The singer didn't go off to war himself: his less well-off cousins did. He just put a yellow ribbon on his bumper to send the message that he "supports the troops." College kids like him don't join the army - they go off on day trips to the coast to hang out with girls and their sisters to drink expensive wine and try to forget how awful the rest of the world is.
He takes pains to avoid the news channels and parks the dial on MTV or something equally vapid. "Lay me on the table, put flowers in my mouth and we can say we invented a summer-loving torture party." This is waterboarding imagery. He's acutely aware of the dichotomy between his heavenly life cavorting at the beach house with two beautiful girls while his cousins and countrymen fight and die in the dust and sand of ugly wars full of torture and terror. He doesn't want to think about them. He wants this day, this beautiful moment to be his whole world - his eternity, but he knows the lemon-scented cleanness of the moment he's in merely masks the stench of the world that it is built on.
The singer didn't go off to war himself: his less well-off cousins did. He just put a yellow ribbon on his bumper to send the message that he "supports the troops." College kids like him don't join the army - they go off on day trips to the coast to hang out with girls and their sisters to drink expensive wine and try to forget how awful the rest of the world is. He takes pains to avoid the news channels and parks the dial on MTV or something equally vapid. "Lay me on the table, put flowers in my mouth and we can say we invented a summer-loving torture party." This is waterboarding imagery. He's acutely aware of the dichotomy between his heavenly life cavorting at the beach house with two beautiful girls while his cousins and countrymen fight and die in the dust and sand of ugly wars full of torture and terror. He doesn't want to think about them. He wants this day, this beautiful moment to be his whole world - his eternity, but he knows the lemon-scented cleanness of the moment he's in merely masks the stench of the world that it is built on.