The Future Soon's final verse

MaW

Does anybody else wonder why it goes like this:

She'll scream and try to run
But there's nowhere she can hide
When a crazy cyborg wants to make you his robot bride

Why does it suddenly switch from 'she' to 'you', and why does JoCo still sing it like this? Is this some strange American grammar thing that I'm unaware of?

For the record, I think it would be much better like this:

She'll scream and try to run
But there's nowhere you can hide
When a crazy cyborg wants to make you his robot bride

It's the minimal modification required to get it to make sense while retaining the original intent, I think.

Edric

Interesting. But I'm less bothered by that than by his persistence in singing...

Just take a point called "z"
In the complex-plane --
Let "z1" be z-squared plus *C*.
And "z2" is z1-squared plus *C*.
And "z3" is z2-squared plus *C*.

... when a simple change (that would still rhyme!) would accurately describe the actual Mandelbrot set (and not the related Julia set at the point "c")...

Just take a point called "z"
In the complex-plane --
Let "z1" be z-squared plus *Z*!
And "z2" is z1-squared plus *Z*!
And "z3" is z2-squared plus *Z*!

On "Best. Concert. Ever." -- he's still singing "C"... (And he IS aware of the slight mathematical oversight. [At 2:22 of this video...])

It just seems like such an easy fix...

:-)

Angelastic

This was discussed in another thread, and it was discovered that they are actually two separate sentences, so there's no problem:

She'll scream and try to run
but there's nowhere she can hide.
['cause] When a crazy cyborg wants to make you his robot bride,
well it's gonna be the future soon...

Javier

Edric,

It's possible that he doesn't realize how easy the fix is. In his blog post about the subject (I'll post a link here if I can find it), he mentioned how he had been shown the correct formula of z(n+1) = zn squared + C with z0=0 and went on to say that to get it right, he would need to add a line to the song. Of course, if z0=0, then z1=C and we're at your solution. I agree that he should change it, but he might not realize how trivial it would be to do so.

EDIT: Here's the post. It looks like he might be aware of the simple fix but is going with the original anyway. Judge for yourself.

I say, “Take a point called Z in the complex plane, let Z1 be Z^2 plus C…” What I really mean is, “Take a point called C in the complex plane (and by the way, set Z=0), let Z1 be Z^2 plus C…” Otherwise, when you look at my lyrics, what the hell is C supposed to be? Well, I guess it’s supposed to be Z. Or something. Anyway, you can kind of get there my way, or at least, if you know what the actual algorithm really is, you will still recognize a vague outline of it in my lyrics. And perhaps you will laugh.

Caleb

The word "cause" was removed for the studio version, but the original phrasing was apparently kept, along with the colloquial Generic You.

Angelastic

Exactly, the word was removed, but I mentioned it (after seeing your link in the other thread) because it gives a hint that this part is a separate thought (if not a separate sentence) from the 'there's nowhere she can hide', (rather than a qualifier saying when there's nowhere she can hide) so it's okay to switch to the generic you. I probably should have linked to your post instead of directly to the video.

MaW

It still doesn't make any sense being two sentences, because the second one doesn't go anywhere!

I'm aware of generic you as a concept, and use it myself, but I still can't see that it doesn't clash with the previous line of the song, which I still insist only makes sense as part of the same sentence.

I did search for threads on this and came up a blank, but I guess I was looking in the wrong place, and I stopped reading Who's Servos Are These a while ago because I didn't see any ambiguity there and so found the discussion very odd indeed.

In any case, I sing my slightly altered version and am happy with it that way.

Angelastic

Yeah, I agree that the second sentence doesn't really go anywhere. I mean, when a crazy robot wants to make you his robot bride, it already is the future (inasmuch as it can ever actually be the future) so saying it'll be the future soon is a bit weird. But I can't think of any other way for it to work, and the 'cause' seems to point to this meaning.

