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Song Parodies -> "I Am Binary-Modal, Sexa-Octal Hexadecimal"

Original Song Title:

"I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major General"

Original Performer:

Gilbert & Sullivan

Parody Song Title:

"I Am Binary-Modal, Sexa-Octal Hexadecimal"

Parody Written by:

Tommy Turtle

The Lyrics

*Please* -- the self-laudatory tone was merely mimicking and satirizing TOS, as we're *supposed* to, right? .... Actually, base six is called "senary", but "sexa-" sounded, well, you know...

Considered adding head- or footnotes explaining the various base systems, but those who know, don't need them; those who don't and are interested, can look them up; and those who don't know them and don't care, don't want them. (hears collective sigh of relief). Footnoted only double-meanings related to algebraic geometry.
PROFESSOR TURTERAL:
I am binary-modal, sexa-octal hexadecimal
Head: calculate; precision, great; mistakes in-fin-itesimal
With others' minds, when mine opines, I definally mess 'em all
Of human brains, yes, mine remains the finest living specimal

Although I'm geek, at girls I peek; I mentally undress 'em all
I'm smart, not snooty: Brainy, beauty, cutie, booty: bless 'em all!
I estimize their cuppish size, correct to fifteenth decimal

[pause, then continue, speaking]
Guess their size? Got it!

[resume singing]
Of thoughts obscene, in base thirteen, would need twelve years: confess 'em all

CLASS:
This "hex" is great! We're losing weight! To 1-2-0 from 2-8-8!
We have discussed one problem, just: of Barbie's bust: it must deflate
From 39 to 27: drastic! Plastic, silicate!

PROFESSOR TURTERAL:
One downside very, of binary: Never get past second base!
No perv I be, though 12 is she (in hex) - That's 18 - so, unlace!
A millionaire (though in bin-air), I've 64 bucks (losing face)
But well-endowed to base 5 crowd: 11-inch? John Wadd, replace!

CLASS:
In short, in things numerical, his head is egg, not spherical
He is so multi-modal; a phenomenon mysterical

PROFESSOR TURTERAL:
I'm never late! In octal (eight), there's thirty hours in a day
I sleep base 4; much more, I snore; at 12 o'clock, begin a day
Base 8, years give: 100, live; I'd learn the violin one day
Binary speak: 10 times a week! My sex life, now a grin a day!

Precise at pi, or slice of pie: my fav'rite flavors: cherry, fur
I never figit at long digits; for the more, the merrier
If I could find one like of mind, brain supernumerary, her

[pause, then continue, speaking]
A female equal? Do what? ... Got it!

[resume singing]
In bright insights, I'd bury her; o'er threshold, carry; marry her!

CLASS:
At this aquatic's laughematics: laughing hyperbolic'ly [1]
His log-a-rhythm: we laugh with him, parab'ling, parodic'ly [2]
Our cunning coach, his puns approach perfection asymptotic'ly

PROFESSOR TURTERAL:
It's much more merry in binary; all my songs: hysterical
How do I know? Those Ones that show? Watch calculations clerical:
A "101"? Another one? A third one: So unfair a call?
On Ones I thrive: That's 555! Binary, what a meracle!

CLASS:
In short, binary Octomom would actually be Kilomom
A labor tough; 'twould be enough of human stuff to fill a mom

PROFESSOR TURTERAL:
I saw a hooker; wanna nook her; love to zip her zipper off
She's quite a looker; want to book her; hundred thousand: tip for boff
Such sneaky snooker: Ha! I took her! In binary, rip her off!
Here's bucks for you: Just 32! How cleverly I gyp her off!

Don't get me wrong about my schlong; I've one true gal, incites my love
I pour upon her: honor; kilo-, mega-, gigabytes of love
In bits and bytes, love nips and bites, my passion rite delights my love

[pause, then continue, speaking]
But does she reciprocate my affections? ... Got it!

