How to Create a Vengefull Kurtain Rods Song

Everyone in my family agrees: The highlight of last summer's visit with our Australian cousins was recording a new Vengefull Kurtain Rods song, "Marsupial Maiden of the Outback".

What is a Vengefull Kurtain Rods song? I hope my friends and bandmates Dan George and Doug King (and many other semi-regular participants) will forgive me for converting the particular into a generic. A Vengefull Kurtain Rods song is a song composed and performed as follows.

How to Create a Vengeful Kurtain Rods Song

(1.) Gather a group of 2-12 friends for about two hours -- the total time allotted for composing and recording the song. If you spend longer than this, you're doing it wrong. The group need not have any musical ability whatsoever, except for one person who is capable of playing a chord progression on piano or guitar, the anchor musician.

(2.) Write lyrics for a humorous song around a goofy idea. Leave your fussiness at the back door. Some ideas around which VKR songs have been composed: the disadvantages of having a bean-shaped head, the joy of eating donuts, seeing a girl's name in your alphabet soup, a woman who decides she prefers kangaroos to men. Write fast and don't revise too much.

(3.) While the lyrics are being composed, the anchor musician creates a simple chord progression alongside, and one person volunteers as singer. The singer need not have any notable singing ability. (Usually it's better if they don't.)

(4.) Gather everyone around a recording device (e.g., a phone). Everyone grabs some readily available instrument or quasi-instrument, for example, kazoo, harmonica, bell, an old marching-band clarinet, or improvised noise-makers (e.g., strike a pencil on cans and boxes). Enthusiasm first. Ignore ability. No instructions on how to do it right, no criticism, no special effort to be musically "good". Just make some approximately musical sounds alongside the anchor musician, without crowding out the singer. Every person improvises their part for each take.

(5.) Record from the very first take, before anyone knows what they're doing. The only real structure is the lyrics and the anchor musician's chord progression.

(6.) You will goof up partway through the first take. Just start again from the beginning, recording the whole time. Repeat until you have one full take. At this point, everyone will have a rough sense of what they want to contribute to the song.

(7.) Record just a few full takes, that's it. Three or four is about right. Eight is too many.

(8.) Keep your favorite take.

Remember the VKR motto: "If you get hung up on quality, you miss out on the pure joy of creation."

Sample songs and lyrics below. To be clear, I'm not claiming these songs are good -- just that we enjoyed making them. VKR and its affiliates, heirs, and nominees take no responsibility for any nausea, brain aneurysms, or irreversible akinetic mutism that may result from listening.

Sample VKR Songs:

Donut Lust

https://tinyurl.com/VKR-Donut

Jack Barnette, Eric Schwitzgebel, Doug King, Dan George

Donuts make me happy
Donuts make me sing
I love my donuts like Colonel Sanders likes his chicken wings
Oh, greasy greasy,
Eat em til I'm queasy and I bust
Give me one with sprinkles
I'm deep-frying in DONUT LUST

Eat one filled with liver
Eat one filled with spam
Doctor Seuss would like me cause I eat em with green eggs and ham
There ain't a filling
That I ain't willing
To consume with total trust
I want em for here and to go
Give me a bagful of DONUT LUST

Way back in childhood
My momma taught me how to eat
Radishes and raisins, rutabagas, broccoli, and beets
My belly's getting bigger
In donuts I trust
But I'm still grinning
cause it ain't no sinning
To give in to DONUT LUST

I want frosting on my fingers
Powdered sugar in my face
I'm like a cop, I just can't stop whenever I get that taste
Raise the price of donuts
Hey I can adjust
(This guy's got no sense of disgust!)
Honey get the keys
Hey, I've got DONUT LUST

Requiem for a Bug

https://tinyurl.com/VKR-Requiem

David Barlia, Eric Schwitzgebel, Douglas King, various other partygoers

Oh you
Were never meant to be inside
That's why you died
Such slender legs
A tiny heart that begs
And eyes that see the world so differently from me

Oh I
Never meant to be your end
I just wanted to be your friend

Kill that bug
Kill that bug
Kill him til he's dead
Kill that bug
Kill that bug
Stomp on his little bug head
Gotta stomp him on the floor
Squish him like goo
Don't let him get away
Or he'll bring his friends too
Kill that bug
Kill that bug
Kill him til he's dead
I said
Kill him til he's dead

Marsupial Maiden of the Outback

https://tinyurl.com/VKR-Marsupial

Various members of the Schwitzgebel and Price-Kulkarni families, some of whom wisely prefer to remain anonymous

Man is stinky, man is sweaty, a hug is not enough
I'm looking for someone whose legs are really buff
Our faces are flat, our faces are bald
A pocket like a locket my hands and heart will hold

(Chorus)
In leaps and bounds they thump across the sandy desert plain
(I will join the pack)
That soaring throne of glory I surely will attain
(I will join the pack)
Marsupial maiden of the outback, my hair a wild mane

I spy a hulking female and my vision blurs
My sympathetic nervous system hops in time with hers
A regal queen splayed across the dewey mountain grass
I will be forever her passenger princess

(Chorus)
In leaps and bounds they thump across the sandy desert plain
(I will join the pack)
That soaring throne of glory I surely will attain
(I will join the pack)
Marsupial maiden of the outback, my hair a wild mane

Lovingly I thrust my head down into her pouch
From the darkness rises an insulated grouch
I withdraw, betrayed, and gaze upon her furry face
I decide to give up the chase
And figure koalas are more my pace
(Koalas, I should have thought of it before, I can keep up with them)

Yay Boo Strange Hope

Happy (almost) Thanksgiving (in the U.S.)! I want to share a recent family tradition which might help you through some of those awkward conversations with others around the table. We call it Yay Boo Strange Hope.

