Fixing a Hole

"Fixing a Hole" is a song written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon–McCartney) and recorded by the Beatles, featured on their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Writing

In a 1968 interview, McCartney said that the song was "about the hole in the road where the rain gets in, a good old analogy—the hole in your make-up which lets the rain in and stops your mind from going where it will." He went on to say that the following lines were about fans who hung around outside his home day and night, and whose actions he found off-putting:

Recording

The first of two recording sessions for the song was at Regent Sound Studio in London on 9 February 1967 in three takes. Regent was used because EMI's Abbey Road studios were not available that night. This was the first time that the Beatles used a British studio other than Abbey Road for an EMI recording.Overdubs were recorded on 21 Feb 1967 at EMI studios Abbey Road.

The lead vocal was recorded at the same time as the rhythm track, a change from their post-1964 approach of overdubbing the vocal.

Asshole: How I Got Rich and Happy by Not Giving a Shit About You

Asshole: How I Got Rich and Happy by Not Giving a Shit About You is a 2008 spoof self-help book and memoir by American author Martin Kihn. The book's title in the U.S. was modified to Asshole: How I Got Rich & Happy by Not Giving a Damn About Anyone & How You Can, Too.

Content

The first line of Marty Kihn’s book, is "I was the nicest guy in the world and it was killing me." Kihn, who works for a marketing company, is told by his boss that unless he started "playing hardball", they were going to demote him and upgrade a colleague Kihn calls "The Nemesis" to a window office. So to save his career, Kihn decides to turn himself into an asshole, and in telling his story, he describes exactly how the reader can follow his lead.

To become an asshole, Kihn builds a team, consisting of an acting coach, life coach and both personal and dog trainer – to help "master the art of assholism." Kihn then creates a ten-step "assholism" program which involves "ignoring other peoples’ feelings, never saying sorry, dressing in black silk and only eating red meat." Other tasks saw Kihn signing up to the National Rifle Association, learning kickboxing, screaming at colleagues and eating garlic bagels on public transport. Additionally, Kihn takes inspiration from famous figures whom he considers "assholes" such as: Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Martha Stewart, David Letterman, Ayn Rand, Nicole Kidman, Machiavelli, Scarface and Paris Hilton. He also takes inspiration from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and The Virtue of Selfishness.

Asshole

The word asshole (often arsehole in British and Australian English), is a vulgarism to describe the anus, and often used pejoratively (as a type of synecdoche) to refer to people.

History

The word arse in English derives from the Germanic root -arsaz, which originated from the Proto-Indo-European root -ors, meaning "buttocks" or "backside". The combined form arsehole is first attested from 1500 in its literal use to refer to the anus. The metaphorical use of the word to refer to the worst place in a region (e.g., "the arsehole of the world"), is first attested in print in 1865; the use to refer to a contemptible person is first attested in 1933. In the ninth chapter of his 1945 autobiography, Black Boy, Richard Wright quotes a snippet of verse that uses the term: "All these white folks dressed so fine / Their ass-holes smell just like mine ...". Its earliest known usage in newspaper as an insult was 1965. As with other vulgarities, these uses of the word may have been common in oral speech for some time before their first appearances in print. By the 1970s, Hustler magazine featured people they did not like as "Asshole of the Month." In 1972, Jonathan Richman of Modern Lovers recorded his song "Pablo Picasso", which includes the line "Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole."

Counter (typography)

In typography, a counter is the area of a letter that is entirely or partially enclosed by a letter form or a symbol (the counter-space/the hole of). Letters containing closed counters include A, B, D, O, P, Q, R, a, b, d, e, g, o, p, and q. Letters containing open counters include c, f, h, i, s etc. The digits 0, 4, 6, 8, and 9 also possess a counter. An aperture is the opening between an open counter and the outside of the letter.

The lowercase 'g' has two typographic variants: the single-story '' has one closed counter and one open counter (and hence one aperture); the double-story '' has two closed counters.

Open and closed apertures

Different typeface styles have different tendencies to use open or more closed apertures. This design decision is particularly important for sans-serif typefaces, which can have very wide strokes making the apertures very narrow indeed.

Fonts designed for legibility often have very open apertures, keeping the strokes widely separated from one another to reduce ambiguity. This may be especially important in situations such as signs to be viewed at a distance, materials intended to be viewed by people with vision problems, or small print, especially on poor-quality paper. Fonts with open apertures include Lucida Grande, Trebuchet MS, Corbel and Droid Sans, all designed for use on low-resolution displays, and Frutiger, FF Meta and others designed for print use. This design trend has become increasingly common with the spread of humanist sans-serif designs since the 1980s and the 1990s and the use of computers requiring new fonts which are legible on-screen.

The Police

The Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting (lead singer, bassist and principal songwriter), Andy Summers (guitarist) and Stewart Copeland (drummer). The Police became globally popular in the late 1970s and are generally regarded as one of the first new wave groups to achieve mainstream success, playing a style of rock that was influenced by punk, reggae, and jazz. They are also considered one of the leaders of the Second British Invasion of the U.S. They disbanded in 1986, but reunited in early 2007 for a one-off world tour that ended in August 2008.

Their 1978 debut album, Outlandos d'Amour, reached No. 6 in the UK, and their second album Reggatta de Blanc became the first of five consecutive UK No. 1 albums.Synchronicity from 1983 was No. 1 in both the UK and U.S., selling over 8 million copies in the U.S. alone. The Police have sold over 75 million records, making them one of the world's best-selling artists of all time. They were the world's highest-earning musicians in 2008, thanks to their reunion tour.

The Police (play)

The Police is a play written by Polish playwright Sławomir Mrożek.

Written in 1958, it is Mrozek's first play and one of his most acclaimed early works. Written in the style of Theatre of the Absurd, and listed in the Martin Esslin book of the same name, it was produced at the Phoenix Theatre, New York, in 1961. A television production was aired in the U.S. in 1971 by PBS. It was directed by Christopher Loscher in 2007 at the Battersea Arts Centre in London as part of the TimeOut Critics' Choice season.

The play takes place in a mythical country where all opposition to the state has disappeared and the last remaining political prisoner is to be released. Rather than face the prospect of retiring the police force, the chief of police decides to create an enemy of the state by ordering one of his officers to commit political crimes. The absurdity of the play culminates when the characters mutually arrest each other repeatedly, in an attempt to restore order and meaning to their world.

The Police (album)

The Police is a self-titled compilation album released by The Police on June 5, 2007, to accompany their reunion tour. It contains 28 tracks over two discs, a mixture of hits and fan favourites. International editions contain two bonus tracks, "The Bed's Too Big Without You" from Reggatta de Blanc and "Rehumanize Yourself" from Ghost in the Machine.

The album debuted at number 11 on the U.S. Billboard 200, selling about 58,000 copies in its first week. As of July 11, 2007, the album had sold 180,558 copies in the US.

Track listing

All songs written by Sting except where noted.

Disc 1