Wow! In all seriousness, PSB, you should be writing books, not wasting this talent on message boards!

Gotta take care of your vinyl, too. Last Sat., I spent about 2 hours in the used record store, just looking. Love those old album covers. What I really love is the liner notes, in nice, big print (at least compared to CD's)---becoming increasingly important to me with each passing year.

Sorry, I was just spacing out the other day on my lunch hour!

Actually, I did continue on that for awhile this weekend and it took a couple of bizarre and interesting twists but it ended with me in a room full of smashed vinyl. a crumpled piece of paper and a guitar with new strings. The verse on the paper was to Tombstone Blues. It was pretty good so I thought I would leave it here before I go!

With apologies to Bob Dylan

(Em) The ghost of Bin Laden
(Am) in Al jazeera (Em) Form
(Em) Comments on the Election
(Am) of deadly misplaced (Em) force
(Em) He looks all to comfortable
(Am) drinking tea and making (Em) war
(Em) Inciting Fear (Am) of Infidel (Em) Existance

The ploughmans been conscripted
To help us fight this war
To work at the light bulb factory
where all his time is lost
So the sons of his daughters
with their minds so rightly warped
Can go Lose their Souls in Battle

Mamas in the basement blah blah blah----on the streets with the tombstone blues!

I know what your thinkin’, Oh God, He has free time at lunch again!

I was sitting around playing my guitar last night (new strings and all) and singing my little variant on the Tombstone Blues when I thought I would try a few finger stretching exercises up on the neck where folkies never go! I crunched through the broken vinyl that still litters the basement floor and rummaged around on the shelf to find my Genuine Authentic First Edition Arlo’s Big Note Guitar Auxiliary Mirror to help me see where I wanted to put my fingers way up there on the neck. I haven’t had that thing out in years, so I had to shine it up and everything. It worked pretty well! I was playin’ along, stretchin’ my fingers, singin’ that second verse I found when I happened to see my head in the mirror. I thought I saw a guillotine. As I contemplated my reflection of who I am, I thought about how many times I have censored myself out of self doubt, insecurity and fear of offending. I mean, I don’t mean to offend, but I don’t really have much control over my thought dreams and all. So, excuse me, it’s just my mind that keeps on a spewin’.

So, before I go, I thought I would backwards unmask that second verse and leave it here as I found it on that paper following my bout with extreme paranoia.

(The Subversive Version)

The Fisherman has been conscripted
To help us fight this war
He works the redemption factory
Where time is just a bore
So the sons of his daughters
Can have their minds rightly warped
As they prepare
To lose their souls
In battle

Mama’s in the basement, she aint got no shoes
Daddy’s in the alley, he’s a lookin’ for food
I’m out on the street, with the Tombstone Blues

(Again with apologies to Bob Dylan)

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Dec 07, 2004 ---</FONT></center>

It is lunch and I stayed at my desk again. i hesitate to post but I am afraid I will hit the button!

Last night was a torturous. I posted on that song lyric game (I love that game) and as I reviewed what I said, I realized I had written two lines, one by John Lennon and one about a badass gun. It made me think of a lot stuff sitting there in the living room trying to wear out those new guitar strings. My feelings about John Lennon and December 1980 got intertwined with a recent trip I made to show my 22 year old nephew the canyons of Manhattan. He came to visit for Thanksgiving from Grapevine Texas and I got him on the Amtrak train in Lancaster and took him through beautiful vista’s of Philly and on through to the Chemical Flatlands of Newark. I walked him down to the BBridge, over to the Battery, by Al Hamilton’s grave, to the Church by the New Subway station near a hole so recently filled with debris and rubble. Then up to 4 Street and Washington Square. I told him stories of how I came to this place in ’75 (when I was just a boy) looking for the ghosts of Woody Guthrie, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Bob Dylan. Took him on the A train and told him about Duke Ellington and Strayhorn and Bird. Got off on 52 street and 8th Avenue, I walked him all around, over to the East side of the Park, To the Met Museum, the Guggenheim and back across to the Natural History Museum. We didn’t have time to go in any of them but I told him of the amazing things you can find if you enter those doors. We walked along the sidewalk as they were putting out the stands for the parade talking about architecture and history and stuff until we approached the Dakota. I took him over to the entrance and pointed to some steps and said, “that is where we lost John.” I realized I had tears in my eyes. A grown man crying on a street corner in New York City for no apparent reason with his nephew looking at him like he is a nut. We walked into the park to the place where you can IMAGINE! There was a woman standing there with tears in her eyes She watched as my nephew snapped my picture. She asked if he would take one of her and handed him her camera. I noticed the accent and asked where you from? Sydney she replied. There was nothing left to say as we looked at each other with tears in our eyes and I said have a nice day.
Suddenly I came to, I was still sittin’ there strummin’ on the couch. I started singin’ my verse and I was so emotional that I mixed up all the words. I realized it came out as this bizarre nightmarish version that Bin Laden would sing. I guess I will post it but it sends shivers down my spine.

