Interpretations:Four Of Two (Demo)

Impossible?

The part of him strangling himself and dying is impossible, because after you stop breathing you'll pass out, and then your body will start breathing for you while you are unconscious. Thought that was pretty funny. --Alijandro 22:37, March 25, 2006

Untrue. Have you considered that he started bashing his head on a wall? If you listen to the horns after the strangling verse, you can imaging him swerving and hitting himself. Amusing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.167.254.10 (talk) 21:13, March 31, 2006

What if he managed to get his hands locked around his neck firmly enough that when he passed out, they stayed where they were and kept him from breathing? Unlikely, sure, absurd, as one person put it, but it's a possibility. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.19.14.19 (talk) 19:38, April 10, 2006

Not quite sure why this conversation dominates the page. This song is very serious, and very very sad. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rez123 (talk • contribs) 18:25, August 27, 2006

If he stopped breathing and was unconscious long enough, he could die of starvation. --J2 03:41, September 28, 2006

Hilarious

It's actually hilarious considering what it turned in to. --Fasterthanyou 07:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Interpretation 3

Okay. I think it's about a guy who's waiting for the girl he loves to show up for a date (duh). Time passes, but the guy doesn't realize it, because the clock he's looking at, as Linnell puts it, "doesn't fucking work", and is stuck at 1:56. Eventually he realizes that time actually HAS passed, and that his date will never arrive; he is so distraught that he kills himself right then and there. Sad, but also oddly amusing. ~Anna Ng hears your words. 01:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Stopped clock/stopped time/one minute

I've heard three different interpretations of this song, the most obvious being that the clock is simply stopped and the narrator doesn't realise time is actually passing. Or maybe he does and is distraught because after four minutes, he knows he's late, even though the clock hasn't changed.

But what if it was time itself that was stopped? What if it's actually 1:56 the whole time and the clock is right, and the girl is actually on her way, but the universe, except for our unfortunate narrator, is temporarily (one would hope) stuck in limbo?

But the last, and my favourite, interpretation, is that neither the clock nor time itself is stopped, but the entire process from "I'm late!" to "I'm bored and want to strangle myself" takes place in exactly one minute. The clock is never wrong, but the narrator never actually sees it flip to 1:57. I like this idea because it makes the song so much creepier. --Zaph 13:19, 28 November 2011 (EST)

Don't Commit Suicide/Things Will Get Better

I think it's saying this because the clock represents things getting better, but it's not moving so he kills himself because he thinks that he can't ever be happy again. -Professor Flans

"Success"?

Maybe the saddest thing about this song is the fact that the only thing the narrator succeeds at is killing himself. He can't get himself moving to see the beautiful girl he'd met the night before. He can't even decide what to do until the outlandish solution of suicide occurs to him. It's truly sad because clearly he had, at some point, been capable of going out and doing things, as evidenced by the fact that he'd met the pretty girl previously--perhaps he was petrified, paralyzed with fear at committing to a relationship. --MisterMe (talk) 15:10, 10 August 2018 (EDT)

What if it was actually just a dream and he woke up after the song ended?