Parodies

Bring Back My Planet
Canning Tuna
Fries Again
Garbage Day
Grandfather's Code
 The Ghost Program
Eagleharper
Finnegan's Wake
Lamentations
The Man Who Never Recharged
 Morning Has Broken
Old Time Religion
Only A Subroutine
Randolph, The Rude Noise Red Deer
Roving Logger's Dream
Sarajevo!

Fries Again


TTTO Mary Ellen Carter

I am an office worker pushing paper for my pay
I don't go out and face the wind or cut down trees all day
I don't fight the kind of dangers that can quickly strike you dead
When my job kills, it kills you slow instead
For I don't get that much exercise, I'd take a heart attack
If I ate the kind of meals it takes to feed a lumberjack
But when I forget to bring my lunch, it always gives me pain
Cause the cafeteria's serving fries again

Fries again! Fries again!
Enough saturated fat to feed a family of ten
All I carry is my debt load, all I'm pushing is my pen
But the cafeteria's serving fries again.


Eagleharper

TTTO Your Cheatin' Heart

Now if you climb / A mountain high
And play your harp / Up in the sky
Where the eagles nest / You'd best look sharp
Those chicks wil crawl / Into your harp
And then those chicks / Go "Cheep cheep cheep"
Till they attract / A passing sheep
And she'll get clawed / It's sad but true:
Your cheepin ' harp / Will talon ewe


Finnegan's Wake

Mike Finnegan was a rowing coach
And many's the crew he used to train
And everyone braced at his approach
For he drove his launch like a hydroplane
He'd stop on the water to make a note
Then look around till he spied his shell
Open the throttle on his boat
And go like a bat right out of Hell

Hold your oars and keep her level
Don't let him tip you in the lake
Grab a pail and bail like the devil
We all get swamped by Finnegan's wake

I was rowing in a double
Partner a novice, first time out
All we didn't need was trouble
That's when we heard someone shout
"Head for the high ground, here comes Finnegan!"
Into the drink goes me and him
Tried to help him climb back in again
"Thanks", says he, "I'd rather swim"

One day Finnegan up and died
To pay our last respects went we
We couldn't stand at his graveside
Cause they buried the blighter out at sea
We all rowed out with the funeral ship
To see him dumped into the drink
They lowered him down and let him slip
He bobbed and splashed but he would not sink

We couldn't just row back to shore
And we sat there wondering what to do
When we heard a mighty Johnson roar
And Finnegan's launch swept into view
And there at the helm sat Finnegan's ghost
He waked the corpse from heels to head
It sank like a stone and we heard him boast
"That's the way to wake the dead!"


Garbage Day

TTTO Camptown Races

Garbage truckers sing this song, doo-dah, doo-dah
Pile of garbage ten miles long, oh, doo dah day

Throw it out the door, load it in the truck
If you don't like out garbage dump, guess you're out of luck

Garbage dump is full of bears
Makes 'em sick but no one cares

Garbage dump wastes property
So let's just dump it in the sea

Sea's so full the fishes choke
so burn it up and breathe the smoke

When you buy stuff you'll throw away
Then every day is garbage day


The Ghost Program In The Drive

TTTO Ghost Riders In The Sky

An old programmer hacked his code, alone and late at night
He tried to save his program just in case he had it right
When all at once, an error message flashed across the screen
An OS dump in octal - - - from a virtual machine

Yippee A I, yippee I/O
The ghost program in the drive

The drives were spinning backwards and the heads began to seek
The printer gave ten formfeeds and started spewing Greek
The speaker moaned and giggled through the tolling of a bell
And the picture on the monitor - - - was an inside view of Hell

The flames were red and ravenous to torture all the damned
The daemons stood there laughing with their pitchforks in their hands
Control - C couldn't kill it, RESET wouldn't work at all
When he tried to pull the power cord - - - it was welded to the wall

The program finally ran its course and off the screen it scrolled
Two flashing lines it left behind, they made his blood run cold.
"Programmer, change your ways tonight or this will be your fate:
You'll come back as machine code - - - for an 8088"


Lamentations

TTTO Doh, A Deer, but sung in a minor key so the scale begins with . . .

