billroper, posts by tag: lyrics - LiveJournal (original) (raw)

| | I recall having mangled a CSN tune many years ago on the way to Contraption. Like that convention, the particular co-worker whose code I was digging through and sorting out is also gone.Ah, well.When the project's months behind,You're debugging, know what you'll find.There's some code, not writ by youAnd you're wondering just what it will do.And when that code goes up in flame,There's a system crash when you type your name,And you're looking round for someone to blame,Buddy, blame the guy who's gone.Blame the guy who's gone.Tags:filk, lyrics, musings, work It has been a long time since I wrote a new song, as I seem to have been afflicted with a case of pandemic-related writer's block. But I started working on this one just before Marcon and finished it up the night before leaving, so I could sing it there.And having a new song makes me happy. :)**( Lyrics inside...Collapse )Tags:filk, home, lyrics, musings These things happen in our household.Gretchen and I were driving home from lunch and listening to Radio Margaritaville when our discussion turned to Italian food. Gretchen mentioned that she was fond of ravioli.Now, we have frequently discussed the similarity between ravioli, pierogi, and various other ethnic foods. It was thus that I sang the following line to the tune of the Jimmy Buffett song, "Everybody's Got a Cousin In Miami":"Everybody's got a recipe for dumplings."Gretchen promptly responded with, "Everybody wants to wrap food up in dough."I am not sure if this is something we should think about finishing.Although, if I hadn't just had lunch, I suppose I would be hungry now.Tags:home, humor, lyrics, musings This is what happens when you spend too much time listening to the classic rock station.I hate myself for loving stew.It's the least of the things you can chew.Tuck into a bowl of gray goo.I hate myself for loving stew.Tags:doggerel, filk, home, lyrics, musings Little boxes float before me.Little boxes filled with Java code.And the tools that I am using are quite thoroughly confused.The compiler shows me errorsBut the missing class is clearly there.And if I rebuild the class, then the errors go away.It's been that sort of day.In other news, I have bought a new phone. It should be here soon.And I smell the chili cooking, so that's enough work for today.Tags:doggerel, home, lyrics, musings, tech, work Here is the other song that I wrote at Chambanacon that I did *not* get to sing in the circle there, because I didn't finish it until I'd headed back to bed in the room on Saturday night. But I had been three verses into writing the song earlier in the day and the other two verses wanted out, so I let them win.I've been kicking the idea for this song around for a while now; more seriously since OVFF.I think it was good and ready to come out. Still haven't decided what to call this one either...(ETA: But now it's simply called "Coal".)( Lyrics inside...Collapse )Tags:cons, filk, home, lyrics, musings So I have been terribly backed up on songwriting. It's not that I haven't had *ideas* -- I simply haven't had the time or energy to do anything about it. This is frustrating.The wonderful thing about being at Chambanacon is that it's a relaxacon and there actually *is* time to do something about it. I got mugged by bits of this song while sleeping earlier this week, wrote it at Chambanacon, and had the chance to sing it in the circle Saturday night. It's still rough and it definitely needs a title, which Gretchen is working with me on.(ETA: And now it's called "Canvas".)But here are the lyrics:( Lyrics inside...Collapse )Tags:cons, filk, home, lyrics, musings Prompted by a previous round of colonoscopy, I penned the following very short colonoscopymas carol:I want a colonoscopy for Christmas.A colonoscopy is all I want.Don't want a doll or a pole for catching bass,All I want's a doctor who will...This was followed by Gretchen saying, "Thank you, dear."But it was a long drive to OVFF ahead of today's colonoscopy. And thus we have another very short colonoscopymas carol (to the tune of "Happy Holidays", if it isn't obvious):Colonoscopy!Colonoscopy!Oh, your bowels we will be probing!Colonoscopy for you!And Gretchen said, "*Thank* *you*, *dear*!"I have three to five years before I need to have this done again. That may be long enough for her to forgive me...Tags:filk, health, home, lyrics, musings So it went like this:Some years ago, I asked Teresa Powell to update my website. Unfortunately, I dropped some balls and I miscommunicated some things, so although much of the work was done, I haven't actually been able to update the updated website since 2011.Over the past few weeks, I have tweaked the website design and have uploaded the chords and lyrics for all the songs that I've written since then. I also patched revised HTML versions of all of the songs back onto the website and swapped in PDFs that are exactly the versions of the songs that appear in my personal songbook. This took a stupid amount of my spare time.But it is done now. There are still some things I need to update. There are some songs that have managed to continue to escape the website.We'll get to those later.In the meantime, you can see the results hereTags:computers, filk, home, lyrics, musings It is a sign of how busy things are that I'm just getting around to posting this (and the next post) now.This is the song that we wrote for Katie's fifth grade teacher, Ms. Turner. She has a reading program called "Passport to Genre", which calls for the students to read and report on books from a wide variety of different genres. This was one of the things that Katie liked best, so it made a great topic for the song.