Laughing Matters

(album: Bathhouse Betty - 1998)

Live at Five and CNN
keep us all abreast
of breaking stories that can tend
to make us anxious and depressed.
Problems with no answers
hang on like some chronic cough.
And every day some brand new issue
rears it's head to piss you off.

Bad guys win.
Optimism's wearing thin.
Things are spinning out of control.
Cynicism's all the fad.
World events could make us mad
as hatters.
Almost every day
some underpinning slips away.
These aren't laughing matters.

Time bombs tick.
People keep on getting sick.
And a nickel's not worth a cent.
Wickedness and greed abound.
Just as peace is gaining ground
it shatters.
Hate is here to stay,
and justice goes to those who pay.
Friend, these aren't laughing matters.

The truth is scarier by far
than anything that Stephen King could write.
The stories in the paper are
the daily small decline and fall
spelled out in black and white.

Oh, what to do, what to do?
how to take a brighter view
when your noodle's totally fried.
Human spirits need to be
leavened by a little levity.
So take those blues
and bounce them off the wall.
Keep your humor please,
'cause don't you know it times like these that
laughing matters most of all.