Wow. Found this bad boy in someone's random archive and now I'm havin' flashbacks. I wrote this particular Usenet song parody one day before my birthday, thirteen years ago. Not one day before my thirteenth birthday, one day before-- oh, you get the idea. Amazingly enough, it works okay today, even though the subject is for all intents and purposes outdated and archaic unless you like downloading illict movie bootlegs from some dude in Russia or illict porno bootlegs from some dude in Czechoslovakia.
Most amazingly (to me, at least) the song quite nearly scans perfectly. "alt.tv.saved-by-the-bell" is a stretch... well, you gotta stretch a syllable or two out, and/or maybe sing the "dot" between "alt" and "tv". If I were a retcon type I'd change the line to something a bit better today and you'd never know the different. But now that I've said that, I can't.
Me, I'm just amazed I was able to take the middle bridge and fit in the classic, loveable "This could cost the net hundreds, if not thousands of dollars" warning that newsreaders such as rn and trn would make you agree to before you posted each message. I am a bit embarassed by the aside at the end of the chorus, but I was impetuous and sarcastic then. I have taken the liberty to remove some punctuation that I don't like looking at, but otherwise, what you see here is what you got back in the halcyon days of 1994, when 28.8kbps was a friggin' luxury.
This song was picked up and published in Wired Magazine's "Net Surf" section in I think August or September of 1994. Nobody bothered to tell me about it, and along the way several lines had been changed for whatever reason -- I believe someone really, really, really wanted the key line in the last verse to actually fit with rhyme and meter.
The thing of it was, I remember receiving an email from a singer who asked permission to perform it at coffeehouses or somewhere around Harvard or Brandeis, I can't remember which. (Shades of a certain Mooninite song 13 years later!) After giving my blessing ("whoa, hey, someone actually wants to SING this?") he later reported back that his performances were well-received and greatly enhanced by adding a completely dramatic pause after the key line, which I have no doubt you will identify.
HE got the point, whoever he was. Bless your heart, Mr. Random Coffeehouse Guitarist. I wish I'd heard your version.
So if it pleases the court, may I present
( The Flamer )
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