The Old Prof Thinks Out Loud

I have been working on my own epitaph for, oh, the last ten years. I don't know why I think it is important to have; it's just that today's graveyards are pretty boring without them (and those ones that call themselves "gardens of memory" and have all the stones as flat to the ground as possible are pathetic -- no personality, no character, and the one nearest to me proved to be a seven-figure swindle). Anyway, here's my growing list so far, from first to current:

'Heaven Should Be A True Paradise -- No Editors!"
"Wherever I've Gone Now, There I Am"
"Never Really An Oddball So Much As A Man At Odds"
"Pardon Me, Is This Space Taken?"
"Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and Moses Never Wrote Anything Down"
"I'd Rather Be W. C. Fields"
"I'll Be With Mark Twain In The Smoking Lounge"
"Now I Really Do Hate The Color Green"
"Believe It Or Not, But The Hokey-Pokey Really Is What It's All About"
"Haven't Seen Houdini Yet (Hmmm?)"
"Ah, Infinitely More Time To Write?"
"What If There Were No Hypothetical Situations?"
"We Are All Hypotheticals"
"Everything, According To Zen, Is:
"True
"False
"Meaningless
"All Of The Above"
"Bob Dylan: Life Is Just One Big Prison Yard; Some Of Us Are Prisoners And Some Of Us Are Guards"
"Better Your Ear To The Ground Than Your Nose To The Grindstone"
"Sound Is The Just Now; Time Is A Whisper"
"I Never Owned Stocks, So They Never Owned Me"
"We Don't Master Technology, It Masters Us"
"So Many Regrets, So Little Time"
"Multi-Tasking Means The Death of Excellence"
"Multi-Tasking Is About The Same As Multiple Gunshot Wounds"
"Tom Lehrer: It Is A Sobering Thought Indeed To Realize That, When Mozart Was My Age, He'd Been Dead For 25 Years"
"As A Writer, He Was Mostly Underappreciated But Undaunted"
"Zen: Those Who Say Do Not Know. Those Who Know Do Not Say"
"Multitasking: The 8th Deadly Sin"
"Death Be Not Proud, He Was Pretty Easy Pickin's"
"John Bremner: It Is Better To Be Fooled Occasionally Than To Be Suspicious Constantly"
"You Can Outlive Many Things, But Never Your Deepest Regrets"
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(Work in progress)

Amazingly, the fictitious song titles that follow are derived from real song titles, most of them in the country music vein. I'd like to imagine that these could have been the original versions submitted to record producers that then were modified and/or sanitized to keep the "suits" happy (if suits ever are happy with musicians and songwriters):

Aborting My Baby (What An Ugly Way Of Saying You Love Me)
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Walk Like A Jihadist (Is That A Bomb Strapped To Your Chest, Or Are You Just Glad To See Me?)
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Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox When You Die (I'll Still Be Drunk And You'll Still Be Dead)
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You Can't Touch This Until I Touch Yours (Long-Lost Michael Jackson Record, And Let's Keep It That Way)
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If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body, Would You Donate It To Science? (With Apologies To The Bellamy Brothers)
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If You've Got 10 Minutes, Let's Get A Room (Romanticized, somewhat, into If You've Got 10 Minutes, Let's Fall In Love --Ain't Country Music Grand?)
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Love Squirts (With Profoundest Apologies To The Band Nazareth)
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Stairway To The Basement (What Is That Awful Smell, Mr. Dahmer?)
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Hey Juden (Don't Let Me Down, Take A Warm Shower, And Make The World Better, Better, Better) -- (So How Did Mel Brooks Miss This One For "The Producers" musical?)
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I Left Your Heart In San Francisco, Since You Weren't Using It Anyway
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Work in progress)

Michael Jackson mourners: For forgetting that he was also the King of Child Molesters and/or Really Creepy Dudes.
Barbara Bush: For giving birth.
Dick Cheney: For not understanding that he is no longer in office or in charge of anything except his pie hole, which he should now shut and instead go call up Dan Quayle and schedule a hunting trip (and Quayle will probably be dumb enough to go).
Sarah Palin: For thinking anyone (even her almost-son-in-law) gives a damn what she does; she'll be invisible (not invincible) by 2012.


The Switchboard Girl: Nothing much to forgive, too much to forget.
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(Work in progress)