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Author: autographedcat

Chair of Georgia Filkcon; musician, songwriter, essayist & dilettante-at-large. Almost certainly not what you expect. (they/them)

Fratricide and Spirits

By

On January 1, 1998

In Songs

Fratricide and Spirits
by Robert Wynne and Jeffrey Williams
Music: “Rainy Days and Mondays” by the Carpenters
© 1998

Talking to myself and feeling cold
I don’t know what I’m to do
Really wish I had a clue
Walking around wearing a solemn frown
Fratricide and Spirits always get me down

What I saw would drive most ’round the bend
My dead father said to me
Son, you’ve gotta kill the king.
But I don’t know
Which way I ought to go
To be or not to be, I sure wish I could know

Funny but it seems i’d know exactly what to do
Don’t know why i cant decide it
If anyone suspects, they’ll probably lock me safe away
So I guess I’d better hide it

Even my best friend thinks me insane
But I knew the play’s the thing
I caught the concience of the king.
Now that I’m sure
Vengence is the only cure
There’s only one more act i’ll be forced to endure

Now I must go
To calculate the final blow
And lay Claudius to rest beneath the falling snow
This song was written because Jeff and I wanted to write a song based on Shakespeare (we were both English majors).

This song was published in the Gafilk 2000 songbook.

The Flamewar Never Dies

By

On January 1, 1998

In Songs

The Flamewar Never Dies
by Robert Wynne
Music: “The Dangling Conversation” by Paul Simon
© 1998

If you will not heed what I say
I’ll repeat it louder still
And you think you can ignore my words
But I don’t think you will
I will shout it from the ramparts
Locked in my position
Like an overzealous twit
You can watch me pitch a fit

Full of righteous indignation
And my superficial lies
The flamewar never dies

And you all howl out with outrage
How dare I break the peace
Although every response to me
Ensures I never cease
Though you put me in your killfile
Still I will be lurking
On the edges of the net
I won’t let you forget

About my righteous indignation
And my superficial lies
The flamewar never dies

Oh, I speak things that don’t matter
Just to prolong the thread
No analysis is worthwhile
No logic’s in my head.
Yet I won’t stop my babble
I can keep this up forever
My fingers never tire
Of this neruotic, senseless ire

Or my righteous indignation
And my superficial lies
The flameware never dies

This is the second song I wrote as a result of the Cineviews flamewar on rec.music.filk back in 1998. The other was The Gold Standard.

While this was inspired by a specific flamewar, this sort of thing happens on USENET all the time. Apply as needed.

Major Outage Tech Support Blues

By

On January 1, 1996

In Songs

Major Outage Tech Support Blues
by Robert Wynne
Music: “California Dreaming” (John Phillips)
© 1996

All the servers down
My Netscape screen is grey
I can’t get logged in
For several hours today
I wouldn’t be so stressed
If I was off today
Customers are screaming
And I don’t know what to say

I called down to the NOC
It’s just 5 miles away
Got down on my knees
And I began to pray
Hey, Mr. Sysop, what’s the story?
Don’t say it’s down to stay
Customers are screaming
Please tell us what to say

(Interlude)

Got an update from the NOC
“We don’t know what to say…
Seems the password file is missing
But we’ve found a way
To get it from the tape
By the next business day…”
Customers are screaming
And there’s nothing we can say
Customers are screaming
And there’s nothing we can say
And there’s nothing we can say
And there’s nothing we can say
Yes, it’s based on a true story. I was a supervisor in the technical support department of an ISP when I wrote this song. They really did delete the RADIUS password file, and it really did take until the next day to recover. I actually wrote this on the way home from work at one in the morning. It took an hour and twenty minutes for me to drive from the office to home, and I had no writing utinsils or recording gear, so I had to sing it over and over again until I got to my computer where I could write it down.

This is one of the few pieces of songwriting I have which survived my 1998 apartment fire, mostly be virtue of having been e-mailed to other people who were also on duty for that tech support shift.

Dark World

By

On January 1, 1992

In Songs

Dark World
by Robert Wynne
Music: “It’s A Small World, After All”
© 1992

It’s a world of darkness
A world of pain
It’s a world of sadness
A world of rain
Don’t you ever ask why
Won’t be long till you die
It’s a dark, dark world

It’s a dark world, after all
It’s a dark world, after all
It’s a dark world, after all
It’s a dark, dark world
I wrote this bit of silliness way back in 1992 when we were first being introduced to White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquarade, and then promptly forgot about it until someone triggered the memory. Almost every song I wrote before 1998 was kept in paper notebooks and perished when my apartment burned down, so this is actually the oldest surviving song of mine I have.

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