Thinking-Brain Dog

by Mark A. Mandel, © 1998
to the tune of "Rolling Down to Old Maui" [aka "Falling Down on New Jersey"]

It's a damn hard row that we have to hoe 
    as beggars in Old Morpork
To gain our bread and a place to bed 
    doing never a lick of work.
But harder yet, you can safely bet, 
    when all is said and done,
Is the toil and pain of a substitute brain 
    for the beggar called Foul Ole Ron.

  CHORUS (after each verse):
  I'm the dog of Foul Ole Ron, my boys, 
      I'm the dog of Foul Ole Ron.
  It's a life of pain for the Thinking-Brain 
      Dog of Foul Ole Ron.  [1]

Now, the way he came by that awful name 
    is exactly as you'd suppose,
So think, if you can, of the stink of that man 
    in a sensitive canine nose.
And my one relief, though it brings me grief 
    to be so brutally frank,
Is the breeze that's blown from the cesspool known 
    as the festering River Ankh. [2]

Now, a bloke who's blind needn't lag behind 
    if his dog is a Seeing-Eye,
And the deaf don't fear if a Hearing-Ear 
    can warn them when danger's nigh.
But it ain't no joke that the part that's broke 
    in Ron's anatomy
Is the organ designed for the use of the mind 
    in the likes of you and me.

Ole Ron depends on his human friends 
    to wangle his ale and bread. 
There's the one who sits and the one who spits 
    and the one with a duck on his head. 
But the four combined haven't got the mind 
    to stop and get out of the way 
When rampaging down the streets of the town
    comes a walking half-ton of clay. [3] 

I don't suppose that the old stinker knows 
    just how bloody much work it takes 
To steer him clear of his pot of beer 
    when he's meaning to use the jakes. [4] 
If it weren't for me he would prob'ly be 
    just a smear on a paving stone... 
So I guess I'll stay for another day 
    to think for Foul Ole Ron. 

1. Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett, p. 165. (Page references are to the American paperback edition: 1996, HarperPrism.)
2. Op. cit., p. 235.
3. Op. cit., p. 98.
4. "Jakes": the bog, the loo, the necessity, the euphemism, the little house out back.

This document was partially created by voice with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. (I dictated the first two verses and the chorus at the office. Then I had to get back to work, and I typed the rest at home.)