Monday 26 March 2012

Five Minutes a Day: Twelve (Conspiracy shanty)

Conspiracy shanty
To be performed by a guitarist and vocalist/ukulele.

[Introduction]
We are all happy passengers
Aboard the good ship “Earth”
Going nineteen metres per second
In our carbon-based berths.

We spin at an amazing pace –
Nine hundred miles an hour
As we circle round the sun
Of great nuclear power.

[Bridge - key change and tempo increase]
You don’t genuinely believe?
Stop being so naïve!

[Chorus]
We wrote this song to educate
The members of the human race
Do not believe their packs of lies;
The earth is flat beneath the skies!

[Verse]
We can produce, for every probe
A hundred proofs the earth is not a globe
It’s our duty to show dissent;
It’s flat beneath the firmament!

[Spoken word]
Actually, while you’re listening there are a few other things you should know. The telephone wasn’t actually invented until 1994. British Telecomms used to pay impressionists to hide behind the wainscoting and mimic the voices of your friends, family, and double-glazing salesman.

And did you know that there’s no such thing as an ATM? It’s just a person who works for the bank sitting behind a metal front. Withholding your card is their idea of fun!

Children’s Calpol is actually a government mind control agent. Think about it – no other medicine tastes that good. They want you to take it.

The first studio TV broadcast was faked. You can tell because if you look at the lighting it’s far too diffuse to be studio lighting, and you’ll note that the flag is completely motionless. It had to be filmed on the moon.

Brian Blessed was a failed genetic experiment.

[Chorus]
We wrote this song to educate
The members of the human race
Embrace the truth, believe your eyes;
The earth is flat beneath the skies!

[verse]
‘Shakespeare’ was a nom de plume
The Queen’s played by Orlando Bloom
The Bedford levels are a plane
Clark Kent hated Lois Lane


[Verbal break-down at the end]
Soylent green is people!
The moon is actually square!
I can’t believe it’s not butter!
Guitarist: Parallax didn’t actually credit the theory of a flat earth with veracity, but saw a lucrative opportunity to exploit the burgeoning market for lectures on the topic of astronomy in the fin de siècle!

[music stops]
Vocalist: You really mean that?
Guitarist: Well, the proliferation of printing presses which led to the increasing abundance and length of pamphlets in circulation, combined with the number of embryonic scientific journals, meant that a skilled polemicist could grow rich on the proceeds of contention.

[pause]

Vocalist: I don’t think I can work with you anymore.

[Guitarist leaves]

[Vocalist continues unaccompanied]
Those who’ve escaped from conforming
Would do well to heed my warning
Views so fallacious do persist
Trust no-one; not even your guitarist.

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