[resume singing]
My love, returns; she yearns and burns; ne'er spurns; my "peta-bytes", my love! [3]

CLASS:
Base six, he seeks, and sex'ly speaks; this geek's performance: plenary
We've fourteen toes, as well he knows, converting ten to senary
Scientia: best potentia est; we quest such, supplementary

PROFESSOR TURTERAL:
Though not a fan: Obama's plan to rack the max and tax us all
My tax bill sucks: 10,000 bucks; but me, I can relax us all
Pay 16 dollars! Tax man hollers? Prove it to 'em, facts and all
Of base 2 payment, I'm a claimant! (sits and waits for axe to fall)

CLASS:
In short, in matters taxtical, his math: their wrath: impractical
Though factical; didactical; his mind is mega-wacktical!

[An awed student approaches the Professor shyly, and asks:]
Can you do that again, in base 17?

[The Professor looks at the conductor, and requests:]
Maestro, pass my calculator, s'il vous plait

[repeat the entire song with all numbers converted to base 17,
followed by a blaring chorus of 1FB votes]
(guess what that converts to from base 17 to our "base 10", or decimal, system?)




[1] "Hyperbolic" = greatly exaggerated, from "hyperbole"; and also describing the algebraic/geometric curve, the hyperbola.

[2] "parable" (moral tale); "parabola" (another geometric curve)

[3] One single-meaning clarification: Not the animal-rights organization PETA, which of course the turtle would support -- Treat those sheep better! I care about them! -- , but the prefix, peta- = quadrillion. (1 petabyte = 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.)

© 2009 Tommy Turtle. All rights reserved. E-mail: tomm...@yahoo.com

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Original Song: 
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Voting Results

 
Pacing: 5.0
How Funny: 5.0
Overall Rating: 5.0

Total Votes: 16

Voting Breakdown

The following represent how many people voted for each category.

    Pacing How Funny Overall Rating
 1   0
 0
 0
 
 2   0
 0
 0
 
 3   0
 0
 0
 
 4   0
 0
 0
 
 5   16
 16
 16
 

User Comments

Comments are subject to review, and can be removed by the administration of the site at any time and for any reason.

Old Man Ribber - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
More bravissimo Gilbert and Sullivan! Also, I suspect that you actually PERFORM many of your Major General parodies and others. Hail Turtle! ;D
TJC - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
~
T's got that scary--very--logi-lexi-cal mentality
Enhanced by a chelony-play'ah's ewe'phone-mewesicality
This pacin' ace, with math debases foes of rationality
Is owed his due--for thru and through our Yertle's trewe regality!

In short in matters schlock n' awe, I bow before this 'Spock of Ha'
Our reigning major mentat who has never stuffed his alge'bra!
~
DJ Blaze - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
This is a great parody that reminds me how much of a pain math is. You're still the very model of a super awesome parodist! 555
Christie Marie M - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
Mathematically awesome parody, Tommy! As usual, math and I don't seem to be getting along. Don't know how I passed calculus with a B, though! A petabyte, eh! First time I heard, but very informative as your footnotes! Your class seems to be paying lots of attention in class, especially giving very plausible explanations in math. You sure know how to get through to them! You put on quite a performance as always, Turtle! Your students scored 555% on their math exams!
Guy - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
Turtle Whacks with the hard sell finish - I almost lost it when Octo-mom turned into kilo-mom. For those non geekish readers the decimal numeral 8 is converted to 1000 in binary. But can Professor Turteral do the same with IP addressing, sub netting, ARP, RARP, EIGRP, MAC addressing? - Oh you kind of did MACs since they are Hex numbers. Oh yeah what about Roman Numerals? Can ya do it in those? How did the Romans ever build all that stuff like the Roman Coliseum and the Roman Aqueducts when all they had to do math with was some letters - they never figured out the concept of zero. So how did they build all that stuff?

I have enough geek in me to have completely understood and thus have greatly appreciated your sublime effort, Professor Turteral. IMHO this is the very best MG parody I have ever had the pleasure of reading.

