There was a radio host back in the day (he now streams his program on the internet) who went by the name Dr. Demento (real name Barry Hansen). He played demented music – novelty songs and comedy riffs, the screwier the better. (The photo here references one of the most popular songs, which goes “Fish heads, fish heads. Roly-poly fish heads. Fish heads, fish heads. Eat ’em up, yum” by a group called Barnes & Barnes. But I digress.)

Dr. Demento’s show was where Weird Al Yankovic launched his stellar career. The show got a tremendous boost from the recent “biopic” of Weird Al, which featured the good Dr. as a major character.

What does all this have to do with me? (Aside from the fact that the day I met my husband, he was wearing a t-shirt that said Dr. Demento. It didn’t refer to the radio show, however, but was given to him by coworkers on the psych unit. (He was also wearing a patch over one eye. How could I possibly resist a demented pirate? It was true love, though we didn’t know it at the time.) But I digress again.)

All my life I’ve been attracted to demented music, from Johnny Cash’s “The One on the Right Is on the Left” (a political ditty) to Kinky Friedman’s “Ballad of Charles Whitman” (which couldn’t be played these days because of current events) to John Prine’s “Dear Abby” to campfire classics like “Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends.” There’s something that appeals to me about songs that don’t take themselves too seriously.

Then I started going to science fiction conventions, where I heard still more demented songs during what are called filk sings (typo for “folk” that stuck). These included songs like “I Spent My Last Ten Dollars on Birth Control and Beer” and “Have Some Madeira, M’Dear.” Why are these played at science fiction conventions? I don’t really know, except that many SF fans are Dr. D. aficionados.

Lots of the filkers wrote their own songs, and many wrote demented ones. Barry Hansen was even a Guest of Honor at one of the conventions, which is where I met him.

Among the demented singer/songwriters are several who became my friends. They’ve had songs played on the radio show. Tom Smith’s “Return of the King, Uh-huh” is a mash-up of Lord of the Rings and Elvis, and “307 Ale” is about a beer brewed in a tesseract. Michael (Moonwulf) Longcor’s “Silver Bullet Blues” is about a werewolf. More demented still is his “Bob’s Dog Obedience School and Taxidermy Shop.” Leslie Fish’s “Carmen Miranda’s Ghost Is Haunting Space Station Three” is self-explanatory.

There’s a Facebook page for Dr. Demento and his fans, too, where they post the aforementioned “Fish Heads” and other videos. I’m a member and have posted some of my favorites there. Recently I shared a video of “Hand Me Down That Can O’ Beans,” which Dan was walking around singing because he was making nachos. (It’s a song from the musical Paint Your Wagon, possibly the worst musical ever made. Who thought of having a musical with Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin singing? It’s principally noted for introducing the lovely “They Call the Wind Mariah.” But I digress yet again.) The post occasioned quite a conversation.

Most of the responses castigated me for being so down on the movie. Apparently, it has a lot of fans out there. There were all kinds of reasons cited that Lee Marvin’s voice was perfect for the songs, despite being notably flat. One even accused me of being envious that my “Uncle James” didn’t get the role. (My father’s name actually was James. When we were young, we always applauded when a “Daddy movie” came out. Another digression.) Someone even pointed out that The Simpsons once did a parody of Paint Your Wagon, which I had forgotten about.

I was delighted that over 175 people reacted to my post and nearly 75 commented on it. I feel special. Maybe Mr. Hansen will notice (he does read his own fan site) and feature the beans song on his show. That would really validate my membership in the group.

Without a little blue checkmark, either.

Of all the things that are controversial these days, pronouns seem like the least likely. But we’ll get back to that in a minute. What I want to talk about right now is the “singular they.”

After a long time, I have finally given in to the singular they. It goes against my prescriptivist history, but it fits in with my newer, more descriptivist views. (Prescriptivists say how language ought to be. Descriptivists say how language is actually used. I studied linguistics in college, where descriptivism reigns. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get on board. Probably my deep-seated need to be pedantic. But I digress.)

A not-so-brief, pedantic rant about the singular they. Traditionally, a singular subject goes with a singular verb, singular adjective, and singular object, like this: She likes her new house. John thinks for himself. They went to the beach with their cousins. Pretty simple, right?

Feminists pointed out the problem. Being a staunch feminist, I wanted to acknowledge women with equal pronouns. (That doesn’t sound right, somehow.) For far too long, we were told that “the masculine includes the feminine.” That is, you constructed sentences like this: Everyone preferred his own chili recipe. We were told that the “everyone” and the “his” in that sentence included women as well as men. The problem is even enshrined in our most important documents: “All men are created equal.” That was said to be equivalent to “All people are created equal” or, if the person was of the very liberal persuasion, “All men and women are created equal.”

Well, many women (including me) didn’t feel very included. Everyone didn’t specify gender, but his sure did. All men was pretty gender-specific. (And women were not afforded all the protections of the founding documents until relatively recently. There are still protections that are missing, IMNSHO. But there I go, digressing again.)

(I also had trouble with the word “gender.” I come from far enough back in the mists of time that “sex” was used for people and “gender” was used for linguistic purposes – nouns and adjectives, not just pronouns, had gender: El armadillo amarillo es sobre la mesa. El and amarillo indicate not that the armadillo was a male armadillo, but that the word armadillo was masculine linguistically. A feminine word would end in -a, like la mesa does. The table is (obviously) sexless, but the language gave it a feminine gender. But I digress at length.)

