Young Talent!

A young friend of mine wrote a spoof of an incredibly treacly anti-drunk driving poem that circulates periodically around the internet. I thought it was very witty. Here it is:



A Ghost's Lament, or Never Drink, You Could Turn Into A TV Set



Well, I went to a party and got stoned right off my head,

I went to bed; next morning I woke up and I was dead

So hark you all and listen to this cautionary tale

And don't go near drugs or drink, not even real ale.



I thought I'd try a spliff or two; my mates were passing round

A toke, some puff, some crack, some weed, some mushrooms they had found

And then out came the vodka; I greeted it with glee,

Despite the fact it tasted like weak, alcoholic pee.



Someone had brought Campari; my friend had LSD

She took half and then she passed the best bits on to me

I didn't really need it; I was getting pretty high

But I politely took it with some whiskey and some rye.



'Round then things got all blurry; I don't remember much

I think we strangled chickens, or maybe they were ducks

In any case, they tasted great- I loved their bitter blood-

And then we sacrificed a cow and mucked around with mud



I remember then, it must have been around "the witching hour"

That Gemma's head transformed itself into a purple flower

Tanya started screaming- something about a chain

Everyone was raving mad and only I was sane



I think it was about then that Chas ate the margarine,

Dave and Ellie ceased to talk and suddenly went green

Somehow Sophia'd turned into a bowler-hatted snail-

Someone had dialled 999- outside, the sirens wailed.



"The ambulance, police and fire services await"

Blared voices on loudspeakers, but by then it was too late

For Tanya had turned perm'nantly into a video game

And Gemma, Chas and Ellie were incurably insane.



Sophia, Brian, Dave and I were frothing at the mouth

And Eddie had been crippled by the onset of his gout.

Poor Natty had transformed himself into a video set

They couldn't turn him back again; he's in that bedroom yet.



The rest of us were rounded up and taken to the gaol,

Wee Billy was arrested; he's in prison, pending bail

I fell asleep upon the way, so they tucked me up in bed,

But I would never wake again, for I was stone cold dead.



So listen all you teenagers, take this advice from me

And if you're offered drink or drugs, refuse it, let it be.

It really isn't clever and it's certainly not cool,

And if you try it, you'll end up, like me, a bloody ghoul



Please help a poor old ghostie, forward this to everyone

And when it's sent ten thousand times, my time on Earth is done,

So go on, forward this, it really is all for the best,

Don't be heartless, help to lay a poor spirit to rest.

Beatle humor in the NYT!

The link might be dead by the time I post this, but friend Ed Park just alerted me to this excellent piece of Beatle-related humor by Tim Carvell in The New York Times. "Take this bucket o' wings and learn to fly," indeed.

Dude, don't bogart the "misconception"

The Yale Daily News rips the lid off of hookah use in this article.