My friend Jeff and I were having a silly conversation on AIM, which involved, as is often the case for us, snippets of silly song lyrics. Often, these are just laughed at and passed on, but sometimes they actually take on a life of their on.
This is a mood piece, much like the song it parodies. I may still tweak a word here or there, but it more or less wrote itself between us.
One of the things that kitanzi got me for Valentine’s Day was some magnetic poetry sets. We had picked up a special set from Dragon*Con a couple of years ago that had a limited set of fannish words, but we’d never gotten the base sets in order to have enough words to really play with. So they sat unused on the fridge for a long while.
To the fannish set, we’ve now added the Original set and the Erotic set, allowing for all manner of naughty thoughts to be formed. And after aiela put the idea in my head, we relocated all the magnets to the back of the front door, in order to have space to work.
It’s kind of fun to just scan over the words and see which ones your brain wants to put together. Almost Zen in practice…
First, a disclaimer: yeah, this is inspired by my own work experiences, but to be fair, every single place where one tier of people had to support another, lower tier of support folks, this has been true. I’ve even been the clueless git on the other end of this song, so believe me that this is all in good fun.
This song is dedicated to anyone who has ever had to work in ANY sort of help desk environment, and especially for the SysOps who have to support THEM.
Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Cicada
by Robert Wynne
Music: Various tunes (see note below)
© 2004
I.
If you like squishing cicadas
getting caught in the rain
II.
Oh cicadas, you’re breaking my heart
You’re all on my lawn and I hate you
Oh cicadas, please please go away
For seventeen years i won’t miss you
III.
I’m gonna kill the bugs next door
Ain’t gonna chirp anymore
They’re underground for seventeen years
Then they come up and drink all my beer
Gonna squash em with my boots
How i wish i had a gun that shoots
Gonna kill kill kill kill kill kill kill those bugs
IV.
Cicada blues
You make me cry
I don’t wanna lose this feeling
And if i choose for you to die
You would be in your grave
V.
You walk across the lawn and they will crawl up on your pants
Shake them off your shoes and you do a little dance
Worst of all you find their shells are stuck to all your plants
Hey, they’re cicadas!
VI.
I squashed cicadas
But i did not squish the ladybugs
VII.
Wasting away again here in Cicadaville
Searching for a safe path I can walk
VIII.
I walked out on my lawn
To face my fears
The last time they were here
Seventeen years
It’s cicadas
They climb on everything
Nowhere to sit
I wish they’d go away
I must admit
Damn cicadas
IX.
One day, bugs will rain out
From beneath the rainspout
And then you will hear ci-
cadas come and chirp the night away
X.
Cold rain on the front lawn has softened the grounds
For seventeen years they have slept in their mounds
But now they have surfaced; the night rings with sound
Cicada’s will rise with the moon
XI.
They are very noisy bugs
Cicadas chirp outside your bedroom
They go away for seventeen years then they come back
And they get in everything
Those bugs are pretty nasty
(That bug’s a Cicada!)
The kind of bugs you read about
(In science magazines!)
They haven’t left my lawn yet
(The bugs are cicadas)
I think I’m gonna squish them
(Everywhere I step)
They’re not right! They’re not right!
These bugs are not for me!
They are cicadas! Cicadas!
I hate Cicadas!
XII.
Little cicadas
Crawling everywhere
You’re pretty sure they’re even crawling in your hair
Where did they come from
Underneath the ground
Seventeen years past and not one could be found
XIII.
Guess who just got back today
Those little bugs that had been away
Everywhere, cicadas in your way
And if the bugs wanna chirp, you better let ’em
Cicadas were much in the news in 2004, because of the arrival of the once-every-seventeen-years emergence from hibernation cycle. The idea for this came from a conversation I was having in a chat room about the subject.
The thirteen tunes are, in order: (1) “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes, (2) “Cecilia” by Simon & Garfunkel, (3) “Gonna Kill The Dog Next Door” by The Arrogant Worms, (4) “Bell Bottom Blues” by Derek and the Dominos, (5) “Macarena” by Los del Rio, (6) “I Shot The Sherriff” by Bob Marley, (7) “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett, (8) “And I Love Her” by the Beatles, (9) “Open Arms (Worlds Apart” by Journey, (10) “Giant” by Stan Rogers, (11) “Superfreak” by Rick James, (12) “Lady Madonna” by the Beatles, and (13) “The Boys are Back in Town” by Thin Lizzie.
The entire thing is a meta-parody of Wallace Stevens’s poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird”
Somewhere On The Windows Server
by Robert Wynne and Jeffrey Williams
Music: “Somewhere Down The Crazy River” by Robbie Robertson
© 2004
Yeah, I can see it now
The flashing green link light shimmered in the dark
I was feeling like a user on a strange site
You know, where people play games on the net?
God, it was too slow to post
I followed the link to an mp3 site from somewhere out in Asia
All of a sudden, I could hear someone whispering from right behind me
I turned around and she said “Why do you always end up on the chat room page?
I said “I don’t know, the links just kind of led me this way.”
She said “Hang the proc”
Dump the blue screen
Errors never seen before
Look for me
Somewhere on the Windows server
(Somewhere on the Windows Server)
Dump the blue screen
All the way down to the core
You can find me
Somewhere on the Windows server
(Somewhere on the Windows server)
Grab a jpg of this
The machine room is empty, abandoned 486 server
Sitting at the console listening to Little Billy Gates
Yeah, that’s when your apps stood still
Y’know, I’m gonna go down to the CompuShak
And let ’em build my box
She said “That UNIX stuff don’t do nothing for me
I’m a man who needs virus protection
I’m a man with a broadband connection
You load the line
You slow the net
I can find my files yet
Dump the blue screen
Errors never seen before
Look for me
Somewhere on the Windows server
(Somewhere on the Windows Server)
Dump the blue screen
All the way down to the core
You can find me
Somewhere on the Windows server
(Somewhere on the Windows server)
Wait, did you see that?
