Tell me something, if this world is so insane, is it making you sane again to let another man tug at the thread that pulls up your empty wooden head?
	-- "You Happy Puppet", Blind Man's Zoo, 10,000 Maniacs

They say it's only vanity that writes the plays we act.
They tell me that's what everybody knows.
There's no such thing as sanity and that's the sanest fact.
That's the way the story goes...
	-- "One World", Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits

These mist covered mountains are a home now for me,
But my home is the lowlands and always will be.
Someday you'll return to your valleys and your farms
And you'll no longer burn to be Brother in Arms.
	-- "Brothers in Arms", Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits

Live!  Live all you can!  It's a shame not to...
	-- unknown

Micheal Jackson in Disneyland,
Don't have to share with nobody else.
Lock the gates, Goofy, take my hand,
And lead me through the world of self.
	-- "Splendid Isolation", Transverse City, Warren Zevon

Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map.  Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?
	-- Vincent van Gogh

To search for perfection is all very well,
But to look for Heaven is to live here in Hell.
	-- "Consider me gone", Dream of the Blue Turtles, Sting

I have a high regard for our species, for all its newness and immaturity as a member of the biosphere.  As evolutionary time is measured, we arrived here only a few moments ago and we have a lot of growing up to do.  If we succeed, we could become a sort of collective mind for the Earth, the thought of the Earth.  At the moment, for all our juvenility as a species, we are surely the brightest and brainiest of the Earth's working parts.  I trust us to have the will to keep going, and to maintain as best we can the life of the planet.
	-- Lewis Thomas

...which all comes down to the fact that `People are a problem'.
	-- somewhere in the BBC "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" 	radio adaption, Douglas Adams

Father, what else did you leave for me?
	-- Pink Floyd

The Father,
The Sin,
and The Holy Gross.
	-- Arkham Assylum, Grant Morrison

In ancient times there was a country who's harvest came in and it was poisoned.  Those who ate of it became insane.  "There is but one thing to do," said the King, "We must eat the grain to survive, but there must be those among us who will remember that we are insane."
	-- anonymous

The lunatic is in the hall, 
The lunatics are in the hall,
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And everyday the paperboy brings more.
And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no moon upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings, too...
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.
The lunatic is in my head
The lunatics are in my head
You raise the blade, you make the change
You rearrange me till I'm sane...
You lock the door, and throw away the key
There's someone in my head but it's not me...
	-- "Brain Damage", Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat.  "We're all mad here.  I'm mad, you're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or else you youldn't have come here."
	-- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol

I see now the virtue in Madness, for this country knows no law nor any boundary.  I pity the poor shades confined to the Euclidean prison that is sanity.  All things are possible here and I am what madness has made me.  Whole.  And complete.  And free at last. 
	-- Arkham Asylum, Grant Morrison

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out, 
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out, 
because I was not a Communist.
Then the came for the Trade Unionists and I did not speak out,
because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for me 
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
	-- Pastor Neimoeller (Nazi Victim)

And so we are told "This is the Golden Age"
But gold is the reason for the wars we wage.
	-- U2, "New Year's Day"

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I gaurd I do not love
	-- William Butler Yeats

If you're going to cock it up, you might as well do it in front of billions of people.
	-- Bob Geldof

Have we come only to sleep?
Have we come only to dream?
No it's not true
It's not true
We have come to rule the Earth.
	-- anonymous

When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurly-burly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.
	-- William Shakespear, MacBeth

Hell is truth seen too late.
	-- John Locke

Avoid extinction, don't be a dodo.
	-- unknown

There is nothing like dream to create the future
	-- Victor Hugo

I don't want to spend the rest of my life
Looking at the barrel of a normal life.
I don't want to spend the rest of my days
Keeping out of trouble as a soldier says.
I don't want to spend my time in hell
Looking at the walls of a prison cell.
I don't ever want to play the part
Of a statistic on a government chart.
	-- The Police, "Invisible Sun"

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.  It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
	-- William Shakespeare, MacBeth

The people of the world respect a nation that can see beyond its own image.
	-- JFK

