It’s an awful song. I mean, it starts off well enough.

Happy birthday to you.

It gets straight to the point and you know what the song is going to be about right there in the first couple of words. It lacks a certain imagination and creativity but it could be worse. I’ll give it a B-.

But then it kind of goes down hill from there.

Happy birthday to you.

I mean! What the fuck! That’s exactly the same as the first line!

What? Couldn’t they find anything to rhyme with you? Like, maybe shoe, loo, cue, poo, dew, do, stew? To a first approximation, most words in the English language rhyme with you. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of many words that don’t rhyme with you. C-.

How about the next line? It can’t worse than the previous one, right?

Happy birthday dear <name-that-doesn’t-quite-fit-the-metre>

Now they’re just messing with me. To start with, I’m getting fed up with every line starting with the same two words. It’s stupid but the last bit is just inane. Although most words rhyme with you, most names don’t. Let me think for a minute. I’ve got Sue, Lou and Mister McGoo. There aren’t any more. Most names are like Chester or Meredith.

But that’s not the worse part of it. Most names don’t fit the metre so you have to torture them until they do. There is a handful of names that you could ram in there without damaging your eardrums but if you are unfortunate enough to only have one syllable get ready to put your name on the rack of tuneless stretching. Let’s try it…

Joooooooo-ooooohhn!

Can you imagine if people always massacred your name like that? But this is your birthday and people are supposed to be nice to you on your birthday.

Now imagine the fate that awaits people with more than two syllables like, Ragged Clown or Barnaby S. Winthorpe the Third (as most Americans are named). There is no way that you are going to cram Barnaby S. Winthorpe the Third in there without someone getting hurt. But that’s not going to stop our intrepid songsters. Take a look at how they deal with this lyrical conundrum…

BarnabyS.Winthorpethe Thuuuuuurrrr-eeerrd

They crammed like 18 syllables into a space meant for one but then they took that last syllable and chopped it in two!! That’s crazy! Why would they do that! It makes no sense at all. F.

I’m not even going to touch the word dear which has all the fondness and affection of an overdraft letter from your bank manager. It’s too depressing by far.

Maybe they’ll find a way to redeem themselves in the last line.

Happy birthday to you.

Aaargh! THEY USED THE SAME LINE AGAIN!! My head just exploded!

With lyrics that bad, the song is already in the running for Worst Song Ever but we haven’t even started on the melody yet.

The melody is basically the dirge section from the national anthem of some third-world dictatorship played at the wrong speed on out-of-tune instruments. You don’t need to know any more. Chopin’s Funeral March is more uplifting. F.

So here’s my recommendation.

If you place any value on good taste and if you don’t completely hate your friends or your children, you will never ever sing this abysmal song ever again. They’ll thank you for it. I know I will.

PJ O’Rourke has cancer. And he laughs in its face.

I looked death in the face. All right, I didn’t. I glimpsed him in a crowd. I’ve been diagnosed with cancer, of a very treatable kind. I’m told I have a 95% chance of survival. Come to think of it — as a drinking, smoking, saturated-fat hound — my chance of survival has been improved by cancer.

…
I have, of all the inglorious things, a malignant hemorrhoid. What color bracelet does one wear for that? And where does one wear it? And what slogan is apropos? Perhaps that slogan can be sewn in needlepoint around the ruffle on a cover for my embarrassing little doughnut buttocks pillow.

Furthermore, I am a logical, sensible, pragmatic Republican, and my diagnosis came just weeks after Teddy Kennedy’s. That he should have cancer of the brain, and I should have cancer of the ass … well, I’ll say a rosary for him and hope he has a laugh at me. After all, what would I do, ask God for a more dignified cancer? Pancreatic? Liver? Lung?

So.
Farewell then
Agitar Software (formerly known as TestAgility).

We sent you code.
You sent back tests.
Free.

You helped us find crappy code.
Now we have to find it for ourselves.

Shame it’s so easy. Here!
I found some!

(with apologies to EJ Thribb, aged 17½)

According to an NYT editorial,

The rate of firearm death for children 14 years and under is almost 12 times higher in this country than in 25 other industrialized nations combined, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Need to investigate that claim some more before I comment.

Jeff reminded me to be careful when we book our funereal silent clowns in case we get mimes by mistake. That would suck. Fortunately, these people are on the case.

A little while ago, Jeff and I attended a funeral because Julio reminded us that you should always go to the funeral and on the way back we talked about how the one thing religions really do well is funerals and that it was a pity that atheists didn’t have anything as good.

The discussion led to all kinds of ideas and eventually a business plan for Kev and Jeff’s House of Death. A big part of the funeral experience comes, I think, from the comforting traditions. Traditions are always difficult things to get going of course but, if enough of us put our heads together, maybe we could come up with a few.

Coincidently, Scott Adams is planning his funeral today, too. One of his readers suggested a sad clown for his funeral. Just sitting up front, moping, not saying anything. One idiot poster was surprised that an atheist would want a funeral at all as though atheists don’t believe in death or something. I had always hoped for one of those Tibetan jobbies with the long sticks and the vultures but Georgina is against it. Most likely I’ll end up with one of those gatherings where my best friends sit around and laugh and get drunk and tell stories like at the best funerals that I have attended.

Religious funerals have a built-in advantage over atheist funerals because they help explain the whole what-happens-next issue in a way that is comforting to children. I know what happens afterwards, but it would be nice to have a story to tell my five year old daughter - something that weaves in the Circle of Life with a generous helping of how extraordinarily lucky we are to experience life in the first place.

Julio, Fabienne and Morgane, our thoughts are with you.