For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.
Lots of my posts are basically rants. Just me, going off, usually angry, about some small thing.
And they’re usually funny.
Here’s an early rant about the lyrics to a song that, I think, are woefully misunderstood.
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Did you ever think about the song “Message In A Bottle”? I mean, really think about it?
Here’s this guy, alone, on an island. He’s basically dying, right? I mean, loneliness can kill you. Maybe he’s got enough to eat, fish, fruits, coconuts. If the Professor was there he could make a friggin’ radio out of those damn coconuts, but, I’m assuming, no, he’s not the Professor. He’s just some guy. Alone. On an island. And, eventually, the way all stories end, if he’s there long enough, he’s going to die.
He’s got to do something. Something to relieve the loneliness. So what does he do?
He writes a letter, puts it in a bottle, and sends it out to sea.
What the hell is that guy thinking? Has he gone batty? Talking to a soccer ball, nutso?
Because he waits a whole fucking year, and wakes up one day, and all he’s gotten for his trouble is more bottles!
The moral is that everyone’s on a fucking island, yes? They’re all out there, lonely, sending these pitiful messages out to sea, hoping someone will come rescue them from their little island…
But, butbutbut, those assholes out on those other islands, they’re selfish, just like the guy in the song. They don’t want to risk their skin in the sea. They’ve got a bottle, hey, they can spare one little bottle. On an island with coconuts and all the fish they can devour, who needs a bottle? Hell, it’s probably a rum bottle, and they polished it off (yeah, I’ve seen “Pirates of the Carribean”) and then, with their courage all pumped up from the booze, they just scribbled off some note and tossed that fucker out into the waves.
No, the real moral of the story is that people are worthless. Ain’t nobody coming to save you from your sandy beach; they’re too busy nursing hangovers from cheap rum on their own sandy beaches waiting for you, yes, you, bunky, to come and rescue them.
The real moral of the story is that you’ve got to dive into the briny deep, expose your skin to the saltwater depths, the storms, the sharks and barracudas… and all you’re going to find out there on the other islands are cowardly people with an unlimited supply of booze to mask their fears.
When, all along, the people you need, the ones that are worth meeting, are probably dead, killed when they dove into the ocean, lashed by storms, drowned, exhausted from battling the waves, eaten by sharks. Dead. Like you’re going to be, whether or not you stay on your island or risk trying to find someone worth talking to.