This song seems to be about oil and how our reliance on it is both killing us and degrading our quality of life. "Yesterday was nice / And today looked fine" -- everything seems OK right now, but the fact is that it's not "all alright." It's pretty fucking bleak because we're being slowly killed by gasoline fumes without realizing it and without CHOICE, since the politicians don't make laws with their citizens' well-being in mind, they do so in favor of their greed and the demand for oil. Also, to be "under the glass of the microscope" makes me think that people are really being trivialized and objectified by this whole process. If people die, get cancer, lose their jobs because of an oil spill, what does it matter? We're just pawns in this game. We are like tiny, powerless organisms in a petri dish in comparison to the structures that entomb and use us--politics, consumerism, the demand for oil. Perhaps the lyrics "Tilt your head back, don't choke" is a wry call to maintain our dignity in the face of these forces, even though they're ultimately too much for us.
This song seems to be about oil and how our reliance on it is both killing us and degrading our quality of life. "Yesterday was nice / And today looked fine" -- everything seems OK right now, but the fact is that it's not "all alright." It's pretty fucking bleak because we're being slowly killed by gasoline fumes without realizing it and without CHOICE, since the politicians don't make laws with their citizens' well-being in mind, they do so in favor of their greed and the demand for oil. Also, to be "under the glass of the microscope" makes me think that people are really being trivialized and objectified by this whole process. If people die, get cancer, lose their jobs because of an oil spill, what does it matter? We're just pawns in this game. We are like tiny, powerless organisms in a petri dish in comparison to the structures that entomb and use us--politics, consumerism, the demand for oil. Perhaps the lyrics "Tilt your head back, don't choke" is a wry call to maintain our dignity in the face of these forces, even though they're ultimately too much for us.