SONG: “Not a Pony.”

SONG:

ARTIST: grant, featuring Enok Webb.

SOURCE: “Horse-sized tyrannosaur may be long-sought missing link in T.rex evolution,” Washington Post, March 14, 2016, as used in the post “Wee rex. Awwww.”

ABSTRACT:
It’s a tiny (well, smaller than usual) T. rex! How can you resist?

Especially since I have a life with children in it. It took attempts at cajoling three of them until I found one I could get to repeat two sentences into a microphone. Kids – they move around all the time.

I originally thought I’d build this out of a looped sample, taking some jazz song in four and cutting it so it looped in three. But I couldn’t find the right chunk in time. I did this all with MIDI.

I kinda knew what the last line was going to be, which meant I knew I wanted kids saying “I want a pony” in the verses, which meant the rest of it was probably going to be spoken word.

All put together sort of last minute, but I’m not going to miss a deadline because of diddling around with a cover I recorded for missing a deadline. Oof.

I don’t know why it is that I always want to clone prehistoric creatures in these lyrics. I’m not even that big a Jurassic Park fan. And yet there it is. (Not always, but often enough.) Maybe it’s the easiest way to get a dinosaur to interact with a human being.

And all paleontologists are also geneticists, right?

And, yeah, CRISPR is cool, right? Right?? I’m on the bandwagon! Next stop, HOLLYWOOD!

LYRICS:

The children had been well behaved
after I left them alone
I had to go into the desert
to piece together bones
They really did deserve a present
As I booked my passage home

I could hear the children asking
Did you bring me a pony?

Now, there are ponies in Uzbekistan,
But Customs is a pain,
So instead of shipping horses,
I thought I’d use my brain,
Run a turkey through some CRISPR
Bring things back to life again

I could hear the children asking
Did you bring me a pony?

Timurlengia eutoica
They’d learn to say his name
I could build him in the lab
They could teach him lots of games.
He’s hungry, but not scary –
Not like what his kin became

So I got home at last, and they asked
Did you bring me a pony?

You’ll have to feed him hot dogs
And maybe something more
Be sure you don’t surprise him
When opening his door
We can fit him with a saddle
And even ride him to the store

And that’s when one of them said
Aw, that’s a cute tyrannosaur