Monday, September 21, 2009

"Get 'Em Out By Friday"

Only the most hard-core progressive rock geeks would recognize the headline as title of the seminal epic song by Genesis (when Peter Gabriel was their singer and Phil Collins mostly played drums). It was on the Foxtrot album, along with the other classics, "Watcher of the Skies" and the side-long epic "Supper's Ready."

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a video online of the band performing this song.

However, the premise of the song is this: Various government and/or corporate interests are buying up real estate in England to make way for new homes, evicting tenants and owners who are already on hard times, moving them to a "block of flats with central heating." A man known as "The Winkler" intones:
I represent a firm of gentlemen who recently purchased this house and all the others in the road
In the interests of humanity we've found a better place for you to go, go, go


What the poor evictees are slowly learning is that the reason for these purchases is because people will soon be restricted to a height of only four feet, and because "It's said, now that people will be shorter in height/They can fit twice as many in the same building site."

Great little creepy science fiction tale for 1972, right? Well, dig this: William Saletan at Slate proposes that in order to save the planet, we should be breeding people to be smaller. Studies are showing that having fewer children and promoting contraception will do more to combat climate change than all the other things we're doing to try to save our planet.

Well, no one would ever volunteer to do that, and one can only imagine that a government would have the foresight, let alone the ability, to force such a genetic breeding program on its citizens. So no chance of this happening, as I can see it. But score one for Peter Gabriel for prescience.

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