Blogistan Pie
A long, long time ago
I can still remember
How those weblogs used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
I could make the Googledance
And maybe Technorati for a while
September always made me shiver
My aggregator would deliver
Bad news in my newsfeed
I couldn’t take one more read
I can’t remember if I cried
When he cut me from his blogroll side
But something touched me deep inside
The day the blogging died
Refrain
And they were singing
Bye bye wiki necho or pie
Took my standard to a body
But the body had died
And the good ol’ boys
Drinking kool-aid and lies
Singing this’ll be the way blogging dies.
Verse 2
Did you write some shitty specs
Is the funk in RSS like sex
When it’s version 2.0?
Now do you believe strict XML
Will save us, how ’bout Jon Udell?
And can you teach me
To install Slashcode?
Well I know that you love Six Apart
But I still can’t tell their pix apart
You’re changing hosts again
Man I dig that Mena and Ben
I was a middle-aging writer hack
With a fast connection and a Powermac
But I knew I had popped the stack
The day the blogging died, I started singing
Refrain
Verse 3
Now for ten years we’ve been on the web
The pings to Weblogs never ebb
But that’s not how it’s gonna be
When the Journals come from AOL
With their instant buddy chatroom hell
And a voice that came from you and me
The BigCos all were too distracted
Their CMSes got impacted
The ROI was burned
No sunk costs were returned
And while Lessig read the prior art
Salam Pax posted in the dark
And we remembered Xerox PARC
The day the blogging died, we were singin’
Refrain
Verse 4
Metafilter‘s interface like gopher
With a filler thread from a jaded poster
Daypop Top and fallin’ fast
Extensible is just a notion
The players tried for some forward motion
With Pirillo on the sidelines with his chest
The war blog line got stale and old
While Gawker played a snarky role
We all got options then
But we never cashed them in
The VCs tried to take the yield
Installed-base churn did not congeal
Do you recall what extensive usability, quality assurance, and user-acceptance testing revealed
The day the blogging died? we started singin’
Refrain
Verse 5
And there we were all on one net
Three generations lost to debt
With new startups to start again
So, come on Marc be nimble, Dave be quick
Meg where’s Lafayette, hey Nick?
‘Cause Pyra gets the only BlogIt button
And as I watched the TypePad splash
I hoped they had sufficient cash
No business model yet
Makes hosting a safe bet
And as the flames lit up the blogosphere
Chris Lydon lent a kindly ear
I saw RageBoy laughing without fear
The day the blogging died, he was singin’,
Refrain
Verse 6
I met this person, Burningbird,
And I asked her for an ontologically meaningful word
But she just smiled and made a sound
I went down to the Scripting News
Where some years before I’d seen the clues
But the server said the file wasn’t found
In LiveJournals children screamed,
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was trusted
The permalinks were busted
And the three men I admire most,
Phil Wolff, Mark Pilgrim, and Steve Yost
Kept editing their final post
The day the blogging died
And they were singin’ …
Refrain
Repeat Refrain
Comments
52 responses to “The day the blogging died”
this a joke or did someone die?
the day the blogging died!
from here A long, long time ago I can still remember How that blogging used to make me smile And I knew if I had my chance I could make the Googledance And maybe Technorati for a while September always…
no one died as far as i know. this is a random riff on a momentary feeling, with an invitation to other people (who more obsessively remember the underlying source song) to fill in additional verses.
It is neither a joke nor an editorial. It is a mood. It is a bit of writing.
the scansion in line 2 of verse 5 limps. Change ‘necho’ to ‘rss’ (pronounced ‘arse’) and it works.
You have to work a little bit at the last verse, but it’s not unapproachable. Nicely done.
RefactorOK
just checking to see if it was actually about someone dieing, cause i linked to it from my site and was joking about it. good. i like the original too.
The First Blog Herald Challenge
Perhaps we have more money then sense. Well we wish we did. However The Blog Herald has been inspired by Radio Free Blogistan to launch the first ever (and maybe even the last ever) Blog Herald Challenge. The first Blogger…
I like your lyrics soo much I have issued a challenge with $20 USD prize money for the first reasonably sung version of your lyrics with appropriate instrumentals.
http://www.blogherald.com/archives/000103.html
Cool, since no one has stepped up to the plate, I’ve gone and written a second verse, and am about to update the entry with it.
What rhymes with blogroll?
Ready or not, I’ve posted a fifth verse of Blogistan Pie. One to go….
All done.
And the three blogs I’d admire most
Well, what do you know. I finished my painfully ridiculous parody of Don McClean’s American Pie, going all Bob Dylan on the rhythm sometimes to squeeze in max nerd humor….
Internet parody songs day
I am tempted to record this, because Christian came up with clever words. But, for some reason, ever since I was a kid, I have found this song pretty annoying.
Absolutely brilliant. Where did this idea come from? I only wish you could have fir ‘radio userland’ in there somewhere — it has such a poetic lilt to it. And BTW, Meg told me today that Lafayette will definitely be out by year-end.
The day the blogging died
Excellent. My favorite comment to date:
_This_ is wonderful. Proof that the best writing appears on Fridays and Sundays.
Nicely done, xian.
Word.
Bye Bye Wiki Necho or Pie
I am finishing the Permalink essays as we speak, though about to take a break becaues the words are running away with me. I’m glad I waited on the 4th part till today because the essay is writing itself — I’m just there to move the keys on demand. In …
the day the blogging died
Blogistan Pie. A wonderful rewriting of “American Pie,” by xian (Christian Crumlish) at Radio Free Blogistan. An excerpt: And they were singing Bye bye wiki necho or pie Took my standard to a body But the body had diedAnd the good ol’…
Those that belong to the emperor
UUIDs in Python. In defense of Fahrner Image Replacement. That famous quote from Jorge Luis Borges. New writing from Leslie, Michael, Michael, stavros, and JD.
Outstanding!
This is great! The last verse is my favorite, by far.
Deadlog
Radio Free Blogistan: The day the blogging died: “In LiveJournals children screamed, The lovers cried and the poets dreamed But…
Stunning. Marvelous. Amazing. Brilliant.
Worthy of awe.
If you get all in-jokes in any verse in this song, you know your A-list. If you’ve written it, mad…
Quicklinks
via IT&W: Move this man. Worth some time, strangely fascinating. via Titanic: Tell Programmers from serial killers. I scored 10/10, believe it or not. via Sam Ruby: The Day the Blogging Died – arguably the funniest thing I’ve read
The day the blogging died – Blogistan Pie
(SOURCE:Radio Free Blogistan: The day the blogging died)-Very cool and very geeky but of course I love it! Can’t wait for the MP3!
The day the blogging died …
Great Parody of
American Pie by Radio Free Blogistan.
Wenn der Sommer schon fast vorbei ist …
This made my day (frei nach Clint Eastwood).