Song for a Martian Rock

[elisem]

[It occurs to me that some folks here might get a kick out of this and might not have seen it yet.... ]


Let me tell you all a story 'bout a blob named Jed,
a poor martian critter, barely kept his family fed,
and then one day he was wigglin' toward some food
when some of the ground came a litle unscrewed.

Impact events, they say;
bounced a piece of it on outta there,
just like a billiard ball.

Well the next thing ya know old Jed is on the move.
The kinfolks said, "Jed, what you tryin' to prove?"
They said "Antarctica's the place ya oughta go,"
so he loaded up the rock and he headed for the snow.

It was a nice rock, too.
Igneous orthopyroxenite.
Got pretty good mileage.

So eventually the earthlings, they took apart the rock,
and ran it through the TEMs and made the darn things talk,
And that's how we know about a critter named Jed,
and we're mighty glad to meet him, even if he's dead.

Come on in; show us your slides, boys.
Publish.
Y'all get tenure now, y'hear?

Song for a Martian Rock (c) Elise Matthesen 10:30 PM CDT 7-AUG-96
Permission to repost and email hereby granted; republication in any other form or for fee prohibited without express written permission of author. Thank you.

Comments

[elynne.livejournal.com]

That is very cool, and funny, and added to my memories-file, which I suppose I'm going to have to categorize into "Elise memories" and "Everything Else memories." ;) Thank you very much for sharing!

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Mind if I forward it to alt.callahans?

[otterylexa.livejournal.com]

Yay for Elise!

[elisem.livejournal.com]

As long as the little copyright-and-permissions thing at the bottom stays with it, I'd be very pleased to have you forward it to alt.callahans. (Well, and keep an eye on it to make sure the formatting of the verses comes out right, too. It starts looking mighty unsingable otherwise.)

Thanks!

LJ Random Character Of The Moment:

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's the way to make it stop! *laughs*

Re: Use of zeroes?

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

(giggle) Quite shocked, I imagine.

That's a lot of fun... thanks for re-posting it. Given the date, no doubt inspired by the debate over whether there was life inside ALH84001.

They said "Antarctica's the place ya oughta go,"
so he loaded up the rock and he headed for the snow.

(grin) see some friends of Jed's at http://www.cwru.edu/affil/ansmet ...

Re: Use of zeroes?

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Oh, excellent URL, Brian; thanks!

One of the folks there, Ralph P. Harvey, sent me a nice email of appreciation about the song and asked if he might have permission to sing it to his students in certain classes. I said sure, and might I please have an autographed article of his, and that's why I've got one on my signed-books shelf upstairs.

It was one of the highlights of writing filk. Getting the song done a.s.a.p. was a big goal of mine, because I wanted a song that got the science right, besides being singable and silly. (I suspect it was managing to fit "igneous orthepyroxenite" in there that did it. Well, that plus the illustration of impact events by analogy.)

Re: Use of zeroes?

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

(grin) I'd say that you rock, but that'd be redundant ;-). Rhyming "igneous orthopyroxenite" is rather impressive. And you got the science right! As least as much as we
think we know...

I know Ralph Harvey, who now runs ANSMET... I was actually going to ask you if I could forward your song to him. And the long-time ANSMET safety and camp manager, John Schutt, performs the same role for our summertime Arctic research camp. BTW, John's the guy that in the Allen Hills in 1984 actually identified "Jed" as a meteorite...