Where Have All the Batteries Gone (Song)

Where Have All the Batteries Gone
to the tune of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone"
by Luna Lindsey

Where have all the batt'ries gone, long time passing?
Where have all the batt'ries gone, long time ago?
Where have all the batt'ries gone? Gone to robots every one.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the robots gone, long time passing?
Where have all the robots gone, long time ago?
Where have all the robots gone?  Gone to mine ast'roids, every one.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the ast'roids gone, long time passing?
Where have all the ast'roids gone, long time ago?
Where have all the ast'roids gone?  Mined to lith'ium, every one.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where has all the lith'ium gone, long time passing?
Where has all the lith'ium gone, long time ago?
Where has all the lith'ium gone?  Gone to batt'ries, every one...
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

The Most Peaceful Christmas Songs of All Time

In my previous post, I explained my theme this year for Christmas, which is peace.  Here is a list of the Christmas songs which sing of peace, be they Christian of origin, or written by those silly fluffy hippies we're all supposed to hate.

UPDATE: 11/7/13. I have fixed some of the broken videos. I have also compiled most of these songs, though not always the same versions, in a Spotify playlist you can subscribe to. The Most Peaceful Christmas Songs of All Time.

Starting with the hippiest hippy of them all, John Lennon, in Happy Xmas.

Bing Crosby & David Bowie sing Little Drummer Boy with additional lyrics:

A spoof of the last video by Will Ferrel, which is for the most part a word-for-word remake.  Until the end, where we see a little irony. (Not embedded, click link.)

And because the Internet is just one big spoof of itself, here is Jack Black:

Handel used the Bible as the primary source of lyrics for the Messiah.  The message of this song is clear.  It tells the story of the angels who came down to the Shepard.  When they were afraid, the angel calmed them, promising them peace on earth, good will to men.  This is the refrain I've had going through my head this season, any time I notice my cognitive dissonance surrounding the concept of peace.

Handel's "Glory to God":

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day was one of my favorites to sing when I was a "sissy little girl".  There are a number of different melodies, so I've included several versions.  This song is all about peace, and how impossible the goal seems.  In despair I bowed my head, 'There is no peace on earth,' I said. 'For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth good will to men.'  It offers hope that right will prevail.

This first version is the one I grew up singing:

A rocked out version of the same melody done by a local church. I include it because its imagery ties it to modern events:

And a spiffy new version by Casting Crowns I'd not heard before:

Hark, here are those angels again. Peace on earth and mercy mild. As sung by Jewel.

I just discovered this song, this year.  Tim Minchin expresses some of my own conflicting feelings about this season, including the commercialism and mixed feelings about the Christian message.  What's important, to him and me, is the love of being with family.  White Wine in the Sun is one of my favorites on this list.

O Holy Night has a very peaceful melody. I almost did not include it because the first to verses speak of submission to God and hints at Christian superiority.  But the third verse encapsulates the message I espouse:

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His Gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His Name all oppression shall cease.

In case you're in doubt that I wish to emphasize the peaceful elements of this song, I've included the John Denver version:

Still, Still, Still, performed by Manheim Steamroller:

While I was still Mormon, I loved Jars of Clay.  Here's a Christmas song of theirs I still have in my playlist. Love Came Down at Christmas:

An Atheist Christmas Carol by Vienna Teng:

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear brings us more peace on earth, by Sixpence None the Richer, who have done some of my favorite Christmas song performances:

Merry Christmas!

Going Indie

It's 1994.  I've finally gotten over my prudish attitude towards music, and I start listening to pop.  Move to 1996. I'm a little late to the party, but my ears can now tolerate rock.  And I'm falling in love with alternative.  The top 40 charts, ironically, are being taken over by indie music, or at least music that has been made to sound as indie as possible.  1997, MTV plays a video by Reel Big Fish called "Sell Out" that openly mocks the music industry, which can no longer survive without giving at least a slight nod to the cultural ideas of the counter-culture that hates it so much.

Then the MP3 revolution hit.  Big business responded with lawsuits.  Finally, when that strategy failed, they decided to actually sell digital music, and they are now making more money that ever before -- not via CD sales, which have dropped to almost nothing, but through digital music.

Indie music has never been healthier.  Artists now have power to negotiate better contracts because bands have alternatives to "selling out".  Music is less expensive to record, distribute, and market.  A really good artist with a firm niche can rise to the top without the help of a record executive.

Flash forward a little more, and watch the same process happen, but in reverse, to the publishing industry.  For a number of reasons, piracy is not as big of an issue when it comes to books.  For one thing, the industry offered legitimate ebook formats early on.  In fact they essentially drove the demand by being the first to invent them in the first place.  Kindle is no Napster; it was designed by big business for the specific purpose of selling books legitimately to as many people as possible.

Ebooks began as the legitimate child of the publishing industry, and with this legitimacy, ebooks are rapidly gaining market share over paper books.

Let me introduce the bastard stepchild of self-publishing.  Once, this form of publishing was known disparagingly as "Vanity Press".  Now it is finally getting adopted and gaining a legitimacy of its own.

One problem with self-publishing in the past is that it was very expensive.  An author had to front the project with a few thousand dollars for a print run of 500-1000 books.  That is no longer a problem.

The next problem was slush.  Vanity press books had a reputation of being crap.  They were for authors who had been rightfully rejected for publication because they were bad and the author was desparate and vain enough to front the money to publish them unedited.  Sure, plenty of good books were rejected, too, but self-published crap tarnished the reputation of the whole lot.  So typically they sat in cardboard boxes molding in the garage.

Publishers still provide a valued service, though some would argue they do so poorly.  A publisher says, "Hey! Ignore the slush pile.  This is the book worth reading."  Technology will hopefully solve this problem as well.  Collaborative filtering (aka customer ratings and reviews), blogs, and review sites help the cream rise to the top.

Over time I suspect we will be seeing additional mechanisms to improve indie quality.  Based on a recent survey I received, Amazon is looking into providing more author services, including low-cost proofing and editing.

A lot of us don't trust publisher opinion anyway.  Because these days, books are rejected on all kinds of grounds -- maybe the writing sucks, but more likely, business is poor for the publisher.  Or they're not taking on any new authors.  Or the genre is wrong.  Or the book is too extreme, or doesn't quite fit any genres.  I've heard so many stories of rejection letters that stated, "I liked the book, but... you're not already famous".  I also recently heard a story about an African-American author whose characters were white, but upon discovering her skin color, the publisher categorized her book under AA Fiction, where it didn't get as much visibility.

On the other side of this coin, I've read traditionally published and edited books (some of them bestsellers) that are poorly written, poorly plotted, poorly proofread, or all of the above.  Some of these have inspired me to keep writing -- if he or she can be published, then so can I!

I'm hoping I'm right, that we will see a rise of excellent, well-written, and extremely popular indie books -- that being indie itself will be a selling point to drive business, just the way it has been in the music and movie industries.

This post is part of a blog carnival. To find the other posts in this carnival, go here.