They say that one of the ways to stave off dementia is to keep the mind challenged. My mother does crossword puzzles to keep her mind active. My dad engages in mental gymnastics by watching four different programs on TV at one time and avoiding any commercials, while simultaneously complaining that there’s nothing on.
For those of you with no access to crossword puzzles or high-performance remote controls, I found an engaging thought experiment while driving home from work this evening.
Back in the early 1970s, after he stopped being The Cute One and before he became some sort of bogus knight (Seriously, how many dragons did he slay to become a “Sir”?), Paul McCartney formed the band Wings with future ex-wife Linda and fellow musician The Other Guy (who later went on to fame as The Other Guy in Wham!, I think).
In 1978 Paul McCartney and Wings hit the charts with the song “With a Little Luck”. It’s a pretty little ballad about the power of serendipity and love to achieve… um… to bring about… er… it. Yes, definitely it.
Now, Paul is an extremely talented musician and billionaire, but the man who once expressed the concept “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da”, and was at one time confused about the proper usage of the words “hello” and “goodbye”, isn’t known to be the clearest of communicators. So I began to try to process the song in order to discover the mysterious “it” that is so influenced by luck.
So let’s apply a little Donnie Iris-style logic. What do we know about it? Continue reading
A Labor of Like 