JoAnn in VA

Doesn't matter to me one way of the other. I was kind of wondering though- does anyone identify with Laura, or are we all the high school kid dreaming of revenge? I know what I am...'scuse me, have to engineer something weak and strange away now...

thomasls

I'm going to be the odd one in the thread and say that the original wording is accurate.

Think of it this way. The persona of the song is telling this story to you, the listener. He's pondering on the future, probably getting that far-away look in his eyes, almost forgetting entirely that you're still there. He's lost in his fantasy. Until finally, it is all coming full circle in his mind, he is about to have his Laura for his very own. "She'll scream and try to run, but there's nowhere she can hide," he says in rapt description. Then he shudders, comes back to reality, then turns to look at you. "When a crazy cyborg wants to make you his robot bride," he says, possibly giggling afterward.

Dr. Perry Cox

If you want a cheap way out of the entire issue, this kid is is probably an elementary/middle school age kid who has a crush and big dreams (Like wanting to be a baseball player, just more elaborate). Probably doesn't have the best grammar.

One of the things that I find odd about the grammar in this song is the first line of the chorus. Think about it: "It's gonna be the future soon." I can translate that to mean "It will shortly (In the future) be the future" .... Craziness!It's not the future now, but it will be the future soon

mtgordon

JoAnn: There are several reasons I don't identify with Laura. First, I'm a guy, which is to say, I've been in the narrator's shoes far more often than I've been in Laura's shoes. That's just the way it is. Second, he's not actually doing anything to harm her; he's just harboring some utterly fantastic revenge fantasies, so totally outlandish that there's no way they'll actually come to fruition. The fantastic nature of these fantasies, revenge reduced to science fiction cartoon, renders them far less disturbing than they would be if they were more realistic. Third, Laura didn't simply reject the narrator; rather, she tells the whole class, which is malicious gossip. She may have an unfortunate obligation to break his heart, assuming his feelings aren't reciprocated, but doing it so publicly and sadistically just goes to show that Laura doesn't deserve him. I've had plenty of women break my heart as gently as they possibly could, and to this day I thank them for their mercy. I might join the narrator in wishing a more realistic and richly deserved revenge upon Laura: may she be lonely in adulthood.

Dr. Perry Cox

Addressing your 3rd point: Like I said, these kids are probably elementary or middle school aged. While I'm not condoning the act of telling the whole class (I was the victim of similar gossip at that age- on multiple occasions), you can't really fault her for it. It's not like she told the whole class for the specific purpose of hurting him. She did it because that's what she felt she was supposed to do.

Caleb

I was just re-watching Dr. Horrible, and I realized that a song there has a similar problem with switching pronoun-person mid-sentence. Felicia Day's solo starts out:

Here's a story of a girl, who grew up lost and lonely,
Thinkin' love was fairy tale, and trouble was made only for me.

Technically, it should end "for her". It's like she started out referring to herself in 3rd person to anonymize the story, then changed her mind, and decided to reveal that she was that girl.

JoAnn in VA

I didn't really think anyone identified with Laura, just threw it out as a throught experiment. I have been the crushed and gossiped about one too- the narrator might be male in the song, but his experiences are pretty universal. It just got me thinking about the "other characters" in the JoCo songs...the wife who keeps making herself better, the girl who finds a stalker on her front step with a bunch of flowers when she comes home from her date, the receptionist at the code monkeys office. Who are these people? are they as good/bad as they are made to seem in the song? What do THEY think of the person telling the story of the song?
Do they have songs of their own somewhere deep inside?

Angelastic

the wife who keeps making herself better

When I read that, I was momentarily shocked, and then I realised that all this time I'd assumed, despite the male voice, that the song was sung from the point of view of a woman whose husband was making himself better. I don't know why; perhaps I have internalised some stereotypical gender roles, or perhaps I just think of myself singing the song.

