A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life  (right click and open in new tab to hear this song)

John Lennon and Paul McCartney

I read the news today oh boy


About a lucky man who made the grade

And though the news was rather sad

Well I just had to laugh

I saw the photograph

He blew his mind out in a car

He didn't notice that the lights had changed

A crowd of people stood and stared

They'd seen his face before

Nobody was really sure

If he was from the House of Lords.



I saw a film today oh boy

The English Army had just won the war

A crowd of people turned away

but I just had to look

Having read the book

I'd love to turn you on

Woke up, fell out of bed,

Dragged a comb across my head

Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,

And looking up I noticed I was late.

Found my coat and grabbed my hat

Made the bus in seconds flat

Found my way upstairs and had a smoke,

and Somebody spoke and I went into a dream



I read the news today oh boy

Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire

And though the holes were rather small

They had to count them all

Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

I'd love to turn you on

How Lucky is this???

Check this out. I was just looking at my Yahoo home page and saw this news ite. It answers most of my "lick" questions.

How to Get Lucky

Oh Boy!

Where does this expression come from?
Do other languages have the same expression?

Wake UP!

What time do most people wake in the morning?
How many hours does the average person sleep?

Crowd

What is crowd mentality?
How are crowds measured?
Where did the expressions "Three's a Crowd" come from?

Is it news or propaganda?

I had a conversation last night with an Iranian expat in the US since 1978. He was drunk, and loud, and eventually got around to blaming all the world's problems on "Zionists."

I told him that, while I agree that the US caused most of its international problems (practically creating the Taliban, putting Saddam Hussein in power, encouraging and supporting Iraq's war with Iran, and on and on) I have a problem with blaming all the word's problems on the Jews. But, it got me thinking about our impression about ourselves. What I mean is "What do Americans believe Americans are?" Beyond that, what does the rest of the world think Americans are? Finally, how much of what we think about ourselves has been manufactured by the media.

After all, Noam Chomsky is Jewish, and he is a major force in criticizing US  policy--both foreign and domestic.
Here are a few things he has to say on the subject:

• All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
• Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.
• Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.
• Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.  
• I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system
• If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion. 
• Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. 
• The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
• The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - "indoctrination," we might say - exercised through the mass media.    

 
I want to read the book and see the Noam Chomsky video Manufacturing Consent. Maybe this idea of the power of the American Media will be the focus of my investigation this semester.

Blow your Mind

This is an interesting phrase from my youth. I remember using it, but did it really come from my time, or is it from an earlier time? Is it a drug reference? Who started it? What does it mean exactly?

According to Hunter Davies (Davies, Hunter (1968). The Beatles. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Book Co.. p. 357. ISBN 0-070-154-570.) It has nothing to do with drugs within the context of the song. A friend of Lennon and McCartney, Tara Browne, the Guinness heir, was the inspiration for this line. He died in a car crash. He didn't "blow his ind out ina car" but Lennon says Browne was on his mind as he wrote that line of the song.