http://bimshwel.com/?p=347
I forgot that I wrote a more comprehensive, comprehendable piece about why “children’s” music is dumb over two years ago. I could say it has not gotten less dumb in that period, but this here is based on older text than that. Maybe I am multiple people and each wants to say the same thing differently.

People have a tendency to blast any old noise to the extent that no one can hear themselves think or others speak. This happens at restaurants and at terrible parties. It makes me uncomfortable and inclined to leave. Others, who think themselves influential visionaries, via the ease with which they are influenced by things which were crummily visualized, think “I should do this at MY terrible party too! Or just whenever I play any music for any reason.”

Perhaps someone who expresses individuality by purchasing a mass-produced trinket that insults people other than the buyer, that the semi-enslaved assemblers probably couldn’t read.

Whenever I am in a car with someone who is fond of their own musical taste, even one I do not hate, they always have to reduce the volume if they want to hear me say something. And then it goes right back up again. Perhaps in the hope that I will stop saying something.

Children, I would expect, have sharper ears than people who’ve been deliberately dulling themselves for years. But I hear the terrible baby-aimed music very, very loud out my window from the neighbor’s house. I used to be terrified of them hearing me listening to music, even though I think my music is good, and so I would greatly reduce the intensity to near inaudibility if such people were themselves audible to me. They seem to have no such reciprocal fear.
Is there some deep musicialness to really “feel” with those songs? Something so subtle you can only appreciate it by blowing out your speakers? I say nay. I hear one main instrument, one voice and occasionally a really simple bass line. Curiously, I have heard much the same sort of dewwww-dadewww, dewwwww-dadewwww bass in the country music the adults of the house listened to when the children were not visiting. This was a few years ago by now, but the sister of mine is looking to launch a new baby imminently, and of course this is the most important topic. Forget the matter of bringing a new person and an additional parent into an 87 year old home that we desperately need to sell before it crumbles to dust in a town we could already no longer afford to live in: I, a 31-year old demi-human living with its own parents might have to deal with some undesirable music.

My brother Iga, at a low age, was made to listen at, and came to insist upon hearing, albums by the self-described “troubadour” Raffi. As grating as those could become, at least Raffi put his unique raffiness into his songs. It wasn’t just mass marketed focus group council of militant neglectful parents approved rubbish. He may have turned down big money from mass market focus groupers. I can appreciate that, even if Joshua Giraffe haunts me to the day I die.
And when that was over, if more Raffi really was necessary, we had a DIFFERENT Raffi tape to put in afterwards. We had Baby Beluga AND Everything Grows. I know you can fit more material onto a typical disc medium than our old audio cassettes, but these people didn’t try, despite their songs being short, plentiful and totally public domain, they’ll be done in 20 minutes and start over again.
I never expected that these people outside my window complaining about how their seagrass is taller than their hydrangeas could seem reliefesque.

My cousin in Florida had the EXACT same album as the neighbors for his children as my Connecticut neighbors, even though every one of those songs has been recorded and pressed in dreadful compilations thousands of times. Why would this version have influence 2000 miles long? I overheard that it was Baby Einstein brand, which shocked me. Not so much because I never considered knowing the muffin man a pre-requisite to understanding the functions of time and space, but because I thought that company only made mind-mushing television programming. I didn’t know they did sense-softening singalong tapes too.
It has been said, a lot, that Albert Einstein did not make out very well in basic schooling. I believe calling an early childhood development product “Baby Einstein” is correct in this aspect, at least, but only because kids who watch and listen to it will be total morons if it has its way and not because the later school material bores them. You might argue that if he had neglected his work in favor of saying “pollywollydoodle” all the day we never would have had nuclear weapons, but I’m sure Alan Oppenheimer would have figured it out eventually.

Likewise, if Baby Einstein had never been born, someone else would have had these exact same sappy singers singing the same sappy songs. By now we’ve had 20 years of Blues Clues, Elmo and Dora types, an army of “positive influences” who smile all the time, never say anything negative or unordinary, and kids aren’t any smarter or nicer. If anything, they are nastier because their concept of conflict resolution is so warped, and they think anyone who has a grievance with their unique special smiling regularly-self-photographed selves is a deranged “hater” whose criticism cannot possibly have merit.
I used to know a bunch of people who were obsessed with being offended on behalf of others or condemning with complete confidence havers of “terrible opinions.” They made little effort to socially justicify their condemnation, because the reason was evident to club members who already agreed with them, and no one else mattered, and thus nothing was proven to anybody. And they might point to a sentence like that one and say it justifies such responses, without explaining why, and then get offended when asked for an explanation. I would blame that on too much internet sooner than television, but more television certainly would not have helped.