The rules:

(1.) Sit in a circle (e.g., around the dinner table).

(2.) Choose a topic. For example: your schoolday/workday, wilderness camping, Star Wars, the current state of academic philosophy.

(3.) Arbitrarily choose someone to go first.

(4.) That person says one good thing about the topic (the Yay), one bad thing (the Boo), one weird or unexpected thing (the Strange), and some wish for the future related to the topic in question (the Hope).

(5.) Interruptions for clarificatory questions are encouraged.

(6.) Sympathetic cheers and hisses are welcome, or brief affirmations like "that stinks" or "I agree!" But others shouldn't take the thread off in their own direction. Keep the focus on the opinions and experiences of the person whose turn it is.

(7.) Repeat with the next person clockwise around the circle until everyone has had a turn.

Some cool things about this game:

* It is modestly successful in getting even monosyllabic teenagers talking a bit. Usually they can muster at least a laconic yay boo strange and hope about their day or about a topic of interest to them.

* It gives quiet people a turn at the center of the conversation, and discourages others from hijacking the thread.

* Yay Boo Strange Hope typically solicits less predictable and more substantive responses than bland questions like, "So what happened at school today?" Typically, you'll hear about at least three different events (the Yay, Boo, and Strange) and one of those events (the Strange) is likely to be novel.

* The Boo gives people an excuse to complain (which most people enjoy) and the Yay forces people to find a bright side even on a topic where their opinion is negative.

* By ending on Hope, each person's turn usually concludes on an up note or a joke.

Origin:

When I was touring Pomona College with my son in the summer of 2016, I overhead another group's tour guide describing something like this game as a weekly ritual among her dormmates. I suspect the Pomona College version differs somewhat from my family's version, since I only partly overheard and our practice has evolved over time. If you know variations of this game, I'd be interested to hear from you in the comments.

The Odds of Getting Three Consecutive Wars in a Row in the Card Game

What better way to spend the Sunday after Thanksgiving than playing card games with your family and then arguing about the odds?

As pictured, my daughter and I just got three consecutive "wars" in the card game of war. (I lost with a 3 at the end!)

What are the odds of that?

Well, the odds of getting just one war are 3/51, right? Here's why. It doesn't matter whether my or my daughter's card is turned first. That card can be anything. The second card needs to match it. With the first card out of the deck, 51 cards remain. Three of them match the first-turned card. So 3/51 = .058824 = about a 5.9% chance.

Then you each play three face down "soldier" cards. Those could be any cards, and we don't know anything about them, so they can be ignored for purposes of calculation. What's relevant are the next upturned cards, the "generals". Here there are two possibilities. First possibility: The first general is the same value as the original war cards. Since there are 50 unplayed cards and two that match the original two war cards, the odds of that are 2/50 = .040000 = 4.0%. The other possibility is that the value of the first general differs from that of the war cards: 48/50 = .960000 = 96.0%.

(As I write this, my son is sleeping late and my wife and daughter are playing with Musical.ly -- other excellent ways to spend a lazy Sunday!)

In the first case, the odds of the second general matching are only one in 49 (.020408, about 2.0%), since three of the four cards of that value have already been played and there are 49 cards left in the deck (disregarding the soldiers). In the second case, the odds are three in 49 (.061224, about 6.1%).

So the odds of two wars consecutively are: .058824 * .04 * .020408 (first war, followed by matching generals, i.e. all four up cards the same) + .058824 * .96 * .061124 (first war, followed by a different pair of matching generals) = .000048 + .003457 = .003505. In other words, there's about a 0.35% chance, or about one in 300 chance, of two consecutive wars.

If the second war had generals that matched the original war cards, then there's only one way for the third war to happen. Player one draws any new general. The odds of player two's new general matching are 3/47 (.063830).

If the second war had generals that did not match the original war cards, then there are two possibilities.

First possibility: The first new general is the same value as one of the original war cards or previous generals. There's a 4 in 48 (.083333) chance of that happening (two remaining cards of each of those two values). Finally, there's a 1/47 (.021277) chance that the last general matches this one (last remaining card of that value).

Second possibility: The first new general is a different value from either the original war cards or the previous generals. The odds of that are 44/48 (.916667), followed by a 3/47 (.063830) chance of match.

Okay, now we can total up the possibilities. There are three relevantly different ways to get three consecutive wars in a row.

A: First war, followed by second war with same values, followed by third war with different values: .058824 (first war) * .04000 (first general matches war cards) * .020408 (second general matches first general) * .063830 (odds of third war with fresh card values) = .000003 (.0003% or about 1 in 330,000).

B: First war, followed by second war with different values, followed by third war with same values as one of the previous wars: .058824 (first war) * .960000 (first general doesn't match war cards) * .061224 (second general matches first general) * .083333 (first new general matches either war cards or previous generals) * .021277 (second new general matches first new general) = .000006 (.0006% or about 1 in 160,000).

C: First war, followed by second and third wars, each with different values: .058824 (first war) * .960000 (first general doesn't match war cards) * .061224 (second general matches first general) * .916667 (first new general doesn't match either war cards or previous generals) * .063830 (second new general matches first new general) = .000202 (.02% or about 1 in 5000).

Summing up these three paths: .000003 + .000006 + .000202 = .000211. In other words, the chance of three wars in a row is 0.0211% or 1 in 4739.

Now for some leftover turkey.

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As it happens we were playing the variant game Modern War -- which is much less tedious than the traditional card game of war! But since it was only the first campaign the odds are the same. (In later campaigns the odds of war increase, because smaller cards fall disproportionately out of the deck.)