( Lyrics inside...Collapse )Tags:filk, home, kids, lyrics, musings, school The Cook County soda tax has been placed on hold by a local judge. The next act in our morality play is now proceeding as usual, as the Cook County government is now issuing dire warnings about the draconian cuts that will be required if this relatively small in the whole budgetary scheme amount of money isn't available.This includes, of course, a fifteen percent cut in personnel for the Cook County Police, because the first thing that they always threaten to cut is the police. I'm sure they'd threaten to cut the fire department too, except that Cook County doesn't seem to have a fire department to cut, based on my brief Google search. That's all controlled by various municipalities and townships. Well, you threaten where you can...In any case, I am old enough to remember Tom Lehrer. For those of you who don't, here's the original. And the altered lyrics follow:( Read more...Collapse )Tags:filk, home, lyrics, musings, politics It has been extraordinarily busy here for the last few months. It was thus that we found ourselves coming up on the end of the school year and having not yet written a song for Katie's teacher, Mrs. Sharko. We knew what we wanted to write, but actually putting pen to paper was being challenging. We had had discussion on the subject with Katie and Julie. We had nothing actually written down.And then on Thursday night, I started my vacation.And at 3 AM I woke up Gretchen and rapped out a verse to her."Can I go back to sleep now?""Yes. Yes, you can."Not much later, but much more awake, we managed to finish pulling everything together. While performing the song as a rap was a possibility, setting a tune to it was going to be a better choice. :)And today, Katie was able to take the recording of the song to Mrs. Sharko, who likes it.It is only deadline that would get me to record something with this case of bronchitis... :)Anyway, here are the lyrics:( Lyrics inside...Collapse )Tags:filk, home, kids, lyrics, musings, school This is what happens when Gretchen and I have not had enough sleep, it seems. :)(And you'll probably suss out the tune in a moment.)I don't want a ham for Christmas, I don't want a roast to sear.I don't want a big old turkey that will last until New Year.I want something that is hot,Slowly simmering in a pot.Something I can chew.All I want for Christmas is stew.Tags:doggerel, home, lyrics, musings Meanwhile, another addition to our fine collection of doggerel, prompted by an episode of Renovation Realities and a rather hapless couple:Shim shimanee, shim shimanee, shim shim sharail.A shim's what you use when your measurements fail.Shim shimanee, shim shimanee, shim shim sharoo.With luck this won't fall when the reno is through.And always cut once, after measurements two.Tags:doggerel, home, lyrics, musings Balticon had a new hotel this year. In a bit of, well, interesting strategy, Programming -- much against Gary's will -- moved the filk room to a different room every night so that we could "try them out". We figured that Gary deserved to have a song written from his point of view about his plight.Happily, Gretchen and I picked on a song that only has two verses in the original -- and a very singable chorus.Note for the interested Programming Head for 2017: Gary would actually be quite happy to be in Kent, but it rhymed, so he is not responsible for that particular observation. :)( Lyrics inside...Collapse )Tags:cons, filk, home, lyrics, musings FilkONtario also has an annual at-con songwriting contest where you are supplied with a list of words -- always including "penguin" -- and challenged to write a song that includes them all. This year, the words were "penguin", "titanium", "synergy", "infinity", and "entropy". This was a fairly happy set of words, as it didn't take me long to figure out what my song should be about.I don't frequently set songs in other people's universes, but in this case the universe belongs to my brother-in-law, Jeff Duntemann, and I figure that I can always set Gretchen on him if I need to. :) We'll see when he finds this... :)Anyway, the song is set in his Drumlin universe and it goes like this.( Lyrics inside...Collapse )Tags:cons, filk, home, lyrics, musings So Gretchen is buying me a new guitar for Christmas. What this means is that I am charged to arrange the guitar which will then be appropriately wrapped for Christmas and placed under the tree, because guitars are a very individual thing. So the last time I was at The Guitar Works, I asked Terry if he carried the line of guitars that I was interested in and he said that he did. Well, that was convenient. :)Last week, I called him up and asked him to place the order. He contacted his sales rep and it turns out that he hadn't bought enough guitars from this particular manufacturer recently to be able to order a single guitar, but if he ordered $5000 worth of guitars, they'd be happy to send him the one that I wanted as part of the package. This was a few more guitars that Terry wanted to get from that manufacturer right now, so he called me back and apologized for not being able to get the guitar, which I certainly understood. He also gave me some pointers to other dealers in town that I could get the guitar from, which was nice of him.I ended up ordering the guitar from one of the local dealers via Amazon, because that meant that I didn't have to pay City of Chicago sales tax. And a couple of days ago, the new guitar arrived. It's an electric baritone tuned B to B, which gives me a new guitar voice in the collection. Of course, it had to be checked out, so I plugged it into the amp and made sure everything was working correctly, which it was. And I played around with some chords...The last couple of days, I pulled out my desk guitar and worked through the chords and produced the following song:( Lyrics inside...Collapse )Gretchen approves. :)And the new baritone guitar is back in its box, waiting for Christmas.And Julie is enjoying playing with the outer shipping box...Tags:christmas, filk, guitar, home, lyrics, musings Having made it safely back from OVFF, here are the lyrics for the song I wrote for this year's songwriting contest for which the topic was "Time After Time". (The over/under on the number of entries containing that phrase in their title was 3.5; we hit the under at 3.)( Lyrics inside...Collapse )Or, as I once said in a SpaceTime Theater bit, "Do you have any idea how much paperwork it takes to requisition a comet?"Tags:cons, filk, home, lyrics, musings, spacetime See, this is what happens when you clean out your desk. I'm going through the big file of filk, looking for the lyrics and chords for Chess so that I can record a backing track for Randy, and I found a printout of a song that I barely remember writing with Gretchen.Is it in the filk directory on my machine? No, it is not. Ok, search.There it is. Let me move it to its proper home.And here's a copy for all of you, from August 25, 2001:( Lyrics inside...Collapse )**Tags:filk, home, lyrics, musings Previous 25 EntriesTop of Page | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |