Happy birthday ... literally ... Harry Joseph Letterman. From AP: "Letterman, 56, said the baby - his first child - is named after his father, Harry Joseph Letterman, who died at 57." The news just came out, though we first found out about it when Paul Shafer guest host on the show last night because Dave was otherwise engaged. I did not think Regina Lasko was that far along. Anyway, the report said it was born "late Monday Night" ... a late show, hmm? [It was born 11:58PM last night. That baby has a sense of timing!]

Conan O'Brien's wife recently gave birth and Letterman was nice enough to welcome her into the world. I guess it's a good time for late night hosts to have their first child. [I just saw his first night back. Dave is great when he is on, and he was tonight. In honor of the birth, he brought on his "special guest," Regis Philbin, who he clearly respects highly, and made it apparent tonight. This sort of show suggests why I think he trumps Leno, ratings aside.]

Reflection: The way to survival in this world, especially on bad days, is not to take things too serious or at least find some humor in it all. It is good, for instance, to appreciate at least the irony or basic stupidity even in the worse things in life. You might laugh sadly, but laugh you do. I find that each day is likely to have some nice moment, a moment of pure joy, which makes even the most mundane day have that little bit of shine. Now, most days have more than one of these moments, but even one makes life worth living, not to be too melodramatic. I feel deep sorrow for those who lives are so bad that they truly do not have such moments or the moments are so overtaken by other events that it amounts to the same thing.

One fun way to enjoy life is the idea of double meanings to generally innocent events or comments. For instance, I used to listen to a radio show in which there were many "in" code words and images that made the audience seem to be like one big family. Part of this was to avoid censors; for instance, oral sex was said to be giving or receiving an "atta girl," arising from one poor soul who got in trouble for saying that to his g/f after she did the deed. This also happens, of course, in our day to day life with friends, family, and loved ones. An ongoing joke with a friend of mine led me to laugh out loud about a line about a butterfly's habits.

Thanks ... to the author of BTC News (see links) for the link to my humble blog ... yours is a worthy addition to the blog universe.