I might be way off base here but I have always pictured a bunch of people playing competitive video games with each other.
"Born is a human with a kung fu spine" that's your typical fighting game character, and "Equipped with a detector of what's on your mind" That's the video game controller in your hand with which you tell the game character how to act.
"to get to the top of the hill" maybe a stretch but a lot of game have a king of the hill as a game mode.
"Jacks in the road yeah fix the breaks" plenty of racing/kart racing games where this is a mechanic.
"it's the madness that's keeping us up all night" its almost a cliche, staying up late playing video games.
"Born is a human with mechanics to win; Born is machine with a human tucked in" I think this is just hammers in the dynamic of these individuals interacting through the video game.
"Your honor your honor its not me; It's the invisible visible evil powers that be" and this is when you cry fowl because your button got stuck, or input lag, or you totally push left and not forward, left, LEFT.
@andrew1076 - I like your analysis. At first I felt this was more using allusions of video games to hint at real life, but I feel it is more directly about video games after reading your take on it. However, your allusion to a video game mechanic is still quite different from my interpretation. I hear "jacks in the road" as a reference to caltrops (which look like the jacks found in the children's game). Caltrops, though designed long ago for horses, are used by police to blow out tires on cars driving past roadblocks. A crafty person can use...
@andrew1076 - I like your analysis. At first I felt this was more using allusions of video games to hint at real life, but I feel it is more directly about video games after reading your take on it. However, your allusion to a video game mechanic is still quite different from my interpretation. I hear "jacks in the road" as a reference to caltrops (which look like the jacks found in the children's game). Caltrops, though designed long ago for horses, are used by police to blow out tires on cars driving past roadblocks. A crafty person can use them to sabotage other race competitors' tires. "Fix the brakes" would refer to fixing in a cheating sense, that is sabotaging the brakes of competitors. Again, it's a way to get ahead, doing anything.
I do like the video game allusions, though. I thought of your ideas as well though not so literally, and I am not even a gamer. The concept of Kung Fu Spine is clearly easy to associate with video games and I would suspect the lyricist knows that. Others I had not paid attention to, but I like what you said about them. Cool!
I might be way off base here but I have always pictured a bunch of people playing competitive video games with each other.
"Born is a human with a kung fu spine" that's your typical fighting game character, and "Equipped with a detector of what's on your mind" That's the video game controller in your hand with which you tell the game character how to act. "to get to the top of the hill" maybe a stretch but a lot of game have a king of the hill as a game mode. "Jacks in the road yeah fix the breaks" plenty of racing/kart racing games where this is a mechanic. "it's the madness that's keeping us up all night" its almost a cliche, staying up late playing video games. "Born is a human with mechanics to win; Born is machine with a human tucked in" I think this is just hammers in the dynamic of these individuals interacting through the video game. "Your honor your honor its not me; It's the invisible visible evil powers that be" and this is when you cry fowl because your button got stuck, or input lag, or you totally push left and not forward, left, LEFT.
@andrew1076 - I like your analysis. At first I felt this was more using allusions of video games to hint at real life, but I feel it is more directly about video games after reading your take on it. However, your allusion to a video game mechanic is still quite different from my interpretation. I hear "jacks in the road" as a reference to caltrops (which look like the jacks found in the children's game). Caltrops, though designed long ago for horses, are used by police to blow out tires on cars driving past roadblocks. A crafty person can use...
@andrew1076 - I like your analysis. At first I felt this was more using allusions of video games to hint at real life, but I feel it is more directly about video games after reading your take on it. However, your allusion to a video game mechanic is still quite different from my interpretation. I hear "jacks in the road" as a reference to caltrops (which look like the jacks found in the children's game). Caltrops, though designed long ago for horses, are used by police to blow out tires on cars driving past roadblocks. A crafty person can use them to sabotage other race competitors' tires. "Fix the brakes" would refer to fixing in a cheating sense, that is sabotaging the brakes of competitors. Again, it's a way to get ahead, doing anything.
I do like the video game allusions, though. I thought of your ideas as well though not so literally, and I am not even a gamer. The concept of Kung Fu Spine is clearly easy to associate with video games and I would suspect the lyricist knows that. Others I had not paid attention to, but I like what you said about them. Cool!