Filers Destroy Even More Lyrics

Almost anything will make a Filer burst into verse. I’ve been clipping the highlights from our own version of La La Land reality for over a year, and today I’m ready to play them for you.

Matthew Johnson https://file770.com/?p=33927&cpage=3#comment-579600 – (“Be Our Guest”)

 (And the juxtaposition of Lovecraft and Beauty and the beast makes me wish there was a mash-up of the two. With a few tweaks, it could be a truly horrifying story.)

Lose your mind, lose your mind
Your skull will be a melon rind
Open up the evil book
And ancient secrets you will find
Hidden clues, shoggoth ooze
You’ve got the Miskatonic blues
Try the fungi, they’re a lulu
Don’t believe me? Ask Cthulu
Thought and reason, you can park ’em
After all, sir, this is Arkham
Our hotel Bible’s not from Gideon
All our curves are non-Euclidean
When you’ve gouged your eyes out you’ll be glad you’re blind
Open the Necronomicon
Read a page and then what fun,
You’ll lose your mind, lose your mind, lose your mind!

Niall McAuley https://file770.com/?p=34266&cpage=1#comment-615233 (Beowulf)

So. The Filers in days gone by
and the SMOFs who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those pixels’ heroic scrolling.

Soon Lee https://file770.com/?p=28318&cpage=3#comment-418410 (“The Gambler”)

The Writer

On a cool Autumn’s eve
At a Worldcon bound for nowhere
I met up with the writer
We were both too tired to sleep

So we took turns a-starin’
Out the window at the darkness
The boredom overtook us,
And she began to speak

She said, “Child, I’ve made a life
Out of writin’ people’s stories
Knowin’ what the plots were
By the way they held their tropes

So if you don’t mind me sayin’
I can see you’re out of ideas
For a taste of your Oolong
I’ll give you some advice”

So I handed her my China
And she drank down my last swallow
Then she bummed a cigarette
And asked me for a light

And the night got deathly quiet
And her face lost all expression
She said, “If you’re gonna play the game, child
You gotta learn to write it right

You’ve got to know when to show ’em
Know when to tell ’em
Know when to passive voice
And to gerund

You never check your wordcount
When you’re typin’ at the keyboard
There’ll be time enough for counting
When the writin’s done

Every writer knows
That the secret to good writin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away
And knowin’ what to keep

‘Cause every book’s a winner
And every book’s a loser
And the best that you can hope for is to Fail
Better next

And when she finished speakin’
She turned back toward the window
Crushed out her cigarette
And faded off to sleep

And somewhere in the darkness
The writer she dreamt stories
But in her final words
I found advice that I could keep

You’ve got to know when to show ’em
Know when to tell ’em
Know when to passive voice
And to gerund

You never check your wordcount
When you’re typin’ at the keyboard
There’ll be time enough for counting
When the writin’s done

Repeat to fade

(Starring Badass Raadchai Ann Leckie as the writer. With apologies to Kenny Rogers)

Peer Sylvester https://file770.com/?p=32890&cpage=1#comment-536816 (“When I’m washing windows” from George Formby)

Now I go ticking boxes to earn an honest bob
For a nosy filer it’s an interestin’ job
Now it’s a job that just suits me
A box ticker you would be
If you can scroll what I can see
When I’m ticking boxes

Pixels and filers too
You should see them argue ‘n coo
You’d be surprised at things they do
When I’m ticking boxes

In my mind I’ll work hard
But I’ll never stop
I’ll scroll this blinkin’ thread
Till I get right to the top

The star wars thing, it looks divine
The twitter guy, he is doin’ fine
I’d rather have Mikes job than mine
When I’m ticking boxes

The handmaids’ new series I call
It’s a wonder if it will fall
My mind’s not on my work at all
When I’m ticking boxes

I know a fella, not so swell
He is a puppy, that’s plain to tell
I’ve seen him insult Jemison as well
When I’m ticking boxes

Oh, with my mouse I’ll scroll hard
But I’ll never stop
I’ll click this blinkin’ box
Till I get it right on the nob

Oz and awards lyin’ side by side
God stalks I have spied
I’ve often seen what goes inside
When I’m ticking boxes

Camestros Felapton https://file770.com/?p=33089&cpage=1#comment-546353 (“Try a Little Tenderness”)

Oh the Gorn may be weary–
Them Gorns they do get weary
Wearing those same old metallic shorts, yeah yeah…
But when the Gorn gets weary
Try a little pixelness….

