Double Flee A

Why I love Douglas Adams:
Ford: "What would you say if I told you that [something else]"
Arthur: "Why? Do you think it's the sort of thing you're likely to say?"

I've got a book of his on order from the U.K., "The deeper meaning of liff". Hurry up and get here. Hurry. Let's go. Come on. Yeah, you. Hey, giddyup now. Show yourself. Get a move on. Shake a leg there.

Today I got the unnerving feeling that something was about to change. Turns out it was just the daily paranoia that comes when I drink coffee and don't eat before I come to work in the morning. I was going to, but thought I didn't have time, so tomorrow I'll wake up earlier.

Johnny Cash had a song that went "...and I never picked cotton." Well, Johnny Cash DID pick cotton when he was a kid. Johnny Cash may have meant that he didn't pick metaphorical cotton, meaning what he picked was something besides cotton, like apples, or that he did pick it, but it really represented something else he was picking. Like the lord. Maybe it meant that he didn't metaphorically pick cotton, meaning the cotton picked him to pick it, or that he would have preferred not to pick cotton, but he had no real input in the final decision. Maybe the metaphor is in reference to never, though. Like he did pick cotton, and that's the way he likes it. He's damn proud to have picked the cotton and given the chance, he'd do it just the same.

Let's take a look.
[Chorus] I never picked cotton But my mother did And my brother did And my sister did And my daddy died young Workin' in the coal mine

When I was just a baby Too little for a cotton sack I played in the dirt While the others worked 'Til they couldn't straighten up their backs I made myself a promise When I was big enough to run That I'd never stay a single day In that Oklahoma sun

[Chorus] Folks said I grew up early And that the farm couldn't hold me then so I stole ten bucks and a pickup truck And I never went back again Then it was fast cars and whiskey Long haired girls and fun I had everything that money could bring And I took it all with a gun

[Chorus] It was Saturday night in Memphis When a redneck grabbed my shirt When he said go back to your cotton sack I left him dying in the dirt They'll take me in the morning To the gallos just outside And in the time I got There ain't a hell of alot That I can look back on with pride

[Chorus]

Oh well. He was just trying to sell a record, after all.

posted by dale @ 6:12 PM