It’s the infidel I have conscripted
To help us make this war
He looks all too comfortable
Using Deadly Misplaced Force
Inciting Fear by Killing Daughters
Making terrorist minds so warped
That they believe
They’ll win Their souls
in battle

PS... your noontime ramblings are thought-provoking, and i sincerely appreciate them, although I may not often respond directly.

Having been thinking about the song lyric thread, and then reading your post here, I felt it was important to put something positive out there.... thus my follow up to your last post over there.

Keep on with your writings! Thank you for being you and for being here!

PS your making the tears roll down from my eyes too. Thanks!

<FONT size="1">edited for spelling...seems to be my thing tonight...I'm not even gonna screw with the grammer...</FONT s>

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by Goofus on Dec 11, 2004 ---</FONT></center>

Last night wasn't your night, Goofus--you spelled grammar wrong.

Back to John Lennon....Somebody at Bob Dylan's boards once suggested, rather cruelly, that the Beatles were dying in the order of most talented to least. Anyways, I'll never forget hearing about Lennon's murder. I was a 1st-year law student & decided to take a break from my studying & watch a few minutes of Monday Night Football. As soon as I turned it on, Howard Cosell made the announcement that Lennon had just been murdered. I'll betcha that a lotta guys here found out the same way.

That is how I found out!

Regarding the relative talents of the various Beatles. I guess it is all a matter of taste. Remember the old joke: What year did Paul McCartney write silly love songs? The answer: 1970 to 2???. That incredible tribute to George in the Albert Hall really made me realize how important his contributions were to both the Beatles and my life. And, going into the 80’s, it looked as though John had lost that Beatle Monkey after wondering in the Wilderness for awhile (seems he was dealing with similar issues that old Bobby Dylan had to deal with, that whole prophet, God, spiritual thing with fan dependency and all, imagine, they both grew up just wanting to be Elvis. Oh wait, Elvis had his own bizarre issues as well! Not an attractive Job this whole Rock and Roll God thing!). I, for one, would have liked to see a few Lennon and Harrison collaborations once their collective Beatles Issues had subsided. But, it didn’t happen!

Yeah,Lennon and Harrison................
One day when I get to N.Y. I'm definately going on the P.S.Beaty Tour!!!!!!!!

I debated this post, but I exorcized this demon, you should just be thankful I didn’t post the Breaking Vinyl Battle and the Guitar String interlude. Also, my daughter is a good kid no matter what I say while I am possessed. When she was eleven her favorite songs were HooDooVooDoo, Take your clothes off when you dance (with ugliest part of your body reprise) by Frank Zappa and I’m Looking through You (Steve Earle version). Interestingly a Paul song written to John after Dylan told John the secret he got from Woody Don’t think about it, Just write it down! But, that is just in my dreams.

So with out further ado! Remember Blame it on Arlo! He was a bad influence.

It’s cold outside tonight. As I walk into the house from the car that cold wind blows right through my clothes, past my skin and settles in my bones. It has been one of those days when just getting home seemed to be the greatest of all possible tasks. I want in the door! I don’t need no supper, don’t need no stimulants, don’t need no books or intellectual pursuit. Not now! I want to merge with pillows and become one with the couch. I just want to achieve the ZZ---OH-OH-OH---NNNN---ee. It’s still cold and the wind outside haunts me. Am I imagining? What is that sound emanating from the basement? Is it the heater?? What, WHat WHAT? Oh, I have to gain control! But the wind is calling and I can’t quite make it out. The basement is moaning back a response. It’s driving me crazy, it’s driving me nuts. It’s as if I am stuck in the middle of some tragic opera with basses in the basement and sopranos in the wind. There is a twitch in my eye and a pain in my brow. My lips are dry and when I lick them they resist the moisture. The saliva congeals with skin burnt dry in the cold and I can’t seem to wipe it away. I just don’t feel well. The blood pounds a primitive beat in my eyeballs. There is movement in the room but I search and can’t find anyone. There is something in my peripheral vision. I can’t make it out. Its colorful, and wonderful, and terrible, and tragic, and when I look, it’s gone. There is a haunting deep in my soul and I must find a means of exorcism before I lose my mind.

