Category Archives: commentary

Shame

You want to talk about desecrating the flag of the United States of America?

How about making it a symbol around the world of rape, murder, corruption, greed, and wanton destruction?

It’s apparently easy for some to say, The world is wrong and we are right…

It rolls from their tongue. It’s second nature for them to blame the other guy because they seem to know in their heart of hearts that they are always right.

Maybe they think God talks to them and tells them what they do and think is right, like the current president of our great nation, certain in his own inerrancy as only a self-appointed messiah can be.

History is strewn with the twisted stories of these people who commit the most heinous crimes against man and nature and God with the apparent certainty that they are right and the world is wrong.

Yet those oblivious to the lessons of history — and certainly our current national leadership seem manifestly incapable of learning any lessons at all — doom themselves to repeat that sad history.

When they only harm themselves, I guess that’s their business.

But when they drag our flag and our beloved nation through the ignorance, selfishness, filth and hatred in their hearts — they wound us all.

Whether we like it or not, we cannot help but share the shame that they bring us.

Archive.org page
[multiple download/streaming formats]

first AYoS version
second AYoS version

HAVE U EMBRACED THE BEAST?

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do you serve the war machine?
Have you embraced the beast?
Did you trade in your soul for the finer thinsg?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do your taxes buy bullets for fascist death squads?
Have you embraced the beast?
They’ll be coming to your hometown before too long . . .

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?

Flag image courtesy: Free Clipart or Photos: www.ace-clipart.com

Exploiting emotional investment seminar

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I'm gonna write a soap opera -- you're gonna be the heroine

Sure… you can try to cash out your relationship to the tabloids… but the money from that is here and gone like a found bindle of… someone else’s forgotten dreams.

No… to fully exploit your investment in a relationship you’ve gotta grow it. Now, we’re pretty much talking about mushrooms on a corpse, here, of course.

But circle of life and all that… media life.

This version of Soap Opera is a bit of a reinvention, musically. It’s still a blues but I recast it into a set of mostly harmonic minor progressions that give it a mock seriousness that amused me. I like to be amused, so here it is.

January 23 version
March 18 version

I’m Gonna Write a Soap Opera

I’m gonna write a soap opera
you’re gonna be the heroine
I’m gonna show the world just how ya think
I’m gonna write a soap opera
I won’t have to make up a thing
When we get the ratings back
you know I’ll take you out for a drink

I’ll get a famous model
to play your part for you
I was gonna ask you but you’re always busy
We’ll get a famous model
I know she’ll do real good, too
When the plot gets thick
She’ll be skinny enough to wriggle through

I’m gonna sell the rights
everywhere I can
there’ll be games and dolls and underwear
I’m gonna sell the rights
I suggest you buy up while you can
I said I’d make you famous
I think by now you understand

You must have lied to me then — why can’t you like to them now?

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... why can't you lie to them, now?

Well, I never actually had an ex-girlfriend turn federal witness against me. Could still happen, I suppose… I got plenty of ex-‘s.

But I always thought it was a great metaphor for a love-gone-wrong song.

As I wrote on January 6 when I posted a different version of this song from the late 70s, the song was partially inspired by stories of Bill and Emily Harris and celebrity kidnap-victim-turned-urban-terrorist Patty Hearst.

machine dog version

GOVERNMENT WITNESS

Someone’s been bleeding us
a young man wake up each day old and tired
I got my gun and my silver bullets
gonna get me a government vampire

Hanging on the chain link fence
got my silver cross my Smith & Wesson .38
But when they turn on the juice
I’m crucified on the electric gate

If this is real life
I guess I’ll get used to it
I’ll be all right as
soon as I get over these electro-convulsive fits

Shackled in my place
inside rthe federal courtroom dock
Staring at your face
floating in the witness box

You’re looking right through me
just like you never heard my name
but you used to lay right next to me
in our little hideout by the lake

If this is real life
I suggest you get used to it
You’ll be all right
as soon as you find a heart to fit that hole in your chest

Governmewnt witness
who would have dreamed you’d be a government witness
Government witness
go ahead — deny you are a government witness

You must have lied to me then
Why can’t you lie to them now
Will you be lying to yourself
while I sweat it out in the death house — death house

This is real life . . .

Let’s not talk about lonely nights…

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Let's not talk about girls...

I think of this as kind of a campfire song.

This is my way of tying it into the First Day of Summer. Which is today.

Anyhow, I used to camp a lot in the mountains of California — in the coastal ranges and in the Sierra. And I always did the campfire thing. When you’re camping the way I used to camp, the fire defines all your time after the sun goes down. You cook over it. You eat around it. Maybe you drink around it. For sure, you talk. Maybe you play guitar or tell stories around it. And when a new log doesn’t go in, the dimming fire defines the arc of the evening back into darkness and the pillowy solitude of sleep.

Ah… I kind of dozed off there for a moment.