Lessons from The House of the Rising Sun

1. Considering the countless number of minors whose lives have been ruined by the House of the Rising Sun, parents should write to their legislators to have the place demolished, or at least have its license to sell hard liquor revoked.

2. Proprietors of the House of the Rising Sun should seriously consider adding other attractions to serve a more upscale clientele.

3. Any decent establishment has a good website. It can frustrating for people to google “House of the Rising Sun” only to find out there’s no information available online or even a Multiply site.

4. If you’re “mother is a tailor” and your “father was a gamblin’ man,”  maybe you should’ve done well in school to mitigate the unfortunate circumstances of your early childhood.

5. The “only thing a gambler needs” is not a “suitcase or and trunk” but an awful lot of disposable income to spend, or at least a good credit standing.

6. Mothers should tell their children that anyone who spends his life “in sin and misery, in the House of the Rising Sun” is a total fuck-up.

7. You should go back to New Orleans for wonderful jazz music and authentic Cajun cuisine, not to “wear that ball and chain.” (edg)

Lessons from Do They Know It’s Christmas Time

1. At Christmas time, there truly is no “need to be afraid.” It’s best to reserve your fears for New Year’s Day, when a glitch of unknown origin in computers around the world will set civilization back to the Bronze Age.

2. This Christmas time, Band Aid may want to seriously rethink its decision to “let in light and banish shade” for people living under the harsh and unforgiving Ethiopian sun.

3. When they’re in their “world of plenty” and “having fun”, “it’s hard” for Band Aid to “say a prayer for the other ones”. Praying = hard!

4. If the only water flowing tastes suspiciously like the “bitter sting of tears”, it’s because your local authorities have chosen the world’s least efficient method of augmenting your water supply.

5. Although the only Christmas bells in Ethiopia are the “clanging chimes of doom”, it doesn’t mean they can’t belt out a mean, suicide-inducing “Jingle Bell Rock”.

6. It’s hard to argue with Bono when he commands you to “thank God” it’s the Ethiopians who are dying of hunger “instead of you” unless you are Ethopian or otherwise dying of hunger.

7. “There won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time.” But thanks to cataclysmic global weather events, all of Africa will be under 100 feet of snow in 2030!

8. Because “nothing ever grows” and “no rain or rivers flow” in Africa, Disney ought to more accurately portray Tarzan and the Lion King as shuffling about in a howling desert of pain and death.

9. This Christmas time, if you truly feel the need to “raise your glass” to poor people dying “underneath that burning sun,” be sure to accompany your gesture with loud, maniacal laughter. (edf)

A Lesson from Matador

You can make a bilingual song with nearly incomprehensible lyrics as long as the refrain is a catchy word such as “matador.”

Lessons from The Ghost In You

1. You ought to disinfect all your shoes since you’ll never know if  “the man in (your) shoes” used all of them. He might have athlete’s foot.

2. You should check other news sources i.e. Internet, social networks, RSS, and blogs because “falling over you” is most likely not the only “news of the day.”

3. There must be a catastrophe of biblical proportions if “angels fall like rain.”  The last thing you should be doing is musing about “love, love, love.”

4. The first thing you should do if you see someone with the “ghost in (them)” which “(doesn’t) fade away” is call an exorcist instead of standing around telling that person how you’ve fallen in love with them.

5. Make sure that you’ve done your research on the nature of time and Einstein’s theory of relativity before making statements such as “inside you, the time moves and she don’t fade away.”

6. Before running off to somewhere, make sure “(your) engines (don’t) die.”

7. Maybe you should be the one going because you’re the one who “makes no sense.” (edg)

A Lesson from (Feels Like) Heaven

If it “feels like heaven,” it probably tastes like chicken.

A Lesson from Daughters

Parents, do not mistreat your daughters or they will grow up to be crazy bitches and hassle John Mayer with mind games. (edf)

Lessons from Tom Sawyer

1. People have a hard time telling the difference between “today’s Tom Sawyer” and yesterday’s Tom Sawyer. So it’s really a good idea to talk about it in a song.

2. It always makes sense to practice having a “mean mean stride” and “mean mean pride” lest you be mistaken for an outdated Tom Sawyer.

3. Even though Tom Sawyer’s “mind is not for rent,” there may be other alternatives like buying it outright in lump sum.

4. You really can’t say anything “about society” if you haven’t met Tom Sawyer’s “company.”

5. The world may be “love and life are deep” but why the fuck should anyone care about Tom Sawyer if all he does is “get high on you.”

6. There’s probably a long queue for “any god or government” interested in renting out Tom Sawyer’s mind. (edg)

 

Lessons from One Headlight

1. It’s okay to call a song “One Hit Wonder.”

2. You’re probably a shitty kind of friend when you can’t even remember when you’ve “lost (your) only friend.”

3. If your “only friend” had “died easy of a broken heart disease” there must be some foul play involved. Get a court order to have the body exhumed by a bonafide medical examiner.

4. You can determine someone’s cause of death by listening “through the cemetery trees.”

5. If you see “the sun coming up at the funeral at dawn,” you must be overstaying. You can only do that at wakes.

6. What’s definitely “better than in the middle” are lyrics by the older Dylan.

7. Sure an old place can “feel just like a beat up truck” but it requires quite a stretch of the imagination to “turn the engine” which “doesn’t turn.” (edg)

A Lesson from Undone – The Sweater Song

Pulling a sweater by its thread is a tedious way to destroy it. Putting in a washing machine with incorrect settings and too much bleach is a much more efficient method.

Lessons from The Hurt

1. You better believe your friends when they say someone is “not (your) kind.”  Dating someone not your type may work out eventually, but an interspecies affair is another thing.

2. You should probably get new friends if they “are (just) laughing (while) seeing (the other person) out with other men” when you are dying.

3.  Some people just cry from the inside so it can be difficult to “see it in (your) eyes (you’re) crying.”

4. Before asking someone “Would you hurt the man who loves you, would you hurt the man today?” it may be a good idea to get a dose of  a strong anesthetic in case there’s going to be a lot of hurting going on.

5. Saying something like “I gave away this sweetest girl I knew, oh just for you,” makes you sound like a pimp instead, not generous.

6. Freedom being a good thing is just a press release. There are types of freedoms that “stings (you) (you) couldn’t hide.” (edg)