I’ll never be able to reconcile Shel Silverstein’s art and stories with his appearance. He looked like he would gladly murder you with a shard of broken glass and then throw your body directly into a shark.
you have odd notions about masculine faces.
real gentle-lookin’ sneer
really gentle looking when not say, in the grainiest over inked newspaper photo you could find.
buddy it’s literally the photo he put on the back of The Giving Tree
Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad From a worn-out picture that my mother’d had, And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye. He was big and bent and gray and old, And I looked at him and my blood ran cold And I said: “My name is ‘Sue!’ How do you do! Now your gonna die!!”
Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes And he went down, but to my surprise, He come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear. But I busted a chair right across his teeth And we crashed through the wall and into the street Kicking and a’ gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer.
I tell ya, I’ve fought tougher men But I really can’t remember when, He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile. I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss, He went for his gun and I pulled mine first, He stood there lookin’ at me and I saw him smile.
And he said: “Son, this world is rough And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help ya along. So I give ya that name and I said goodbye I knew you’d have to get tough or die And it’s the name that helped to make you strong.”
He said: “Now you just fought one hell of a fight And I know you hate me, and you got the right To kill me now, and I wouldn’t blame you if you do. But ya ought to thank me, before I die, For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye Cause I’m the son-of-a-bitch that named you “Sue.’”
–lyrics, ”A Boy Named ‘Sue’”, Shel Silverstein, 1969.
I’m all strung-out, and, my money’s spent Can’t really tell ya’ where last year went But, I’ve given up paying my bills for Lent My landlord, he says he wants his rent Fuck ‘em!
Hey, now, the women they come, the women they go The hens start to cackle when the cock starts to crow Hell, I take ‘em in when the warm winds blow But, I boot ‘em in the ass once it starts to snow Cause, fuck them!
Yeah, got a letter from my folks, and, they say they’re in debt They say that things are as bad as they can possibly get Y’know, I haven’t answered that letter yet I might use it to light my cigarette Cause, fuck them!
What’d they ever do for me anyway? Threw me outta the house when I was twenty-nine years old And cut off my allowance Fuck ‘em!
Hey, a woman come around and handed me a line About a lot of little orphan kids sufferin’ and dyin’ Shit, I give her a quarter, cause one of ‘em might be mine Yeah, the rest of those bastards can keep right on cryin’ I mean, fuck kids! Throw up on your shoulder, piss in your lap, Never give you nothing Fuck ‘em!
I had a fight last night with a big lumberjack I spent most the fight laying flat on my back You know he beat me up fair, and, that’s a fact But, I busted his head as soon as he turned his back Cause, fuck “fair fighting”!
Yeah, y’know, my junkie buddy got the shakes again He give me five bucks and sent me out in the rain I’m supposed to bring back something to kill his pain, heh, hehAw, shit! I took the bread and I jumped on a train’ Cause, fuck junkies! Menace to society, break into your house, steal your TV set And go pawn it, and stick up gas stations, then wanna get rehabilitated right next-door to you Fuck them!
Hey, I caught a cold, I’m chilled and wet And, I’m coughing blood, and I’m short of breath And at the foot of my bed sits Old Man Death He says: “ Hey Shel, ” he says, “ ain’t you ready to go yet? “And, I says… ” You’re the Devil’s favorite pet! “ And, I says…"He’s waitin’ for ya…And, you’re late…"And I says:
“FUCK HIM! LET THE MOTHER WAIT! I GOT THINGS I AIN’T DONE YET, AND BILLS I HAVEN’T NOT PAID! I GOT PEOPLE I AIN’T BAD TALKED AND I GOT CHICKS THAT I HAVEN’T KNOCKED UP AND LEFT YET! I’VE GOT things TO DO…PLACES T’ GO…. PEOPLE T’ DO!HA HA-HA-HA!…” How’s that?
the thing is, shel silverstein absolutely was the sort of stoned maniac who would gladly murder you with a broken glass bottle and throw you to a shark. he was just also the dude who’d make you coffee and give you a blanket and a couch to sleep on while you tried to get yourself sober, and it’s in his latter line of thinking about, you know, people that he ended up deciding kids needed poetry to enliven their screwy days just as much as the screwy adults he usually wrote for did, and because he was good at it (and because nobody pays attention to folk singers anyway so his recording career went unremembered by all but the singers and engineers and producers who worked in the studios with him), that’s what he’s known for today.
obviously, at 30k notes, someone else has pointed this out before me, but i imagine most of the people following me, especially those mutuals i’ve seen this from already, haven’t seen that person’s post, lost as it probably is in those aforementioned thirty thousand notes. so it bears repeating!
