Cap’n Refsmmat’s Blog of Doom

Nerd poetry! This is what happened when I was forced to parody The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.

(Yes, it’s long, but it’s worth it. Really.)

Once upon a schoolnight dreary, while I worked, bored and weary,
On many a long and arduous paper of the English kind,
While I toiled, nearly sleeping, suddenly there came a beeping,
As of some device slowly losing, losing its electronic mind.
“’Tis but a battery,” I muttered, “needing a replacement of its kind –
Nothing more, I hope to find.”

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the late of night,
And each separate keystroke rang out like a silenced gunshot.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to delay
The completion of my work – work I could afford not
To lose, work whose final completion I had sought
A whole lot.

And the cold heartless beeping of the unknown gizmo
Scared me – scared me with its beeping, insistent and unkind,
So that now, to ease my nervous mind, I sat repeating,
“’Tis but a battery, only a battery, needing a replacement of its kind –
An old battery needing a replacement of its kind –
Nothing more, I hope to find.”

Now I looked about in search of the insistent beeping,
With each passing moment my mind filling with terror;
Terror that the beeping may not be trivial,
Terror that the error’s wearer
Could be the cruel bearer
Of a fatal error.

I cautiously looked about the debris-strewn floor
To find this beeper, to find its hidden location
And suddenly I saw it; I saw what I had hoped not to admit –
A computer, my computer, the source of all my frustration,
And I saw on its screen a message that caused a curious sensation:
“Illegal operation.”

I suddenly felt quite faint, as though I had inhaled paint;
I fervently prayed this was but a mere aberration,
That my hard work, my essay, had not just seen its final day;
But alas, it was lost, by an act of electronic constipation,
By my computer’s ceaseless and mindless oration:
“Illegal operation.”

“No!”, I cried, “you fiend! I was nearly done when you intervened!”
I was filled with sorrow – there was a great emotional tribulation;
Poetry is not easy, The Raven less so,
And now it was all lost in the electronic devastation –
The fatal aberration – of my computer’s
Illegal operation.

Another nerdy musical parody is up on YouTube. This time, we take aim at My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music.

Enjoy!

As you can see, I’ve been helping make science- and nerd-related parody songs recently, and I’m looking to make some more. It’s a fun way to spend some time.

Do you have any songs you think could be written? Pick a song (preferably something that can be played on guitar or piano) and a promising subject or a few funny lines and submit them in the comments here. You don’t have to write the whole song — usually it’s easy enough to finish a song if you supply a line or two or a witty chorus idea. The best/funniest ideas might be used to make a new song later this year.