By Jeremiah Tucker

Globe columnist

I'm going to cover two different topics today. The first is in honor of Halloween having taken place this week. Initially, I thought about trying to come up with a list of the creepiest songs of all time, but that would have required a lot of research and a lot of time, so instead I narrowed the list down to the all-time champ. The second is about the dangers of listening to independent music.

The Creepiest Song of All-Time: Bob Carlisle's "Butterfly Kisses"

Some may have gone with a Cannibal Corpse song or some other horror-metal act, but no song makes my skin crawl like "Butterfly Kisses."

A big part of it is Bob singing the first-person dialogue. No grown man should ever sing the words: "You know how much I love you, Daddy, but if you don't mind I'm only gonna kiss you on the cheek this time." Yes, Bob's impersonation of a little girl imploring her daddy to allow her to just kiss him on the cheek - please, just the cheek, just this time, daddy! - would get the song a respectable placement on my list of all-time creep-out songs, but the fact that the listener is obviously supposed to find Bob's daughter's obsession endearing, even admirable, wins this song the top prize.

Now I'm not saying you can't write a nice song about your daughter growing up, but of all the things one man might love about his daughter, why fixate on her kissing ability? I mean, Bob loved - loved! - his daughter's sweet, sweet butterfly kisses, and he lets you know it. Most of the song is Bob saying he did a lot of bad things in his life, but, man oh man, he certainly did something right to deserve his daughter's "love in the morning and butterfly kisses at night."

And this song is not a fun line-dancing number. No, this song is a lament! Bob's pouring out his emotion; his daughter's getting married. He knows his butterfly kissing days are over, and he's not happy about it.

Now perhaps there are some people who love this song and find it touching. That's fine. I'm not implying this song is necessarily anything less than chaste. However, I wonder if the song would still be popular if Bob sang nearly the exact same lyrics, except the song was about how great a butterfly kisser his son was. Somehow I doubt it, and that's what I find most disturbing about this song, the whole special father-daddy's-precious-pretty-little-princess relationship it's supposed to represent. I mean, did Bob's son get a firm handshake every evening after dad had his fill of butterfly kisses? The whole sentiment is just creepy, but the song is great for Halloween and bad weddings.

Weed and indie music

A new public service announcement links smoking marijuana with listening to "indie rock." The ad, which is put out as part of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy's "Above the Influence" campaign, is a girl talking in a robot voice that transitions into her normal speaking voice as a subtle way of saying "it's totally rad to just be yourself, kids."

The girl in the ad says: "Being popular was all I could think about last year. I wanted to, like, be cool with everybody. I listened to music that I didn't like and laughed at stuff that wasn't funny. I programmed myself to be a totally different person to everyone. But I wasn't myself. Now I'm not pretending to like indie rock or anything like that. And people think that's cool."

Then a professional male voice tells you to live above the influence, live above weed, check out our Web site.

I didn't think I would say this before I was 65 or so, but this is what my tax dollars are going toward? For one, these kind of anti-drug campaigns are essentially useless. Two, while I wish more kids had a philosophic appreciation for Britney Spears' "Toxic," I'm slightly offended by the tone of the ad, which seems to be that pot smokers are a bunch of weirdo slackers listening to The Walkermens and their Deathrap Taxies for Attractive People and what not. I am sick of these negative campaign ads! The skyrocketing obesity rate among young people is a much more dangerous societal problem than marijuana, but if ads portrayed young people who eat too much as negatively as they do kids who choose to smoke weed, people would be outraged.

Imagine a little boy on an abandoned street looking around for someone who isn't there, and then a stentorian voiceover saying: "Go ahead, tubby, tell your little brother you forgot him because you were too busy stuffing your fat face. Don't be disgusting; live above the calories."

But no, we have to coddle the chubby kids and vilify the pot smokers and indie rockers. It's not fair. Especially when many parents would probably rather their children smoke pot than be obese.

Address correspondence to Jeremiah Tucker, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802.