The feminist alternative was to use “his or her” (or “his/her”). This was also problematic in feminist terms. His always came first. For a long time, I (and other writers) used she/he or she throughout one paragraph and he throughout the next, if the gender wasn’t relevant. This was clumsy, took the reader out of the reading experience, and left out one sex in each paragraph. Besides, you ended up with ugly sentences like this: Everyone should bring his or her notebook because he or she will need to make notes that he or she can study.

And since the plural pronouns don’t have gender, someone came up with the bright idea of using they, them, and their instead of he, him, and his or she, her, and her. Like this: Each team member (singular) can use their (plural) own bowling shoes. You’re using a plural pronoun where before you would use a singular pronoun.

Substituting a plural pronoun for a singular one just sounds wrong to a prescriptivist. It grates on the ear. It gives them one more reason to correct people and sound like an insufferable know-it-all. That was me.

Then I started writing full-length books (ghostwriting, really). It sounded really awful to keep saying his or her multiple times in a manuscript. And alternating between she and he still left out half of the people half of the time.

Enter the singular they. (I knew I’d get around to it sooner or later.) It was met with scorn and derision by the prescriptivists. They was plural and that was that.

But descriptivists embraced they. Descriptivists insist that one can use language the way the general public actually uses it. They viewed it as correct based on the evolution of language and common usage. Besides, they argued that the singular they had a long and noble history. Even Shakespeare used it. And, at last, I got on the proverbial bandwagon. They, their, and them have now made their way into my prose. And I’m not going to apologize for it. Call me a descriptivist convert (a deadly insult among prescriptivists).

Now, on to the subject of preferred pronouns for nonbinary people. I say we should use whichever pronouns they choose to use. After all, we call people the names they prefer – first name, middle name, or nickname. Why shouldn’t people be able to use their own pronouns? It seems to me to be only polite. (I have trouble getting used to the recently created pronouns such as xe and hir. I never know how to make a sentence using them as subjects, objects, and possessives. But I digress one last time.)

Those of you among my readers who are also writers know just what I mean by all this. So do any linguists that are lurking here. I admit that it may be a bit obscure for many.

But it’s fascinating to people who are fascinated by this kind of thing. And that includes me. Nothing like a good pedantic rant to stimulate my brain cells, I always say.

The Waffle House restaurant chain doesn’t get a lot of love from many people, particularly foodies.

I beg to differ. There are lots of reasons to like Waffle Ho. (We call it that because of a sign with three letters that weren’t illuminated. But I digress.)

First is the so-called Waffle House Index, a measure that FEMA uses to help determine disaster response. Basically, the idea is that if the Waffle House in a given location is closed due to weather, then a disaster is dire indeed. It’s unofficial, but there’s some truth to it. Waffle House is noted for remaining open 24/7/365, and for one of the restaurants to close, there has to be something significantly wrong. During lesser disasters, Waffle House may provide only a limited menu and call in backup staff, but it will by-God remain open.

(I once worked at a Frisch’s, which is not quite as ubiquitous as Waffle House nor as iconic. When the power went out, we kept serving food that didn’t require cooking, like salads or ham and cheese sandwiches, or that would last a while through residual heat, like coffee. Any weather more severe than that and we were outa there. But I digress again.)

Then there’s the food. Say what you will about diner food, but there is a place for it, and that place is the Waffle Ho. Sure, they’re deficient when it comes to desserts (there are several varieties of waffles, naturally), but when it comes to breakfast and lunch (and dinner – there’s steak), they have everything a diner diner could want. (They have eliminated omelets from their menu, but not from their repertoire. You can still get them if you ask, which I do – mushroom and cheese for me; fiesta for Dan. More digression.) But if you believe that the four food groups are salt, fat, carbs, and caffeine, you’re in luck. They don’t have a breakfast buffet like some places, but if you prefer to chow down rather than graze, Waffle Ho is the best bet.

Dan and I also love the Waffle Ho because of that whole 24/7 thing. Our work schedules (and our sleep schedules) have been, well, irregular over the years. Waffle Ho is always there when we need them. Sometimes, if we wake up at 2:00 a.m., we’ll say, “Let’s go to the Waffle Ho,” and stay there until we’re ready to try once again to sleep. Waffle House is also a lifesaver when the heating or cooling is out. Many a time we’ve gone there in searing summers to cool off with endless iced tea when it’s too hot to sleep.

It’s also fun to order hash browns. You have to know the lingo. First, you should order them “scattered,” if you don’t want hash browns that look like a squashed bird nest. Then you specify what else you want in or on them – diced (tomato), capped (mushrooms), smothered (onions), melted (American cheese), chunked (smoked ham), peppered (jalapenos), topped (chili), and country (sausage gravy). I don’t feel like doing the math, but the combinations, if not endless, are at least extensive.

The only places in the US with no Waffle Houses are Vermont, Nebraska, Michigan, Utah, Iowa, the District of Columbia, Wyoming, and American Samoa.

I pity them, along with those who disdain the chain. It’s convenient, unpretentious, and predictable (in the comforting way), which is more than you can say for more upscale places. Cheaper, too.