WEBVTT

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Inner North London, top floor flat

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All white walls, white carpet, white cat,

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Rice Paper partitions,

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Modern art and ambition

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The host’s a physician,

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Bright bloke, has his own practice

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His girlfriend’s an actress

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An old mate of ours from home

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And they’re always great fun.

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So to dinner we’ve come.

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The 5th guest is an unknown,

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The hosts have just thrown us together for a favor

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'cause this girl’s just arrived from Australia

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And she's moved to North London

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And she’s the sister of someone

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Or has some connection.

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As we make introductions

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I’m struck by her beauty

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She’s irrefutably fair

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With dark eyes and dark hair

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But as she sits

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I admit I’m a little bit wary

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because I notice the tip of the wing of a fairy

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Tattooed on that popular area

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Just above the derrière

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And when she says “I’m Sagittarien”

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I confess a pigeonhole starts to form

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And is immediately filled with pigeon

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When she says her name is Storm.

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Conversation is initially bright and light hearted

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But it’s not long before Storm gets started:

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“You can’t know anything,

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Knowledge is merely opinion”

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She opines, over her Cabernet Sauvignon

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Vis a vis

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Some unhippily

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Empirical comment made by me

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“Not a good start” I think

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We’re only on pre-dinner drinks

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And across the room, my wife

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Widens her eyes

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Silently begs me: Be Nice!

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A matrimonial warning

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Not worth ignoring

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So I resist the urge to ask Storm

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Whether knowledge is so loose-weave

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Of a morning

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When deciding whether to leave

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Her apartment by the front door

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Or a window on her second floor.

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The food is delicious and Storm,

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Whilst avoiding all meat

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Happily sits and eats

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As the good doctor, slightly pissedly

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Holds court on some anachronistic aspect of medical history

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When Storm suddenly insists

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“But the human body is a mystery!

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Science just falls in a hole

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When it tries to explain the the nature of the soul.”

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My hostess throws me a glance

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She, like my wife, knows there’s a chance

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I’ll be off on one of my rare, but fun, rants

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But I shan't. My lips are sealed.

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I just want to enjoy the meal

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And although Storm is starting to get my goat

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I have no intention of rocking the boat,

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Although it’s becoming a bit of a wrestle

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Because -- like her meteorological namesake -

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Storm has no such concerns for our vessel.

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“Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy

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They promote drug dependency

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At the cost of the natural remedies

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That are all our bodies need

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They are immoral and driven by greed.

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Why take drugs

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When herbs can solve it?

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Why use chemicals

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When homeopathic solvents

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Can resolve it?

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It’s time we all return to live

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With natural medical alternatives.”

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And try as I like,

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A small crack appears

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In my diplomacy-dike.

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“By definition”, I begin

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“Alternative Medicine”, I continue

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“Has either not been proved to work,

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Or been proved not to work.

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Do you know what they call “alternative medicine”

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That’s been proved to work?

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Medicine.”

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“So you don’t believe

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In ANY Natural remedies?”

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“On the contrary, Storm.

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Actually, before we came to tea,

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I took a remedy

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Derived from the bark of a willow tree

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A painkiller that’s virtually side-effect free

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It’s got a weird name,

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Darling, what was it again?

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Masprin?

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Basprin?

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Oh, yes. Asprin!

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Which I paid about a buck for

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Down at the local drugstore.

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The debate briefly abates

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As our hosts collects plates

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but as they return with desserts

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Storm pertly asserts,

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“Shakespeare said it first:

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There are more things in heaven and earth

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Than exist in your philosophy…

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Science is just how we’re trained to look at reality,

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It doesn't explain love or spirituality.

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How does science explain psychics?

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Auras; the afterlife; the power of prayer?”

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I’m becoming aware

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That I’m staring,

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I’m like a rabbit suddenly trapped

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In the blinding headlights of vacuous crap.

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Maybe it’s the Hamlet she just misquothed

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Or the eighth glass of wine I just quaffed

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But my diplomacy dike groans

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And the arsehole held back by its stones

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Can be held back no more:

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“Look , Storm, I don’t mean to bore ya

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But there’s no such thing as an aura!

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Reading Auras is like reading minds

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Or tea-leaves or star-signs or meridian lines

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These people aren’t plying a skill,

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They are either lying or mentally ill.

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Same goes for people who claim they can hear God’s demands

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Or spiritual healers who think they've got magic hands.

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By the way,

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Why do we think it's OK

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For people to pretend they can talk to the dead?

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Isn't that totally fucked in the head?

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Lying to some crying woman whose child has died

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And telling her you’re in touch with the other side?

