In Berlin they say "Tschüss!" (Spelled "tschüß" if you're really cool.) (Rhyme it with juice, like "chuice".) The meaning is somewhere between "Good-Bye", "Thank You" or "You're Welcome", and "Dismissed!" Somehow I didn't catch this during my 1978 visit, or perhaps its use has become more common and widespread since then; in 1994 I heard it everywhere, and started saying it myself. The expression's rather like "Be Seeing You" in the Village of Number 6. I use it in America but only in the rare German food store; elsewhere, when it slips out, people look at me funny.

For many days that goofy song "Watching Scotty Grow" has been on extended rotation in my head. I think I'm more vulnerable to this annoying little ditty because I somehow avoided the original, by Bobby Goldsboro, when it was new. I noticed another version over the weekend, on one of the Muzak records I got at Big Al's and it just won't go away. According to Dave Barry this is one of the "bad songs". A few of its notes are similar to this recent Elton John song I'm trying to identify. In related arcane musical trivia, I learned this week that "I Will Follow Him" was actually done by Little Peggy March, not Dusty Springfield as I had erroneously believed.

In today's Washington Post, Michael Kelly begins an editorial called "Weenie World" this way:

Here where I live, in weenie nation, the bad news is that life is still terribly, terribly -- really, almost unbearably -- dangerous. The good news is that, at last, we have gotten pretty much everything properly labeled to reflect this.