So readers if you learn anything from this parody learn this - when offering bids or payment convert the amount to binary, give that number to the recipient and then when they take it to the bank convert the binary number back to decimal - thus a $100,000 tip for a hooker converted back to decimal becomes $32.00 - when collecting debt determine the amount in decimal, convert it to binary and put the binary value on the invoice. So the purchaser thinks $32.00 but the bill says $100,000. Then you do the math for them and how can they argue with math?

Pythagoras, Claudius Ptolemy, Archimedes of Syracuse and Aristotle would all spin in their collective graves if anyone argued with your mathematic logic. So now someone get the pay czar to read this parody, ah - never mind - he wouldn't understand it. But if he could and would then the debt would be gone in nano seconds and there are more nano seconds within one second then there are seconds in 30 (decimal) years. Fantastic write Professor Turteral. I'm voting in several base number systems - 1053, 22B, 1000101011
AFW - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
I'll let you and Guy do the math, but quite a write
Adam Eccleshall - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
Excellent. I voted 1 (in quinquemiliaquinquagintaquinquecimal). On a side note... you wouldn't be related to Howard Wolowitz, would you? ;)
Pythagoras @ Adam Eccleshall - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
quinquemiliaquinquagintaquinquecimal? WTF?
"LA" Fiddlegirl - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
They say you *can* indeed fool all of the people some of the time (it's twue!-- or 10...). As for me, I buy nary a word of it. :D

Well, OK... I really do. 555!!!!!!!!!
John Barry - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
WOW! 0101 0101 0101
blackjack21 - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
Well done. And if you're that good at math, you should have no trouble counting cards. (Don't worry about hitting that soft 17, it only hurts for a little while)
Tommy Turtle - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
Old Man Ribber: Many thanks, but as turtles have no voice and therefore can't sing, I don't perform these, though a few have been professionally produced and syndicated to about 700 radio stations. Thanks for v/c,OMR

TJC: I've been outdone ... hey, think ya could finish that off? Great parody! -- great comment. Thanks, Major friend and General great guy.

DJ Blaze: I guess if we don't like something, it's a pain. I *like* math, but then, I'm weird. Don't ask me to do household repairs, though -- they're a pain :-) Thanks for "Blazing-ly" awesome vote and comment!

Christie Marie M: The lady protests too much, methinks. (Hamlet). Even taking Calculus, much less getting a B, sounds like you and math got along pretty well! Thanks for v/c!

Guy: By slave labor, just like today.... No problem with IPs, etc., since at the bottom, *everything* is either "on" or "off" electrically, i. e., a 0 or 1, which are the only things computers can read, store, and transmit at their heart, right? And hex is just a way of shortening a binary number, both for space and easier human readability. 01000000001001100011001100110010 is a little hard on the eyes. 40263332 is a bit easier, no?

btw, I used to do a party trick as follows: After pinging a site to get the IP, I'd convert the octets into their true binary form, as above (the IP of www.amiright.com). Then copy/paste the 32-bit number into the browser, and presto -- you'd be taken to AmIRight. Or 01000000001001100011001100110010, which is another cool place. It used to work in IE 5.x. But it doesn't work any more, even after disabling the "fixup" in Firefox that automatically appends www and .com if the address doesn't hit. Haven't used IE in so long, don't even know how to disable that, but in IE6, it did seem to try the 32-bit address, and couldn't find it. Has something changed at the ISP, internet router, or other level, that would explain why this doesn't work any more?

"very best MG"? Considering not only the number, but the quality of most of the writers who do this monster, you humble me, Sir. Thanks for the senary, octal, and binary VVV!

AFW: No problem :) Thanks for v/c, and glad you enjoyed even without the math.

Adam Eccleshall: It's a mystery why the quinquemiliaquinquagintaquinquecimal system isn't taught in our schools and used more, especially here at AIR. (Think about it -- suddenly a 1 is no longer a bad thing!)... Wolowitz: DK, so looked it up. While I *am* overtly sexual and disgusting, I don't live with my mother, so, uh, no... but thanks for the comparison! ... also, no engineering background, although I once drove a Diesel locomotive (true). Thanks for v/c.

