Be courteous, kind and forgiving
Be gentle and peaceful each day
Be warm and human and grateful
And have a good thing to say
Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike
Be witty and happy and wise
Be honest and love all your neighbors
Be obsequious, purple and clairvoyant
Be pompous, obese and eat cactus
Be dull and boring and omnipresent
Criticize things you don't know about
Be oblong and have your knees removed
Be tasteless, rude and offensive
Live in a swamp and be three-dimensional
Put a live chicken in your underwear
Get all excited and go to a yawning festival
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4 comments:
I listened to an interview with Steve Martin yesterday--by Terri Gross. In the interview, this song was played from an old stand up routine, and Steve Martin specifically referred to it (in the interview) as "a song that starts normal and ends crazy."
I love it--think its hilarious but also somehow brilliant--and I'm trying to pinpoint why right now but I cannot as of yet.
But i felt it surely belongs on Site Q.
I heard parts of this interview, too. The song is BRILLIANT! The way it employs the syntax of tepid moral code to mutate the message into absurd declamation. The gesture is subversive, maybe surreal, but more reminds me of flarf, especially:
Be pompous, obese and eat cactus
Be dull and boring and omnipresent
Criticize things you don't know about
Be oblong and have your knees removed
Thank you SO MUCH for posting this. I peaked into Site Q while at work yesterday, and seeing this shed some very bright light on my day.
your label, "writing ideas," reminds me that it might be interesting to have a "prompts" or "exercises" section, inspired by posts here...
Beth, you nail it on the head with your comments--thank you!
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