MAKING MONSTERS FOR MY FRIENDS

by Charles Carreon

The Ramones wrote:
Click here to play "I'm Makin' Monsters For My Friends"

Everybody said so, man ...
You could see it on T.V.
They stood there ashamed with nowhere to go

Nobody wants them now
The kids are alright
Every day is a holiday
Pushin' people around

I'm making monsters for my friends
I'm making monsters for my friends

Someone caught one I could see so myself
I had to call 254 so they wouldn't blame me
We wanted to know how much trouble there was
When we asked our Daddy, he said, "It's just because."

I'm making monsters for my friends
I'm making monsters for my friends

I don't wanna open a can of worms and
I don't want any Spagetti-Os
And I could always tell when
someone is holding a grudge

I'm making monsters for my friends
I'm making monsters for my friends
I'm making monsters for my friends
I'm making monsters for my friends

This song is on the last Ramones album, Adios Amigos, which has the cheapest, schtickiest photo shoot on the back. They've got the band like about to be put in front of a firing squad, and their hands are tied behind their backs with some cheap skinny twine, like they're not even desperados, they're parcels. But the album was great even though the photography sucked, and this song is one of the greatest. It's of course impossible to estimate the beauty of a song like this from looking at the lyrics. It's the merest symbolism really, a cipher for the ineffable experience of listening to the Ramones on your car stereo, or in your living room, bedroom, wedding chapel, church, bathhouse, or suicide parlor.

Like many of the best Ramones songs, I have no idea what the song is "about," and I have no doubt it is about something. Just the image, though, of someone hiding in a basement splitting protons and every now and then whipping out a few monsters for their friends, that's what I love about that song.

You could have all kinds of friends if you made monsters. It's the sort of thing a geeky kid would do.

Lawyers are kind of geeky, at least corporate lawyers are, and so maybe they like to make corporate monsters for their powerful friends.

A corporate monster is something to see.
A centralized, integrated,
Ball-bearing, four-squaring,
Profit-sucking, downsizing,
Lean mean people-fucking machine.

A corporate monster is something to see.
A remote-controlled distintegrator
Hemispheric renovator
On a rampage with a license to breed
Its own mechanistic seed.

John Lennon wrote:
Click hear to play "Working Class Hero"

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of at all
'Til the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow the rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
You think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile when you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero, well then just follow me
If you want to be a hero, well then just follow me

The drive to take on the corporate abuse of human beings is beginning to get a little momentum. The Sun just published an Interview with Robert Hinckley, a corporate lawyer who is trying to get corporate law changed to include a duty to take cognizance of the concerns of human beings, as well as profit, when making decisions. His plan is to add "28 words" to the law of corporations:

Robert Hinckley wrote:

The duty of directors henceforth shall be to make money for shareholders but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, public health and safety, dignity of employees, and the welfare of the communities in which the company operates.

Not really an outrageous proposal. Tara even questioned why it would add anything to the law as it stands. I responded that adding this limitation on the right to garner profit would motivate corporate boards to consider "the environment, human rights, etc.," which they currently are actually deterred from doing by laws that say that the board's duty is to maximize profit for the corporation, and to offload costs onto "outsiders" -- workers, the public health, the environment, unborn generations. Eliminating this heartless and backward excuse for atavistic behavior by the corporate elite would certainly alter a significant tenet of corporate responsibility.

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