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One week shy of 24 years ago, Weird Al released this album, which featured a parody of another huge (pun intended, as you’ll see) Michael Jackson song. The title of the album and even the album cover are also spoofs – MJ’s album was “Bad,” this one is “Even Worse.” The album went certified platinum (over a million sold), Al’s first.

11. Lasagna – A parody of “La Bamba” that’s all about Italian food and the tendency for those who usually serve it to try to get you to eat more of it. It’s okay, but I skip this one a lot.

10. Alimony – Parody of “Mony Mony,” about a fellow who feels he is getting the raw end of the deal in a divorce settlement.

9. Melanie – Could also be called “The Stalker Song.” He wonders why Melanie won’t go out with him, and as the song progresses, we find out why. “Are you still mad I gave a Mohawk to your cat?” This song definitely goes on the “Dark List,” as the main character commits suicide because she won’t go out with him.  Doesn’t sound funny, I know.  But it somehow still is!

8. I Think I’m a Clone Now – “…there’s always two of me just a-hangin’ around.” A lot of great puns about being cloned, with the best one being “Every pair of genes is a hand-me-down.”

7. You Make Me – Another song about a girl, this one about a girl who makes him want to do weird things, like slam his head against a wall and buy a Slurpee at the mall. Pure silliness.

6. Stuck in a Closet with Vanna White – A song about recurring dreams, where no matter how his dream starts out, he always ends up as the title would suggest.

5. (This Song’s Just) Six Words Long – This song is the first one I noticed in his collection that makes fun of the actual song it’s a parody of. Most of his parodies are the tune with word changes, but this one makes fun of the fact that George Harrison’s original “(Got My Mind) Set On You” pretty much had the hook of those words and not much else to it. Poking fun at a Beatle! But he asked for and received permission, so George must have been amused by it.

4. Velvet Elvis – In the style of  The Police, about a painting bought at a garage sale. I love love love the “He’s so fuzzy / He’s so great” lines near the end.

3. Good Old Days – If you’re making a list of Al’s darkest songs, this one would have to be at the top.  I’ll let Al himself explain it: “I wanted to see if I could write a song as if Charlie Manson and James Taylor were collaborating.” He pretty much succeeded, and this one is twisted, twisted, twisted.  Speaking of twisted…

2. Twister – A rap song about the board game that is just so smile-inducing. It’s in the style of The Beastie Boys, in case you were wondering. I always thought it was a Run DMC-type thing, but Wikipedia has corrected me.

1. Fat – Parody of MJ’s “Bad,” won Al a Grammy. It’s another food song – well, more of a “result of food” song, with every pun about being large that you’ve ever heard. The video for this one was just fantastic, and to this day, Al ends his live concerts wearing the fat suit from it.

I’m very excited about the next album, as it contains my very favorite Weird Al song. Stay tuned!

I take three main roads on my way to work every morning. The first major street I turn onto is two lanes where I start on it, but after a half mile it turns into a four-lane street right before the first stoplight.  When my side splits into two, I immediately get into the left lane. Why? Because in 4.2 miles, I need to make a left turn. It’s so much easier to get into that lane right then at the starting point because no one is in the next lane and it’s a very slight movement of my steering wheel. The way the split is designed, I don’t even need to activate the turn signal. Seven stoplights later, I make my left turn.

I know it doesn’t strictly apply because the road curves and turns, but I frequently think of angles when I initially get in the left line, 4.2 miles ahead of the turn. If two people are walking in parallel lines, and suddenly one of them takes a 5-degree turn and they keep walking, they’ll get farther and farther apart. That little angle turn at the beginning ends up making a huge difference.  I’m a big fan of the “shortest distance between two points is a straight line” maxim.  Even at work, if I’ve got several things I need to attend to, I’ll plan my route to be the shortest way to get to all of them.  I know where I’m headed, so let’s figure out how to get there.