Cubist https://file770.com/?p=32862&cpage=4#comment-539962 (“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”)

picture yourself on a scroll on a pixel
with vector equations and hex-color codes
suddenly someone relocates the cursor
and turns on alternative modes

high-contrast JPEGs and aliased TIFFs
stealing your vision away
look for your rods and your retinal cones
and you’re blind

pixel in the scroll with diamonds…

Rev. Bob https://file770.com/?p=34266&cpage=1#comment-615153

The Mount Tsundoku pile is hangin’ over my head
And if it falls over I reckon it’ll render me dead
Oh! Woe is me! Typos are a misery!
But I-I-I’ve got to read
So I’m off to start ‘nother pretty thick doorstop!

Jack Lint https://file770.com/?p=32961&cpage=2#comment-540505 (Kipling’s “Gentlemen-Rankers”)

Since we’re talking of things that are Kipled:
We’re poor pixel scrolls who’ve lost our books,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We’re little morlocks who’ve got no Nooks,
Baa–aa–aa!
Gentlefolk-filers out on the spree,
Damned from here to the Library,
God ha’ mercy on such as we,
Fifth! Godstalk!

Morlocks doesn’t really work there, but it seemed important at the time.

Peer https://file770.com/?p=33024&cpage=1#comment-543093 (People Are Strange)

People are strange
When you are a filer
Twitter seems wicked
When you’re unwanted
Places are uneven
When you are scrolled

Kip W. https://file770.com/?p=33089&cpage=1#comment-546116

Scroll on, thou doughty filer;
And, as thy pixels flow,
Scroll messages of media
To every fan below.

microtherion https://file770.com/?p=33129&cpage=2#comment-548951

Yor-El And The Gang Singing:
Oh yes, it’s Kryptonite
And the feeling’s right
Oh what a night

Luthor, he’s got the one
A rock that’s special everywhere
From Gotham to Metropolis
It’s Kryptonite, and Superman is down

[It’s Kryptonite…]

Wonder Woman, Lois Lane
You mothers both named “Martha”
Come here you hostage lady
Yeah, stay with me tonight

If you hear any gats
It’s just the Bat
It’s Kryptonite

Gonna use that Kryptonite
Use that Kryptonite
Gonna use that Kryptonite
Use that Kryptonite

[It’s Kryptonite…]

Stoic Cynic https://file770.com/?p=33129&cpage=1#comment-548627 (“Ragtime Gal”)

Hello my baby,
Hello my pixel,
Hello my scrolltime file.

Send me a tick by wire,
Baby the blog’s on fire…
*notices audience*

Ribbit!

Kip W. https://file770.com/?p=33274&cpage=2#comment-556328 (“High Hopes”)

Once there was a marten so fine,
Thought he’d take Collider off line
Everyone said, “Your mind’s flyin’…
You can’t take that off line!”

But he had
High hopes,
He had
High hopes,
He had
Sky-high don’t-care-if-I-die hopes
So whether mouse or mink,
If your Brain can think
You can scheme with Pink-
-y till nine.

Oops, there goes the Large Collider off
Oops, there goes the Large Collider off
Oops, there goes the Large Collider off line

Ka-
BOOM!

Peer Sylvester https://file770.com/?p=33328&cpage=1#comment-556877 (“The Joker” from Steve Miller Band)

Some filers scroll for the space cowboys
Some scroll for rockets and love
Some scroll for Boris (*)
Cause we scroll for the Tingle and love!

People scroll here, baby
Some clicking it wrong, clicking it wrong
Well, don’t you worry baby
Don’t worry
Cause were right here, right here, right here, right here at home

Cause we´re a Brunner
we´ re a Carter
we are a LeGuin
And were much smarter
We read SciFi in the sun!

(*) Strugatzki of course!

