Songfacts®:

• This reminds us to put our petty problems into perspective. To help us do this, the song tells the stories of three people who passed away in terrible circumstances: a man who died while awaiting a kidney transplant, a missionary who was beaten to death and a man who died trying to emulate Tarzan on an electrical wire. Keith Morris elaborated to Rock Around the World: "It's like things could be worse. One of the things that always happens to me whenever I get depressed, rather than laying there, or sitting there or dwelling upon it I will go downtown L.A., or walk down or ride my bike down to Hollywood Boulevard and see the runaways or (when I say the runaways I don't mean the female, the all girl band - I mean all the kids that have migrated out here for whatever reasons) wandering the streets; or just taking a look at the homeless and saying the worst thing that could happen to me could never be as bad as what's happening to these people. So I'm very fortunate. Yeah, so I can't pay my rent on time, or they're gonna shut my phone off - these are not big deals. There are much larger issues to address." Morris continued: "A lot of times you have to go off and do some soul searching if you're having problems or things aren't going right you just need to go off to a place where you can let the dust settle, collect your thoughts and that can get a little bit serious, and you need something to kind of lighten it up so you need to go out and have some fun but also at the same time while you're thinking about your scenario, it's good to be able to see some of the things that are going on around you - so you're not locked into one groove, so you don't become like: me, me, me, I, I, I, me before you, you don't get greedy, you don't become self-centered. And being able to see these other situations or be in them or rub up against them, a lot of times is enlightening and it's also grounding -helps center you, helps stabilize you."
• Oddities, Abnormalities, & Curiosities was Circle Jerks' sixth album and their first under a major record label. Following their successful 1992 live album Gig, Mercury Records signed the band, but weren't able to expand Circle Jerks fan base enough to make them profitable. When it became clear the band didn't have Nirvana potential, Mercury dropped them after just the one album, and Circle Jerks disbanded.