Sunday's Lectionaries: The Book of Billy Joel, The Book of R.E.M., The Book of Ecclesiastes

"Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez..."

"Egypt was troubled by the horrible asp. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Charles Darwin had the gall to ask. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...."

Egypt? Muslim Brotherhood? Oil at 100 dabloons a barrel? Televised "experts" running the pundit kibble dispensers at 2000 RPM? A slim con-artist babbling in the West Wing with a hand full of gimme and a mouth full of noblesse oblige?

Good luck with all that, and see you all a few more miles down the road.

Millions of Muslims tired of inhaling sewage and having measly mean nothing getting out in the streets, and somehow believing that Islam is going to make it right and deliver the goods and not the gun and the noose?

Good luck with all that, and see all you survivors a few more miles down the road.

For a few days I sort of wanly yearned to make sense of it all since my magpie mind is easily attracted by the hot and shiny objects of today's news from nowhere.

For a few days I thought I might find something to say about the latest, greatest conflagration from one of the world's ancient cesspits.

For a few days I tried my best to care because I've been trained to say "I care" whenever some new fecal festival erupts.

But I'm a bad person and I've hit, yet again, the wall of compassion fatigue.

I guess I've just seen it all too often and seen how it so often turns out -- badly -- to get all that worked up.

"Sometimes it gets so hard to care
It can’t be this way ev’rywhere
And I’m gonna let you pass
Yes, and I’ll go last"

I try to care and then I remember to seek solace in places like The Book of Billy Joel:

Now that's a textual poem set to music that quite deftly tracks my life (Yes, I had that exact lunchbox)... at least up to around 1989. Since somewhere around the end of the 80s my life has been tracked pretty much by The Book of R.E. M.:

But both these Books from the Bible of Pop are mere rewrites, filtered through decades of defining degeneracy down of the original. And, in the end, the original is always the best. I think I'll stick with it and leave the prognostications to the purveyors of pundit kibble.

Forgotten the original? Let's review:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh:
but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down,
and hasteth to his place where he arose.
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north;
it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full;
unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it:
the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;
and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said,
See, this is new? it hath been already of old time,
which was before us.
-- Ecclesiastes 1

But then..... just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in...

Posted by Vanderleun at January 30, 2011 12:38 PM