Labor violations, random question

[qatarperegrine]

The spokesman for the Ministry of Labor just announced that, during surprise labor camp inspections, his own company was found to have some labor law minor violations.

On the whole this seems like a very good thing -- they seem to be inspecting their own, and making the results public. (One could still be cynical about this, of course.)

In other news, I was listening to "Love the One You're With" the other day and realized that I've always parsed the line "There's a rose in a fisted glove" as "There's a rose in a gloved fist." But it's not a gloved fist, it's a fisted glove. What on earth is a fisted glove? (No ecchi explanations please.) Do you suppose they meant gloved fist and just switched the words to make it rhyme, or is it supposed to mean something else entirely?

Comments

Me too

[elkit.livejournal.com]

Huh. It never even would have occurred to me, but I've done that exact same parsing forever.

I think

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I think that your "parsing error" is entirely natural. We often do things like that completely unconsciously-automatically, when the outside "input" doesn't make sense to us, either because we lack context or simply because it really is meaningless. Yes, i am a computer geek, how did you guess?

While no "proof" of meaning, the following WordReference.com "Language Forum" fisted glove thread (at the bottom) claims that this expression is meant as a "symbol of contradiction", which rest of the line in the song "and the eagle flies with the dove" seems to support. Having read the lyrics for the first time (don't know the song), all I can think to ask is - WTF? So just forget your baby who "is so far away", and "get with it" with "the one you’re with"? How THIS relates to those symbols of contradiction, is entirely beyond me. Is this like whining about being Unfaithful, only without the angst?

[(Anonymous)]

what are your plans today marjorie?

[aristopheles.livejournal.com]

It's a freakin' pop song, right?
Your brain did exactly what it's supposed to do, which is make sense of language, and Stephen Stills did exactly what he's supposed to do, which is to write nonsense that feels romantic, sells lots of records, and maybe gets people laid.
Am I missing anything deep here?