La - metations, pain and woe
Ti - means troubles without end
Dough - the cost of funerals
Ray - of hope won't shine again
Me - I wish that I was dead
Fa - away from hope we are
So - go kill yourself instead
And we all will sing our La - men - ta - tions


The Man Who Never Recharged

TTTO The MTA Song

Let me tell you the story of a man named Jonathan
On a tragic and fateful day
He kissed his wife goodbye, unplugged his Electra Seven
Took it out on the broad highway

Did he ever return? No, he never returned
Though he did not crash and burn
He just ran out of power in a half an hour
He's the man who never returned

Jon got it up to speed in under five minutes
Cause the road was all downhill
But the first slope he barged up showed he wasn't fully charged up
Halfway up he stopped dead and still

Now day after day Jonny stands by the highway
Saying "Goddamn!" and "Why me, Lord?"
"Nothing would be the matter if you'd send me a battery
Or a two mile extension cord"

Now you prisoners of Big Oil, don't you think it's a scandal
How electric cars weren't left to thrive?
Change your vote this hour! Vote for solar power
And get Jonny off the old I-5.


Morning Has Broken

Morning has broken, no one can fix it
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't defend it, now they can't mend it
No one can put it together again


Old Time Religion

Lots of people have written verses to this filk. These are mine.

Let us sing of Huitsilopochtli
He ate human hearts like broccoli
It's hard to rhyme him properly but he's good enough for me

Let us sing one for the sun god
Cause he's the Number One god
He's sure as hell a fun god, Ra! Ra! Ra!

Let us sing a verse for Noah
He was one hell of a rowah
He forgot the dinasoah, but he's good enough for me

Let us sing in praise of Mammon
Chasing wealth like spawning salmon
Sure beats poverty and famine, and that's good enough for me

Religion is a rum thing
Seems we'll worship any dumb thing
If you've gotta worship something,Why don't you worship me?


Only A Subroutine

TTTO Only A Paper Moon

It was only a subroutine
That nobody knows who wrote
But it got into the voting machine
And it just ate your vote

It was part of a Pac-Man game
Caught up in program bloat
But it got into the voting machine
And it just ate your vote

It was just a bug
Where the coding wasn't deft
Yeah, just a bug
But only the right-wing votes are left

Yeah, politics isn't clean
But look at that program gloat
Cause it got into the voting machine
And it just ate your vote.

Roving Logger's Dream

TTTO Roving Gambler

I am a roving logger, I ramble all around
Whenever I see a stand of trees, I love to cut them down
I love to cut them down (saw noises), I love to cut them down

I cut down trees in springtime when the sap is on the rise
I cut down trees in summer when the dust gets in your eyes

I cut down trees in winter to float them on the thaw
And many a tree's laid down and died to hear me start my saw

I dreamed I saw Paul Bunyan come walking through the door
I told him there were no trees left, he waved his axe and roared

When I woke up that morning, there were no trees around
So I fired up my chain saw and I rambled into town

I went to ask my bosses just what I should do
When a company cop said I should stop, I sawed his badge in two

It seemed my bosses didn't want to talk to me at all
With twenty guards outside the door, I sawed right through the wall

I sawed their desks of rosewood, I sawed their swivel chairs
I sawed off their belt buckles and I trimmed their curly hairs

When I had their attention, I had these words to say
"Don't cut them faster than they grow or I'll be back some day"


Sarajevo!

TTTO Oklahoma!

Sarajevo! where the tanks come rumbling down the lane
We had so much fun starting World War One that we're gonna do it all again
Sarajevo! every night my honey lamb and I
Watch the Serbs and Croats cut each other's thro-ats
And shoot UN planes out of the sky
Oh, the Nazis found we were tough
But they left before we'd had enough
So when we shout - YYAAAAAAAHRGHHH!!!
It's you we shout about
We're only saying, "We'll never share Sarajevo
Sarajevo! Keep Out!