I suppose you could say that I, despite my technologically inferior/implied superior upbringing, am perpetually angry, and look harder than anyone for things to have problems with. It is not so. I find them without looking.

And Baby Einstein does not specify “Albert.” It could be Bob Einstein, TV-I-Don’t-Watch’s Super Dave Osborne, who comes across as kind of a bonehead. And he even has a brother named Albert, who changed his last name specifically to clutter this website entry with me explaining that.

That was all based on an experience I had in 2006. November 2006, four months after a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission from the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood or something like that about media products that purport themselves to make babies smarter whose claims are utterly unsubstantiated, which eventually led to the demise of the brand. I never heard about that. Did you? I just found out now when I went to find pictures of the rubbish. No, this stuff isn’t treated like it is a big deal. “Oh you say cheap junk from stores is bad for us? What else is new.” Unless it’s a NIPPLE that no toddler could discern was a nipple nor have any reason to feel offended by, considering that it is their instinctual inclination to try and acquire nourishment from them, nobody cares about damaging Our Kids. Hey hey don’t use The F word around my precious biological commodity! Rated E for Everyone!

By the way butt butt butt butt butt butt poop booger fockers

Even a product that serves a purpose and that is supposed to make things less messy and unpleasant is vulgar for no reason.

Actual doctors requesting that we cease a specific deliberate action get no traction unless they are used in the promotion of another product. People will BUY something because a doctor was quoted saying so, but never NOT buy something. Lunchables, Count Chocula and Sunny Dee are still available, right? I realize that I eat fried chicken and drink coke every week, and also am greatly put off by certain words. I am a lost cause.

Supposedly the Disney company recalled the Einsteinian products in 2009 after a research study suggested the things were actually of no benefit to babies, but this recall occurred two years after the company demanded that the study be retracted. And again this was not major national news despite the millions of parents who were duped by the marketing. I have not read the study, and I do not need to, and I do not need to look at “scores” on weird tests to figure out that this nonsense is way too stupid to benefit anybody of any age. I think the “harm” will be cumulative, based on months and months of non-interactive simplistic nonsense that some unreliable outside party insists is beneficial based on this or that thing that the parent of the consumer cannot ask for proof of, and probably would not ask for if they could. Parents love to brag about how smart their babies are while simultaneously treating these babies like they are idiots at best, and maintenance-heavy toys at worst. Babies get smart by overcoming challenges, unless the only way to make the “challenge” bearable is to dullen their perception. This stuff may no longer be sold, but, again, I only found this out when I looked it up just now in 2014. Parents who can’t find braindead dvds for sale (and I am sure they CAN) will locate and submit their children before something just as dumb on broadcast television without considering it might be a bad idea. Those bad scores may be related to some other thing that the sort of parent who buys those dvds does.

But forget Einstein. He is just a meaningless stereotype to people. A goofy non-specifically-European man who never combed his hair, but was smarter than me, smarter than you, because he did some science stuff, right? and was named Einstein. Surely we can find music recommendations unassociated with pseudo-religious devotion.

Gosh the Bob Dylan of regular music isn’t even all that good at it. What does that remark even mean? The guy moans a lot and has messier hair than Einstein?

I didn’t think he had 7 GOOD songs, but apparently those 7 are not only GREAT but there are 63 others that are also GREAT, and presumably some others that were great but not enough so to get on the list. Otay, so why do I only get to hear the 3 or 4 terrible songs when someone else is choosing them? I suppose I might have looked inside this magazine for insight but I was concerned about being able to use this specific complaint in a website entry three years after it was printed.
As far as being sick of the wiggles goes, “jump in the jumpy house” sounds too dumb even for them. And make no mistake, I am here to bury the wiggles, not to praise them. They might request that I jump in the big red car or inquire as to whether I could point my fingers while I did it. I am sure Mr. David is not remarkably worse than others in his field, and may have had nothing to do with this advertisement, but I am not comfortable with marketing that tries to connect something new and untested with something old that may not be questioned.

Golly bees I sure have opinions about minor aspects of child rearing! Thankfully I am not at risk of impregnating anybody or becoming pregnant.

I hear about tinder, and how it makes matches and brings people together, and my first thought is: ridiculous! I played tinder all the time as a kid and never had any friends. Even when I had super tinder that didn’t help.

In more relevant news, somebody attempted to give the pregnant party a baby-accessible i-phone control device, and fortunately she declined it.

Being near a pregnant person does remind me that there is positivity and chances for renewal in the world: I realized I have not worn sweat pants in years.

When I first saw this picture, I thought it was a woman pregnant with a green skeleton. I have been told this baby expects to come out with flesh and organs, but it is good to be prepared.