Tag Archives: lyrics

What Does the Sock Say?

Blogger posts,
Friend writes this
Spammer adds
Some word salad.
N00b goes what?,
Crank goes but—
And the conversation starts.
Redditor
Submits a link,
And the trolls come out to play.

But there’s one voice
That no one knows
What does the sock say?

Just a thing-thing-thing-a-thingy-thing!
Let me bring-bring-bring-bring-a-thing-up-thing!
Let me bring-bring-bring-bring-a-thing-up-thing!
What the sock say?

Wha-ta-fu-wha-ta-fu-huh?
Wha-ta-fu-wha-ta-fu-huh?
Wha-ta-fu-wha-ta-fu-huh?
What the sock say?

Hatey-hatey-hatey-ho!
Hatey-hatey-hatey-ho!
Hatey-hatey-hatey-ho!
What the sock say?

Yup-yup-yuppo-yuppo-yup!
Yup-yup-yuppo-yuppo-yup!
Yup-yup-yuppo-yuppo-yup!
What the sock say?

Different name
New IP
Strange how much
You remind me…
Make a slip
In what you know
Suddenly your true self shows.

And what I read
As innocent
From a stranger to my site
Now comes across
More sinister
And things get suddenly much
Wo-o-o-o-orse
Wo-o-o-o-orse
Wo-o-o-o-orse
I say your name and
Cu-u-u-u-urse
Cu-u-u-u-urse
Cu-u-u-u-urse

What does the sock say?

Got-cha-gotcha-gotcha-now!
Got-cha-gotcha-gotcha-now!
Got-cha-gotcha-gotcha-now!
What the sock say?

Fukka-kaka-kaka-kaka-cow!
Fukka-kaka-kaka-kaka-cow!
Fukka-kaka-kaka-kaka-cow!
What the sock say?

Tee-hee-teehee tee-hee!
Tee-hee-teehee tee-hee!
Tee-hee-teehee tee-hee!
What the sock say?

I foo-oo-oo-ooled
Yoo-oo-oo-ooo!
What does the sock say?

The secret of the sock
Anonymity
Somewhere out in the net
I know you’re hiding
What is your name?
Do I even care
What got you so obsessed with me?
Why do you stay?

You’re my internet stalker
Hiding in the net
Why do you stay?
I won’t go away, no, you can’t drive me away, no, I’m here to stay, yo
Will we ever know?
Maybe I’ll come and stay, now
I want you
Come on over and play, you’re
I want you, want you to go!
Reading the crap that I say, though.

Original version here, Know Your Meme explanation here, if you’re confused.

Lurching through eternity

O fragrant flesh, beside my tomb
You wander freely through the gloom
And think you’re safe among the dead
With those sweet brains still in your head.

You turn your back, and I arise
And look on you with rotten eyes
But then you hear my hungry moans
And see the flesh hang from my bones.

You scream in panic, run away
While all around the graveyard sway
The revenants, in shambling race,
Converging on your hiding place.

And when we find you crouching there
We seize your ankles, wrists and hair.
We bite your flesh, we chew your veins
And then at last, we eat your brains.

And when the feasting time is done
You rise again, and we are one:
The eaten eat, the victims stalk
We shamble where we once did walk.

Remember, man, as you pass by:
As you are, once was I;
As I am, you’re to be,
Lurching through eternity.

To the tune of Look on and Cry.

Originally posted on Making Light

While running through the park one night

While running through the park one night
In the early days of zombie blight
I was taken by surprise
By a pair of bloodshot eyes
And I knew that I would have to win this fight.

A moan was all I heard at last
[shambling sounds]
Before I turned into undead repast.
[shambling sounds]

I immediately turned to flee
But the zombies had surrounded me
And soon I will forget
How much I now regret
The dawn I would not live to see.

I was shambling through the park one night
Infected with the zombie blight
I was searching for remains
Not yet deprived of brains
In the early days of zombie blight.

Originally posted on Making Light

Pyramids

(To the tune of “Fields of Gold” by Sting)

You’ll remember me when the sandstorms blow
Among the low mastabas
You’ll forget Lord Ra in his shining boat
As we guard the pyramids.
So she took her love for to gaze awhile
Upon the low mastabas
Her sarcophagus was their shelter then
Among the pyramids.