I lie on the couch and drift off to sleep. It is not a real sleep, not a satisfying sleep, it is just that my awareness is blocked and my consciousness lingers on. The pounding beat in my eyeballs, the drone from the basement, the wind howling, the white noise from the TV speakers all mixing together in my mind. It is an opera. An opera in my head, so clear and distinct, a minimalist cacophony arranged by that “San Francisco Modernist from Massachusetts” composer John Adams (you know he’s got to be a fruit loop). It won’t stop and it gradually gives way to images, images, images. From the basement, a pulsating low frequency chant: Chooks in the Stew, Chooks in the Stew, Chooks in the Stew. From the wind, an ethereal high frequency chorus: Free Birds in Flight, Free Birds in Flight. Somewhere in the middle the TV blared with only occasional comprehension of a few words in my head: Nightly News, Renewed Hostilities, Car Bomb, Suicide, Death Toll, Corruption, Indictment, Successful Elimination of Hostilities, Dead Mother and Child, Pleading for Life. I awoke suddenly trembling all over. My daughter standing above me! “Are you OK Daddy? You look like you did the other day when you stumbled into the basement and broke all that plastic you have been so weird about preserving all these years. You are not going to go all fruity again and break more stuff?” The TV is just a blur in my eyes, and I can hear the weatherman say we are in for a prolonged cold spell!

I sit up trying to focus as my daughter messes around in the kitchen getting something to drink. I holler back at her, “I didn’t break anything, it was a plot by the evil ones because they found out I was on to something.” She replies, “ Ya right, I suppose it was sewer snoids or those gorillas with bow ties that you are always mumbling about. I just didn’t see them when I went down stairs because they have trap doors and trick mirrors in the basement.” Go ahead and laugh, you unappreciative kid, you who belong to a generation of spoiled brats that don’t realize the fears and confusion that the world was dealing with when you suddenly appeared on the planet in the 1980’s. In your minds it is the world that owes you. I took all that new age child rearing stuff way to seriously when you were little, I should have smacked the hell out of you more often like my old man did to me. I survived without to many mental scars and phobias. I’m normal for crying out loud! The child chimes in, “When are you going to clean all that crap up in the basement anyway, all that broken plastic, those rusty guitar strings, and that creepy Arlo’s Auxiliary mirror thing? I get shivers every time I go down there! God knows what happened down there.” Hey, maybe the kid is on to something, maybe if I clean it all up and throw it all away, maybe my dreams will stop haunting me.

So I gather together shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and head down the steps to clean it up. I stand in the doorway and look at all those years of shattered dreams littering the floor. Mitch Ryder’s Devil in a Blue Dress, that was a kickin’ band. Peter and Gordon, Woman, Do You Love Me, I didn’t know I still had that crap. Oh man, my Rare Earth Live, I’ll never see that on CD. God, what a huge pile? Man, that first “Gonzo Style Jerry Jeff Walker with That Old Beat Up Guitar. The Gilded Palace of Sin, Paradise and Lunch and The Shaker Loops, there must have been some hidden secrets in there! This isn’t exorcizing anything but a lot of memories. It gets worse and worse as I look at the names go by on the broken labels: Ornette Coleman, Coltrane, Cadenza on the Night Plain, Bones and Roses, Loudon Wainwright 3, Talking Heads, Sonny and Brownie, Crawfish Fiesta, Estaban Jordan, as I throw it all away there are tears in my eyes. My daughter shows up while I am working away. “Daddy, I have a question. I was just studying my chemistry and they say if we don’t develop fusion we will run out of energy in thirty years. Is that true?” I reply, “It’s not as messy as fission, that’s what they said we needed when I was a kid. Now, go away I’m busy.” Undaunted the nervy kid continues, “But it says we could run out in my life time, doesn’t anybody care?” OK, so I stop and I look at her. “Sure people care, occasionally a few people care, in the 70’s a lot people cared for one summer when the pumps ran dry. That’s what happens when people think about things that could go wrong in “my” world.” I rummage on the shelf for a second, “here, look at this bumper sticker from the first Iraq war.” She reads it aloud,” If its worth fighting for over there, its worth drilling for over here.” The little smart-alec responds,“ The chemistry book says more drilling is not an answer.”