It can be very fun and interesting to take a story and imagine the story of one of the other participants. I did it with the fairy tale The Three Feathers (and found that the resulting story made more sense to me than the original) and again (sort of) with The Frog Prince, and then with a story I'd written myself twelve years earlier. Not meaning to blow my own horn or anything, I just wanted to say that I found it very interesting to do, and quite easy to start writing because the basic outline of each story was already there. And here, we even have tunes (which could be kept as-is, or inverted, or otherwise manipulated to suit the character) so I think that rewriting them from other perspectives would be a great challenge/exercise/game/eye-opener*/filler of time and threads. Considering our surprisingly different takes on some of the songs, I bet we all had different ideas of how these 'minor' characters felt.

What is it like to be a half-pony, half-monkey monster, made to please a pretty thing who instead reacts by screaming? Perhaps it's like being a Snuggie.


* the rebellious zombie's can-opener

BenS

I would quite like to hear Re: Your Brains from Tom's point of view, is the zombie actually being as eloquent as he thinks it is. Is it like when a person retells a story from when they were drunk and in their head they spoke very clearly and cleverly but actually to the other person it just came out as groans and such like. Either that or is Bob actually a sophisticated Zombie in which case how do you deal with someone like that, was it really a monologue or does Bob just ignore everything Tom says.

Bry

BenS: RE: RE: Your Brains (by IrishLion)

Angelastic

Very rough (and yet still ninja'd) try:

Heya, Bob, it's Tom,
I hear you moaning at the door.
Good to see the zombies ate your tongue.
Things have been okay for me, I'm trapped inside a candy store,
safe from all the airheads you're among.
I know you're twits with rotting brains, but I still don't understand
why you folks don't think to turn the doorknob with your hand...

Caleb

Another Re: Re: Your Brains, on Youtube.

JoAnn in VA

More Angelastic, MORE!

Please?

As to "Better"- because it is a man, JoCo, singing it, I always thought of the person changing all the time was his wife, and that the singer was male. Then I started wondering- why did she start to do it? Was she originally unsatisfied with her body- or did he start commenting on every pound she gained after marriage? Was she always so emotionally aloof and defensive that she felt she needed real defenses, or was she a battered wife maybe? Perhaps this is one I ought to rewrite, hmmmm.

mtgordon

Quite some time ago, I made a complete list of JoCo songs as they then existed and noted which ones were gender-neutral. The following songs make gender-neutral reference to "I" and "you" without any clear bias as to the gender of either:

You Ruined Everything
I'm Your Moon
Summer's Over
When You Go
Till the Money Comes
Drinking with You
So Far So Good
Take Care of Me
That Spells DNA
Womb with a View
Better
I Crush Everything
Ikea
I Hate California
Over There (though there's an implied interest in naked ladies dancing)
Overhead
Screwed
A Laptop Like You

In some cases, "I" and "you" are mostly rhetorical, but in some others, changing the gender from a male narrator can change the nature of the song completely.

Angelastic

More Angelastic, MORE!

Please?

Okay, okay, I went to bed half an hour ago but Angela's bunkum's making trouble when she should be sleeping. I don't know the last two lines of the first verse yet (and it's likely I won't sleep until I do) but here is a crude (in all senses of the word) draft of the chorus.

All you zombie dudes have shit for brains,
you're just not reasoning,
you think that you can eat IQ.
All you zombie dudes have shit for brains,
once you've digested them
brains are undead meat like you. [Changed from 'just dead meat']
If you open up your skulls,
there's all dumb inside, you've got no brains.

MaW

There's no reason at all why Better can't refer to a gay or lesbian relationship either. The only prerequisite is for there to be somebody in the partner/spouse role who starts going in for rather excessive cybernetic enhancement.

JoAnn in VA

I am more interested in the why of the enhancements..what makes someone go that far?

