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The Gold Standard

By

On January 1, 1998

In Songs

The Gold Standard (To A Modern Tune)
by Robert Wynne
Music: “MmmMmmMmmMmmM” by the Crash Test Dummies
(or, if you prefer, “Headline News” by Weird Al Yankovic)
© 1998

Once, there was this guy who
Wrote a bunch of filksongs and
thought that they were cool
But when he sent them in to
a fanzine, they were bounced back in his face
He didn’t understand it,
The tunes were so well known

MmmMmmMmmMmm (etc…)

Once there was an editor
who published filkdom’s very best
and most prestigeous journal
But when she got these filksongs
She found she didn’t know the right music
She asked all of her friends
and they didn’t know them either

MmmMmmMmmMmm (etc…)

It wasn’t that the songs were bad
But it sure made that poor guy mad

And so he went to USENET
And said that she had unfairly rejected his poor filk songs
But he found to his dismay
She was well loved by all of the folks there
They flamed him rather soundly
and put him in their killfiles

MmmMmmMmmMmm(etc…)

This is the other song i got out of the Cineviews flameware on rec.music.filk in 1998. (If you really want to know, see the notes at the bottom of The Flamewar Never Dies.

This one is more specifically addressing the topic of that flamewar, and as a result doesn’t hold up as well over time, but I’m fond of it for the reaction it provoked. While I tried to keep the tone neutral and reporting merely what actually happened without actually showing favour to either side, I got a vitrolic e-mail from Cineviews accusing me of being a “Lee Gold Apologist”. I related this to Lee, and suggested that perhaps we could form a “Lee Gold Apologist Society” and get little buttons to wear at cons and maybe a neat graphic for our webpages and stuff. One day I’ll actually get around to designing those…

Gingrich of Congress

By

On January 1, 1998

In Songs

Gingrich of Congress
by Robert Wynne and Jeffrey Williams
Music: “Lord of La Mancha” from the musical Man of La Mancha
© 1998

Hear me now, all you old disenfranchised white men!
CEOs and your rich companies!
Clad in armor of God and American flags
I call forth my majority!

I am Speaker Newt Gingrich
I’m from Pennsylvania
But Georgia’s been kindest to me!
Political backstabbing’s
my bread and butter
I thunder on self-righteously

Elect me and I’ll stamp out the gays and the poor
And the lib’rals who stand by their side
And we’ll smuggle our spies into every bedroom
To ensure that you’ve nothing to hide

I am Speaker Newt Gingrich
I’m from Pennsylvania
But Georgia’s been kindest to me!
Political backstabbing’s
my bread and butter
I thunder on self-righteously

When I speak I weave visions of futures untold
Technological marvels are neat
But we must stay on guard from the liberal horde
Who aren’t among our elite!

I am Speaker Newt Gingrich
I’m from Pennsylvania
But Georgia’s been kindest to me!
Political backstabbing’s
my bread and butter
I thunder on self-righteously
I thunder on self-righteously
Come sign my contract
Come sign my contract
Behold!

The problem with writing songs about the news is that they are so quickly “overtaken by events”. I wrote this back when Newt Gingrich was still the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

While Gingrich did have his good side (he was a major supporter of the space program), I found his political tactics obnoxious and divisive, and lay a lot of the blame for the atmosphere that surrounds our political machine today on him.

Fratricide and Spirits

By

On January 1, 1998

In Songs

Fratricide and Spirits
by Robert Wynne and Jeffrey Williams
Music: “Rainy Days and Mondays” by the Carpenters
© 1998

Talking to myself and feeling cold
I don’t know what I’m to do
Really wish I had a clue
Walking around wearing a solemn frown
Fratricide and Spirits always get me down

What I saw would drive most ’round the bend
My dead father said to me
Son, you’ve gotta kill the king.
But I don’t know
Which way I ought to go
To be or not to be, I sure wish I could know

Funny but it seems i’d know exactly what to do
Don’t know why i cant decide it
If anyone suspects, they’ll probably lock me safe away
So I guess I’d better hide it

Even my best friend thinks me insane
But I knew the play’s the thing
I caught the concience of the king.
Now that I’m sure
Vengence is the only cure
There’s only one more act i’ll be forced to endure

Now I must go
To calculate the final blow
And lay Claudius to rest beneath the falling snow
This song was written because Jeff and I wanted to write a song based on Shakespeare (we were both English majors).

