Thursday, November 30, 2006

11/30/06 O'er the Home of the Land

The Star-Spangled Banner has 4 verses. Why did I look this up? Because I heard the song on TV and I started thinking to myself, "On the shore dimly seen, through the mists of the deep". I gave myself a double take (since, as usual, I was alone) wondering where in the hell those words came from. How did I know the words to the 2nd verse? There was a song book in my house as a kid with all sorts of traditional American songs. (The same book had the tune to "Glory, Glory Hallelelujah", but the words were "John Brown's body lies amouldrin' in the grave". I still don't know what "amouldrin" means, but I think it's a part of history that most people would like to forget.) Anyways, all of the star spangled verses were in this book. On a rainy day, I started memorizing all of the words. Twenty something years later, they're still stuck in my head. I'm convinced that, with all of the useless childhood knowledge lingering upstairs, if I started learning chemistry and biology as an infant, I might have cured cancer by now. Instead, I just reference tv shows and songs in everyday conversation.

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One of my favorite running subplots in The Family Guy - How they all treat the daughter like crap. And nobody cares.

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