Sindex

<blockquote>I am more interested in the why of the enhancements..what makes someone go that far? </blockquote>

I don't know, but people take current plastic surgery waaaay too far, probably from a terrible self-image (look at Jocelyne Wildenstein.. you know, if you can). Better (the song) just seems like the logical extension of that same idea. It is said some people get addicted to surgeries even.

I can see it though. How cool would it be to have a computer chip in your brain so you could instantly pull up information about people when you see them? Or the ability to see in the dark? Or jump 30 feet in the air? One could assume once you started down the path of artificial enhancement it would be hard to stop gaining "new powers" so to speak. Come to think of it, now it sort of sounds like Sylar from Heroes.

I certainly don't think there was any outside pressure on the subject of "Better" since the narrator specifically says, "You used to be ok, and I liked you that way." And it's clear they don't like [him/her] "Better."

Most people who start down the path of enhancements (let's say breast augmentation for example) do it because it's something they want for themselves, not to impress other people. Or at least that's been my experience with the 5 or 6 people I know who have had work done.

Angelastic

I don't know why people have cosmetic surgery (or even why they wear make-up or fancy pants) but silicon (not silicone) implants might tempt me. And then, well, you know, one moment I'm just going for a digital watch implanted in my wrist because I'm sick of broken watchstraps (seriously, why hasn't that been invented yet?) next thing you know, I'm a Superwoman with more bandwidth in my fusiform gyrus alone than most ISPs, but underneath my aluminium case, there's still love.

mtgordon

There's plastic surgery, and there's plastic surgery. I don't think anyone in their right mind has a serious issue with correction of birth defects, repair of injuries, etc. Post-mastectomy breast reconstruction is perceived very differently from porn star breast enlargement. Many of the excesses come from people trying either to change some aspect of themselves, perhaps to obscure race or ethnicity, or to obscure the effects of aging. Fighting aging is a losing battle, but to the extent that it's only an effort to freeze time, I'm somewhat sympathetic. It's the efforts to be someone other than who you are that make me roll my eyes. If, as the tabloids suggest, Michael wants to look less black or Scarlett wants to look less Jewish, I'm less sympathetic. Gender reassignment is arguably a bit fuzzy, but if Walter really and truly feels like a Wendy, then it might be seen as repair rather than denial of true identity.

Enhancement, the effort to change the adequate to the superior, is a different story, and aside from breast implants, it's mostly science fiction at this point, Prosthetic limb technology, for example, has advanced considerably in recent years through unfortunate need, but there's still no reason to trade in the original hardware.

Angelastic

Many of the excesses come from people trying either to change some aspect of themselves, perhaps to obscure race

For example, somebody from the human race who wants to obscure that by becoming a cyborg.

Caleb

I certainly don't think there was any outside pressure on the subject of "Better" since the narrator specifically says, "You used to be ok, and I liked you that way." And it's clear they don't like [him/her] "Better."

Actually, the line "You used to be OK" could hint at the triggering event. I'm imagining a sitcom-style conversation between an insecure wife and an apathetic husband that goes something like the following:

Wife says: "Honey, do you like how I look?"
Husband (watching TV) says: "Yeah, you look OK."
Wife thinks: Only OK? Not beautiful, or wonderful, or pretty? Just OK? I'll fix that.

JoAnn in VA

That is it exactly Caleb, I keep thinking that there was something going on, something that made her so willing to put up with the pain and recovery time for those surgeries for upgrades, because unless they were instant surgeries like in Logans Run the human body will always need time to recover from trauma.

Good point between necessary reconstructive plastic surgery and the purely optional kind, Mark. Actually, I kind of had both a few years back. I had hated my face for years, and had hated most photos taken of me because of a pronounced underbite caused not by the lower jaw but through the upper jaw and center bones of my face never quite growing out properly. It was deemed a medical necessity because it affected my breathing and proper chewing ability. Took me 6 weeks of a liquid only diet afterwards, and my hip bone is connected to my jaw bone-literally- now, but I LOVE the final results. Being able to breathe through both nostrils all the time- not having sinus infections constantly- having a decent profile finally! It was worth it, completely. It hasn't tempted me to go for any other changes though!

mtgordon

My son had two plastic surgeries in the first two weeks of his life. The traditional one isn't normally thought of as a plastic surgery, but it technically is; the other was correction of a birth defect.

