A Week Since You Left

The last set of song lyrics that I posted were really upbeat and positive and sappy. In the interest of balance, here is one that leans in the opposite direction. I'm not actually bipolar. It's just poetry. I can write this stuff without actually feeling the emotions the narrator must be feeling. Honest.


It's a week since you left,
And I'm so bereft,
A mangled-up ball of emotion.
I feel like a sham,
And I don't give a damn.
I'm struggling to go through the motions.
 
I can't let you see that I'm falling apart,
But when I go out I don't know what to do.
I can't let you know that you've torn out my heart,
So I try to pretend I can live without you.
 
It's a week since I've slept,
And I'm such a mess,
But I put on a brave face and fake it.
I think about you,
And I know what to do.
It hurts but I just have to take it.
 
So no one can know that I just want to die.
I pretend to believe I can find someone new.
I walk through the park and I stare at the sky.
If you found out you'd hurt me, that might hurt you.
 
For a week you've been gone,
And my life is just done,
Since I have no more use for my future.
I'm deeply obsessed,
And completely distressed,
Because thinking about you is torture.
 
But I relish the hurt, it reminds me of you,
I don't want to forget or get over the pain.
You're my reason to live even though we are through,
And forgetting would mean that I'd lose you again.
 
For a week I'm alone,
And I guess that's the plan,
Even though it's incredibly lonely.
I will learn not to fuss,
And I'll do what I must,
And I'll think about you, and you only.
 
So go, live your life, and forget about me,
I promise I won't let you know of my pain.
I wish you the joy, be content and carefree,
Go, leave me behind, and find true love again.
 

Everything About You

M: The way you smile when I look at you,
M: Your gorgeous hair and the way you laugh,
M: Your sense of humor splits me in two;
M: Your wicked smirk breaks my heart in half.
 
F: I like the way that you look at me,
F: Love the admiration in your stare.
F: So tall and handsome and so carefree,
F: Your humble blush caught me unaware.
 
Duet: Everything about you,
Duet: Everything that makes you
Duet: Who you are.
Duet: It isn't any one thing,
Duet: It's everything.
Duet: Every single thing,
Duet: It's everything about you.
 
M: I love your voice and your burning eyes.
M: I love your wit and your curvy form.
M: You are as clever as you are wise,
M: As full of grace as you are of charm.
 
F: Your corny jokes keep me entertained.
F: My tummy flips when you hold my hand.
F: Your creativity is unrestrained.
F: You always ask, but you don't demand.
 
Duet: Everything about you,
Duet: Everything that makes you
Duet: Who and what you are.
M: It isn't one thing,
same
time
F: Isn't any one thing,
Duet: It's everything.
Backup: That's what I love,
Duet: Every single thing,
Backup: ... is what I love,
Duet: It's everything about you.
same
time
Backup: ... what I love about you.
 
M: I can rely on your common sense.
M: I love your drive, know that you'll succeed.
M: You always know when to take a chance.
M: You make it clear to me what you need.
 
F: You're always working with those burly arms,
F: But you have time to tell me how you feel.
F: Your compassion takes so many forms,
F: Your generosity is so unreal.
 
Duet: It isn't any one thing,
Duet: Because it's everything.
Backup: That's what I love,
Duet: Every single thing,
Backup: ... is what I love,
Duet: It's everything about you.
same
time
Backup: ... what I love about you.
 
Rap Bridge:
[M should have no breaks in his flow as he raps like J-None in Valhalla Calling.]
[F talks over him, overlapping the end of his line and start of the next one.]
[F speaks at a slower speed than M, in a breathy alto half-whispered bedroom voice.]
M: Hold up now, I gotta verbalize
F: Please do advise.
M: What you mean to me; I must vocalize
F: I can empathize.
M: What it's taken me a while to realize,
F: Let me emphasize:
M: 'Cause you look at me and I'm mesmerized.
F: You're the prize,
M: I'm awestruck, bowled over, and hypnotized,
F: Your face a sunrise.
M: My blood pressure is on the rise.
F: Did you know I fantasize
M: You know how I like to just look into your eyes,
F: about touching your hair?
M: I get so lost in your gaze that it's hard not to stare,
F: I don't even care.
M: 'Cause no other girl that I've met can compare,
F: You're so debonair,
M: You've got your own style, your own kind of flair,
F: I fell out of my chair,
M: And I really must say that we make quite a pair,
F: Consider my plight,
M: 'Cause whenever I'm sad, you are such a delight,
F: Now I'm upright,
M: Your mind is so keen and your face is so bright,
F: But I'm still quite a sight,
M: You take all my passions and set them alight,
F: I'm getting excited,
M: Awakening all of my base appetites,
F: Weak in the knee,
M: So I swear to you that now I'm gonna be
F: 'Cause I think I see
M: Your number one fan and your best devotee.
F: How you feel about me,
M: 'Cause I'm looking at you and you're looking at me,
F: And that's gotta be
M: And you're giving off all of the right energy.
F: The best thing that's happened to me.
M: I'm picking that vibe up and liking it too,
F: That makes two:
M: And now that I've got it I know what to do,
F: I'm liking it too.
M: And my days of pining for you might be through,
F: Yeah I'm with you.
M: 'Cause I'm telling you now that I'm in love with you.
F: Oh, me too.
 
