From: SteveD
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett
Subject: F[I]lk for 10-year AFP party, 2002 (part the next)
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2015 10:16:19 GMT



Just one of those times you can't get a song out of your head unless you
write it down - and so I did. And then tinkered. And tinkered some more.
What I ended up with was something which can only be sung if you -
(a) know the twisted scansion of the original, and
(b) can sing variations of this on the fly, especially for the second
line in the first verse...

Apologies in advance, for:

"Ten Years"
Original: "One Week", Barenaked Ladies

(Sung from the future perspective of just before the 2002 afparty)

It's been Ten Years now for a.f.p
First invoked for the fans before '93
Nine years since September came
Can't do much about it but we know who took the blame
Yesterday, reading Terry P
And now on our way to meet up at the party

Take a breath and watch the beer threads
Or cheese or real breads
You'd think you're skimming through uk.food
You mention chocolate and it changes,
and rearranges,
Until it alters into something rude

Hot like jalapenos or a gun thread
Don't make me boot head,
Because we understand positions
You know our politics are twisted,
Our views are listed,
And we undergo transitions

Briggs's plays and maps and missing Chap-
Ter soon adapted as the trap-
pings of the postings making up our finest history;
[TAGS] invade the sig
(and quills were big)
This newsgroup gig had pubic wigs
So Mike .announced a group
And Collette, Would You Marry Me?

How can we help it if you haven't read the mini-FAQs?
Trying hard not to twitch at the all-caps
It's the kind of group that laughs at the UPAs
Can't understand what I mean? Wait a few days.
We have a tendency to greet and growl and geek a lot
We have a history of cabbages at dawn

It's been four years since the Temple thread
Six since the first Disc Con, there was a crowd there
Five years since the meets came online
(And now) I sit back
and read the
a.f.p. timeline

Like the a.f.p. Cabal we don't exist here,
So have a Real Beer,
Just don't post rubbish while you're plastered
Lurk around the group and browse the FAQs place,
It's off in Lspace,
Sit down and call the cat a bastard.
Our internet core starts here on Usenet
For those we've not met
We've mail lists, web and IRC too

For newbies wond'ring where to go next,
OK check the sig text
Just surf to lspace.org and read through
Gonna get improved and better news
Gonna find the kind that knows the grooves
Just so my posts aren't always misconfigured wibbling
Gotta RFC which fixes me
cos it's the key to breaking free
of the artifacts
that make me post the wrong thing

How can I help it if I think you're funny when you flame?
Trying hard not to feed trolls, it gets lame
There are posters here who filk if a hat is dropped
Think posts like this make you laugh?
Watch it get topped :)
I have a tendency to post my filks on the group
Our online history is ten years of change

It's been Ten Years now for a.f.p.
Dropped the Temple, kept up the geekery
Six years since we looked at Paul and said
"One Con was nice, thanks a lot, we want plenty more"
Three years after '99
We wondered if Y2K would take us offline
Yesterday, you just smiled at me
And it all came together here at the party

It all comes together here at the party
We all get together, here at the party
Worldwide attendance, home of the barmy



- SteveD in .au