How to Be Dumb (macmanus) - Elvis Costello
I was hell-bent on destroying my powers of concentration
While you were living like a saint
And all the time the very one you trusted was washing off
somebody else's paint
Now you've got yourself a brand new occupation
Every fleeting thought is a pearl
And beautiful people stampede to the doorway of the funniest
f_cker in the world
They're here to help you
Satisfy your desire
There's a bright future for all you professional liars
CHORUS
Now you know how to be dumb
Are you ready to take your place in the modern museum of
mistakes?
Don't you know how to be dumb?
Like a building thrown up overnight in one of the reverse
earthquakes
They emptied out all the asylums, they emptied out all the gaols
The "New Bruise" was the name of a dance craze
By "Jesus Christ and the Cruel Nails"
Followed up by "Torturing Little Beaver"
With their contraption of barbed wire
Between the fear and the fever lies all the rejection they
require
They'll be howling by midnight, they'll be drooling by dawn
Skulls shrunk down to the size of their brains
Heads shaven and shorn
CHORUS
Trapped in the House of the Perpetual S_cker
Where bitterness always ends so pitifully
You always had to dress up your envy in some half-remembered
philosophy
Now you're masquerading as pale powdered genius
Whose ever bad intention has been purged
You could've walked out any time you wanted but face it you
didn't have the courage
I guess that makes you a full time hypocrite or some kind of
twisted dilettante
Funny though people don't usually get so ugly 'til they think
they know what they want
Scratch your own head stupid
Count up to three
Roll over on your back
Repeat after me
Don't you know how to be dumb?
Are you ready to take your place in the modern museum of
mistakes?
Don't you know how to be dumb?
Like a building thrown up overnight in one of those reverse
earthquakes
comments
share this page