M: I never knew, until I met you,
M: How much emotion my heart could feel.
Duet: It's a little too good to be true,
M: But now I surely believe it's real.
 
F: I never worry that you're gonna cheat:
F: I can see the focus in your eyes.
Duet: It's your love that makes my heart beat.
F: And when I'm with you the time just flies.
 
Duet: Everything about you,
Duet: Everything that makes you
Backup: Who...
Duet: Who you are.
Backup: ... you ... are.
M: It isn't just one thing
same
time
F: It isn't any single thing,
Duet: It's all of the things.
Backup: That's what I love,
Duet: Every single thing,
Backup: ... is what I love,
Chorus: It's everything about you.
Duet: Every single thing,
Chorus: Everything about you.
Duet: It isn't any one single thing.
Duet: It's all of the things.
Backup: That's what I love,
Duet: Every single thing,
Backup: ... is what I love,
Chorus: It's everything about you.
Duet: Every single thing,
Chorus: Everything about you.
M: Everything about you.
Backup: That's what I love.
F: It's everything about you.
Backup: Everything I love.
Duet: Everything about you.
Chorus: Everything about you.
Chorus: Everything about you.

Cut out of a Mountain

It was a rock,
Cut out of a mountain.
Not by human hands.
It was a rock,
Cut out of a mountain.
Do you understand?
 
[Musical introduction]
 
The wind blows in the north.
The wind blows in the south,
Eventually we all strike out,
And everything we care about
Goes flying in the wind.
 
It was a rock,
Cut out of a mountain.
Not by human hands.
It was a rock,
Cut out of a mountain.
Do you understand?
 
Everything that we have done,
However great, the time will come.
We build it tall.
We build it strong,
But it will fall,
Before too long.
Everything that we have made
Is doomed to fail, and then to fade.
Everything that we have built
Will break and let us down.
 
We work the long day through,
But what good does it do?
We hurry forth, we hurry back,
Running on our weary track,
Until it's gone again.
 
It was a rock,
Cut out of a mountain.
Not by human hands.
It was a rock,
Cut out of a mountain.
Do you understand?
 
Everything that we have done,
However great, the time will come.
We build it tall.
We build it strong,
But it will fall,
Before too long.
Everything that we have made
Is doomed to fail, and then to fade.
Everything that we have built
Will break and let us down.
 
[musical outro]
 
Do you understand?
It was a mountain...
Do you understand?
It was a mountain...
[repeat, fading to silence]

No, Google, I didn't meant that.

Can we please just stop trying to implement autocorrect features?

[screenshot:  Google's Did You Mean feature miscorrecting my grammar, badly]
Computers aren't smart enough to correct a native speaker's grammar. Computers will probably never be smart enough to correct a native speaker's grammar, and when they try, it just makes things worse. Please, just STOP.

Dust

There's one thing in this life that you will learn:
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
They say time is the fire in which we burn.
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
Eat and drink, and weep with those who mourn.
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
Death comes for every person who is born.
Dust you are. To dust you will return!
Dust you are. To dust you will return!
It was years ago, I was twenty-two,
Ready to go, fresh out of school.
I had so much that I wanted to do.
I had no idea I was such a fool.
There's one thing in this life that you will learn:
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
They say time is the fire in which we burn.
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
Eat and drink, and weep with those who mourn.
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
Death comes for every person who is born.
Dust you are. To dust you will return!
Dust you are. To dust you will return!
I couldn't change the world by myself,
[But] I had ideas and a full bookshelf.
I saw the world and I saw the grief,
[But] if we worked hard it could be enough.
There's one thing in this life that you will learn:
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
They say time is the fire in which we burn.
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
Eat and drink, and weep with those who mourn.
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
Death comes for every person who is born.
Dust you are. To dust you will return!
Dust you are. To dust you will return!
It seemed to me that the plan was sound,
Get a group together and buckle down,
With sweat and tears and some common ground,
We could bring the world around.
There's one thing in this life that you will learn:
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
They say time is the fire in which we burn.
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
Eat and drink, and weep with those who mourn.
Dust you are, and to dust you will return!
Death comes for every person who is born.
Dust you are. To dust you will return!
Dust you are. To dust you will return!