To the Mosquitoes.
	We have more influence over your children than you do, but we love your children.  Most of you love them too, very much.  You want what's best for them.  Consider them when planning the future.  Right?  Oh, mother, father, your blindness to our most blessed gift, NATURE, leaves us with the overwhelming task of correcting your utter mess.  It also proves that you are no judge of art, nor of beauty.  We learn from you how to become ideal adults?  There are subjects that you've passed over.  Or maybe they are too painful to speak about?
	Nature and art -- what could be more breathtaking?
	I used to wish sometimes that I was a black man.  I listened to the way black men spoke when they spoke about freedom, justice, and human rights.  And in the way they spoke, I was sure they were speaking the truth.  At the same time there was a faint buzz spreading to all of us the suggestion that the black man was not to be treated equally.  For this I envied the black man because it gave him a passion for his living and a cause to die for.
	Would you ever have imagined there would be children swinging in polluted playgrounds?
	Do you have children?  Do you see yourself in them yet?  Do they do whatever you tell them to, or do they question authority?  Do you take the time to explain things to them, or do you blame the rest of the world for their mistakes?
	I used to wish sometimes that I was a woman.  A woman is the most attractive creature nature has to offer a man.  Why then is it such a shame to see her unclothed?  I feel more shame as a man watching a quick-mart being built.  How complementary a woman is to a man!  Their giving of love is fearless.  Nature did right in tying the infant to the female.  Yet they also carry a sense of sadness.  Quite like a premonition of danger they hide but can't shake from their minds.  I understand why they want to protect their children, but for their own good, let me point out that though you may have to explain subjects to your children that you perceive as wrong, it is better to have the freedom to explain it in you own words than be silenced under a government that has the power to squash anyone who opposes their views.  It may one day evolve to be your child that stands in opposition.  Who opposes the faint buzz that suggests to us all that women are beneath me.  Women have cause to live and reasons to die with dignity.  This was not always the case.
	Try to restrict our freedoms and we will fight even harder to preserve them.
	Mothers and fathers, grandmothers and fathers, great-grandmothers and fathers, great-great-grandmothers and fathers, you are responsible for more destruction done to this planet in the last one hundred years than in all of mankind's history combined.  You've invented weapons capable of destroying every form of wild animal and vegetation.  I am not sure what condition the world we are inheriting is really in.  I just have a fear of smokestacks, and I don't trust the men who feed their flames.
	The paper these words are written on also contains the music of Jane's Addiction.  The music is original, the cover is not.  The original cover is as colorful as the music.  It is a daydream of the music, made tangible.  It will take effort to get, it is being sold, but we are having difficulties.  There is an invisible force, the same one you have heard faintly buzzing all your life.  This time it buzzes much louder.  I myself have felt its pain.  When I looked down at the spot where it hurt, I saw a very small mosquito.  A bug so old, it was known to Confucius as the "intellectual mosquito."  He sucks off of you and he sucks off of me.
	Sometimes to realize you were well someone must come along and hurt you.
	I have grown to become proud of myself.  I have aligned with all those who have been stung by suppression.  As heirs to this planet, we must maintain, honor, and enjoy the gift of freedom.  A cause to validate everyone's life?  Indeed.
	The world looks at America because we are the beautiful!
 
	-- Jane's Addiction, "Ritual de lo Habitual"

I saw a flower by the walk,
As I went to class today,
I did not stop to here it talk.
I wonder what it had to say?
	-- original work (7-90)

The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in it's belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosened from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
	-- Randal Jarrell

Five Ways to Kill a Man
	There are many combersome ways to kill a man:  you can make him carry a plank of wood to the top of a hill and nail him to it.  To do this properly you require a crowd of people wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak to sissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one man to hammer the nails home.
	Or you can take a lenth of steel, shaped and chased in a traditional way, and attempt to peirce the metal cage he wears.  But for this you need white horses, English trees, men with bows and arrows, at least two flags, a prince and a castle to hold your banquet in.
	Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind allows, blow gas at him.  But then you need a mile of mud sliced through with ditches, not to mention black boots, bomb craters, more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs, and some round hats made of steel.
	In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly miles above your victim and dispose of him by pressing one small switch.  All you then require is an ocean to separate you, tow systems of government, a notion's scientists, several factories, a psychopath and land that no one needs for several years.
	These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man.  Simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, and leave him there.
	-- Edwin Brock

Today I wanted
Desperately to sing a song
But I knew no words.
	-- anonymous haiku (SPS ASP 1990)