Uploaded August 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

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Tapeworm I track 6. Thanks to rocketman0739 for providing high-quality versions of these songs.
Download the album here: archive.org/details/filk_tapeworm_1
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Lyrics:

Come along Harry and Mary and Joe,
Check out your suits and get ready to go.
Fill up those trucks with today’s load of sands
To be shipped back to Earth when the space shuttle lands.

Chorus:
Twelve million, half billion, billion, and more,
Watching T.V. on the living room floor.
Barely aware that the day is at hand
When we dig our first mines in the rich lunar sand.

It’s those people we left back on Earth that get me.
While we’re living the dream, they sit watching TV.
Their metal supply now comes mostly from here,
And they put half of that into cans for their beer.

(Chorus)

Television ignores us; it seems there’s no place
For cov’rage of homesteads we’re building in space.
The reason for this lack of interest is clear:
The ones who would watch are all working up here.

(Chorus)

We’re geologists here, astrophysicists too,
And plain old hard workers like those in our crew,
With one thing in common: we yearn for the stars,
And we will not stop building until they're all ours.

(Chorus)

Someday we’ll be living in pressurized domes
As warm and secure as Earth’s safe little homes.
But Earth folk won’t visit, because of their fear
That the T.V. reception is lousy up here.

(Chorus)

So come, let’s start building our homestead today,
Where a world of foot-draggers can’t stand in our way.
And when no dependence on Earth goods remains,
We can all say goodbye to those Earthbound mundanes.

(Chorus)