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I think that’s just fundamentally sick

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Do we need to clarify here that there’s no such thing as a psychic?

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What, are we fucking 2?

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Do we actually think that Horton Heard a Who?

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Do we still believe that Santa brings us gifts?

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That Michael Jackson didn't have face lifts?

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Are we still so stunned by circus tricks

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That we think that the dead would

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Wanna talk to pricks

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Like John Edwards?

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Storm to her credit despite my derision

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Keeps firing off clichés with startling precision

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Like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition

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“You’re so sure of your position

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But you’re just closed-minded

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I think you’ll find

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That your faith in science and tests

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Is just as blind

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As the faith of any fundamentalist”

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“Wow, that’s a good point, let me think for a bit

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Oh wait, my mistake, that’s absolute bullshit.

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Science adjusts it’s views based on what’s observed

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Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved.

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If you show me

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That, say, homeopathy works,

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Then I will change my mind

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I’ll spin on a fucking dime

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I’ll be as embarrassed as hell,

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But I will run through the streets yelling

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It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!

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Water has memory!

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And while it’s memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is Infinite

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It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!

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You show me that it works and how it works

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And when I’ve recovered from the shock

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I will take a compass and carve Fancy That on the side of my cock.”

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Everyone's just staring now,

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But I’m pretty pissed and I’ve dug this far down,

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So I figure, in for penny, in for a pound:

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“Life is full of mysteries, yeah

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But there are answers out there

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And they won’t be found

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By people sitting around

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Looking serious

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And saying isn’t life mysterious?

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Let’s sit here and hope

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Let’s call up the fucking Pope

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Let’s go watch Oprah

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Interview Deepak Chopra

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If you’re going to watch telly, you should watch Scooby Doo.

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That show was so cool

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because every time there’s a church with a ghoul

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Or a ghost in a school

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They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?

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The fucking janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide.

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Because throughout history

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Every mystery

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Ever solved has turned out to be

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Not Magic.

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Does the idea that there might be knowledge

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Frighten you?

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Does the idea that one afternoon

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On Wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you

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Frighten you?

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Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural

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So blow your hippy noodle

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That you would rather just stand in the fog

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Of your inability to Google?

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Isn’t this enough?

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Just this world?

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Just this beautiful, complex

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Wonderfully unfathomable, natural world?

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How does it so fail to hold our attention

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That we have to diminish it with the invention

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Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?

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If you’re so into Shakespeare

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Lend me your ear:

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“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

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To throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly”

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Or something like that.

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Or what about Satchmo?!

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I see trees of green,

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Red roses too,

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And fine, if you wish to

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Glorify Krishna and Vishnu

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In a post-colonial, condescending

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Bottled-up and labeled kind of way

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Then whatever, that’s ok.

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But here’s what gives me a hard-on:

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I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant bit of carbon.

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I have one life, and it is short

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And unimportant…

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But thanks to recent scientific advances

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I get to live twice as long as my great great great great uncleses and auntses.

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Twice as long to live this life of mine

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Twice as long to love this wife of mine

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Twice as many years of friends and wine

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Of sharing curries and getting shitty

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With good-looking hippies

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With fairies on their spines

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And butterflies on their titties.

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And if perchance I have offended

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Think but this and all is mended:

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We’d as well be 10 minutes back in time,

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For all the chance you’ll change your mind.

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Written and performed by Tim Minchin

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Directed by DC Turner

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Produced by Tracy King

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Character Design and animation by DC Turner

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Camera & Effects: Ricky Earl, Fraser Davidson, DC Turner, Andrew Flatt

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Supporting Character Animation: Ricky Earl, Kei Phillips, Ash Collins, Valentina Grasso, Betty Le Bon, Fraser Davidson

00:10:02.650 --> 00:10:06.778
Supporting character artwork: Kei Phillips, Ricky Earl, Diego Garcia, Betty Le Bon, Fraiser Davidson, Rachael King, Stuart Mason, Manu Roig

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Sound: Milton Mermikedes, Bridget Merkimedes, Holley Gray, Matthias Simmons, Pete Clements

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Additional Storyboards: Tracy King, Fraser Davidson, Ricky Earl, Joe Pavlo

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With thanks to: Sid Rodrigues, Rebecca Watson, Jane Goldman and family, Chris Blohm, Loretta King, Susan Turner

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With thanks to: Lyndsey Brown, Shella Livingston, Helen Jack, Chris Cox, Tom Milsom, Robin Ince

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© Storm Movie 2011 All Rights Reserved. stormmovie.net, timminchin.com, kershoot.com