This is a warning to my neices and nephews. As you grow older you will acquire strange and unusual tastes in food, music, and even friends. Incredible as it may seem, you might even mutate to the point where you like someone like Tom Waits.

A decade ago a co-worker tried to interest me in his Tom Waits collection. That's singing? No thanks. Eventually I discovered that, like blue cheese or anchovies, Tom Waits is an acquired taste. Inexplicable, certainly, like when Dad started eating pickled Herring. I'd come home from school and the only thing in the fridge is a can of Coors and a couple jars of grey and milky white fish wedges. Now here I am at the same age and listening to Tom Waits, the pickled herring of music. There's some sort of balance in that.

On this morning's walk into work we popped out of the woods and onto the road just as Tom croaked out of the iPod with Goin' Out West.

I know karate, voodoo too
I'm gonna make myself available to you
I don't need no make up, I got real scars
I got hair on my chest, I look good without a shirt

As with any lyrics they make more sense in the context of the music...sort of. I must have repeated the track a half dozen times before we hit the office. I'd heard it before but this morning it seemed a fitting soundtrack to the rush of morning traffic.

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