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Elvis Costello Lyrics for Song: How To Be Dumb
 Lyrics for Album: Original Album Series [2012]
 
 
 
 1947>I was hell-bent on destroying my powers of concentration
 
 While you were living like a saint
 
 And all the time the very one you trusted was washing off
 
 somebody else's paint
 
 Now you've got yourself a brand new occupation
 
 Every fleeting thought is a pearl
 
 And beautiful people stampede to the doorway
 
 of the funniest fucker in the world
 
 
 
 They're here to help you
 
 Satisfy your desire
 
 There's a bright future for all you professional liars
 
 
 
 Now you know how to be dumb
 
 Are you ready to take your place in the modern museum of mistakes?
 
 Don't you know how to be dumb?
 
 Like a building thrown up overnight in one of those reverse earthquakes
 
 
 
 They emptied out all the asylums, they emptied out all the gaols
 
 The "New Bruise" was the name of a dance craze
 
 By "Jesus Cross and the Cruel Nails"
 
 Followed up by "Torturing Little Beaver"
 
 With their contraption of barbed wire
 
 Between the fear and the fever lies all the rejection they require
 
 They'll be howling by midnight, they'll be drooling by dawn
 
 Skulls shrunk down to the size of their brains
 
 Heads shaven and shorn
 
 
 
 Now you know how to be dumb
 
 Are you ready to take your place in the modern museum of mistakes?
 
 Don't you know how to be dumb?
 
 Like a building thrown up overnight in one of those reverse earthquakes
 
 
 
 Trapped in the House of the Perpetual Sucker
 
 Where bitterness always ends so pitifully
 
 You always had to dress up your envy in some half-remembered
 
 philosophy
 
 
 
 Now you're masquerading as pale powdered genius
 
 Whose ever bad intention has been purged
 
 You could've walked out any time you wanted but face it you
 
 didn't have the courage
 
 I guess that makes you a full time hypocrite or some kind of
 
 twisted dilettante
 
 Funny though people don't usually get so ugly till they think
 
 they know what they want
 
 Scratch your own head stupid
 
 Count up to three
 
 Roll over on your back
 
 Repeat after me
 
 
 
 Don't you know how to be dumb?
 
 Are you ready to take your place in the modern museum of mistakes?
 
 Don't you know how to be dumb?
 
 Like a building thrown up overnight in one of those reverse earthquakes
 
 1947>
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| Album Lyrics: Original Album Series [2012] |  
| 
  Elvis Costello
 "Original Album Series [2012]"
 
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