I was hell-bent on destroying my powers of concentration
While you were living like a saint
And all the time the very one you trusted was washing off

somebody else's paint
Now you've got yourself a brand new occupation
Every fleeting thought is a pearl

And beautiful people stampede to the doorway
of the funniest $#&@er in the world


They're here to help you
Satisfy your desire
There's a bright future for all you professional liars


[Chorus:]
Now you know how to be dumb

Are you ready to take your place in the modern museum of
mistakes?
Don't you know how to be dumb?

Like a building thrown up overnight in one of those reverse
earthquakes


They emptied out all the asylums, they emptied out all the
gaols
The "New Bruise" was the name of a dance craze

By "Jesus Cross and the Cruel Nails"
Followed up by "Torturing Little Beaver"
With their contraption of barbed wire

Between the fear and the fever lies all the rejection they
require
They'll be howling by midnight, they'll be drooling by dawn

Skulls shrunk down to the size of their brains
Heads shaven and shorn


[Chorus]

Trapped in the House of the Perpetual Sucker

Where bitterness always ends so pitifully
You always had to dress up your envy in some half-remembered
philosophy


Now you're masquerading as pale powdered genius
Whose ever bad intention has been purged

You could've walked out any time you wanted but face it you
didn't have the courage
I guess that makes you a full time hypocrite or some kind of

twisted dilettante
Funny though people don't usually get so ugly till they think
they know what they want

Scratch your own head stupid
Count up to three
Roll over on your back

Repeat after me

Don't you know how to be dumb?

Are you ready to take your place in the modern museum of
mistakes?
Don't you know how to be dumb?

Like a building thrown up overnight in one of those reverse
earthquakes