“You have just constructed a straw man so large you could burn it in the desert and hold an annoying festival around it.”

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Don't Let It Bring You Down
Song lyrics, After the Gold Rush (1970)

Source: The Alchemist

Source: 1970s, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)
Context: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

As quoted in "Digerati are unlikely celebrants of a primitivist conflagration in the Nevada desert." by Edward Rothstein, in The New York Times (21 July 1997) https://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/21/business/digerati-are-unlikely-celebrants-primitivist-conflagration-nevada-desert.html

L'ambition prend aux petites âmes plus facilement qu'aux grandes, comme le feu prend plus aisément à la paille, aux chaumières qu'aux palais.
Maximes et Pensées, #68
Reflections

Mitch All Together (2003)

Source: The Story of Us

Song For A Winter's Night, Track 10, United Artists A hauntingly beautiful version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbgfXp5M02M
The Way I Feel (1967)