Dew
by Maxwell Joslyn. (updated
This is a parody of "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", the best-known song by 90s group Neutral Milk Hotel (NMH), feted for their otherworldly sound and surreal lyrics. I apologize to Jeff Mangum, Scott Spillane, Jeremy Barnes, and Julian Koster for perpetrating the following verses.
As always, I encourage you to sing along. A glossary follows.
What a scrumptiously-based mountain liquid I taste
Could this be what sex feels like? Must be
While I chug, enemies start to flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye, they'll be shot by me
Sweet caffeine
Glug it dry, then use the bottle to go pee
And one day we will die, and respawn in the sky
Where God's scoreboard will show our K:D
But for now, we are young
Gaming far from the sun
Fragging noobs in a vicious and masterful spree
My mommy
Says to turn it off, but all I do is ree-eee-eee-eee!
[Spillane horn solo]
What a gripping gunfight
I've been having tonight
On the leaderboard, I made top three
I'm in love with my life
And my virtual wife
Hear the voice that I made for her digitally
Love to be
In the arms of my handmade waifu daki
Now how I crave Mountain Dew
How I would stretch my tongue out to
Receive what nectar trickles through
The mountain valleys, green and sweet
Where does it come from? No one knows
We dare not question sacred flows
Our slurping, burping record shows
It's Dew that keeps us on our game
[Koster on the singing saw]
What a scrumptiously-based mountain liquid I taste
As I pick from arrayed weaponry
And when we meet on a cloud, we'll sip long and sip loud
Laying waste to all comers and guzzling freely
Can't you see?
We gamers live in a society
The promised glossary, for those unaware of certain seedy aspects of gamer and otaku culture:
- a "waifu" is a female anime/manga character which one adores to the exclusion of all others. "Waifu" is transparently a loanword from English "wife"; the male equivalent is husbando.
- a "daki", short for "dakimakura", is a person-sized body pillow. These are so commonly adorned with a printed anime character that popular usage of "daki" almost always refers to that kind (commercial examples.)
- "ree" is onomatopoeia for a shrill and irritated cry of rage.
- the adjective "based" (Urban Dictionary) means "cool; admirable; worthy of agreement," often with the implication that the noun so described is obviously superior to alternatives. This positive usage was coined by rapper Lil B.
- "K:D" stands for "kills:deaths (ratio)", a basic measure of competence in shooter games.
- "we live in a society" is a variant on a phrase uttered by Seinfeld character George Costanza. Through memetic mutation, it became a slogan for poking fun at gamers who believe themselves to be persecuted by ordinary society. Since online expression flits between irony and sincerity, and so many extreme viewpoints can be encountered on the Web, it's difficult to know how many people use the phrase seriously.
- finally, while playing real-time games, some people will avoid leaving for the toilet by peeing into soda bottles. Nasty, but ... efficient.