Like happy bunnies in a clover field
They're dancing to the health of good old Rob
For partying no second will they yield
'Cause he's set to head Japanward for a job
But the quake and tanker blast left them perplexed
And shocked when Lady Liberty was next...

With her head stuck on a New York street
Careering off the tower
With her head stuck on a New York street
In the midnight hour
It's all across the Internet, look how the traffic grows
They shot it with their cell phones, you've seen the videos
With her spike stuck through a car roof and a lamppost up her nose
And her head stuck on a New York street

Who else is going?

Not particularly a spoiler for anything, unless I missed a detail.

( I'm sorry it went down like this, your memory you'll lose... )

Weather-related.

( Set your hammer down... )

Back at work after a weekend at Conestoga in Tulsa. They went and developed a music track while I wasn't looking! lukeski and ericcoleman had concert sets, as did Cedric of the Bedlam Bards and a group called Queen's Gambit. I missed the Friday night filk (hadn't even thought there would be one -- there wasn't the last time they had a Harry Potter book release at the con) but the Saturday filk was well attended, and fun.

Unsettling story from the seeing-false-patterns-in-white-noise department: The night I was leaving Tulsa, a first-base coach from the Tulsa minor-league team was hit by a line drive and killed while his team was playing the Arkansas Travelers less than half an hour away from my family's home.

I'm currently midway through Chapter 5 in That Book, all of which was done on the ride down from the con to DFW with decoy01 and tmc4242. After the drive from the to Waco I was sufficiently wiped that I pretty much went straight to bed. Haven't read any more yet because I did not wish to be late for work...

Words: (c) 2006 Joseph Abbott
Music: "Rattlin' Bog," traditional

( As you'd expect from using that tune, this one goes long... )

If you go down to the pond today
You're in for a bad surprise
If you go down to the pond today
You'll want to avert your eyes
For every trout that used to swim there
Is floating up, exposed to the air --
Today's the day the teddy bears all go fishing

As it turns out, there's another reason to celebrate today: It's Hermione Granger's birthday.

Of course, if you're Tom Smith, you could do both...

(P.S.: Just noticed that they've changed the "Update Journal" button to "Update Captain's Log" for today...)

Cross posting to filk, texasfilk

( This one's creepier than I usually do... )

(cross-posting to texasfilk, filk)

TTTO: "Leaving on a Jet Plane," John Denver

I'm heading out to see a friend
On this flight that never seems to end
Going to L.A. to have some fun
Across the aisle, a bald black man
Turns to give the plane a scan
And I can't help but noticing his gun

Ah, stewardess? Excuse me, miss?
I think that I just heard a hiss
Does anyone know herpetology?
'Cause there's snakes here on this jet plane
I don't know when they'll attack again
Oh, God, don't let me die

Went to the doctor yesterday; he couldn't find anything wrong with me and even the blip on the EKG vanished, but I was still having some shortness of breath. The current theory is anxiety, so I now have a prescription for low-dosage Celexa (actually the generic version thereof). Having taken it a couple of days now, I remember why I took it at night when I was on it for depression some years back -- a couple of hours after I take it, it's naptime. So tomorrow instead of taking it in the morning I'll take it in the evening after I come home. The shortness of breath is still there, but not as much as previously. Thanks to everyone who wished me well...

We broke our string of 100-degree days; Thursday only got up to 99, and Saturday only to 98. Friday, though, got up to 101, and today it was 100. So we're 10 for the last 12 on 100-degree days (and the weekend was when it was supposed to cool off to the low 90s).

Dinsdale is looking up at me and meowing, probably for attention. He's doing pretty well, as near as I can tell, though he's due back at the vet's for a checkup sometime this week.

I have a showstopper -- one verse and chorus -- I'm preparing for Conestoga next weekend. I've been dithering about whether to post it or leave it entirely a surprise, but there's only a couple of people I can think of offhand who'll be there who read my journal, so I'll probably post it in a bit. I certainly hope the drive to and from Tulsa is cooler than the drive to/from OKC was last weekend -- OKC has been having even worse heat than Waco (isn't it supposed to get cooler as you go farther north?).

(ttto: "Happy Holidays," Irving Berlin)

Happy holidays, happy holidays
'Cause there's more than one involved here
Some for many, some for few

Happy holidays, happy holidays
May all discord be resolved here
Happy holidays to you

I finally managed to finish a song...

EARTH-THAT-WAS
Words and music: Joseph Abbott
Based on "Firefly" created by Joss Whedon

She was beautiful and tattered
She was innocent and worn
And we knew she'd always be there, and we knew her time was near
She was everything that mattered
From the time that we were born
To the time that we abandoned her to die

CHORUS: And though we never saw her
We still shape them in her image
We see her ghost, see everything it does
And though we never knew her
We still know that she was ours
We still dream of Earth-That-Was

From Osiris out to Paquin
From Greenleaf to New Hall
A hundred worlds all haunted by the memory of one
From Persephone to Sihnon
Londinium to Whitefall
Wherever humankind has made its home
CHORUS

And still we blast and dig and cut and burn
We remember our first home... but have we learned?
CHORUS x 2

Do you remember Mal Reynolds?
Do you remember Jayne?
Could you picture them selling tickets
To the Reavers standing over
The body on the plain (well, actually, I could picture Jayne doing that...)
Did you understand the contract, Saffron
Or was it all in vain?

(More complete (different) Firefly filk to follow...)

Things you just don't hear many places other than a con:

"Okay, now flip over all your planets..."

"Are you visible?"
"No."

The Harry Potter party, combined with it being a Friday night at a small-to-medium con, pretty much blew out any chance for filk. Well, that and the filk room was locked until about midnight-thirty, since apparently no one at the hotel seemed to know for sure who had the key to that room. So it wound up just being me, msminlr and celticdragonfly. Saturday night was much better, with a peak of about a dozen people, half of them performing. I got to spring my "Northwest Passage" filk "Twisty Passage" on Mark Simmons, which unfortunately turned out to mean he didn't do his own "Goddard Passage," which had inspired "Twisty" as much as the original had. (In fact, because of the way I came at filk backwards from how the older filkers did, I heard "Goddard" before I heard the Stan Rogers original.)

I didn't get a copy of HP at the party because mine was waiting for me at a substantial discount at Barnes & Noble here in Waco. I walked over there for my pre-breakfast exercise at 10:30 this morning, while the weather was still something at least vaguely resembling cool (recall that I work odd hours -- in fact, I'm writing this while I should probably be getting ready for work). Started to read it, which was probably a mistake (and probably why I got started later than planned on writing this entry). Horrifying typo on Page 10, "site" instead of "sight"; Spell Check strikes again, I fear. (Pun unintended.) I read it up to the start of Chapter 3, which is the first in which Harry actually appears.

Also, it not only turns out that there is no copy of the new Usagi Yojimbo collection to be had at B&N (it's been on order for some months now), there's apparently no copy anywhere -- there will be a second printing late next month, and I'm pretty much SOL until then. Meanwhile, I have a standing order for future collections at the local comic store. (They had sold out of theirs -- they don't tend to keep the paperback collections anyway -- which is what led me to try ordering it through B&N.)