You’d think that would carry over into life. You’d think I’d look twenty years from now and say, “That’s where I want to end up” and make the small angle change now to start me that direction. For some reason, when it’s important, I’m not as easily able to do it.  Eventual left? Make the change now!  Life goal?  Eh… we’ll see what happens. To a certain degree, that can be a good thing. I can be more flexible should something show up.  But it’s not really a plan.

Part of the problem is not knowing what that eventual goal is, I think. I’ve been feeling lately that there’s something out there I should be doing (“should” in the sense of “would be a great fit for”), but I can’t figure out what that is. I’m not sure how you figure that sort of thing out. I feel like once I figure that out, the angle change will come to me.

I’ve been working my way through Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix streaming and I’m in the last half of the last season. I thought I had seen most episodes of the show, but I think there’ve been more I haven’t seen.  Regardless, it’s been a great ride and has reawakened my inner Trekkie.  After this, I’m thinking of starting Deep Space 9, because I’ve seen maybe three episodes of that one.

Yesterday I watched an episode that I had seen before, but didn’t remember that well.  It was called “Lower Decks,” and I’ll let the IMDB synopsis tell you about it:

A mission of the Enterprise as seen through some junior officers who are up for promotions, as questions of duty and honor arise among some of them, such as a Bajoran whom Worf has designated to be promoted to operations.

Because I’ve been watching the series in order, I remembered the Bajoran from the previous episode she was on, “The First Duty,” where she (along with Wesley Crusher)  covered up an accident they were involved in.  There’s more, but it’s not important.  You’ll get to that when you watch through the series yourself.

It ended up being one of my favorite episodes in the whole series. Seeing the ship from the viewpoint of people who weren’t the same characters we’ve seen every week was very interesting. The secondary characters circled around a storyline that sort of happened in the background with the main characters, until the end when the storylines sort of became the same.

I’ve said before how much I love the idea of space travel. I love the idea of an Enterprise wandering around at warp speed, checking things out and getting into crazy adventures. I do not, however, love the idea of actually being on the Enterprise.  Aside from the whole “submarine in space” thing, it just seems like living in the place you work is a bad idea. The Enterprise-D has a little over 1,000 people on it, which is fewer than the amount of people at the school where I work. So you see the same people during your 8-hour shift, and then you see those same people in your 16 hours of off-time (minus sleeptime). There’s pretty much just the one hangout place, and Guinan’s there most of the time, so there’s always the danger of her butting in and making you learn some sort of life lesson.

Aside from having to figure out how to keep coming up with small talk in a place where the weather never changes, there’s also the lack of privacy. Anytime the senior officers want to know where you are, they ask the computer and the computer tells them. “Ensign MadMup is hiding behind some crates in Cargo Bay 4. He is playing Angry Birds 4000 on his spacephone.” The kids on the Enterprise can’t play hide-and-seek because the computer ruins everything.

Speaking of kids, what kind of psychotic parent brings their kids on a spaceship whose job it is to seek out new and unexplained phenomena??  ”Well, the Crystalline Entity was pretty scary, but I’m sure there’s nothing worse than that.  Now, what’s this ‘Borg’ thing you were talking about?” I don’t know what the Starfleet approximation of Child Services is, but any parent that wants to take their kids on a starship should probably be assumed to be an unfit parent.

How often did the non-major characters even know what was going on, anyway?  The ship’s being torn in half, but I never noticed anyone getting on the intercom and saying, “Hey, we’ve run into some slight quantum turbulence, so buckle in and put your tray tables up.” It really seems like a horrific experience all around.  Sure there’s replicators and holodecks, but Barclay can’t even run a simple holodeck program with the senior officers as inferior-to-him beings without being found out, so what chance does your “I am Superman mixed with Spider-Man on a planet of chocolate” program have of not being used by everybody?

I’m completely in favor of space exploration. When I’m appointed President, I’ll make sure NASA gets a nice budget (and I will share my ideas with them). I just don’t want to be the guy out there in actual space.  Vulcans are totally cool, but I can wait til they come here for a visit.