I really love this because it illustrates something I think a lot of us who were born after the American Roots/Folk/Acoustic waves of the 50s and 60s that a lot of it is actually kinda dark?
Even when you read the collections of popular folk songs that are produced now, check the date of origin or popular variation. You’ll find a lot of stuff that seems twee at first, or that plays as much more light hearted than the lyrics provided.
Almost a springy, jaunty Gothic that totally maps onto Shel Silverstein’s work. And, really, makes total sense that he worked in music at the same time. For all the clever absurdism and jovial surrealism in his poetry, there’s often a vague sense of menace to the worlds he created. In some cases it was dispelled by the nonsensical nature of his storytelling, while in others (like the poem above) the menace lingers past the last line.
He’s not alone, either, when you recognize that Henson and Sendak (among others) were producing children’s media with a similar air of…idk, wonder comes to mind. Which doesn’t feel entirely right, but it’s adequate enough to capture the magical element all their work.
It’s not a dumbed down magic, where consequences are absent or neatly resolved at the conclusion. Rather, they all took kids seriously and made the (imho, correct) assumption that treating kids as aware, conscientious, emotional beings rather than “practice adults.” Which meant leaving in menace and the spectre of incompleteness/dissatisfaction, while still encouraging their younger audiences to look past that.
my favorite out of context quotes from my archeology professor so far in no particular order
and floridians are just as human as you and me!
and the moral of the story is that there are no deadly snakes native to alaska
you might know this guy as one of the only archaeologists cool enough to be mentioned by indiana jones
it’s my dream to have my name said by harrison ford
i’m not going to apologize for having this class at 6am because you paid for it and it’s your fault.
we don’t all dress like lara croft. i tried to get it to be a thing on a dig and my colleagues yelled at me.
they were pretty good archaeologists except they were too racist to realize anything they found.
i take back what i said about us not dressing like lara croft because lewis binford here is wearing nothing but short shorts and a cowboy hat. take notes for an academic halloween costume!
archaeologists can be good artists! not me, though. or anyone i know. but if you can draw just know you have options.
sometimes you find dead bodies when you dont really expect it and you just have to deal with it
archaeologists are the only people allowed to get exited when they find corpses.
once i ruined thanksgiving dinner when i told my family i had gotten my degree in archaeology and my uncle commented he liked dinosaurs too
the closest i’ve ever been to a grizzly bear is when i left my glasses in my tent on a dig in alaska, saw a big rock in the distance, and almost screamed
additional quotes
ah yes. archaeologists. or, as i love to call us, pottery analysts
i mean he was kind of a good guy for helping us beat britain but he owned slaves so that really cancelled it out.
archaeology is like cultural anthropology, except after you interview the person you turn around and shoot them in the head.
do not use trees! trees are bad! don’t do it!
usually you find shards, but it’s super exciting when you find a really big shard
it’s basically like a waterpark, except you’re fully clothed and walking through a dark tunnel knee deep in muddy water. so, basically splish splash.
i dont believe in curses but my colleagues and i like to encourage the idea of them so people stop touching our stuff
usually, you would find a knife in a kitchen. or underneath your pillow to really freak out your roommate who is a history nerd and has no idea why you would sleep with a knife under your pillow and he’ll get really scared and freaked out and okay i’m getting off topic
no matter what the other scientists say, archaeology is a real science.
don’t worry, i promise you, and whatever government agency that’s spying on me right now, that i’m not a crazy communist trying to overthrow the government
by now you’ve noticed the big “POP QUIZ” written on the board. there isn’t one, but i wanted to see the looks on your face when you saw it. but you’re all dead inside so it’s not really funny.
everything was fine except the citizens of pompeii just woke up dead the next day
the number one question you should ask when you read old archaeology papers is “how the hell do you know?”
nothing pisses off old men more than young people asking “why” and “prove it” so do that as often as possible
this is incredible! all it takes is a computer the size of this room!
even more from the margins of my notebook!
