Understanding Nothing

There are many sites on the internet carrying the lyrics to Lou Reed and John Cale’s “Song for Drella” album. Interestingly it seems that the vast majority of them are wrong.

There’s a wonderful couplet in “Faces and Names”: People who want to meet the name I have / Are always disappointed in me. But almost every site that carries the lyrics has this as “… always disappointed when they meet me”.

Similarly there seem to be many sites that carry the text of the Robert Frost poem “The Road Less Traveled”. Of course, there’s no such poem (that phrase doesn’t even exist in it); the title is actually “The Road Not Taken”.

There’s always a temptation to believe that the better attested to something is, the more likelihood it is to be true. Truth is never that simple.

Note to self:

Although the Abacus Chinese Restraurant on the corner of Eglantine Avenue and Malone Road does really good food really cheaply, remember that it pulls the nasty trick of pouring its soft drinks from 2-litre bottles that have been sitting around and have probably gone stale. (They do 500ml bottles of Ballygowan though which they bring to the table). Also remember that they pull the other nasty trick of charging 3% extra if you want to pay by credit card.