Purely For Fun: Song Lyrics That Make No Sense

I was thinking about this, having recently started listening to The Killers. I like them, even though they seem to be outisde of my normal likes for music, (Ie, they are very heavy on the syntesizers, and they were made in the past 10 years or so). So "Somebody Told Me". Catchy song, well produced and everything, but I ask you to critically consider the lyrics.
Lets start off at the beginning
Breaking my back just to know your name
(If I ever have to have blunt trauma done to my spine in the course of an introduction, I'm probably better off not knowing the person)
Seventeen tracks and I've had it with this game

(tracks of what? CD tracks? Moose tracks? What game? Scrabble?)
I'm breaking my back just to know your name

(We're aware, sir)
But heaven ain't close in a place like this

(Assuming heaven is in the sky, heaven would be pretty much the same distance wherever you go. Am I assume he is making a comment about the altitude?)
Anything goes but don't blink you might miss
(Might miss what?. My eyes are watering now)
Cause heaven ain't close in a place like this
I said heaven ain't close in a place like this

(We know what you said)
Bring it back down, bring it back down tonight

(Heaven? His back?)
Never thought I'd let a rumor ruin my moonlight

(I can't see anything on this night! I heard a rumor, and its completely ruined my moonlight!)

Alright, pretty standard song lyrics thus far. I make fun of them, but you can make fun of anything by the standards I just used. Its the chorus that's the real head scratcher.
Well somebody told me
(Why would somebody be telling you this?)
You had a boyfriend
Who looked like a girlfriend
(Wait, this was a guy? Who looked like a girl? And who is he talking to?)
That I had in February of last year

(Why is February important?)
It's not confidential

(Why would this be confidential? Unless the fact said boyfriend looked like a girlfriend was the result of an experiment gone horribly wrong. Then I could see how this would be confidential. Perhaps that is what's going on here. We may never know)
I've got potential

(Forget it. This makes no sense. It's just catchy. Kids these days.)

So that was a cheap laugh. But there are many song lyrics, that when you think of them, make no sense. Brandon Flowers is not the only culprit. Take for instance, Anthony Kiedis talking in "Dani California"
"With a name like Dani California

The day was gonna come when I was gonna mourn ya"

Why would a name be necessarily indicative of an untimely death? I see the name Dani California, I don't think, that girl is going to die. I think, "Hm, that girl is name after a state, but has the first name of a dude I went to high school with". What does Anthony Kiedis see in my name? "You will become an accountant". And if indeed the name "Dani California" is indicative of an early demise, why would anyone name their kid that?

Lest you think that only today's rockers are prone to nonsensicality (yes, I see the red underline, but I mantain that should be a word), I bring you this line from The Rolling Stones' "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown"
Your mother who neglected you
Owes a million dollars tax.
And your father's still perfecting ways of making sealing wax.

I get the mother neglecting you and owing a million dollars tax. But why is the father still perfecting ways of making sealant wax? "Still" implies he's been doing this for a while. As if this is a man who is possessed by making the perfect sealing wax, a man who wakes up in the morning and says "I'm going to perfect sealing wax", and sets about doing that with unmatched dedication and diligence, leaving his wife sink into debt, and his daughter sleep with and then infuriate Mick Jagger enough to write a song about it. Actually, that makes perfect sense.

This is all I can think of off the top of my head, but there are probably more. Maybe I'll get around to doing more. We'll see.

