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The Worst Job There Is

from Who Let Him In Here? by Tom Smith

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Wayne Garmil
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Nathan Filizzi
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gammacavy
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about

The original song is a lovely little piece about the movie The Karate Kid, and the key concept is "balance". I merely replaced that with "ballast", and proceeded to ballistic.

This was early in my career, when I was starting to feel my power. When I premiered the song, in front of Julia, I watched as her eyes grew wider and wider, and her friends carefully leaned out of the way in anticipation of her launching herself at my throat. A few weeks later, I attended a songwriting panel that she was on, and, to my great delight, she said it was really well done, and an original idea, not just changing a few words and calling that a new song. I was on my way.

lyrics

In all things there must be balance, said my physics prof to me,
And in the days of sailing ships, the ballast was the key,
Some sand and garbage in the bilge are all you need at sea,
But things work slightly differently when you turn in zero-gee.
The ballast must be accurate to ten places, maybe more,
Whether you are dodging asteroids or just going to the store.

When the spaceships first used ballast, they tried everything in sight,
And inert materials at first worked out all right,
But when spaceships first went past light-speed, the laws of physics changed,
Gravitation pulled unequally, several ships were... rearranged.
They finally discovered that the ballast must float free,
To go where it's most needed -- so the ballast now is me.

I tried to be a Space Marine, but they wouldn't let me go,
My vision was myopic, my reflexes way too... slow,
And all my dreams of Space Marines and interstellar fame
Were dashed to Hell by defects in my undernourished frame,
But still I made it into space, although my job is dull,
For now I serve as ballast sealed up inside the hull.

Now inert, unliving ballast will not do the job -- instead,
They've got me in a Kevlar jumpsuit, pockets lined with lead,
The hyperdrive computer says where we'll need extra mass,
We accelerate to F.T.L. and inertia kicks my ass,
I bounce around between the seams, grabbing anything at hand,
Like a plane whose one wing tears and falls, the ballast wants to land.

credits

from Who Let Him In Here?, released January 20, 1991
Music: "Crane Dance", © 1986 by Julia Ecklar

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Tom Smith Ann Arbor

Weird Al with more books, JoCo with more jokes, Carlin with more Cthulhu. Since 1985, Tom Smith has been breaking hearts, minds, and laws of propriety and physics with his insane blend of sf/fantasy, Life With Computers, pop culture, politics, and puns. More than twenty albums later, he maintains the best is yet to come. ... more

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