Man, this is stirring up some errors for me
She said “There’s one thing you gotta learn
Is how to keep rebooting it.”
I said “No, I hate it. I hate it, it sucks.”
She said, “You hate it now, but you’ll learn to loathe it later.”
Dump the blue screen
Errors never seen before
Look for me
Somewhere on the Windows server
(Somewhere on the Windows Server)
Dump the blue screen
All the way down to the core
You can find me
Somewhere on the Windows server
(Somewhere on the Windows server)
I’ve been coredumped — failing the trace
I’ve been coredumped — failing the trace
Log on the system — disks and mem’ry
I’ve been coredumped — somewhere on the Windows server
This is another case of Jeff and me being silly in conversation and having it lead to a pretty nifty song. Both of us have been big fans of Robbie Robertson for years, and especially of the moody jazz noir of “Somewhere Down the Crazy River”. If I can figure out a way to recreate the accompaniment to this, I’d love to actualyl perform it someday, or see someone else do so. It’s such a cool tune, it’d have to be done “right” for it to work.
Never Seen The Tech Desk
by Robert Wynne
Music: “Never Been To Spain” by Three Dog Night
© 2004
Oh I’ve never seen the tech desk
Cause I’ve always been too lazy;
But I know a lot of folks there
They call me up and drive me crazy!
My spirit’s droopy
Cause they’re so loopy
They’re our support staff
Our tech support staff
There’s not a day goes by now
They don’t call me on the phone
And they start each conversation
With “Hey, now what’s going on?”
Is there an outage?
Or some strange problem?
We can’t define it!
No we can’t define it!”
I ask them if they’ve done their homework
And what they did to troubleshoot it
They say they’re not sure what to do next
And wonder if they should reboot it?
I say “Don’t know yet
Where you ought to go yet
What is the error?
You haven’t said the error!
I studied hard to be a SysOp
Because I thought that I would like it
I didn’t know back when I started
That you also must be psychic
I do my best, still
Hoping that the rest will
Learn from repeating
But memory is so fleeting
‘Cause the next time that my phone rings
Once the problem is resolved
and it’s the same technician calling
And a new customer’s involved.
Why can’t you see it?
I can guarantee it’s
The same thing as the last one
It’s the same damn problem!
Oh I’ve never seen the tech desk
Cause I’ve always been too lazy
But I know a lot of folks there
They call me up and drive me crazy
My spirit’s droopy
Cause they’re so loopy
They’re our support staff
Our tech support staff
I’d like to state, for the record, that I adore my support desk, and they really are good at what they do. Having said that, the sorts of things that this song details are inevitable in ANY organization where someone has to support the support folks, and that’s what I do for a living.
The song is also true in the regard that I’ve never actually set foot in our call centre, as it is located in another city and I haven’t made time to go down there. I really need to correct that some day soon.
The Last March of Gondor
by Robert Wynne and Larissa March
Music: “Least of My Kind” by Cat Faber
© 2004
Armored in in battle mail,
Swearing we shall not fail,
Cursing, we ride to Mordor’s Door.
Men, elves and dwarves unite
Facing the Shadow’s might
Here is a challenge he can’t ignore!
Well spent the battle cost
All hope is not yet lost
Frodo still carries the ring
You have not fought in vain
When you march forth again
You shall be led by your king.
We fought and did not yield
Pelennor’s battlefield
Now we approach the Dark Lord’s gate
Sauron we will defy
Hoping to draw his eye
Far from the one who’ll decide our fate
Well spent the battle cost
All hope is not yet lost
Frodo still carries the ring
You have not fought in vain
When you march forth again
You shall be led by your king.
One day may tell the tale
Courage of men shall fail
That will not be this day, I swear
Look on me now, Dark Lord
Reforged, the broken sword
Thought you that Isildur had no heir?
Well spent the battle cost
All hope is not yet lost
Frodo still carries the ring
You have not fought in vain
When you march forth again
You shall be led by your king.
Ultimately, this song was inspired by a typo. Gwen Knighton was discussing the second album release of her band, Three Weird Sisters and accidently typed the title of the Cat Faber song “Least of My Kind” as “Least of My King”. That sparked the idea of an LOTR themed parody of that tune.
One of the nifty additions to the movie versions of Lord of the Rings is Aragorn’s “St. Crispin’s Day” speech, as the assembled Army of the West stands before the Gates of Mordor. I imagined how bards might remember that in song, and this was the result.
This is the first song that my wife Larissa and I wrote together. It was an enjoyable experience, and hopefully one we’ll repeat.
This song was published in the Conterpoint 2004 songbook, and in “Under Filk Wood”, the songbook for Interaction, the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow.
Just In New Zealand
by Robert Wynne
Music: “Only In Kenya”
© 2004
Where can you get temp jobs?
Just in New Zealand!
In New Zealand we got temp jobs!
Say you wanna make movies?
Just in New Zealand!
Got temp jobs and movies: Just in New Zealand!
(Forget Hollywood!)
New Zealand Oh, New Zealand!
Where the dwarves are and the Bree men!
New Zealand! Zealand Zealand Zealand!
New Zealand! Come to New Zealand
(Can you believe it?)
This was an instafilk inspired by a report that New Zealand’s economy had been bolstered by the huge number of temporary jobs the filming of Lord of the Rings had generated. It’s extremely silly, but so is the source tune.
Now, if only someone could animate it. *grin*
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