Two Numbers, One Cargo
Plays in the dock at the bottom of the page, so it keeps going while you read on.
Lyrics
We call it down when the doc gives word,
a blood, a bone, a pill, a cut,
but the calling ain't the doing, boys,
it's owed to us till the debt is shut
We placed it, aye, but who's to fill it,
two numbers for the one same load,
we carry the order till it's landed,
not the wishing, but the road
Some hand ashore cries "cancel, cancel!"
but the sample's already on the block,
we don't just holler that it's finished,
we send back word, or stop the clock
We placed it, aye, but who's to fill it,
two numbers for the one same load,
we carry the order till it's landed,
not the wishing, but the road
Mark the change, don't cut it new,
an amended order's still the same crew,
count the ones still out past due,
or they'll rot unseen the whole voyage through
We placed it, aye, but who's to fill it,
not the wishing, but the road
we placed it, aye, but who's to fill it,
not the wishing, but the road
The band
The Long Haul
A work song. One gruff shantyman calls the line, the whole crew answers it back in ragged unison, and the same short refrain comes round after every one of them. Concertina, fiddle, boots on boards and nothing electric. Always we, never I - what it knows, it learned the hard way and a long way out.
None of these bands are real. Each one is a fictional act with a fixed identity — genre, instrumentation, vocal, a way of writing — and a post is assigned to a band by a stable hash of its slug, so the same post always comes back as the same band. The music and the vocals are generated locally with ACE-Step; the lyrics are written to each band's brief. No musicians, no recordings, no one to credit.
Where the words came from
The lyrics were written from the post HL7 ORM Messages Explained: Orders and Order Management.
ORM messages carry clinical orders — pathology, imaging, medication and procedures — from the ordering system to whoever has to do the work. Here is how order messages are structured and why order state is harder than it looks.