| How right you are, dear Paul
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| That we hear of famous people’s deaths
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| While on vacation
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| Perhaps it’s so their funerals
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| Are not too crowded
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| With their loyal fans
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| Being out of town and all
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| Those celebrities
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| Are pretty clever
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| I’ve heard that someone’s born
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| Every 8 second
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| So I presume that someone dies
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| Every 8 seconds
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| Just to keep things even
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| It makes me feel shortchanged
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| When I read the obituary page
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| Someone’s holding back
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| Information
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| It also prompts me to flip through the telephone directory
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| On sleepless nights
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| Saying over, and over
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| And over again —
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| «Yep. |
| You’re all going
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| Every last one of you.»
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| Wow!
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| Heaven must be a big place
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| I don’t know too many dead people
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| But folks tell me I’m young
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| When my grandfather died
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| He was laid out in the Bubb
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| Funeral home
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| And I was secretly glad
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| Mr. Bubb didn’t change his name
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| To something more romantic
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| When he went into business
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| I just wish it was less memorable
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| My high school locker partner Ned
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| Worked part-time for a mortician
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| Imagine dressing dead people
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| Straightening their ties
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| And fluffing up their hair all so
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| You can afford to take a girl out to the movies on Saturday night
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| Well that’s love
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| That’s adolescent desperation!
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| I would have been honored to have Ned
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| Take me to the movies
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| And let him buy me popcorn
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| Instead, I went out with a boy who died
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| The hardest part was knowing that his body didn’t just disappear on the bed
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| The moment he left
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| I think that’s what keeps me off of suicide
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| The idea that there’s something left
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| For someone else to clean up
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| How rude and inconsiderate
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| It’s a pain to take out the weekly trash, l
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| Et alone figure out what to do with
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| Over a hundred pounds of flesh
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| That’s about to go bad
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| Then even worse
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| In India, where there’s a religious cult which believes you shouldn’t desecrate
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| any of the elements of the dead
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| They can’t be buried
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| Or burned
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| They can’t be cast out to sea
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| So they’re taken to the top of the tower of silence
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| Where they become
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| The vulture’s problem
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| How’s that for passin' the buck?
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| No, when I go, I want to go clean
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| Convenient, leaving no mess
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| As if I vaporized while taking a shower
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| As if I moved to Antarctica leaving
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| No forwarding address |