I am more and more aware
of missed opportunities lately, where the timing really matters. This is a
rather silly one.
There has been so much
talk of today's eclipse, but there were other things going on. Other than
confirming that we would have glasses and that we were not going to travel
South to catch the other three percent that we can't see from home, I have not
thought of it much until a few days ago.
There were things that
seemed interesting; I never thought about there being different strengths of
welding helmets. I know you can use a pinhole viewer, and there are pinhole
cameras - could you photograph the eclipse that way? (There's probably not enough
exposure time to get a crisp shot.) There could still be interesting
experiments to do.
If I had thought about it
more, I would have been tempted to try a pinhole camera, but my biggest regret
is not recording a song parody.
I was thinking ahead for
the next few daily songs and thinking about today. The most obvious one is
Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" -- that one is so obvious
she is performing it during the eclipse -- but I wished that Weird Al Yankovic had
parodied it.
Just in case he had, I
did some searches. There was nothing by Weird Al, but Don McLean and some
German band called Einstürzende Neubauten have songs. Neither of them are as
dramatic as Bonnie Tyler. That's when I started wanting to do my own.
I wrote many parody
lyrics back in the day, so that was something I could do. I thought about just
posting them, but it would be so much better to have something recorded. I have
wanted to make my own daily songs at some point.
This is not the time for
that. It's not just that I don't have a means of recording either; Bonnie Tyler
goes both too high and too throaty for me. Too late I thought of asking a
friend who does some recording, but there just wasn't sufficient time. Yes,
there's another eclipse in nine years, but we are not in its path.
So, here we have just a
blog post, with some lyrics at the end. I did not write enough lyrics for the
whole song. I could have added more, but learning that the original version was
over seven minutes so it was already chopped down makes me feel better about
this. This is the PSA version.
Total
Eclipse of the Sun
Turn
around
It's
stronger than it looks
You're
not going to feel it
burn a
hole in your eyes
Turn
around
Or put
on the glasses
Are they
from somewhere approved?
Is it
ISO certified?
Turn
around, for your eyes,
It's
just a few hours
but your
retina's for life
Turn
around, for your eyes
Every
now and then someone goes blind!
I know
you want to see first contact,
and to
see the crescent sun,
the
diamond ring and Bailey's beads,
and the
reverse before it's done,
but you
must protect your eyes,
so much
can go wrong
I know
that it's the day and looking like the night, but you can watch the moon and
still keep your sight.
Or
welding glasses too, if they're thirteen or fourteen. If you see anything but
sun, you know it's too weak.
Use a
pinhole camera or the leaves on a tree, it's only safe to look during totality!
Don't
damage your eyes!
You have
to protect your sight. You have to protect your sight.
Some
things don't really blind you, but this one is true, protect your eyes until it
is done. Don't regret where you look for the total eclipse of the sun.
There'll
be so much else to see if your eyes still work, I just want to help everyone.
Don't
regret where you look for the total eclipse of the sun.
Please
protect your eyes.
Please
protect your eyes.
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