when in doubt, it’s ritualistic
coprolites are the only shit archaeologists get excited over
i know the only reason you’re not laughing at my hilarious jokes is because it’s early
they called it the garbage project. which is also what people call the projects i work on when we apply for funding.
what you have to realize is that people are fundamentally weird. they do weird stuff now and they have done it thousands of years ago.
things come and go but pottery is forever
i dont know if you all know this but moose are terrifying abominations.
and today’s lesson is about the difference between dirt and soil!
please, please, please do not eat old butter you found buried in a bog.
normally i would say this blackboard is a feature because it isn’t portable and can’t be moved but this is a community college so who knows
one of my biggest fears is that this will get so many notes that someone in the class will see it and show it to the professor and he’ll realize half the notes ive been taking in class are jotting down the weird shit he says
There are n*zis on campus rn and a student brought out like a 1997 boombox and started blasting Taking The Hobbits to Isengard every time they tried to say something.
“Those who do not share our genes -THE HOBBITS THE HOBBITS THE HOBBITS THE HOBBITS – THE MASTER RACE – TO ISENGARD TO ISENGARD – AND I BELIEVE –
THE HOBBITS THE HOBBITS THE-”
Chaotic good
In Jewish tradition, one of our holidays is called Purim. It celebrates the defeat of an antisemitic political advisor to a king who liked to prowl the streets ranting his hatred. Part of the story of Purim involves the people being ranted at inventing a special kind of noisemaker to drown him out.
Basically what I’m saying is this student is following a grand tradition whether they realize it or not and they should be proud.
petition to add Taking the Hobbits to Isengard to Purim. like groggers are cool and all, but autotuned Orlando Bloom. come on.
one of my favorite things in Brooklyn Nine Nine is when you can tell the writers were like “you know, Andre Braugher is an extremely talented Shakespearean actor who graduated top of his class at Juilliard…..what if we took advantage of that for our sitcom”
FUN FACT: in hebrew, “feet” is a euphemism for genitals.
so if you ever see “washing feet” in the bible, it, uh. yeah.
(source is my old bible class textbook which i don’t have on me anymore 😦 )
HOLY SHIT WHAT
I MEAN CORRECT ME IF IM WRONG BUT I SWEAR TO GOD I REMEMBER READING A STORY IN THE BIBLE WHERE JESUS CLEANED THE ‘FEET’ OF A LADY PROSTITUTE INFRONT OF HIS TWELVE DISCIPLES WHO GOT SERIOUSLY GROSSED OUT. THEM GETTING REALLY SUPER GROSSED OUT BY THAT NEVER MADE SENSE TO ME UNTIL NOW.
Time for Bible Lessons With An Ex-Fundie Because All Of This is Wrong!!
The feet-washing custom was exactly what it sounded like. You come into a house in the Roman era Middle East after walking around in your sandals and shit and your host offers to wash your feet with a bowl and a towel and some perfume if we’re REAL fancy. It was a hospitality custom.
And the story isn’t about Jesus washing the feet of a prostitute, the prostitute in the story washed Jesus’s feet while he was a guest in someone’s house. She heard he was there, got super fucking emotional (the Bible says she was repenting of her sins but I like to think that she was a super huge fan) busted in the door with a vial of incredibly expensive perfume, and cried over his feet to wash them and dumped perfume over them AND DRIED THEM WITH HER HAIR, which was over-doing it to the max but hey, I won’t judge a Middle Eastern hooker’s foot fetish if she doesn’t judge me
So the guy who was hosting Jesus (Simon, a Pharisee) was sitting there like “what the fuck” and thinking to himself “if Jesus had ANY idea who this bitch is he’d drag her crusty ass” and then Jesus, using his telepathy Jesus powers, goes
YO I HEARD THAT, SIMON
YOU NEED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP BECAUSE WHEN I CAME INTO YOUR HOUSE YOU DIDN’T OFFER ME SHIT
NOT EVEN A MOIST TOWELETTE FOR MY FEET
AND THIS WOMAN IS A LOVELY LADY AND SHE HAS DONE BETTER BY ME THAN YOU HAVE SO SIT THE FUCK DOWN
and also that hooker wound up being the sister of Lazarus
you know, that guy Jesus raised from the dead
moral of the story: if you wash a homeless middle eastern guy’s feet with your hair and drench them in Dolce and Gabbana he’ll return the favor and resurrect your brother
myblog 