Thoughts on Osama's Death, through the lens of Elvis and Johnny Cash

One of my favorite songs, second perhaps to the White Stripes' "Death Letter", is the posthumously released "God's Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash. Cash's voice is quiet, world weary, but speaks with deadly seriousness. The guitar gives us a bleak and threatening atmosphere like a cold, windy, desert He's tired of trying to catch up with those who've been running for a long time, but he wants them to know that they will soon have their divine just desserts. It feels like what reading Neviim Achronim should feel like. I often hum it to myself when I read the stories of Eliyahu in Malachim Alef, and I imagine the Kotzker Rebbe walking into rooms with this playing in the background It's about as perfect a song as you'll ever find, representing, cold, hard, divine justice. So I was surprised when I found out that it was an old gospel song, covered by Elvis Presley for one, which was not originally sung with the world weariness of an old Johnny Cash, but as a finger snappingly happy gospel tune. So, this was weird for me for a bit, but I thought about for a bit. People often ask how there can be a God when the world is full of evil. This is a good question, in fact, I would say, the essential question religion tries to answer by providing a program for ridding the world of evil. So why is it those same people who are so upset by tales of violence in Jewish Tradition. I don't mean stuff like the commandment to kill Amalek, which actually seem morally problematic at first glance. I mean stories like Shmuel killing Agag, or Eliyahu killing the Neviei Ha'Baal, or instances in Judaism where we have the death penalty. "How can it be so violent? Violence is wrong?" Well, if you're really serious about being upset that the world is evil, then something has to be done to get that going. Evil is not going to cease to exist by sit ins and candle light vigils. If you really, really wish to rid the world of evil, and you hate evil, then sometimes killing has to be done. Now obviously this is not an easy thing to accomplish on a pure level. And you have to be really, really, ridiculously careful knowing what is evil and what is something you merely don't like. But once something or someone which is unquestionably evil has been utterly destroyed? That's a reason to celebrate, to sing finger snappingly upbeat gospel songs unto the Lord. And this is not a crass, primitive sort of "HA! WE KICKED HIS ASS!" kind of celebration. It's a celebration born of a sense of moral sensitivity, that cannot bear to see evil triumph in this world, and when it is defeated, truly feels glad that it has been. Osama Bin Laden was evil. Unquestionably, undoubtably evil. There is no excuse for killing 3,000 innocent people. His death is a gain for mankind, and worthy of celebration. You may run on for a long time, for 10 years, through Afghanistan and Pakistan and hole up in your million dollar compounds, but sooner or later, God's gonna cut you down.

After A Long Break, Part 2

Well, its been a while since I updated my last post which I left off in the middle of. I'd say it was because I was being productive, but sadly, I usuallly was not, usually I ended up procastinating writing it until I forgot about it. In the meantime, I had been doing a lot of other thinking, a lot of other reading, so a lot has changed in the things and way I think. I've decided to attempt to update this blog regularly so that I have a record of what I was thinking at a given time, and also, so that I can at least feel like I'm doing something.
So, where was I? God, outside of time, and free will.
As I see it, the two sides of the argument go like this. If God is Omnipotent and controls everything in particular, from leaves falling down to what I wear today, then that leaves no room for free will, since everything was predetermined. I've come to the conclusion that that position is morally untenable. Free Will is a necessity if we are to be held responsible for our actions. However, saying that God doesn't control everything, that he started the machine and it runs on its own, is theologically untenable if we are to believe in an Omnipotent and all-powerful God. One side is morally problematic, and one side is theologically problematic. So while there are those who are content to leave it as a paradox, saying the two are mutually contradictory but both true, which is a road I see a lot of merit in, I see my own way of understanding it. God is omnipotent and nothing happens without his willing it to be done. That makes theological sense. But what about us? Is everything predetermined from our end? No. There is no predetermination by God, as there is no "pre". Nothing has been decided already, but rather, from God's perspective, is in a constant state of being decided. Creation is happening at the same time as the end of time at the same time that I am making whatever decision I am making. Once I make it, it becomes part of the world God created. You have the ability to make that decision in the present, but once you've already made it, your decision was "predetermined". Perhaps I'm not making any sense, so an example. I have a doughnut in front of me. I could decide to eat the doughnut, or not eat the doughnut. At the moment I am making the decision, I have free will whether to eat said doughnut. I cannot claim that God compelled me to eat the doughnut, which if I was able to do so, would be morally problematic. At the moment, the world exists in a state of a safek as to whether I eat said doughnut or not. Now let's say I eat the doughnut. The world is now a world in which I have already eaten said doughnut. God created a world in which I ate the doughnut. I have no free will as to whether I ate the doughnut. I did have free will to eat it. The past becomes part of the world God created (which from his perspective, is BEING created) and its plan for it. It is now part of the divine plan that I ate that doughnut. We tend to, as time bound beings, view past decisions as "I could have done this, or I could have done this". But God does not view things that way. There is no past to God. What you did already only could have happened that way. But what you're doing now is up to you. And ultimately, even if I'm dead wrong, thats what it comes down to. We need not concern ourselves with God's perspective so much. We're here to do our job, and we need to accept both the concepts of an all-powerful God and Free Will and the responsibility that comes with that. This kind of mental acrobatics will perhaps help people who find these questions an obstacle to doing what they need to do, but our religion is not one that focuses on such questions. The main thing is, learn, do mitzvos, be a good person, and try to bring the divine down to the world we live in.