September 24, 2014: Even though in the song it’s “bluebird of friendliness”, every time I hear about National Bluebird of Happiness Day, I get the song “Birdhouse in Your Soul” stuck in my head. Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch!

It’s also Punctuation Day, so here’s a palindrome (a double-dose of TMBG today for you all) with quite a bit of punctuation in it. I love punctuation, but if I had my druthers, there’s one American usage I’d change. (In fact, I almost always do it the English way.) I’d pull commas and periods out of quotations where they don’t belong, and put them after the end quotation mark where they properly should go. We’re not setting type by hand anymore, so we don’t need to close in those little marks with something heavier so they don’t fall off the end of the press.