Dear Any Company That Makes Any Baby-Related Item,

Please stop with the making me feel like an inadequate parent if I don’t buy or use your product. While I’m sure that you do make a nice pair of infant pants or that you do make one of the best electrical beepy toys around, I don’t appreciate your implying that somehow my baby daughter isn’t being afforded the “best chance at reaching her full potential” or insinuating that the greatest minds of the modern world would have been far greater had their parents gotten them a multicolored swirly flashy thing. I’m on to you and your ways and the last thing I need is you pushing your guilt issues on me.

Thanks!

PS: Is there anyway you can make everything in the world, I’m thinking more of your non-food type items, taste like Gerber Hawaiian Delight?

I’m a copycat thanks to Jay and Erika:

My First Random 10 MP3 Assortment

1. I Am The World Trade Center - The Postcard
2. Dolly Parton - Why’d You Come In Here Looking Like That?
3. The Jayhawks - Let The Critics Wonder
4. The Avalanches - Flight Tonight
5. Kasey Chambers - Not Pretty Enough
6. John Cougar Mellencamp - Rain on the Scarecrow
7. Stacy Q - Two of Hearts
8. Kathleen Edwards - Hockey Skates
9. Aimee Mann - Save Me
10. Mary J. Blige - No More Drama

So, I modified the lyrics to Lump by Presidents of the U.S.A. and now I have a diaper-time classic for the baby girl: “It’s lump, it’s lump, it’s lump, it’s in my pants…”

Some ’90’s new dad must have already been there done that with that song when it was out.

By the way, could I be any more excited about the solidification of the baby girl’s number two? That sudden change in states of matter is, and I’m not religious, a godsend.

Does anyone originally from New England know if Barry Manilow ever sold the rights to “Weekend in New England” to some kind of New England tourism promotion office or the state of Massachusetts or something? The song came out the year I was born so I have no memory on the subject but come on, someone had to have used that song to get people to take vacations with “long, rocky beaches” and, if Barry let them change the lyrics a little to suit their purposes, “lobster shacks by the bay.”

Met some new people this week in Boston. Erika and Jay are coo (intentionally without the “L” which is cooler than even being ice cold) and should be admired for dealing with my wife’s greatly exaggerated (1) pregnancy stories, (2) cat stories, and (3) Atkins stories. I’m looking forward to at least meeting up again in the summer.

Amy and I brought the baby girl to the New England Aquarium and watched fish much bigger than her pretend to not be interested in the potential of eating other fish about the same size as her. I like to go around the big central tank and come up with sounds that the fish would probably make if they could make sounds. Most of the sounds I come up with are something of a variation on “BLERRRRRRRG” like “PLERRRRRRRRG” or “GLERRRRRRRG.” Some of the smaller fish I imagine make a more excitable noise like “GABILLIE, WOOP WOOP!” Hey, for $16 per person, I’m going to get my money out of that place. Anyway, the baby girl had a good time too. Amy made me do an impersonation of her:

Tart pointed out, during the Grammy Awards the other night, that the Luther Vandross song that Richard Marx co-wrote sounded eerily similar to Richard’s own “Right Here Waiting” in parts. Could Richard be cashing in on an old formula?

I own every Alan Parsons Project release on CD. In addition, I also own a compilation of just Alan Parsons Project instrumental tracks. I’ve always held that Alan Parsons and his Project were more musically gifted and talented than critics would believe. In my wiser years, I have come to realize that this is not the case. I like ‘em anyway though.

I have to fess up to something.

For years, when I’ve told the story of how I got lost in the woods for hours when I was a kid, I’ve always set it during the summer after fourth grade. It was, in fact, the summer after fifth grade that I was lost. Somehow, I’ve always thought that saying it was after fifth grade was pretty embarassing as that’s right before sixth grade which is middle school and middle school kids don’t go getting lost.

This is one of very few lies I have ever knowlingly told.

Someone get me this. It’s also on my Amazon list.

So Yoko Ono gives what appears to be a heartfelt and tear-soaked rememberance of her late husband (though such long-winded speeches are completely out of place at award shows even if it is the Beatles) and let’s cut to Madonna for her reaction. We see a cackle-laughing Madonna annnnnnnd… cut to camera three. Such is the magic of The Grammy Awards.