Pythagoras: Base 555.

La Fid Le' Girl: twue, it was 10, according to Lily! See -- it really does work out! (great pun, btw) .... Glad you bought it. When do I get my 100,000 dollars? ... thanks for v/c, fg :)

John Barry: Almost four years on site, and I do believe that's the first WOW! fron JAB -- quite a compliment from one who's provided many wows himself over the years. Thanks, John.

blackjack21: I have no trouble whatsoever counting cards; I've done it many times. There are 52, plus the jokers. :) thanks for v/c, and as mentioned, gambling in general, and going against casinos particularly, isn't my thing, but I did take $1,000 of play money and run it into half a million at online poker, before the US Gummint, in its Infinite Wisdom, chose to run off most of the online sites (a rider attached to a Port Security bill -- typical US politics. You wanna talk math -- hold'em, it's all math, esp. online, where there are fewer (but *not* zero) tells ... surprised you're not into poker as well. Thanks for v/c. 64.38.51.50 01000000 00100110 00110011 00110010 01000000001001100011001100110010 216.92.110.5 11011000010111000110111000000101
Oops.... - August 20, 2009 - Report this comment
AJ21: sorry about that string at the end. Copy/paste error... puters, fine; math, fine; but there's always the human factor -- or, in this case, the "flipper factor" (i. e., "klutz."
Adam Eccleshall - August 21, 2009 - Report this comment
Strictly speaking, I think my response should have been "10" (that'll learn me to spend so long making up bases that I forget to do the actual maths). :) By strange coincidence, it looks like I'm having to do some work in base 62 in the near future... how brilliantly well timed your parody was for me :)
Mark Scotti - August 21, 2009 - Report this comment
As a computer programmer, who started by learning Assembler language, it gave me shivers to see these 1's & 0's come up again. But as for the parody, it had a nice "byte" to it!!
Tommy Turtle - August 21, 2009 - Report this comment
Adam: For once, I took your word for it without ASCII-ng..... yeah must be ESPN... and I'm sure URLatest project will succeed.

Mark Scotti: You and Steve Gibson! ... does *anyone* program in Assembler anymore? lol. Drink your Java as you write your script, so that you can see sharp :) Thanks for your python-like wit in that perl of a comment, and I am so glad that you could dig-it-al(l). ... maybe someday, if I get into Barry-mode, I'll try to do 300 parodies of "I Put A Hex On You".
Silver Power - September 23, 2009 - Report this comment
Glad you referred me to this one. The rhyming was amazing. 5s. PS: You have my vote for the most intelligent Turtle on the planet. xD
Tommy Turtle - September 23, 2009 - Report this comment
Silver Power: Thanks! Glad you didn't take the plug the wrong way. And wow! -- smartest turtle on the planet ... but given the competition, that's not saying much, is it? :D :D :D

I've done this OS, for which massive internal rhyming is a "requirement", three other times, but one plug a day is enough. I think you can find them on my author page with a search, if you were so inclined. Thanks for stopping by, and for the nice vote and comment.
Silver Power - September 24, 2009 - Report this comment
I forgot to say... I checked out your Geocities website, and you look just adorable in those pictures! Lol.
Tommy Turtle - September 24, 2009 - Report this comment
LOL! :D ... unfortunately, they're closing down Geocities free hosting next month (October), and I'm not gonna pay for it, so will have to see about getting it hosted by my ISP or something. Glad you enjoyed! .. thanks for taking the time to go there and come back here.
Better Late Than Never - December 20, 2009 - Report this comment
Didn't catch this one a few months back - been very busy of late.
Fave lines = cuppish size & head is egg
Fave new word learned = asymptotical (great sound to it)
Fave complete verse = $32 looker. $32 without the con = skanky-ass crackhead
Fave home-made word = mega-wacktical
An all round excellent entry with some mighty fine jAPery in which there are gags APlenty. Must have been very time consuming for you (I've just finished an M-G myself and it certainly was for me)
Tommy Turtle - December 20, 2009 - Report this comment
Better Late Than Never: Thanks for citing all those faves! :-) ... Looking forward to (pre-)looking at your MG, AP! Thanks for v/c!
Sheepish Reiterator - December 28, 2009 - Report this comment
An astounding masterwork, TT (And even better on the 3E8th reading)!
Tommy Turtle Reiterated (poor world!) - December 28, 2009 - Report this comment
Sheepish Reiterator: But there are only D0 page views at the moment.... oh, I get it -- you printed it out! ... and are using base 62, as per Adam Eccleshall. ;)

