Please, don't murder me

In the timbers to fennario, the wolves are running round,
The winter was so hard and cold, froze ten feet neath the ground.
Dont murder me, I beg of you, dont murder me. please, dont murder me.

I sat down to my supper, twas a bottle of red whisky,
I said my prayers and went to bed, thats the last they saw of me.
Dont murder me, I beg of you, dont murder me. please, dont murder me.

When I awoke, the dire wolf, six hundred pounds of sin,
Was grinning at my window, all I said was come on in.
Dont murder me, I beg of you, dont murder me. please, dont murder me.

The wolf came in, I got my cards, we sat down for a game.
I cut my deck to the queen of spades, but the cards were all the same.
Dont murder me, I beg of you, dont murder me. please, dont murder me.

In the backwash of fennario, the black and bloody mire,
The dire wolf collects his dues, while the boys sing round the fire.
Dont murder me, I beg of you, dont murder me. please, dont murder me.
No, no, no dont murder me. I beg of you,
Dont murder me. please, dont murder me.

In Nordic mythology we are told of a monstrous wolf, Fenris, that would destroy iron chains and shackles and was eventually shut up in the bowels of the earth. It was also said that, with the twilight of the gods--the end of the world--the monster would break out of this prison too, and would devour the sun. Here, then, the wolf appears as a symbol of the principle of evil, within a pattern of ideas which is unquestionably related to the Gnostic cosmogony. ... The myth is also connected with all other concepts of the final annihilation of the world, whether by water or fire."--p. 375

The Annotated "Dire Wolf"

I'm not saying it's the end of the world. But I think the symbolism is appropriate.

Pat Tillman: Another inconvenient truth.
Please, don't murder me.
Civilization's Toll: "Please just tell the world that we are dying."
Please, don't murder me.
A Tale of an Uninsured Child, Now Grown and in Big Trouble
Please, don't murder me.
Taliban Holding & Threatening to Kill 20+Korean Hostages (18 Women)
Please, don't murder me.
Everybody knows
Please, don't murder me.
My mother is dying of Cancer & is unable to eat yet Sinister DEA Medical Marijuana Raids continue
Please, don't murder me.

Why?
Please, please don't murder me.

Now I am still here in this country wondering why, and having to pick up the pieces of what is left of my friend in our room. I would just like to know what is the true reason we are here? This country poses no threat to our own.

A good question.

It's hard, really, to grasp the depths to which we have fallen. But today we stand face to face with the Man Who Sold the World.

We passed upon the stairs,
We spoke of was and when
Although I wasnt there
He said I was his friend
Which came as a surprise
I spoke into his eyes -- I thought you died alone
A long long time ago

Oh no, not me,
We never lost control,
Youre face to face,
With the man who sold the world

I laughed and shook his hand,
I made my way back home,
I searched for form and land,
Years and years I roamed,
I gazed a gazely stare,
We walked a million hills -- I must have died alone,
A long long time ago.

Who knows, not me,
I never lost control,
Youre face, to face,
With the man who sold the world.

Iraq War: Without Purpose, Accountability, or End
Iraq Vets Billed for "Debt of Service"
The USA's Immoral Spending Habits
Body armor: Congressional hearing TODAY (Updated, with audio link)
Bandar Bush, Billions in Bribes, and our National Security

and most painful of all, cosoldier's
I know war is not the place for conservation, but...

So yet again, things are not as they seem. War funding does not only provide supplies to troops. It buys troops, it is burned in mountains of wasted food, and is tossed away on overpaid contract workers, all so civil war may more fully consume a country full of regular people who seek only survival, and whose lives share equal value with my life and yours.
Oh, it’s someone else’s country we destroy, though. What does it matter? We Americans will not be around to clean the mess we have created. We certainly will not bury the dead we have killed, nor will we find safe ways of disposing of the weapons we’ve dropped, nor will these mountains of plastic trash be cleared away. It is the unwitting people of this country we curse with cleaning up the destruction we have rained down on them.
But it sure as hell isn’t over yet, is it, Mr. Bush?
Meanwhile, your one billion dollars a day are being poured out like raw oil in the streets: equally wasteful, equally ugly, equally destructive. Can we do no better than destroying homes and burning food in the face of hungry people?

may God, if there is one, forgive us all.