Will you stay with me, will you be my love
Among the low mastabas?
You’ll forget your time in the living world
As we sleep in pyramids.
See the sandstorms blow wearing down the stones
That make the low mastabas
Feel her cerements as the wrap you round
Inside her pyramid.

I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I’ve broken
But I swear to you in the days still left
We’ll sleep in pyramids
We’ll sleep in pyramids.

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the low mastabas
And the time has come now to rise again
Among the pyramids
We will show these men what it means to fear
Those who guard the pyramids
Those who guard the pyramids
Those who guard the pyramids

Originally posted on Making Light

Box of earth, be my home

(To the tune of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver)

Almost heaven, Transylvania
East Carpatians,
Cold Prahova river.
I lived long there
Lurking in the trees
Hunting in the mountains
Drifting on the breeze.

Box of earth, be my home
Be the place I belong
Transylvania brought to London,
Box of earth, be my home.

All my powers root themselves there
Superstitious peasants live in terror
Mountain refuge, under moonless sky,
Salty taste of warm blood
Wolf-pack in full cry.

Box of earth, be my home
Be the place I belong
Transylvania brought to London,
Box of earth, be my home.

I hear its voice
‘Cross the salty seas it calls me
Scent of earth reminds me of my castle far away
And flying in the dark I get the feeling
That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday

Box of earth, be my home
Be the place I belong
Transylvania brought to London,
Box of earth, be my home.

Originally posted on Making Light

Little Brother

(To the tune of “How can I keep from singing?”)

My high school days were simple once
But now that time is ending.
I’ve learned how much I have to lose
And what is worth defending.
My freedom and my privacy
Depend on one another.
And those who threaten either one
Will deal with Little Brother.

Encryption guards my web of trust
Against the infiltration
Of DHS officials who
Would pry for information.
The Xnet grows with leaps and bounds
No outside force can smother
The message spreads from peer to peer:
We all are Little Brother.

The army trucks and prison cells
That caught us and confined us
Stripped all the innocence away
That we had thought defined us.
But now we know how strong we are
When we work with each other
So anyone who’s watching us:
Watch out for Little Brother.

Originally posted on Making Light

We nine clades of trilobites are

Teresa Nielsen Hayden pointed me (and the rest of the net) to a page on the nine orders of trilobites. It’s a great page, and leads to some good clicktrance.  But it made me think of “We Three Kings of Orient Are”.  And once I’d thought of it, of course, I had to write it.  (Sleep being, of course, something that happens to Other People)

Trilobites from Cambrian stone
Evolution glorious shown:
Adaptations, variations
On their ancestors unknown.

O fossil record, long preserved
Ancient hist’ry still conserved
Stone from sand made, nine of their clade
Now are classed from forms observed.

Ancient Agnostida you find
Primitive, and many are blind
Head like butt, thus isopygous
(Greek is much less unkind!)

Redlichiida’s thoracic spines
Form distinctive parallel lines
Micropygus, eyes a big plus.
Order that the head defines.

Varied trilobites could conform
To Ptychopariidanic form.
Long surviving, widely thriving
Giving them time to transform.

Corynexochida descends
And from Redlichiida’s form bends:
Glabella clavate, bum a tad great
Pointiest at their back ends.

Many trilobites spread their spines
Few, however managed the lines
Of Lichida, lacy leader:
Order that’s dressed to the nines.

Asaphids, effacéd, could glide
Or perhaps in sediment hide.
Distinctive sutures but no futures
The order still, like others, died.

Lasting till the Permian age
Proetida, ultimate stage.
Small, with spineless tail behind, this
Order turned the final page.

Semi-circle or ovate brimmed
Rostral plate by ages’ change trimmed.
Ptychopariida had Harpetida
But was by an order slimmed.

Spineless trilobites, a surprise!
What that in prehistory lies
Could but see the Phacopida
As they saw with compound eyes.

Worlds change, adapt if you can.
As with trilobites so with man?
Global warming, new plagues forming
May we run as long as they ran.

O fossil record, long preserve
All our hist’ry, and conserve
Stone from sand made, what of our clade
Will be known, and who’ll observe?

The scansion gets a bit ragged on the last lines; I was kinda punchy by the time I finished it.  But it was fun; how many times do you get to rhyme “Head like butt, thus” with “isopygous” in one lifetime, after all?

