Whoever else you believe is in the sky looking after you, you can be sure that the crew of any airliner you fly in are there to keep you safe. So here’s a parody of the hymn ‘The Galilee Song’ about surviving an emergency water landing. It’s based on the stories of Pan Am Flight 526A, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961, and US Airways Flight 1549:
Both the right wing engines glitched, when a plane had barely climbed,
So the pilots deftly ditched; soon a rescue crew arrived.
Panicked flyers feared the sharks in the sea where they came down,
So instead of boarding rafts, some stayed in the plane to drown.
So I leave my bags behind
Leave through unfamiliar doors
Set my raft upon the deep
Pull my life vest inflate cord
Once some halfwits stormed a flight, made impossible demands,
So the captain who was bright, steered them stealthily toward land.
They came down just off a coast; those with life vests could be saved.
Some inflated theirs too soon, trapped inside that sinking plane.
So I leave my bags behind
Leave through unfamiliar doors
Only after I am free
Pull my life vest inflate cord
One plane struck a flock of birds; there was nought to do but glide.
Skiles and Sully, undeterred, ditched the plane and no-one died.
Though ’twas not an ocean flight, there were crucial vests and slides.
A stroke of luck that now we cite in the transport safety guides.
So I leave my bags behind
Leave through unfamiliar doors
Set my raft upon the deep
Pull my life vest inflate cord
So I leave my bags behind
Leave through unfamiliar doors
Only after I am free
Pull my life vest inflate cord
∎
After I posted the chorus of this along with my last aviation-themed parody, Joey made noises about potentially singing it if I wrote the rest, so that’s what I did. The chorus is very catchy, so I hope it reminds people what to do if they need it.
The original song has a strong enough tune that you barely notice that it has basically no rhymes, only a little assonance in the chorus. I couldn’t help putting in a bunch of rhymes though. Where’s the challenge, otherwise? The chorus still pretty much rhymes with the lines of the original chorus rather than with itself, though, which doesn’t make sense for anyone who doesn’t know the original, but is so very tempting for those who do, because the chorus is catchy enough to inspire faith… to the non-rhyme scheme.
So I add a bunch of rhymes
Fix the song’s familiar flaws
To absolve it of its [bleep]
Wait, that word was not untoward!
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m including a song parody each time I post about a minor update in an app I release. Well, I’ve released a new version of Seddit, my text-to-speech-focussed Reddit client for iOS and macOS. The new version has three new features, so it’s not such a minor update, really. Here’s what’s new:
Features
- Settings for sounds to play between posts and comments — now you have two options for the sounds to play when going up or down levels when reading comments. You can also choose to turn off the sounds played between posts or when going up or down comment levels.
- ‘Random from previous’ option when autoloading more posts, so it will automatically load posts from any of the subreddits you have previously loaded posts from, instead of just a specific one
- Option to say ‘Link’ instead of reading out URLs in posts and comments
Bug fixes
- Fix to a potential hang when autoloading posts
You can get the latest version of Seddit from the app store!
Creative Output 