F***ed Up Friday: "The Poignant, Yet Pointless, Crisis of a Co-Ed" by Dar Williams

Welcome back, gentle readers, to another edition of F***ed Up Friday, where your intrepid hero (that's me), will tell you the songs you should be listening to in order to fully deal with your emotional/romantic needs.

First of all, I feel slightly ashamed that I have barely posted in the past two weeks, and that this is coming to you so late on Friday.  But never fear, cats and kittens, I shall be attempting to delight and titillate you with more insightful posts (or at least amusing stories of my life) in future weeks.

But enough chit-chat.  Let us sally forth into the depths of emotional torment.  Or something.  Today's song is one of those tales of love, mirth, and woe.  It tells the story of love found, then tragedy struck, and then lost.  It tells of the struggle to overcome hurt and pain to move on into a brighter tomorrow. 

Ok fine, really, it's about a college girl who finds out her pothead boyfriend is cheating on her.  But you have to admit, I had some good purple prose going there.  And really, not all of our songs can be about hacking off your limbs for love or going to movies alone.  Sometimes we need a little levity.

 

Her parents apparently wanted to name her Darcy, after the guy with the big. . .house. . .in Pride and Prejudice.  I kind of like that.



From her 1996 album "Mortal City," today's selection is Dar Williams' "The Poignant, Yet Pointless, Crisis of a Co-Ed."

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

I'm not a leader, I'm not a left-wing rhetoric mobilizing force of one,
But there was a time way back, many years ago in college, don't laugh,
But I thought I was a radical, I ran the hemp Liberation League with my
boyfriend,
It was true love, with a common cause, and besides that, he was a Sagittarius.

Things seem to be going so well.  You meet someone who has similar interests in you, and you hit it off.  And far be it from me to comment on picking someone for their Zodiac sign.  After all, I was a very amateur totally professional astrologer for a respected news paper.  This is all true, if slightly editorialized.

We used to say that our love was like hemp rope, three times as strong as the
rope that you buy domestically,
And we would bond in the face of oppression from big business and the deans,
But I knew there was a problem, every time the group would meet everyone would
light up,
That made it difficult to discuss glaucoma and human rights, not to mention
chemotherapy.

Ooooooooh.  See, now things begin to go downhill.  Well, not all crushes are good news.  But at least she acknowledges it, as opposed, to say, continuing to stalk/pursue her crush.  As a certain person has never ever ever done.

Well sometimes, life gives us lessons sent in ridiculous packaging,
And so I found him in the arms of a Student Against the Treacherous use of Fur,
And he gave no apology, he just turned to me, stoned out to the edge of
oblivion,
He didn't pull up the sheets and I think he even smiled as he said to me,
"Well, I guess our dreams went up in smoke."
And I said, "No, our dreams went up in dreams, you stupid pothead."

Sigh.  Well it's a fact of life that some times your crushes just don't work out.  You know, sometimes you're stalking your crush and then they turn out to be really dumb.  Or you're at a bar making out with a guy and then he mentions something about balancing his Thetans and you realize that you have stuck your tongue down the throat of a Scientologist.  Which, I should point out, has happened to me. 

And another thing, what kind of a name is Students Against the Treacherous Use
of Fur?
Fur is already dead, and besides, a name like that doesn't make a good acronym.

She does have a valid point here.

I am older now, I know the rise and gradual fall of a daily victory.
And I still write to my senators, saying they should legalize cannabis,
And I should know, cause I am a horticulturist, I have a husband and two
children out in Lexington, Mass.
And my ex-boyfriend can't tell me I've sold out, because he's in a cult.
And he's not allowed to talk to me.

She's moved on!  Hallelujah!  This is a good example of how to deal with a setback in love.  You don't lock them up in a room to make them love you and threaten to cut them should they leave *cough*Dido*cough*  And you certainly don't sit alone in the dark drinking wine and listening to a Tori Amos song on repeat.

No.  You move on, find somebody better, and then laugh at the patheticness of your crush in the first place.  Or deny said crush ever happened in the first place.

But most important, if they do happen to be a member of the cult, never join them.  It never turns out well.