Precision Review

Folks, I rode all the way down here to tell you something, and what I rode down here to tell you is I can't count how many folks I've known who get bullied by the name printed in big letters on a page of their calendar, how many poor fools turns white on January first of certain numbered years and don't resume their normal God given color until Hanukah of that same year, how many folks I've met in my wanderings what want to skip over the squares on that calendar where a certain number is printed. Them folks, they set aside entire years, months, days, to be worried people, and people, bein' worried like that just is not a happy way to spend your time, not when there is only just so much time what is given to you.

I mean, I mean ( get that Arlo Guthrie thing going here...)
what kind of mother lovin' idiot sets aside every year what ends in a big number seven to be a bad year? What kind, I say just what kind of persimmon peelin' fool decides that every August just got to be a whole month of bad luck? Well I'll tell ya' what kind, yes, I will, just let me get my fingers set for a terr-eee-fying, spinal-chord shiverin', bladder bustin' big old minor key chord on the guitar here, and I'll tell you what kind... strum...they was the kind sittin on the other side of the room, them what was sittin' over there on the other side of the room on, on the group M bench, that being M meaning they had mental problems, and the shrink didn't think they should be in the army, bein' as how the army didn't want no-body what might be having a whole month of bad days once'd every year to be having themselves a high powered rapid firing women and children and other soldier killing kind of gun at that self same time of each and every year.

Now when I told Alice about all this, you do remember Alice, right? We was a talkin' about her last time, well, anyway, when I told Alice about this Alice in her usual very wise woman way she tells me some folk are just like that, and my heart it starts to sinking into the sympathy pains of the whole affair.  But, she says with a great big Broadway fancy flourish, she says there is, there is something can be done by ordinary folks just like you and me and even Officer Odie can do it to help relieve all this suffering, and that is to convince them folks to be scientific about the whole arrangement. Now this didn't make any sense at all to me, so I asked Alice how in the name of Noah's pet whale being scientific about a hung down, brung down, slung plum around hang up like that could be of great and redeeming value to them poor people, and I were not thinking I was gonna be agreeing with Alice even though I do love her a whole lot, and then Alice changed my entire perspective on the problem for me, she delivered down one word, just one word what changed my whole mind for me, and that word, and she said it like it was a very special word, and folks it is a very special word, and what she said was "Precision", and then she walked away from me, just walked away leaving me totally confused to bake some more brownies being as how we'd eaten every last one from the last batch.

Now folks, I thought about that very special word Alice had said, and when I fully com-pre-hended what Alice was a meaning I packed up my guitar and rode right down here to tell you about it. You see Alice, being as how she has all that wisdom from a-livin' in an old church, Alice was sayin' them poor people was not suffering to remembering some horrible sad and bad thing what happened to them, now that, that just goes with livin' here on earth, what she was a saying is they suffer a whole lot more than they needed to because being ordinary folk like you and me, instead of scientific thinkin' kind of folk, they just did not have any numbers small enough to say just how long that horrible bad sad thing might have really taken to a full and scientific perspective on the entire unhappy affair, and so they was just using numbers that was way to big for the truth of the matter, and that was what was a causin' most of their suffering was remembering it for way longer than what it really took.

So friends, I want you to take yourself a ball-point ink pen, if you don't have you a ball point ink-pen I want you to borrow one from your neighbor when he gets done with it, and right there on your hand I want you to write a big number one, and then right beside it I want you to draw a kind of slanty line and then write you another great big number one, and then right behind that second great big number one I want you to write you six, I said six little circles to be zeroes, and you can kinda squinch them up if you have small hands and are a runnin' out of room, because that won't matter, but what does matter is the last thing you are going to write, and that is the letter "s" just like starts the name Sam.

And that, that my friends means to the scientific folk just plain old number one divided into one million itty bitty pieces, and that, that is a very small and scientific number, but what makes it a very special itty bitty number in our particular case of applying thoroughly modern science to the ancient art of living is that last thing you wrote, that letter s, because to the scientific folk that letter s stands for seconds, not years or months or days or even just one minute, but just one second of time divided into one million pieces, and the science folk call that totally tiny length of time by a special name, and that name is micro-seconds.

Now folks, when it happens that you have to remember something from the sad and bad and blue side of living here on earth what hurt your feelings I want you be very scientific and precise in remembering just how long it was that you was really and truly beset and bewildered by that sad bad blue thing what invaded your world, I want you to be very scientific and precise about the whole sad bad blue affair, I want you to measure the real and true time of the whole affair in micro-seconds, so you don't end up wasting, I say totally wasting, not one micro-second longer remembering that thing than what it took you to live through it the first time to be here to remember it now. And that's what I rode all the way down here to tell you.