[This is another in an occasional series on popular songs with appeal across the generations. This post will be broken into two parts; Part 2 will appear in a few days is here.]
As a kid, I once read a “funny” comic-book episode in which aliens landed in mid-20th-century America and reported back to their home [...]

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No, alas — not here to report anything like the conclusion of Seems to Fit. Just sharing a tidbit from the irrepressible xkcd webcomic. The first three panels of today’s contribution to the collective wisdom are above; click the image to see the final panel.

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[This is another in an occasional series on popular songs with long histories. Part 1 -- which focused on the song's composition and lyrics -- appeared on Wednesday.]
How many times and by which performers has “Begin the Beguine” been covered? It is to laugh.
The most comprehensive list I’ve seen was on the page of information [...]

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From whiskey river (first 3+ lines not included there):
from The Ninth Duino Elegy
Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely
in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all
other green, with tiny waves on the edges
of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze)–: why then
have to be human–and, escaping from fate,
keep longing [...]

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I do love a punchline — or a cartoon caption — which makes me pause for a split-second before making me snort. (Score another for the Bizarro strip.)
This one’s even better than that first split-second made me realize, as I just noticed when uploading it.

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Real post for the day imminent. In the meantime, I think this quotation deserves a post of its own:
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people [...]

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[This post's title alludes to this little tidbit of news: 2008 will last
a second longer than most years.]
The New Year, per usual, calls to mind resolutions about what we hope will come within the next 365ish days. I’ll get to that in a moment.
First, though, I want to note that whatever else it stands for, [...]

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[Don't assume the above is the whole story. Click the image to see the
complete strip from Shannon Wheeler's "How to Be Happy" series.]
Like me, you have probably heard more than once the assertion — pronounced in a gentle voice, at the end of a radio commercial (for the Motel 6 chain) consisting entirely of nothing [...]

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Cartoonist Keith Knight is a regular contributor to my favorite monthly magazine, The Funny Times. To break the routine from his main comic strip, called The K Chronicles, he occasionally does a strip called “Life’s Little Victories.” He builds these strips from ideas submitted by readers — little one- or two-panel ideas describing the little [...]

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I’ve always liked punctuation; some would say I like it a little too much. For my junior-college newspaper, I wrote an opinion column called something melodramatic and “clever” like “The Outspeaker.” [...checking yearbook... yeah, that was it, all right] I was convinced that the only thing anyone would notice about the column was the eloquence [...]

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