Quoth Dr. Banana <sdc116@psu.edu>:

Last Friday we had to close down the Gullible Research Institute due to the inclement weather. Unfortunately we have not read our mail since then. So if you have sent in a request, please be patient. Thank you, now down to today's business:

Last week Mr. Edwierdo Deabalone wrote to us:

here is my request for song analysis to Dr. Bannannananana (sorry, I am never able to figure out where to stop.)

There was a rotten old Coot
Who was looking fo someone to shoot
Then he did fall,
And shot off his balls
Could you please analyse Space Suit?

Here at the Institute, all the mail gets screened for importance before being sent up to my office. This particular one almost did not make it. First impressions were that it was a cruel prank, but it was sent up any way because they just weren't sure. After reviewing this I have come to two conclusions:

1) This limerick is really, really pushing the boundaries of limerickdom (but we have been accused of the same type of thing in reference to our analysis) and,

2) Although "Space Suit" is an instrumental, I felt it was worth some more research. So, since I had a long weekend, I did some expirementation here at home and I now present:

What "Space Suit" really means, a surprising analysis by Dr. Banana:

So "Space Suit" is an instrumental, immediately I said "subliminal message" so I called my neighbors and had them sleep over. I took #1 - #3 and put them in a bedroom that was perfectly quiet and #5 - #6 and put them in a room where I played "Space Suit" very quietly all night long.

The Results:

No music:

Neighbor #1, we'll call him Bob, slept like a log. Entered R.E.M. like normal. Woke up refreshed and energetic.

Neighbor #2, Bob's Wife, slept soundly also, except for an occassional loud moan. Woke up, err... in an anticipatory sexual mood. But this is by no means abnormal. (You have to know Bob's Wife)

Neighbor #3, we'll call him Harold, slept soundly also. In fact, Harold slept too soundly and at one point we thought he had passed away. We scared the bejesus out of him when we rushed in and used the heart palpitators on him by accident.

Music:

Neighbor #4, we'll call her Veronica, tossed and turned all night and kept murmuring the words "mmbmbmmle... your ears are so pointy...mmbmb". We have yet to determine exactly what this means.

Neighbor #5, Matthew, just drooled a lot. When I say "a lot", I mean A LOT. If we hadn't been there he would probably have drowned.

Neighbor #6, we'll name him Fredrick, was our most abnormal case. He slept walked around his room the whole night. Doing everything from wearing the waste basket on his head, to wearing his sheet as a cape and jumping on his bed until he hit the ceiling and knocked himself unconscious.

Comparing #1 - #3 and #4 - #6 we thought we were on to something. We were sure that "Space Suit" did indeed have a deeply buried subliminal message. However it all turned out to be wrong! In an extremely careless act I placed #4 - #6 neighbors on the side of the house were the high-voltage power lines run. All of these behaviors can, unfortunately, be attributed to the power lines in addition to the fact that I washed #1 - #3 sheets with Snuggle and #4 - #6 with Tide. I was deeply embarrassed.

So we went back to the drawing board. This time I took the song, slowed it down by 3.67 joules/second, ran it through a white noise filter, beefed up the bass by 4.5 db's, and finally condenesed it through a Harmon/ Kardon Bypass Infibdibulator. The results were everything that I hoped for. It turns out that there IS a buried message in the song! But it was so proccessed and sped up that you can't even hear it. Even on the subliminal level. The buried message turned out to be an episode of Star Trek, but due to the size of the script we chose not to reprint it here. However, here is an exceprt from it:

Bones comes running over the ridge, panting and covered in a viscous white material.

"God, Bones, what have you two been doing?!?"

"Jim! Ensign Spendable has fallen into a pool of cream filling!"

Jim, Spock and Bones run over the ridge. On the other side they find a flat stretch of land covered with pools of burbling white fluid. Ensign Spendable is flailing about in one, with filling up to his chest. Kirk throws himself on the ground, and reaches for him.

"Here! Give me your hand! Give me your hand!"

"Can't! Polyester... is absorbing... *gasp*... cream filling! *gasp* Big balloon pants filling up too... *gurgle*... *bloop... bloop.... BLOP*."

"My God Jim! He's dead! He's cream-filled too! I told you this would happen. But did you listen to me...?"

Right now we are unsure of the significance of this. If you would like a complete copy of the above Star Trek episode so that you may draw your own conclusions just send a request to the regular request address.

Mr. Deabalone, we hope that we have helped shed some light on "Space Suit" for you. You presented us with a difficult task and we tried our best.

Any further request can still be sent to us in the form of a dirty limerick (or not):

DR. BANANA c/o THE GULLIBLE RESEARCH INSTITUTE (sdc116@psu.edu)

Quoth Siobain Duffy <siobain@meathook.intac.com>:

Space suit, since it doesn't have lyrics, always reminds me of She's an Angel: "I heard they had a SPACE program, when you sing you can't hear..."