Other than the chorus, I don’t believe lyrics matter much when it comes to writing a mega hit song. I think it’s more about what the song sounds like and the catchy chorus rather than what story or message the writer/musician is trying to convey.

‘Proof’ you say?

Have you listened to a Bob Dylan song lately and tried to make sense of the lyrics? How about that 70s perennial, Stairway to Heaven – I defy anyone to make sense of that one!

My manifesto on mega hit songs is not isolated to music, but carries over to common sayings used by all of us, which are meant to be profound yet end up being conversational pie fillings without the crust to hold it together.

Take, “What goes around comes around” (definition of a circle?) this is an annoying hair twirler of a phrase that has been, and will continue to be, directed to the political and environmental intellipod community, but they don’t get it!

The Federal government has to decide on the fate of the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal by the middle of June.

That’s this year everyone!

But now there is one ink stained print media “expert” who has come out with his parrot on the shoulder solution: Forget the Northern Gateway and send 600 tank car loads a day (390,000 bpd) over the Rockies to Prince Rupert then just load it on a ship and… ‘See ya later!’ This expert also claims that shipping bitumen by rail doesn’t need diluent to lower the viscosity, but forgot that without the thinner/solvent the rail cars have to be of the heated variety, which are extremely expensive adding to the end cost of the crude. Then it’s said that these rail cars could always be diverted to the proposed – now up to $35 billion refinery in Kitimat.

This is a back of the napkin facility with no crude supply, no natural gas supply to heat the distillation columns, no financing, and no customers for the end products – gasoline and diesel.

It is claimed that the gasoline and diesel will be sold to the Asian market, but alas, the Chinese are already refining crude and exporting gasoline and diesel to India, Japan and South Korea… they are not planning on buying the stuff that the Kitimat entrepreneur is planning to sell to them!

What China will buy is the oil sands crude and the Northern Gateway is the best way to get it to them. Stephen Harper will probably approve the project but this will be blocked by legalese from the U.S. Funded Ewacks and be tied up for years in the appeals courts aka, the Chambers of Second Rumination.

For fear that the judicial system may suffocate in processional cobwebs not only on the matter of the Northern Gateway, but also the doubling Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, oil sands, as well as Bakken producers in both North Dakota and Saskatchewan, have resorted to shipment by rail because the politicians and environmental Ewacks have no soap box to stand on, nor do they have any TV cameras to wave their placards in front of. Rail shipment exports from Canada alone will increase by 50% in 2014 to 160,000 bpd.

This despite derailments of crude trains averaging one a month since July of last year.

What goes around comes around I guess.

So does a political boomerang; once you’ve thrown it, watch out, because if you don’t it will hit you in the back of your head – and you won’t be humming any catchy tunes then. ~ The Grouch