Archive for the 'Random Thoughts' Category

Caving In

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Jamie Spong in the field of Random Thoughts.

♪ All the people are so happy now, their heads are caving in

I’m glad they are a snowman with protective rubber skin… ♫

There’s something that’s been bothering me about a lyric from a They Might Be Giants song.

The song is Nothing’s Gonna Change My Clothes and it’s the first line in the song. My problem with it is that it’s too ambiguous.

I’ve thought about it for a while, and I’ve narrowed-down three plausible interpretations of the line “the people are so happy now their heads are caving in”.

  1. “The people are so happy now. On an unrelated note, their heads are caving in.” There is no direct correlation between the people’s happiness and the caving in of their heads.
  2. “The people are so happy, now, that their heads are caving in.” In other words, the people’s heads are caving in as a result of their currently high levels of happiness.
  3. “The people are so happy now because their heads are caving in.” A reversal of 2; in this case, the people’s heads caving in causes them to be happy.

Further inspection of the liner notes of Then: The Earlier Years reveals that the lyric is written with a comma after the word “now”. This would suggest that interpretation 3 is incorrect. However, we are still left with two possible interpretations of the line. Are people really suffering from caved-in heads due to extreme joy? And what exactly is meant by “caving in”? Are their heads literally collapsing or are they merely suffering from debilitating headaches?

Moreover, why are they a snowman? And how?

Carrots to this. I’m done. ㋼

They Might Be Giants’ new album, Join Us, is released on the 19th of July; a preview EP is available now. They will be appearing in London at KOKO on July the 15th. See you there.

This post has 0 Comments at this time. Care to add something?

Planeview Bench

Posted on April 17, 2010 by Jamie Spong in the field of Random Thoughts.

Ever been to Kew Gardens? Lovely place. Go during the spring; it’s far too hot (or far too wet) in the summer.

Now, Kew Gardens is located just a few miles away from London Heathrow Airport. As such, aeroplanes fly over it. A lot of aeroplanes. An awful lot of aeroplanes.

One thing that sits in my mind in particular is a bench that I usually end up taking a break on whenever I visit. You get a nice view across the green with a few trees at the end. But this bench is underneath a flight path. From behind one of the trees, a plane appears. It flies towards the gardens. Before it disappears overhead, another plane ascends from the tree. Again, it flies overhead, only for another aeroplane to grow into existence. On average, I’d say that there’s a turnaround of a minute or two.

It doesn’t really annoy me; by the time that they get to Kew, the planes are high enough to make only a small amount of noise. It’s just something that I noticed.

If you’ve been following the news lately, you’ll be aware of the giant cloud of ash that’s been holding up (or, should I say, holding down) European flights. Across the United Kingdom, aeroplanes are grounded and incoming flights are forbidden. To some, this is a bad thing; many, many tourists are trapped in foreign nations, with limited means to get home. Ferries and trains have been overwhelmed. Personally, I’m just glad that we chose to visit Venice a week earlier.

But there is one party surely overjoyed by the airspace closure: people who live near airports. For the first time, people living in places like Hatton and Yeadon can leave their houses without fear of engines roaring overhead. Just this morning, the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 ran a lovely story on how beautifully quiet London is now. If I lived in Hounslow, I know that I’d be making the most of it.

So if you’re in Richmond, Twickenham or somewhere else on the Tube map with money enough to get you there and back again, get yourself down to Kew. This may be the only time in this lifetime that it’ll be aeroplane-free.

Or you could just come up here and visit Harlow Carr. Your choice. ㋼

This post has 0 Comments at this time. Care to add something?