation survive childhood?

The thing about having an infant and a car seat in the back of the automobile in which he rides whenever we drive somewhere: When we are with more than one other person and need to go somewhere in a vehicle, we are going in separate cars; after my wife and son in the back and me driving we can fit one modestly sized human in the passenger seat. And even if the other people have a vehicle that can accommodate the number of people involved, we can't take their car because the car seat is not in their car.

For example, when visiting family back in June, when it came time to go out to breakfast someone initially thought we could all fit in one truck, with our son being held in our lap.

Nope.

The Unexpected Majesty of the Every Simpsons Ever Marathon

Since a week ago Thursday through this past Monday the cable channel FXX aired the complete run of The Simpsons (#EverySimpsonsEver the hashtag reminded us) in a marathon. Over those twelve days I have tuned in to re-watch episodes when I had the chance, and have found it to be perhaps the best background viewing material available.

We'll get to Sesame Street later.

For example, last Thursday night as I washed the dishes I saw parts of the 2003 Treehouse of Horror episode. I didn't need to give it my full attention but when I wasn't rinsing I was reminded of the scene where Homer has killed Death and takes over as the Grim Reaper and goes to claim Jasper's soul—and upon seeing Grim Homer, Jasper asks "Where's the regular guy? Where's Doug?" Obviously that joke holds special appeal for me personally, but it's the way something like that can stand on its own as a moment without me having to then pause my task at hand made it particularly good as what I'd want on the TV when I couldn't give it my full attention.