Impressed that you've gone through it 12,408 times! Thanks for reiterating! (and please rest assured that the number of iterations permitted by this algoriTThm is unlimited, which makes it recursive - i. e., read it, curse; re-read, re-curse; etc. ;-)
Blarney - December 30, 2009 - Report this comment
reeks of insecurity
Tommy Turtle - January 01, 2010 - Report this comment
Blarney: Huh? Probably pointless to point out, but you *do* realize that this is a parody of The Major-General himself, as drawn by G & S?
www dot naic.edu/~gibson/poems/gilbert1.html
.... didn't think so. Thanks for stopping by.
John Jenkins - August 08, 2010 - Report this comment
Excellent stuff, TT, particularly the tax verse.
Tommy Turtle - August 09, 2010 - Report this comment
John Jenkins: Thanks for taking the time to read, and thanks for the kind v/c.
Bilbopooh - August 10, 2010 - Report this comment
I don't have much of a head for numbers, but this was great! I love all the different ways you drop the numbers into the song, especially in the verse that begins "I'm never late!" Bravo!
Tommy Turtle - August 10, 2010 - Report this comment
Bilbopooh: Thanks for taking the time to read, and for the kind v/c!
Peregrin - August 12, 2012 - Report this comment
Came here from your plug, TT. What can I say? Top work from start to finish with lots of geeky funny lines :)

And now for something completely different, an M&P link where we earlier attempted something similar, but at a disturbingly lower level!

http://www.amiright.com/parody/70s/davidbowie59.shtml
Tommy Turtle - August 12, 2012 - Report this comment
Peregrin: Thank you, kind Sir.  :D

"Disturbingly lower"? Surely we all realize that the occasional attempts at the long and complex B7s are an attempt to shoot for above the norm of pop, and that just doing a really good job on *any* OS is an achievement. Vini, vidi, voti. ;)
Leough - December 12, 2012 - Report this comment
555! TMGLTM! You sure worked a lot harder on this than I did on my 12/12/12. I don't know how I missed this the first time out, but my apologies for doing so. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

In the early days of microcomputers, I bought one of the first Apple II+ machines and taught myself to program it. After I learned how slow the BASIC interpreter worked, I taught myself to program in Hex/assembly language. When I first started doing that, I found myself constantly doing mental conversions from base 10 to/from base 16, which about drove me crazy. Then one day I magically acquired the ability to think in hex, and that problem went away. However, I've long since lost that ability, so I had to read this parody a second time to do all the conversions, then read it a third time to appreciate the associated humor.
Tommy Turtle - December 13, 2012 - Report this comment
Leough, I have two words for you: "Scientific Caclulator". ;-D .... IDK which OS you use, but in Windoze, "Calculator" should be in your Programs menu somewhere (Accessories?), or just open the Start > Run box, type "calc" without the quotes; Enter/OK. Converts between bin, oct, dec, and hex. Or is that what you did?

Per Mark Scotti's comment way above, wasn't Assembly originally a binary language?

Thanks for following the link, and for the kind v/c! (and for reading it through three times. Does each read deserve a vote? -- j/k!)
Leough - December 13, 2012 - Report this comment
Learn something every day. I didn't know the Windows calculator had that ability, but thanks to you I do now. It wasn't obvious, because you have to go to the View menu to select the scientific options.