Personified

I am the pain, I am the sorrow.
Here today and gone tomorrow.
I am anger, I am suffering.
I am the death I am the carcass.
Light has come, but men love darkness.
I am terror, I am far from grace.
I am the bruise, I am the black eye.
Life's a b-word, and then you die.
I am sickness, I am damaged goods.
I am the wrong, I am the failure.
This world is a dumpster fire.
I am ruin, I am broken dreams.

I Have Wandered

I have wandered lost and blind,
Within the confines of my mind.
My mental state was slowly sinking.
I needed to explore my thinking.
But the dolor that is lodged
Within my brain, still remains,
When I am done rethinking.
 
My mind has such a hollow shape,
An empty cage I can't escape.
If all my thoughts could be directed,
A useful structure thus erected,
Something good and useful might
Even be gained, or obtained,
Some evil circumvented.
 
Would I, could I, do some good?
I have no doubt at all I should.
Alas, I doubt that I am able,
The notion seems like just a fable,
For the focus, I am missing,
And the lack, holds me back,
Making me quite unstable.
 
[instrumental metal segment here, with maybe some incomprehensible growl vocals]
 
Chained to myself, I cannot break away.
I babble, but I know I have nothing good to say.
Sick to death of life, I am terrified to die,
I question all my goals, and I cannot answer why.
My dark thoughts tear me up, I have no one to confide,
It's eating me alive, all bottled up inside.
I want to go away, but there's nowhere left to turn.
I'm doomed to ride it out, and then in hell to burn.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
 
In the dark I sit and brood,
Savoring my somber mood.
But all my thinking turns to folly,
Empty, hollow, meloncholy,
And dejected, I return
To what I know, so I go
Back to the crass and bloody,
 
For I am quite unstable,
Oooooooooooooooooooooooh!
And I am done with thinking.
 

Microsoft Has Nerve

I just directly and personally witnessed the Automatic Updates system of Windows 10, flashing a computer's firmware without getting any kind of permission for that specific action from the user or system administrator.

The PC in question is a recent-model (less than three months old) Dell desktop, though I'm not sure whether this fact is significant.

I'm not going to explain the implications in detail, because if you don't already have a pretty good idea, you likely wouldn't understand the explanation either.

I don't happen to know whether the motherboard on this model has a backup firmware chip, in case of power outage during flash. Hopefully it should, because that is a reasonably common feature these days. But I don't feel like opening the case to verify it at the moment. Nonetheless, I'm going to give Microsoft the benefit of every doubt here and tentatively assume that surely they are only doing this on systems that have that safeguard. (Not because of virtue, but because of the potential for really nasty bad publicity.)

The stated reason (which was displayed on screen as the flash was happening) is, of course, security; but Microsoft cares about your security like Apple cares about your budget. With that said, I looked at the firmware setup after the flash occurred, and it doesn't seem any more egregious than the usual UEFI setup. I'm tempted to put a small Devuan install on the thing, even though it isn't needed on this system, just to verify that it works as expected; but I don't see any indications in the firmware setup that would suggest a problem in that regard, at this time. Secure Boot is enabled, but it appears to still be possible to disable it. So if this is a major power grab or exclusivity lock, I'm missing something.

But I sure don't like the precedent.

Londonderry Err

O [person], Dear,
Mine heart, mine heart is broken,
For I dispair, to ever hear a word,
A word from you,
A word that love betokens,
That word I long to hear,
But I will not.
 
And so I go,
I go but I am saddened.
I go to live a life of solitude,
A life alone,
Without you in my presence,
Oh [person] dear, oh dear,
I am alone.
 
So fear ye not,
Oh [person] dear, be happy,
For if I leave, I leave you well alone.
And if I go,
I'm sure you will find someone,
A better man, for you,
Than I could be.
 
And as for me,
Mine end, mine end is fitting,
There is for me, a better match indeed.
For if I can't
Have you then I want no one.
And that is good,
For no one wants me too.

 

Sung to the tune Londonderry Air