IanP https://file770.com/?p=33328&cpage=1#comment-556985 (Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name”)

Scrolled through the heart
And you’re to blame
Darling, you give Kzin a bad name…

A Kindle’s sale is what you tell
You promise me heaven, then put me through hell
Piles of books got a hold on me
Mount Tsundoku’s a prison, you can’t break free

Oh, oh, you’re a pixeled gun (yeah)
Oh, oh, there’s nowhere to run
No one can file me
The damage is done

Scrolled through the heart
And you’re to blame
You give Kzin a bad name (bad name)
I read my part
And you play with your game
You give Kzin a bad name (bad name)
You give Kzin a bad name
You give Kzin a bad name

Kurt Busiek https://file770.com/?p=33381&cpage=1#comment-559446

Pixel Scroll is my name
770’s my nation
Cyberspace my dwelling place
The File’s my destination

Steve Davidson https://file770.com/?p=33461&cpage=1#comment-562912

Mikey had a little file
there it is, on the screen
its just a little file
why not scroll it up
cute cute, little file
little pixels, little scrolls
now its comin at me
flowing cross the computer screen

pixel pixel, please let me scroll you
I want to write the fifth comment
Filer filer, its just a file
we want to make it the fifth comment

Camestros Felapton https://file770.com/?p=33485&cpage=1#comment-563726 (David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars”)

Pixel Scrolldust and Filers from Mars
Pixel scrolled guitar, blogging posts by Mike & Glyer
And the Filers from Mars
He scrolled it left hand
But made it too far
Became a special post by our gracious host

Peer Sylvester https://file770.com/?p=33546&cpage=1#comment-566010 (“Where is my mind” from The Pixies)

Ooh, stop
With your pixels in the air and your mouse on the ground
Try to tick and click it, yeah
Your box will collapse
But there’s nothing in it
And you’ll ask yourself
Where is my file
Where is my file
Where is my file

Peer Sylvester https://file770.com/?p=34628&cpage=2#comment-624273 (“No Milk Today” from Herman’s Hermits)

No scroll today
cause Mike has gone away
For signing of a book
“No scroll” is what it took
How could he know just what this absence means?
The end of all our scrolls, the end of all our dreams

Camestros Felapton https://file770.com/?p=33546&cpage=1#comment-566131 (“Distant Sun” by Crowded House)

When your seven worlds collide
Whenever I am by your side
And dust from a distant sun
Will shower over everyone

Charon D.  https://file770.com/?p=34101&cpage=1#comment-605760 (“Little Old Lady From Pasadena”)

Now everybody’s saying that there’s nobody shadier
Than the little old lady from Pixelgradia
She’s scrolling fast, she’s scrolling hard
She’s the terror of Pixelgradia Boulevard

Go granny go granny go granny go!

John Hertz – “Superstar”

Frankenstein,
Frankenstein,
Why are your eyes always filled with brine?

Frankenstein,
You’ve gone far;
Do you think you’re what they say you are?

Peer Sylvester https://file770.com/?p=34151&cpage=1#comment-610212 (“House of the Rising Sun“)

There is a house in New Crobuzon
They call the Rising Son
And it’s been the scroll of many a poor boy
And Godstalk, I know I’m one!

My mother was a Filer
She scrolled my new blue dreams
My father was a Slakemoth man
Down in New Crobuzon

Now the only thing a slakemoth needs
Is some dreams and a trunk
And the only time he’s satisfied
Is when he’s on a weaver

Camestros Felapton https://file770.com/?p=34186&cpage=2#comment-612125

We are the Hugo voting mere-people
We swish our flippy tails
We like to read our books a lot
And all that that entails

Once we lived on land you see
Amid the normal folk
But rabid mammal griefing
Made us all a bit more ‘woke’

“If we really must regress” we said
“and head back to the past,”
“Let’s return to the sea”
“But this time make it last”

Now we live among the dolphins
The whales and all the cephlapods
You are welcome to join us
Among the weird, the strange, the odds

Johan P https://file770.com/?p=34266&cpage=1#comment-615027 (“Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” by Cole Porter)

Birds do it, bees do it
Even pixel scrolling files do it
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love

