reserved

It is a signifier of the amount of water gone under the bridge that the last time I investigated formally applying for copyrights of the songs of days I railed against the fact that the government could not deal with a simple electronic transfer of data. Years pass, apparently, and they've gotten a little closer to modernity down Library of Congress way. Frugal soul that I am I've started by compiling the entirety of the first project into a single volume and registering it as a single literary work. Which it is, to my mind, a compendium of original verse. The copyright office's website has this ridiculous, old school design and action, as if they kidnapped math teachers out of the 1980s and forced them to program it on VAX terminals, but it functions well enough. The thing ended up as a rich text file weighing in at an almost invisible 627 KB. It probably takes more memory to run a flashlight these days.

It is in fact a little bit alarming to ponder that any crazy with a computer and 35 dollars can make the government store a copy of whatever insane rantings they've produced at any time of the day or night... I wonder what sort of madhouse stockpile of ephemeral text they've accumulated since they started taking submissions online (because I have to confess, I probably still wouldn't have this done if I'd had to mail it... at 1,001 songs it's the printing that would really kill my enthusiasm for the project). Of course the irony here is that I am in fact one of the "crazies," seeing as how I don't really project a likelihood of doing much anything with the songs. I'm hoping somewhere along the line some factotum of Sony will gank a few lines out of one of my lyrics for some chanteuse of the week, then to fill my bank accounts with the sweet proceeds of litigation. Luckily my plans of growing rich, by whatever means, at the hands of the record industry are purely jocular, as their chances of being anyone's sugar daddy grow ever more remote. I'm not sure why to bother with the actual copyright, when I get right down to it. Except that it is the work of years, and it is mine. I figure I'll compile editions of the new project every 5 years or so, as I complete the transcriptions. On a related note I just finished transcribing the songs from the first book of the second series - the first time I've finished transcribing a book before I start actually posting it. A good sign, I'd like the transcription to actually get caught up at some point. Considering I'm on volume 12 in the second series this is a good way off yet, though. All rights reserved, kids.

You can read an explanation of the origin of these lyrics here