Themes
The album, made in 1998, lampoons the various world-threatening results which were being predicted from the Y2K bug. It also satirizes the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the Joe Camel controversy, and the Art Bell radio show.
A running gag involves eyeballs, which at one moment represent binary digits (the digit 1 resembles the letter I, a homophone of "eye", while the digit 0 is in the shape of a ball) and at other times seem to be an allusion to The Residents ("Guyz in Eyeball Hats"). Another is "U.S. Plus", an apparent multi-national conglomerate with intentionally vague commercials that hint at their all-encompassing presence ("We're U.S. Plus. We own the idea...of America!")
The album consists almost entirely of new ideas, the only significant nods to the past being a reappearance of Proctor's Ralph Spoilsport character (introduced in How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All), the presence of Harold Hiphugger and Ray Hamberger (introduced in Everything You Know Is Wrong), and a telephone conversation with Caroline Presskey from Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.
Read more about this topic: Give Me Immortality Or Give Me Death
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)