How To Be Dumb Lyrics by Elvis Costello

How To Be Dumb Lyrics

    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

    Chorus
    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

    Chorus

    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 'til 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

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