Monday, July 23, 2012

Pediphage Quartet

This song began as four poems on the joys of child-munching that was given to me by Dugym Qycfyl one day at Softdisk, a quaint little software firm found in the 80s and 90s in Shreveport Louisiana. I wasn't sure what to do with the four sheets of paper but I ended up taping them together then emoting them over an odd setting on my Casio keyboard. I simply pressed a few buttons on the keyboard to get a dramatic-sounding rhythm, then played two chords over and over hoping they fit the words I would be singing on the next track. I adopted my best British accent and let fly with the lyrics. It sort of worked.

 (c) 1993 by Dugym Qycfyl

Dugym Qycfyl? One of the first programs written for Softdisk, the Apple II computer magazine the company put out, was a little curiosity called NAME WHEEL (or something like that). It puts the 26 letters of the alphabet in a "wheel" and you can enter your name and it will give you all 26 of the cryptogram names that are produced if you spin the wheel. In this case, JAMES WEILER, when spun 7 times to the left, becomes DUGYM QYCFYL (pronounced Duggum Kwik' fill). J to D, A to U, M to G, etc. You can figure it out easy enough without the program, but back in 1985 it was fun to have a machine do things like that for you.


A child is a vitamin storehouse
Packed full of nutrients
We'd have to go to the poorhouse
If we didn't use good sense.

We lures the tykes with a promise
Of candy, sweets and treats,
And grinds them up in a hummus
With garlic, which we eats.

My daughter came to the house today
And brought her daughter too
My husband caught them right away
And put them in the stew.

My daughter's flesh is soft and sweet
My grandkid's hot and tart
And when my hubby tried the meat
It made him shit and fart.

Me and Mickey found a kid
In a dumpster in the back
His head was crumpled by the lid
His skin was turning black.

There must have been a prom somewhere
Cause he was just a new-born
The little preemie had no hair
And he was tiny as a shoe horn.

But we were hungry so we ate
We divvied him right up,
Mick took his portion on a plate
I sipped mine from a cup.

Snot-nosed children makes him sick
He can't abide the taste
So I grabs me up a butter stick
And baste and baste and baste.

Then with a length of garden hose
I sucks out all the snot
And casting off hands, feet and nose
I dumps them in a pot.

I boils them till their skin turns green
And eyes pop out like corks
And serves them hot to king and queen
Who eats them with their forks!

Slugette