Get the Lead Out

My idea is either new age “rappers” and/or drug use. It makes me think of “The Package” with the no time for chit chat reference. And suck it up buttercup. And how places have “safe zones” for addicts, hence the “no time to coddle you” part comes in. Just an idea!

"Get the lead out" is a way of saying: Hurry up!

The whole song is clearly about time and (to me) how society is driving us to making a bad use of it: rushing for everything.

"Ain't got time for that"

"No time to cuddle you"

I believe Billy here is trying to make us stop and think about slowing down a bit. There is always no damn time.

PS Do you observe people swiping down their Facebook wall sometimes in the train or metro? God they go fast: do they really read something? XD

This song is the last in the album for a reason, it's telling us to take what we learned from the album's reality check to get off our asses and make reasonable change that can stop the coming apocalypse.

I think there are two ways of looking at this song. The idiomatic is using American street slang to say “stop talking, get rid of the problem, it’s time to do something” while the literal refers to the problem of guns control by mentioning the “Get the lead out of schools” bill and opposing the “gun up buttercup” slogan. When you put them together, there’s a clear message calling to resolve the guns problem now.

Prior to the Industrial age time was almost solely kept by the cycles of nature relevant to agricultural activity, i.e., people judged time based on the cycles of the sun. Even into the 18th century precise time was almost non-existent and time would be different in Philadelphia than it was in New York. The first timetable for railroads didn\'t occur until 1830. The Industrial age changed all this, assembly lines were turned into templates for human activity. Soon after the factories imposed time schedules, schools, hospitals, government offices, etc., were quick to follow. Where once 1 clock might have existed in an entire town or county, we now have more timepieces in our homes than in some pre-industrial countries. In fact, we consult our clocks dozens of times a day where an average medieval man did not normally know the year. Now \nwe wake up, catch transportation, perform our work, build our work around, build our social lives around and watch our football games, all under the auspices of industrial time. Where once we had drinks after the sun went down until it rose again, now we meet at 9pm precisely and the bar closes by 2. The Industrial Revolution brought about many societal upheavals and industrial time is one of them. The greatest impact (or destruction) on our society wrought by the Industrial Revolution is the elimination of families and local communities and replacement by the state and market. Therefore, I believe this song is a type of prophetic warning that we have to be aware of the forces that are driving our behavior because they may not be in-line with our very existence. At the least they can cause massive negative disturbances in our society that can lead to less enjoyable/purposeful lives, create divisions, and allow political trolls, sociopaths and other clever agents to blind us to truth and bring pain and destruction.