So, it appears Blender magazine is just the latest pop-culture pretender to anoint itself arbiter of what is best and worst in our society, in this case with its "50 Worst Songs Ever" list.

I won't even go into the semantic idiocy of that name, other than to say I'm sure there are some 14th century chants that should have ranked highly on the list.

Their No. 1 pick as worst song of all time? "We Built This City" by Starship beat out all contenders. I will freely admit that song is sonic toxicity. It causes orifice bleeding in lab animals and is a waste of good airtime. However, it is far from the worst song ever done.

Consider if you will the paragon of bad songs, "Macarthur Park," done by Richard Harris and others over the years. Much has been written already on the horridness of this one, so I shall move on rather than adding to the pile.

My personal horrors? A couple of them made the list, oddly enough. "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin is the song most likely to provoke me into a homicidal rage. I once force-fed a fellow bus passenger his radio, whole, when he refused to turn the song off. It's that sort of relentlessly cheerful, idiotic babble that can turn a good day into one long puppy-kicking nightmare.

I basically loathe "happy" songs in general. Eddie Murphy's ill-advised career move "Party All The Time," which inflicted itself on us in the '80s, is in the Blender top 10. I don't think it's any coincidence that Eddie's cinematic career has gone in the toilet since that song. You don't lay down bad sonic karma like that and not earn yourself some righteous universal payback.

In the love song department, there are of course endless possibilities, but I'll narrow my focus down to two lest I induce gastric distress in the audience.

First up is one that made Dave Barry's "Bad Song Book," and led to one of David Letterman's first TV jobs: "Afternoon Delight" by The Starland Vocal Band. Dave emceed the band's short-lived variety show (there's your trivia for the week). The relentless phallic imagery of the "skyrockets in flight" and the brain-bludgeoning harmonizing of the Starlanders makes me want to become celibate and move to a mountaintop somewhere.

Second, and I lay the blame for this one solely on my cousins Lori and Shawna, is "I Just Called To Say I Love You" by Stevie Wonder. Back in the mid-'80s, when this one was torturing us with its presence on the charts, Lori and Shawna discovered that it made my neck hair stand on end and my eyes bug out. Of course it wouldn't do but that these two, with an evil sister-bond rivaled only by the hellspawned Olsen twins, learned EVERY WORD and sang it at top volume anytime I came in range. I've forgiven them, though. Really. Honest. I have NO long-simmering plans for revenge of any kind.

I didn't want to go love-song bashing without a feminine perspective, though; and since I gave up getting in touch with my own female side years ago after that whole paisley ensemble incident, I tapped Lisa Morrison, who faithful food section readers will know as the author of the MOST excellent Liquid Solutions column. She reacted to my request for bad song preferences with a list of tunes that had me writhing in my chair and pleading for mercy. That woman has some serious music rage issues, and we love her for them.

First off on her rant was "Loving You," by Minnie Riperton. You know this one. It's got the "ooo-oooooo-oooooo" warble in the middle that sounds like a yodeler being castrated by a dent puller.

The lyrics are sheer poetry, too:

Loving you is easy cause you're beautiful
Making love with you is all I wanna do
Loving you is more than just a dream come true
Everything that I do is out of loving you

Gee. Good thing you're not ugly, I guess. You wouldn't be able to get a girlfriend named Minnie who's got a voice that makes dogs cry at 100 yards.

I would, however, pay real money to see an episode of "American Idol" where the contestants are evaluated solely on their ability to sing the "oooo-oooo-ooooo" part of the song. By the end of the show, the stage would be littered with the smoking remains of vocal cords.

The other choice I culled from Lisa's avalanche of musical hatred was "Undercover Angel," by Alan O'Day. This has GOT to be the ultimate Lonely Guy Song. This poor unfortunate has obviously been watching far too much late-night pay cable and overdosed on the "Red Shoe Diaries" at some point. The chorus alone sounds vaguely like the soundtrack to one of those movies sold in the back at the video store:

She said, "Whaaat?"
I said, "Ooo-oo-oo-wee"
She said, "All right!"
I said, "Love me, love me, love me"

Before we move on, I've got to make a quick stop in the Depressing Song Department. You know the songs ... the ones that can take a bright, sunny day with birds singing and turn it into some sort of lightless pit from which no hope can escape. I'm sure Morrissey's mom listened to a lot of these while she was carrying him.

The all-time bull moose grand champion of songs by which to eat a shotgun has got to be "Alone Again, Naturally" by Gilbert O'Sullivan (that wouldn't by any chance be a pseudonym, would it?).

If Bart Simpson ran the world, this would be the hold music on the suicide hot line:

In a little while from now,
If I'm not feeling any less sour.
I promised myself, to treat myself,
And visit a nearby tower,
And climbing to the top,
Would throw myself off,

In one song, he manages to cover everything from a failed wedding to religious doubts to dead parents. It's a real party tune! I've had my suspicions over the years that it was written by one of the better-known singer-songwriters of the '60s and '70s as some sort of joke, and then somehow the "ha-ha, I fooled you!" part never came along.

And once again Lisa came through with a quality contribution to my efforts (besides free beer): "I Started A Joke" by the Bee Gees. Yes, I was surprised to find out this was one of theirs, too! It turns out that they apparently were a little depressed at times before the Age of Disco. Listen to this song enough times and your every paranoid fantasy will come to life and dance around you singing along.

I know you've got to be bursting at the seams right now ... your fingers poised over your keyboards, ready to either flame me for my choices or enlighten me with your own. So just click here and let me have it right between the ears.

Dance, Chicken, Dance!

Just in case you've just been released from a sequestered jury or perhaps returned from your long-awaited trip to the peak of Everest, there's a fairly amusing site making the round that is at the cutting edge of the new Internet advertising breed.

Subservientchicken.com is sponsored in a VERY low-key way by Burger King. The only trace of Whopperdom is a BK Tendercrisp link and the Burger King branding at the bottom of the page.

You'll spend hours (or at least a long lunch) coming up with new and different things for the chicken to do. So far, "throw pillows" is a pretty amusing one, as is "bite me."

Oddly enough, if you put in "eat a Whopper," the chicken begins hopping on one foot. "Eat a hamburger" elicits an odd sort of grimacing into the camera and "eat fries" induces the man in the chicken suit to chew on his arm feathers.

Enjoy!

Got bigfoot in the garden? Crop circles in the petunias? Drop me a line anytime! Professions of undying love and large cash grants are also accepted.

Previous Stories:

• April 9, 2004: Mongo Movie Madness
• April 2, 2004: Sweating Like An Oldie
• March 12, 2004: Put It In Writing
• March 5, 2004: The Sporting Way
• Feb. 27, 2004: It's A Cat's Life
• Feb. 13, 2003: For Love Of Munchies
• Feb. 6, 2004: Fallen Idols And Flying Wings
• Jan. 30, 2004: Surviving The (NFL) Experience
• Jan. 23, 2004: I'm Eating, Here!