As for binary language, what I was doing was one step above entering the zeroes and ones. Instead I would enter four digit hex numbers (A - F corresponding to 10 - 15 in base 10.) I was writing programs to display hi-res charts of historical market data I had purchased, including superimposing moving averages and other indicators on the charts. Since the screen addresses were all mapped in hex, doing that kind of programming became amazingly easier once I started thinking in hex.

Every time I've tried to vote more than once on a parody, whether accidentally or on purpose, the AIR program would act like it was going to let me, but then would not increment the vote count.
Tommy Turtle - December 14, 2012 - Report this comment
I believe you're correct that WinCalc defaults to Standard view, but once you set it to Scientific, it seems to remember that, and always opens in Sci mode unless changed back.

You're right that while, say, Intel opcodes are fundamentally binary, they can be expressed in hex to be more human-friendly. Apparently, Mark Scotti started before that was possible:
  "As a computer programmer, who started by learning Assembler language, it gave me shivers to see these 1's & 0's come up again."

I would never actually encourage anyone to vote more than once on a parody, of course. but for tech info only, think "cookie". ;)

I don't want to impose any more on your time, but the topic of very basic (not BASIC, lol) low-level binary and hex ops made me think of Fiddlegirl's and my parody explaining how computers work. It's laughably simplistic for someone like yourself, but of course I'd respect your opinion highly should you have too much time on your hands some day. ;)

http://www.amiright.com/parody/60s/judycollins8.shtml
Leough - December 14, 2012 - Report this comment
Assemblers date back to as early as 1949 per Wikipedia, so I doubt that Mark was actually keying in ones and zeroes. I could be wrong though. I know what you're referring to with "cookie", but I don't think that works with voting.

I scanned through the parody you linked, but I'll have to go back to it later. Could you be a little more specific about the nature of the feedback you want from me on that?

Right now I'm a bit tied up trying to figure out how to deal with a situation that's come up on one of my recent parodies. Apparently someone brought it to the attention of Eric Bolling of Fox News Channel - The Five, and he's trying to find a video or audio performance of the parody -https://www.facebook.com/EricBolling. Unfortunately, all I have to offer at this time are the parody lyrics. This has produced some good PR for amIright.com, as a link to the site is posted on Eric Bolling's Facebook page. The hits on the parody have shot up to over 600 in short order and are still rising.
Tommy Turtle - December 14, 2012 - Report this comment
Steve Gibson, of www.grc.com, has mentioned doing 1s and 0s in his early days, I think, but I could be mistaken. He still writes a lot of his stuff in Assembly, which is why it's maybe 23k vs. the 5MB one would expect from MS.

I guess what I would be looking for on the other parody would be how you, clearly an experienced programmer, thought we did as far as explaining the basic mechanics to the non-computer-literate (the "non-geeks" in the subtitle.) It can be challenging for those knowledgeable in any field to explain or teach it to noobs -- I know, because I've taught several things, ranging from academics to sales to snow-skiing, and seen other teachers have problems with the beginners in each field.

Super job of PR, getting your stuff on TV. I sent a pertinent link to B. O'Reilly once, and never got a reply. I'm not clear on what you want me to do -- produce a video or audio? I became a writer for the same reason Rocky became a boxer -- because I can't sing or dance. I had a radio producer buy some of mine and make very professional audios of them, which were syndicated to his subscribing stations. He wouldn't do yours, since it's already public.

Some people here do produce their own stuff. Not sure, but look at Author Pages for those who have links to their productions. M/P, Mark Scotti I think, Rex, and some others.

Whoever brought your song to the attention of cable news, can I hire him/her to handle mine? :)
TT P.S. @ Leough - December 14, 2012 - Report this comment
Regarding voting, cookies, etc., I don't want to be any more specific, partly so as not to encourage ballot-box stuffing, but also not to enable the bypassing of the protections against sp*m*ers, comment flooding, etc. If you're truly interested, click the e-mail link right after the copyright notice, do the Captcha bit, and drop me a line.

The author of the parody has authorized comments, and wants YOUR feedback.

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