South of Perk

Sudden strange and disturbing realization last night:

1. I was hearing the music to "Begin the Beguine" (Lyrics below)

2. The TV was showing South Park.

3. The music was coming from the TV.

Also strange and disturbing: I found this article on MSN. Really, I should never, ever read MSN. (S. almost forty. Forty! That's twice as old as I was when we got married! Four...decades. Ten years from ....fifty. Forty is certifiably middle-aged.) You'd never know it to look at him, thank goodness.

A man's fertility appears to decline after the age of 40, in much the same way that a woman's ability to conceive fades after 35, according to French researchers. Our results provide, for the first time, strong evidence for a paternal age effect on failure to conceive that is linked only to biological male aging," the study authors report.

According to the researchers, the lower IVF success rate among relatively older men may be due to poorer-quality sperm. It has long been known that women are less likely to conceive after the age of 35 than before, de La Rochebrochard and her colleagues note. But the current findings, they write, suggest that for men, the age of 40 is similarly important.

"In reproduction," the researchers conclude, "age must no longer be considered as the concern of the woman, but as that of the couple."

This, folks, is exactly the kind of statistic I'd like tattooed handily on my... well, my forehead isn't very big, so maybe my arm? That and another one that says, "Nunya" - and when people pester me, I can point to it and say, look, there's your answer. They'll look at it and intone "nunya?" and I'll say, "Nunya business, fool!" and flounce off to go listen to a full album of The Smiths or Echo & The Bunnymen or The Strokes, or possibly Ella Fitzgerald.


Begin The Beguine by Ella Fitzgerald

When they begin the beguine
It brings back the sound of music so tender,
It brings back a night of tropical splendor,
It brings back a memory ever green.
I'm with you once more under the stars,
And down by the shore an orchestra's playing
And even the palms seem to be swaying
When they begin the beguine.

To live it again is past all endeavor,
Except when that tune clutches my heart,
And there we are, swearing to love forever,
And promising never, never to part.
What moments divine, what rapture serene,
Till clouds came along to disperse the joys we had tasted,
And now when I hear people curse the chance that was wasted,
I know but too well what they mean;
So don't let them begin the beguine
Let the love that was once a fire remain an ember;
Let it sleep like the dead desire I only remember
When they begin the beguine.

Oh yes, let them begin the beguine, make them play
Till the stars that were there before return above you,
Till you whisper to me once more,
Darling, I love you!
And we suddenly know what heaven we're in,
When they begin the beguine