Steve Davidson https://file770.com/?p=34266&cpage=1#comment-614908

The pixel must scroll
down the file of Mike’s dreaming
Flow Glyer, slow let the fifths and nears
come streaming onto my screen,
onto my screen
There’s a file, over at the fannish place
there’s a file, scrolling in a pixel place
there a hive, a hive of villany in every fans life

Peer Sylvester https://file770.com/?p=34266&cpage=1#comment-614968 (These Boots Are Made For Walkin’)

Well, these files are made for scrolling, and that’s just what they’ll do

One of these days these files are gonna scroll all over you
You keep tickin ‘ when you oughta be clickin’
You keep stalking when you oughta not God
You keep fifthing ‘ when you oughta be a’seconding’
What’s right is right but you ain’t been left just yet
These files are made for scrolling, and that’s just what they’ll do

Matthew Johnson https://file770.com/?p=34357&cpage=5#comment-619490 (“The Jumblies” by Edward  Lear)

Far and few, far and few, are the lands where the Filers stroll
Their books are piled in a tsundoku
And they went to sea in a scroll.

They went to sea in a scroll, they did, in a scroll they went to sea
In spite of all that the pups would say
In a Meredith Moment on book launch day
In a scroll they went to sea

And when the scroll was nearly wrecked
And everyone said “You’re just boxes to check!”
They called aloud, “Our scroll’s done with,
But we don’t care a pixel! We don’t give a fifth!
In a scroll we’ll go to sea!”

Far and few, far and few, are the lands where the Filers stroll
Their books are piled in a tsundoku
And they went to sea in a scroll.

Camestros Felapton https://file770.com/?p=34259&cpage=2#comment-614694 (“Goldfinger”)

I spent today cleaning things and entertaining other members of the household with my Shirley Bassey impression:

Molddddd fingers,
He’s the man, the man with the mouldy touch!
It rained too much
(so now he has)
Molddddd fingers
Beckons you, with his dusty clawsssss
They’re full of spores!!!!!!

Peer Sylvester https://file770.com/?p=34266&cpage=1#comment-615126 (Let’s Do The Time Warp Again)

Let’s do the Godstalk again.

Let’s do the Godstalk again.
It’s just a click with the left.
And then a box from the right.
Scroll your hands with your hips.
You bring your comments in tight.
But it’s the puppydrek
That really drives you insane.
Let’s do the Godstalk again.
Let’s do the Godstalk again.

Magenta:
It’s so dreamy, oh fantasy free me.
So you can’t vote me, no, not at all.
In another dimension, with
scientific invention,
Well pixelated I scroll all.

RiffRaff:
With a bit of a Mars flip

Magenta:
You’re on the file drip.

RiffRaff:
And nothing can ever scroll the same.

Magenta:
You’re read like a mountain.

RiffRaff:
still more books;you cant count´em .

All:

Let’s do the Godstalk again.
Let’s do the Goldstalk again.

Charon D. https://file770.com/?p=34697&cpage=1#comment-625555 (“A Pirate’s Life For Me”)

We pillage and plunder and polish our hooks
Appertain, me hearties, yo ho!
Or we would if we weren’t sitting around reading books
Appertain, me hearties, yo ho!

Yo ho, yo ho, a pixel scroll for me!

Tom Becker https://file770.com/?p=34828&cpage=1#comment-630510 (The Road Goes On Forever by Robert Earl Keen, Jr.)

Sherry was a blogger at the local fannish site
She had a reputation as a girl could really write

Down Main Street after midnight with a brand new file of zines A fresh one before her nose and a bheer appertained
She’d ride down to the clubhouse and meet with all her friends
The scroll goes on forever and the pixels never end

Kip W. https://file770.com/?p=34828&cpage=2#comment-630692

Useta blog down south on a pixel farm
Near Corflu, Tennessee.
‘Tweren’t nobody there in that cube but air,
Seventeen billion pixels and me.
One day round three, I said “OMG,
I’ll read File Sev’n Seven-teee!
It blew my screen,
Turned my red lights green
And I scrolled my pixels freee!

And there was
Pixels on the Hugos,
Pixels on the zines,
Pixels scrolled on costuming
And television screens
Pixels writing con reports from Washington, DC,
When I scrolled my pixels freeeee!