SemiEvolvedSimian

Not to bog things down in semantics, but there is "cosmetic" surgery and there is "corrective" surgery. "Plastic" surgery is a pseudo-derogatory term, and should really only refer to elective cosmetic procedures designed to enhance one's appearance.

"Corrective" covers the gamut from medically necessary (eg: to correct birth defects) to medically/psychologically appropriate (eg: reconstructive surgery for accident victims or gender reassignment for Mr/Ms Carlos).

There are obvious grey areas. Some might call circumcision "cosmetic" while others consider it medically necessary and therefore "corrective". Our accident victim undergoing reconstructive surgery might come out looking better than when s/he went in... when did corrective turn into cosmetic in this case?

And back to cyborging... it may be that one day one could increase one's life expectancy by cyborging certain parts of one's self. Does this fall under either category of surgery? Treating a medically recognized disease (age) with a medically accepted treatment (organ replacement) could make this a "corrective" procedure, yet the vanity implied by such an act makes me think "cosmetic". Certainly replacing an arm with a stronger, more resilient cyborg arm is cosmetic in nature, so why should a spleen be any different?

mtgordon

Hardware replacements for hips, knees, and heart valves (mitral and aortic) are fairly common. I read recently about ankle replacements coming on the market. Hardware is sometimes implanted to correct especially severe fractures, but that's intended to shore up a bone rather than replace it. In all such cases, they're replacing as little as possible, and there's no superficial difference beyond surgical scarring, at which point the procedures are hardly cosmetic. Cochlear implants and pacemakers are the only medical devices that come to mind that are permanently implanted to replace some broken bits of anatomy. Other medical devices can do the work of a failing organ, but they're typically external devices: heart/lung machines, dialysis machines, etc. Age is sometimes, but not always, a major factor. Correction can significantly improve overall health, which may in turn improve physical appearance, but that's secondary to the improvement in overall health.

Colleenky

One of my friends has a small pump in his head. From the brain surgery. :-)

ETA: And my sister has a neural implant to treat her RSD (reflex sympathetic dystrophy).

If we just close our eyes, it's already here!

MaW

There are also artificial heart pumps, although I gather they're not really all they could be yet.

Angelastic

Has anybody read the article which this song was written for? I can only find the soundtrack and a teaser on the popsci website.

Anyway, here's an idea I just had (actually, when I typed that my idea had only gone as far as 'hot', I'm as surprised as you are when I see where it goes next, but I think it explains the later reinforcements):

Where did we go?
When was the moment that we broke in two?
I think I know
In fact I am sure I can blame it on you.

I remember the first big surprise
You wouldn't look into my infrared eyes
I only bought them to make you look hot,
but real human warmth you had not.

But it's not me it's you, what you're turning into
Is some kind of something that I never knew
you stay inside all day, your skin's turning light grey,
and I don't think that Bob made you better,
no I don't think that Bob made you better.

JoAnn in VA

I think Angelastic has been taken over by the spirit of voidptr/Caleb...this looks like his work, combining two songs like this!

Not that I don't like it of course!

Angelastic

Or perhaps we're both half-zombie-half-drunkard monsters, possessing each other with our spirits? I think this one of mine was before Caleb earned his reputation, though I'm sure it wasn't the first in the genre.

Incidentally, I made this half-zombie half-cyborg mash-up to please you.

Caleb

I'm more than busy enough with Song Fu at the moment to go around possessing people (you know, assuming I could...)

And I can tell by those messy bloodstains
That your thoughts are only for eating my brains
Do me a favor and leave me my eyes -- just so we don't cause a scene.

(sorry, couldn't resist!)