I look at her and say. “You did not ask me for answers, you asked me if people cared, the bumper sticker demonstrates that some people cared, even if it was just the Okla. Independent Drilling Association. Certainly you don’t think they cared only because it was in their interest to care. Supposedly, it is all a cost versus profit deal. As long as there are profits to be made on oil, why should we endure the expense of an alternative energy source? Who cares if oil is dirty and causes wars? It is easy profit without thought or to much investment on the “great unknown”, it’s easy to use and besides there is profit in war as well. You think Haliburten has problems throwing big parties these days?” She sits down and disappears into deep thought as I return to my cleaning. Finally, I get to the bottom of the pile of broken plastic and I see something truly bizarre. There is my old Highway 61 Album cover cleverly folded origami style into the shape of a Pillbox Hat. The hat was decorated with a black Sharpie and Yellow Highlighter so it looked like it was made of Leopard Skin. Right on the top of the hat in yellow highlight there were only two words you could read from the original cover that lay beneath: Tombstone Blues. Ooohhh SHIVER! At this time, my daughter pipes back up. “Well what can we do to get people to care.” So, I’m trying to handle all this heavy stuff with the broken records and the pillbox hat and this kid won’t shut up. So I say, ”Kid, people care, it’s just that some people care now and some people care then and some people say they will care later, the problem is getting all people to care together at one time in harmony so their cares will last! Now when I was young, I thought we could get people to care. I went out on the streets and said, “Hey, you should care.” They just looked at me like I was crazy. One time I did the Hokie Pokie with a group of people trying to tell other people to care while we were waiting in line to be fingerprinted for caring. If you want, I’ll run out in the front yard with you now and we can yell in harmony, “you should care” and see if we can get those Bush Cheney for President signs that line the neighborhood to care.”

Well, at that, she has had enough of me and runs away. I turn and refocus on the task at hand. I notice the pillbox hat is precariously balanced on something. I look closer and see a pile of toilet paper about an inch deep. I look closer. Right at the bottom of this huge pile of broken plastic, mounted on a pile of toilet paper and protected by this pillbox hat is an intact phonograph record, Alice’s Restaurant Massacre. I’ll be damned! The bottom side is all scratched to hell with sewer snoid graffiti. The top has two deliberate scratches leaving an unscratched playable zone close to the end of a really long song. In amazement, I run to the turntable and pop it on. Pop,scratch Alices-pop skip scratch, then the needle hits a groove that it can dig into and I hear the voice of Arlo saying Kill, Kill, KILL. That’s it. And the stylus jumps back so that all you hear is Arlo over and over again saying Kill, Kill, KILL. It was only then I realized how truly devious those sewer snoids are! The pounding in my eyes resumed even more intensely than ever. The droning chook stew chook stew over and over in my head. I put my hands on my temples and squeezed hard to make the sounds go away. It made me think, more pressure that’s what it needs. Quickly, I searched for coins in my pocket. I found a quarter and balanced it on the stylus like when I was a kid but to no avail. A nickel, not enough pressure, a penny, and still the Chook Stew pounded in my brain. I had one last penny. Would 32 cents be enough? I carefully balanced it on the other coins. It was a magical moment as the stylus ripped through the tortured grooves and established a new equilibrium. Suddenly the Chook Stew Mantra was gone and the Free Birds in Flight chorus became even more ethereal as it blends with Arlo’s voice singing, “You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant!”

wow, that's a lot. in defense though of the kids born in the 80s supposedly not knowing the fears and confusion etc...what about 9/11 and the snipers and kids going off to war and stuff...that's a lot too.
(you were probably just kidding though?)

shortly after 9/11, i overheard this kid (who was probably about 7) say, "as soon as kids enter school, they should be taught how to do battle...it's the way of man!" and one could see he was none too happy...now there's something i won't forget anytime soon.

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by agnes on Dec 15, 2004 ---</FONT></center>

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by P. Pittsburgh Joe:

Last night wasn't your night, Goofus--you spelled grammar wrong.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

(screams)

<img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>

well, I was possessed when all that crap flew out of my head after all she is a good kid!