There are occurrences you don’t find in any parenting book that one should look out for when near children.  The most common predicament I find myself getting into is having one of my daughter’s songs from a show or CD or DVD play itself on an infinite loop in my head.  I can’t blame children’s programming solely on this phenomenon, as I had that goddamned Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” song in my head for about 2 years after it came out in the 1980s.  The fact that I, along with thousands of other music-loving Americans, didn’t commit random acts of violence while that song terrorized our brains is a testament to our willpower and tolerance for pain.  I will soil that buttbrain's grave with at least one of my bodily fluids when he finally reports to Lucifer for full time duty.

So now while the Dora The Explorer version of Kylie Minogue’s “Locomotion” rumbles through my head (“C’mon, amigos, do the Locomotion”), I try to drown it out with a nonstop barrage of metal from my iPod.  After 4 years of playing child songs for my daughter, I now have a wide variety of songs to run ad nauseum through my head.  I still recall that damn “Veggie Tales” chorus from a friend’s tape when I visited him and his kids 7+ years ago.  Those songs are forever embedded in my brain.

Speaking of songs, another friend who reads this blog relayed an amusing story to me.  He was switching his satellite radio subscription from XM to Sirius since the Grateful Dead now have an exclusive channel on Sirius.  That’s cool, I understand that since the sole reason I stay with XM is for their 24 hour NHL channel, unlike Sirius which only has partial hockey coverage on one channel. 

So as the customer service rep is trying to entice him to stay with XM after explaining his loyalty to the Grateful Dead, she started talking about XM’s heavy metal and death metal channels.  She must have thought that any band with the name “Dead” in it was a death metal band.  Even more amusing was that she claimed to be a huge music fan (yet had never heard of the Dead) and kept on talking about some European death metal bands and how she could name any song from the 1950s through today if he gave her the lyrics.  He told her those bands aren’t even close to what the Grateful Dead songs are like, and here’s where I would love to have audio of the call.  He started to sing a verse of “Truckin’” to her but she still didn’t recognize it.  Oh well, maybe one day she will be able to tell the difference between the Grateful Dead song and Cannibal Corpse.