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Haskell is one of my imaginary friends, a small silicon dragon who accompanies me on inner journeys. I've said a bit more about him in the intro to another song, but I left off telling the story of how we met, because I wasn't ready. Then this poem came pouring out.

Haskell is not just an imaginary friend, he represents a part of me, specifically my manic cleverness. We met near the beginning of the Year of Madness, and he wasn't small then, or tame. When I realized how dangerous he might be, it was almost too late. Making him small and tame took a lot of hard work.

The alarming thing about the story is this: the first half of this poem narrates, in detail, the content my own subconscious contributed to a (dangerously poorly) guided meditation journey that took place before the Year of Madness — in fact, that may have triggered the Year of Madness — certainly long before I knew I was bipolar. Looking back, it has an uncomfortable whiff of prophecy about it.

by Benjamin Newman
 
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This poem is a style parody of Edward Lear's nonsense poem "The Akond of Swat", mainly notable for its distinctive rhythm and the way it dangles and drops rhymes.  Swat was a real princedom in what is now Pakistan, and its prince was indeed titled Akond — Lear's poem of course has nothing to do with the real place, and uses the title merely for its strangeness.

"S.H.I.E.L.D.", on the other hand, stands for "Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division".  ("And what does that mean to you?"  "It means that someone really wanted our initials to spell 'shield'.")

by Benjamin Newman
after "The Akond of Swat" by Edward Lear
 
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I'm pagan and have studied magic in the Reclaiming tradition, so I unironically love the song "When You're Magic" by Starhawk and Anne Hill (and I'm pleased to report that the album it's from is back in print after a long hiatus).  However, I'm also bipolar, and I couldn't help but notice how my world became much more magical exactly when I was having a major mental health crisis.  And you only have to change one letter...

lyrics by Starhawk, adapted by Benjamin Newman; music by Anne Hill

Just replace "magic" with "manic" where it appears in the verse and "balance" where it appears in the chorus.
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With apologies to Paul McCartney and Garth Nix.  The introduction is adapted from passages in Sabriel and Lirael.

(content note: horrible things done to animals (fictional))

Gore Crows... Read more... )
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Only a few lines of Paul Simon's "American Tune" needed to be changed to make it about Neil Gaiman's novel.

lyrics and music by Paul Simon, adapted by Benjamin Newman
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Almost nothing in "The Rainbow Connection" needed to be changed to make it about Babylon 5.  Just replace "rainbow" with "Vorlon" throughout and every line falls into place.

Really, that's it.

lyrics and music by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher, adapted by Benjamin Newman

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In "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", Alan Turing suggested that we will know whether machines can think, roughly speaking, by the way they behave — just as, in "Prince Lir's Song", the prince will know when he loves "by the way I behave".  Thus begins a brief survey of the history and philosophy of machine intelligence.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman, after "Prince Lir's Song" by Peter S. Beagle
ttto: "The Ash Grove", trad.
 
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I'm fortunate not to have any (known) food allergies (for now), but I have friends with serious nut allergies — this one's for you.

content warning: explicit description of serious allergy symptoms

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "Addicted to Love" by Robert Palmer
 
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The song "The Rolling Mills of New Jersey" is affectionate in tone but basically paints NJ as an industrial wasteland. Which, sure, some of it is, but much of the state is green and growing. This song provides a counterpoint.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "The Rolling Hills of the Border" by Matt McGinn
after "The Rolling Mills of New Jersey" by John Roberts and Tony Barrand
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Chocobos are mostly flightless avian steeds from the Final Fantasy multiverse.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "Chocobo Chocobo" from Final Fantasy IV by Nobuo Uematsu
 
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A sing-along song about life's journey.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman
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"Your State's Name Here", by the Berrymans, abstracts over all US states. Parodies of it have been written abstracting over other categories — sci-fi cons in "Your Con's Name Here", crooked politicians in "Your Crook's Name Here", etc. This song abstracts over all categories, and thus all parodies of the original song. I think this is about as meta as a song can get without collapsing.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "Your State's Name Here" by Lou and Peter Berryman
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A sentient starship intended for exploration must be able, not only to think, but to wonder.  Parts of this song came to me in a dream.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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Spice harvesting in Dune is a lot like whaling — you ship out to the most hostile environment there is, where there is no fresh water, and colossal beasts may strike from below at any moment, in order to obtain one of the most valuable substances there is, which is the biological product of these same beasts.  So a Dune filk of a whaling song seemed apropos.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "Wings of a Gull" (or "The Weary Whaling Ground"), trad. Canadian
 
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A duet for Ravna and Pham from A Fire Upon the Deep.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto "The Ocean" by Dar Williams
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A time for each instruction in the program...

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "Turn, Turn, Turn" by Pete Seeger, after Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
 
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Based on Children of the Sky, the sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "The Times They Are A-Changin'" by Bob Dylan
 
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lyrics by Benjamin Newman, after an idea from the Philcon 2003 open filk
ttto: "Charlie on the MTA"
 
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Tanamoril

Jul. 22nd, 2020 07:37 pm
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Based on Cart and Cwidder from the Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman
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lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "Angel from Montgomery" by John Prine
 
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