Today is the first step in our long journey down the hazardous path known as the work week. It is filled with peril, and fraught with difficulty, and in the terrifyingly appropriate words of Bob Dylan
"Every step of the way we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is pilin' up we struggle and we scrape
We're all boxed in, nowhere to escape"
Plainly, trouble waits around every corner, and the best thing we can hope for is to live until Friday, scarred, frightened, barely alive, crawling toward a painfully toward the glorious weekend. It ain't much, but we, here at Life Explained, call 'em like we see 'em, and if we don't see 'em we make 'em up (thank you, George Carlin).
With this joyous news firmly in mind we can "hunker down," "gird up our loins," "dig in deep," and "saddle up and ride." To make your week easier, we thought it might be convenient to have an itinerary for this trek, a guide to this weeks Life Explained, kind of like a written life preserver for your sanity, what little is left.
Monday - well, this is about it, what did you expect for a Monday?
Tuesday - a whiny, complaining recap of this years NCAA tournament, and all of the awful officiating, that cost all of my choices to lose, or joyous celebration of the NCAA tournament recounting how my teams got beat, but are so young, and have such good recruiting classes that the future is filled with immeasurable possibilities. It depends on who wins tonight. We are not going to mention who we are rooting for, but it is not Kentucky.\
Wednesday - we will post a short story written a while ago, and are not sure what to do with. It is a western, with a happy ending, and a quote from Midnight Oil. Their first album was pretty intense, and went well with beer and angst. We hope that doesn't ruin it for you.
Thursday - we are going to cover how GM, Chrysler and Ford have trained spiders to infiltrate the fuel systems of Mazda and cause the gas tanks to rupture. Plus, we suspect these are illegal immigrant, third world spiders, taking all of the good jobs from American spiders. But they work cheap, so domestic automobile manufacturers are saving money any way they can, which is not all bad.
Friday - We will apologize since we will probably forget to do any of these things. But, it is kind of difficult to be too angry on Friday, right?
Showing posts with label Dylan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dylan. Show all posts
Monday, April 7, 2014
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Sorry I Asked.
While driving to work this morning I listened to "Black Diamond Bay" by Bob Dylan. My music is always set to shuffle so it was a pleasant surprise. The song dissects the last days of several people and the fictional resort island they are visiting. It is filled with odd twists and takes several bizarre turns. One of the characters (the Greek) came to island to commit suicide and actually kills himself as the entire island is dying.
From one frantic scene to the next Dylan sends you tumultuously through the last hours of disparate lives ending tragically. It is a song that provides a lot of imagery and fascinating character interplay.
It all starts with an aging woman, you never learn much about her, but the descriptive text leaves you guessing, and wondering.
"Up on the white veranda
She wears a necktie and a Panama Hat,
Her passport shows a face
From another time and place
She looks nothing like that."
Moves quickly to an aging gentleman from Greece who is there to end his own life.
"While the morning light breaks open,
The Greek comes down and he asks for a rope,
And a pen that will write,
Pardon Monsieur," the desk clerk says
And carefully removes his Fez,
"Am I hearing you right?"
In a short song you start to identify with the characters.
"And as the island slowly sank,
The loser finally broke the bank, in the gambling room,
The dealer said it's too late now,
you can take your money, but, I don't know how
You're going to spend it in the tomb."
And it ends with the finality that only Dylan can bring to such a wild ride.
"I was sitting home alone one night, in LA
Watching old Cronkite on the seven o clock news
It seems there was an earthquake that
Left nothing but a Panama hat
And a pair of old Greek shoes
Didn't seem like much was happening
So I turned it off and went to grab another beer
It seems like every time you turn around
There is another hard luck story that you're gonna here
And there's really nothing anyone can say
And I never did plan to go anyway,
To Black Diamond Bay.
Maybe it was too much coffee. Maybe a lack of sleep, but I was convinced this song held the secret to a happy life. How do you discover the meaning. Wait, Siri to the rescue. "Siri, is this song the ultimate answer to life?"
After a long, uncomfortable pause, followed by a low, pained groan Siri said, "it is a good song, Tim, but you are looking for too much. Obviously, Dylan was exploring his boundaries as a playwright, in fact the entire album "Desire" is filled with imagery designed with stage direction in mind."
"If you are looking for a metaphor for the existence of mankind, I would choose something from "War Child" by Jethro Tull. "Two Fingers" might be good, but it may be too focused on the quest for redemption, and the urge to justify a life of excesses. The first lines offer some proof;
'I'll see you at the weighing in,
When your life's sum-totals weighed
And you set your wealth of goodly deeds
Against the sins you've laid.'
"In fact," Siri continued, "many people feel the entire album is riddled with overtly Christian references, and is too heavy handed to be enjoyable. However, I find comfort in the possibilities of divinity and a more noble purpose. But, I digress. If you really want to find an explanation for life in song (and you must, because you are always going on and on about it) you need look no further than "Bungle in the Jungle." It sums up the entire human existence through the interplay of animals in the jungle. It is really quite fascinating;
'Walking through forest of palm tree apartments,
Scoff at the monkeys who live in their dark tents,
Down by the waterhole, drunk every Friday,
Eating their nuts, saving their raisins for Sunday,
Lions and tigers who wait in the shadows,
Their fast but their lazy and sleep in green meadows."
"You see, all through the song there is a delightful interplay between the strong and the weak, those in power and those being ruled. It is a fantastic journey through life."
By then I was at work and thought it was over, and then I had to put up with this.
From one frantic scene to the next Dylan sends you tumultuously through the last hours of disparate lives ending tragically. It is a song that provides a lot of imagery and fascinating character interplay.
It all starts with an aging woman, you never learn much about her, but the descriptive text leaves you guessing, and wondering.
"Up on the white veranda
She wears a necktie and a Panama Hat,
Her passport shows a face
From another time and place
She looks nothing like that."
Moves quickly to an aging gentleman from Greece who is there to end his own life.
"While the morning light breaks open,
The Greek comes down and he asks for a rope,
And a pen that will write,
Pardon Monsieur," the desk clerk says
And carefully removes his Fez,
"Am I hearing you right?"
In a short song you start to identify with the characters.
"And as the island slowly sank,
The loser finally broke the bank, in the gambling room,
The dealer said it's too late now,
you can take your money, but, I don't know how
You're going to spend it in the tomb."
And it ends with the finality that only Dylan can bring to such a wild ride.
"I was sitting home alone one night, in LA
Watching old Cronkite on the seven o clock news
It seems there was an earthquake that
Left nothing but a Panama hat
And a pair of old Greek shoes
Didn't seem like much was happening
So I turned it off and went to grab another beer
It seems like every time you turn around
There is another hard luck story that you're gonna here
And there's really nothing anyone can say
And I never did plan to go anyway,
To Black Diamond Bay.
Maybe it was too much coffee. Maybe a lack of sleep, but I was convinced this song held the secret to a happy life. How do you discover the meaning. Wait, Siri to the rescue. "Siri, is this song the ultimate answer to life?"
After a long, uncomfortable pause, followed by a low, pained groan Siri said, "it is a good song, Tim, but you are looking for too much. Obviously, Dylan was exploring his boundaries as a playwright, in fact the entire album "Desire" is filled with imagery designed with stage direction in mind."
"If you are looking for a metaphor for the existence of mankind, I would choose something from "War Child" by Jethro Tull. "Two Fingers" might be good, but it may be too focused on the quest for redemption, and the urge to justify a life of excesses. The first lines offer some proof;
'I'll see you at the weighing in,
When your life's sum-totals weighed
And you set your wealth of goodly deeds
Against the sins you've laid.'
"In fact," Siri continued, "many people feel the entire album is riddled with overtly Christian references, and is too heavy handed to be enjoyable. However, I find comfort in the possibilities of divinity and a more noble purpose. But, I digress. If you really want to find an explanation for life in song (and you must, because you are always going on and on about it) you need look no further than "Bungle in the Jungle." It sums up the entire human existence through the interplay of animals in the jungle. It is really quite fascinating;
'Walking through forest of palm tree apartments,
Scoff at the monkeys who live in their dark tents,
Down by the waterhole, drunk every Friday,
Eating their nuts, saving their raisins for Sunday,
Lions and tigers who wait in the shadows,
Their fast but their lazy and sleep in green meadows."
"You see, all through the song there is a delightful interplay between the strong and the weak, those in power and those being ruled. It is a fantastic journey through life."
By then I was at work and thought it was over, and then I had to put up with this.
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