Catspaw,

Last year in October we had a series of weekends when the threads wouldn't open: Max left town and everything went to hell in his absence. Three weeks in a row I wrote songs about what it was like to be without the threads. The first (The Missing the Mudcat Blues) can be found at

MISSIN' THE MUDCAT BLUES

I got the blues 'cause the Mudcat's gone and crashed again;
My God it hurts, the Mudcat's crashed again--
Good golly Miss Molly, when will them crashes end?

I gotta have the 'cat, 'cause I got a lotta stuff to say;
Oh, I need them threads 'cause I got so much to say.
But Benjamin and Barry Finn and all the threads have gone away.

I need Barbara and Art, I need Alison and Mick,
With only silence from the swamps--I know I'm gettin' sick,
Tim and Chet and Northfolk, you're gone but what can I do?
I'd ask Joe Offer, but dammit, he's gone, too.

With no Harpgirl and no Raven I'm stuck all alone in lonesome hell;
Bill's in Alabama, and there's no Wolfgang here in
hell,
Roger, Pete, and Ewan, Mike and Murray, they're all gone as well.

There's no word out of Brisbane, and Vancouver's quiet, too;
There's no word out of Brisbane, and Vancouver's quiet, too.
You gotta get me back on line, Max, 'cause what else can I do?

I got the blues 'cause the Mudcat's gone and crashed again;
My God it hurts, the Mudcat's crashed again--
Good golly Miss Molly, when will them crashes end?

c. Charles Kratz (12/0ct/98)

The second, like yours, was a parody of Banks of the Ohio; I haven't been able to find it yet, nor the third, another blues based on the error message we'd get anytime we tried to log onto the threads.

--seed