Mr. Bad Example

by Warren Zevon

as it appears on the album "Learning to Flinch"

Faithfully transcribed by Jeremy Sarna

I started as an altar boy working in the church

Learning all my holy moves and doing some research

Which led me to a cash box labelled "Children's Fund"

I left the coins and tucked the bills inside my cummerbund

I got a part time job at my father's carpet store

Laying tackless stripping and housewives by the score

I loaded up their furniture and took it to Spokane

and auctioned off every last Naugahyde divan

I'm very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins

I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in

I'm proud to be a glutton and I don't have time for sloth

I'm greedy and I'm angry and I don't care who I cross

I'm Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt

I like to have a good time and I don't care who gets hurt

I'm Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me

I'll live to be a hundred and go down in infamy

Of course I went to law school, took a law degree

Counselled all my clients to plead insanity

Then worked in hair replacement swindling the bald

Where very few are chosen and fewer still are called

Then on to Monte Carlo to play chemin de faire

I threw away the fortune I made transplanting hair

I put my last few francs down on a prostitute

Who took me up to her room to perform the flag salute

Whereupon I stole her passport and her wig

Headed for the airport and the midnight flight, you dig?

Fourteen hours later I was down in Adelaide

Flipping through the want ads sipping Fosters in the shade

I opened up an agency somewhere down the line

To hire aboriginals to work the opal mines

But I attached their wages and took a whopping cut

Whisked away their workman's comp and pauperized the lot

I bought a first class ticket on Malaysian Air

Landed in Sri Lanka none the worse for wear

I'm thinking of retiring from all my dirty deals

And I'll see you in the next life, wake me up for meals!