New dress for Mistress Pink, or, Package tracking as entertainment

Last year, my mother made a [jumper / pinafore] (depending on dialect) dress for Fiona. It was every pink-obsessed little girl’s dream garment, with tier on tier of floral ruffles. From a parental point of view, it’s also very good – corduroy, washable, looks good unironed, long and loose enough that she can wear it for some time before it is too small. Fiona loves it, and has to be wrestled from it when it’s time for a wash.

So in the tail end of the year, with the sewing machine and serger throwing inviting glances her way, Mom asked me if I wanted her to make another one. I thought about it, but Fiona only really needs one obsessive dress, or we’ll run out of shirts and tights to go under it. But I had an idea for the leftover fabric from the first dress. Why not make a matching one for Fiona’s favorite doll, Holly?

Measurements were taken in the dead of night. Guesses were made and rechecked. More measurements were required. Christmas threatened to squat like a toad on the postal services, so the decision was to wait till after New Year’s to send the package. Federal Express then required a crash course in Dutch postcodes (hint: looking at them on the US ZIP code database gets you nowhere). Finally, the thing was sent and all we could do was watch the tracking.

And watch it we did, with versification to keep it entertaining.

On January 3 it arrived in Memphis. Mom commented,

Give me Memphis, Tennessee!
Hep me find the party tried to get in touch with me.
She could not leave her number, but I know who placed the call
Cause m’uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall!

I replied with a mangling of Marc Cohn’s Walking in Memphis:

Warehoused in Memphis
Would that I could see the sights outside
Warehoused in Memphis
Waiting for my transfer. Where’s my ride?

Then it was sighted leaving Memphis, destination unknown. I found myself humming:

I’m leaving on a jet plane
At last I’m on my way again.
Fedex can ascertain
Where next I’m set to go.

Paris, as it turned out, was the next step. Mom announced this with:

The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay,
I heard the laughter of her heart in every street café

The last time I saw Paris, her trees were dressed for spring,
And lovers walked beneath those trees and birds found songs to sing.

I dodged the same old taxicabs that I had dodged for years.
The chorus of their squeaky horns was music to my ears.

Holly’s dress arrived in that most magic of all cities at 8 pm today, January 3.

The first time I saw Paris I was 19 years old. We took a train into town, and we got there at about 6 am. (“We” being Mike Thacker and me.) I walked out onto a bridge over the Seine, and the city was misty and quiet still….the cathedral had been there forever. At that moment I fell in love, as one does at 19, unthinkingly. And forever. I can’t see the real city now, when I go back. All I can see is what I saw in 1965.

The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay,
No matter how they change her, I’ll remember her that way.

I Googled for Paris poetry, and settled on one that starts:

First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
That lead the heart unto the heart’s delight. . . .

It swiftly became:

First, Piedmont, for the artistry that creates,
Flat Memphis that still Elvis elevates;
But Paris for its far-flung motorways
That bear the dress to where the dresser waits…

Before any more versification or doggerel could be committed, the Fed Ex van arrived here in Oostzaan. Fiona was delighted.

DSC02113

Thanks, Mom, for the dress and the entertainment.

Zombies on a Jet Plane

All you brains are ours
Though you don’t know
We’re shambling here along the aisle
Our clothing ragged, marked with stinking stains.
And the dawn is breaking
Above the cloud
The pilot’s seen us
And screamed aloud
Already we’re so hungry
We want brains

So scream now and try to flee
See the things you shouldn’t see
Hide somewhere you think you can defend
Cause we’re zombies, on a jet plane
Don’t think that you’ll be safe again.
You’ll die before the end.

There will be times you think you’ll win
The door is locked. They can’t get in.
I tell you now that it won’t hold for long
Every time you run, we’ll follow you
Every place you hide, we’ll come for you
When we break through, you’ll know your hopes were wrong.

So scream now and try to flee
See the things you shouldn’t see
Hide somewhere you think you can defend
Cause we’re zombies, on a jet plane
Don’t think that you’ll be safe again.
You’ll die before the end.

Now the time has come to kill you
One more time
Let us bite you
Then close your eyes
We will eat your brain
Now you stir; you’re one of us.
So tell your fellow passengers
Their screaming and their struggles are in vain.

They scream now and try to flee
See the things they shouldn’t see
Hide somewhere they think they can defend
But we’re zombies, on a jet plane
Don’t think that they’ll be safe again.
They’ll die before the end.

Originally posted on Making Light.