A pistol shot at 5 o'clock
The bells of heaven ring
"Tell me what you done it for"
"No I won't tell you a thing

"Yesterday I begged you
before I hit the ground -
all I leave behind me
is only what I found

"If you can abide it
let the hurdy-gurdy play -
Stranger ones have come by here
before they flew away

"I will not condemn you
nor yet would I deny"
"I would ask the same of you
but failing will not die

"Take up your china doll
it's only fractured -
and just a little nervous
from the fall"

Yesterday I begged you
before I hit the ground -
William Camden, an antiquary and scholar who lived between 1551 and 1623, wrote in his Remains Concerning Britain:

   Betwixt the stirrup and the ground, Mercy I ask'd; mercy I found.

These lines express the Christian (Catholic?) concept that even in the split second as you fall dying from your horse, there is still time to repent, ask for mercy, and be given absolution.

A SUBJECTIVE INTERPRETIVE NOTE
This song was originally titled The Suicide Song, and I at first looked at it as a dialog between a suicide and God or Jesus, where the suicide argues in favor of being allowed into heaven even though he/she committed what for Catholics is an unforgivable sin. But then an even more bizarre interpretation dawned on me, and well, you should always go with the bizarre.

I think one way to look at this song is to see it as a commentary on the threat of nuclear war. It imagines the aftermath of The Bomb in much the same way Morning Dew did. In this light, I see the song as a dialog between a Human (representing humankind) and a Creator in the wake of a nuclear holocaust where humans destroy themselves completely. The bombs are dispatched-- "a pistol shot at five o'clock"-- and the resulting holocaust shakes even "the bells of heaven", causing them to ring. The Creator, perhaps in despair of His destroyed work, asks the Human "Tell me what you done it for". The Human refuses to "tell you a thing".

But then the Human points out that he/she had begged the Creator yesterday "before I hit the ground", a plea for mercy that the Creator was unable to give. The Human also consoles the Creator with "all I leave behind me is only what I found", meaning that while mankind and its works are destroyed, the earth will eventually recover and life will go on. The Human then asks "if you can abide it let the hurdy-gurdy play", meaning even though mankind is so flawed as to create the means of its own destruction, let it be born again out of the ashes of its self-destruction. After all, "stranger ones" than we have come and gone in the pageant of the cosmos.
Finally, the Human promises that unlike in the time of Jesus, "I will not condemn you nor yet would I deny", perhaps signaling a promise of a new birth in spirituality among humankind. The Human then asks the Creator to also refrain from condemning or denying its creation just because it is flawed, but assures the Creator that in any case, it "will not die".

In the last part, the Human reassures the Creator that his creation will survive even this self-destruction, that the Creator can "Take up your china doll" (the earth/life), which isn't destroyed but "only fractured, just a little nervous from the fall".

How's that for way over-thinking this song!!!

--Rob Meador

The Annotated "China Doll"

What else should I be
All apologies
What else could I say
Everyone is gay
What else could I write
I don't have the right
What else should I be
All Apologies

In the sun
In the sun I feel as one
In the sun
In the sun
Married
Buried

I wish I was like you
Easily amused
Find my nest of salt
Everything is my fault
I'll take all the blame
Aqua seafoam shame
Sunburn with freezer burn
Choking on the ashes of her enemy

In the sun
In the sun I feel as one
In the sun
In the sun
Married
Buried
Married
Buried

Yeah yeah yeah yeah

All in all is all we are

Global Warming: It's Worse
All apologies.
Marine Life Series: Shark Finning
All apologies.

All apologies...to the human race. To the planet. To everything and everyone.

I don't know how to have hope anymore. It seems like everything is screwed up to the point that even if we fix one thing, by the time it gets fixed, something else is going to destroy us. I don't know how to have hope. I read Edwards diaries and listen to him speak and it fills me with hope...but then I go back to thinking, and I see the pictures of shark finning, I see Pat Tillman's picture, I see the vast wastelands filled with plastic debris and the global warming graphs and the exit poll discrepancies of 2004, and I just don't know how we're supposed to fix it all in time.

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone

I'm so sad, and so angry, so bitter, so depressed. I don't know what to say. I'm sorry this diary is so long and so lacking in substance. It just seems like my own words can't do justice to the way I feel.