This song was published in the Gafilk 2000 songbook.

The Flamewar Never Dies

By

On January 1, 1998

In Songs

The Flamewar Never Dies
by Robert Wynne
Music: “The Dangling Conversation” by Paul Simon
© 1998

If you will not heed what I say
I’ll repeat it louder still
And you think you can ignore my words
But I don’t think you will
I will shout it from the ramparts
Locked in my position
Like an overzealous twit
You can watch me pitch a fit

Full of righteous indignation
And my superficial lies
The flamewar never dies

And you all howl out with outrage
How dare I break the peace
Although every response to me
Ensures I never cease
Though you put me in your killfile
Still I will be lurking
On the edges of the net
I won’t let you forget

About my righteous indignation
And my superficial lies
The flamewar never dies

Oh, I speak things that don’t matter
Just to prolong the thread
No analysis is worthwhile
No logic’s in my head.
Yet I won’t stop my babble
I can keep this up forever
My fingers never tire
Of this neruotic, senseless ire

Or my righteous indignation
And my superficial lies
The flameware never dies

This is the second song I wrote as a result of the Cineviews flamewar on rec.music.filk back in 1998. The other was The Gold Standard.

While this was inspired by a specific flamewar, this sort of thing happens on USENET all the time. Apply as needed.

Major Outage Tech Support Blues

By

On January 1, 1996

In Songs

Major Outage Tech Support Blues
by Robert Wynne
Music: “California Dreaming” (John Phillips)
© 1996

All the servers down
My Netscape screen is grey
I can’t get logged in
For several hours today
I wouldn’t be so stressed
If I was off today
Customers are screaming
And I don’t know what to say

I called down to the NOC
It’s just 5 miles away
Got down on my knees
And I began to pray
Hey, Mr. Sysop, what’s the story?
Don’t say it’s down to stay
Customers are screaming
Please tell us what to say

(Interlude)

Got an update from the NOC
“We don’t know what to say…
Seems the password file is missing
But we’ve found a way
To get it from the tape
By the next business day…”
Customers are screaming
And there’s nothing we can say
Customers are screaming
And there’s nothing we can say
And there’s nothing we can say
And there’s nothing we can say
Yes, it’s based on a true story. I was a supervisor in the technical support department of an ISP when I wrote this song. They really did delete the RADIUS password file, and it really did take until the next day to recover. I actually wrote this on the way home from work at one in the morning. It took an hour and twenty minutes for me to drive from the office to home, and I had no writing utinsils or recording gear, so I had to sing it over and over again until I got to my computer where I could write it down.

This is one of the few pieces of songwriting I have which survived my 1998 apartment fire, mostly be virtue of having been e-mailed to other people who were also on duty for that tech support shift.

Dark World

By

On January 1, 1992

In Songs

Dark World
by Robert Wynne
Music: “It’s A Small World, After All”
© 1992

It’s a world of darkness
A world of pain
It’s a world of sadness
A world of rain
Don’t you ever ask why
Won’t be long till you die
It’s a dark, dark world

It’s a dark world, after all
It’s a dark world, after all
It’s a dark world, after all
It’s a dark, dark world
I wrote this bit of silliness way back in 1992 when we were first being introduced to White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquarade, and then promptly forgot about it until someone triggered the memory. Almost every song I wrote before 1998 was kept in paper notebooks and perished when my apartment burned down, so this is actually the oldest surviving song of mine I have.

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