Who Gets The Call
Plays in the dock at the bottom of the page, so it keeps going while you read on.
Lyrics
Site A writes the long code, site B writes it short
The receiver sends a note and it's a Friday afternoon sort
So someone says the middle man can sort it out for free
A favour with a half-life, and nobody holds the key
A code with a few extra letters on the front
We argue where to fix it, and we always miss the point
Who gets the call at three o'clock?
Who gets the call when the file bounces back?
Put it where someone owns it, put it where you can see
If nobody's name is on it then it's not a fix, it's a guarantee
Of a bounce, a bounce, a bounce!
Who gets the call? (Who gets the call?)
Put it where it's owned!
The exporter's got a secret, it's changing what you sent
The screen says short, the file says long, and nobody knows what it meant
Two places keep one fact and they only match by memory
So make the config shout when the code's the wrong degree
Name a person, write the rule where both teams can read
Check it on the way in, not when the damage is already done
Who gets the call at three o'clock?
Who gets the call when the file bounces back?
Put it where someone owns it, put it where you can see
If nobody's name is on it then it's not a fix, it's a guarantee
Of a bounce, a bounce, a bounce!
Who gets the call? (Who gets the call?)
Put it where it's owned!
Bass and upstrokes only
The people who've moved on won't be there to ask
So write down whose it is
Write down whose it is
Small, boring, visible, theirs!
Who gets the call? Who gets the call?
Somebody's name on it, that's all!
The band
The Standup
Fast, cheerful and upstroked, with a whole room shouting the hook back. Comic and rhyme-heavy, but the joke always lands on a real point, and it mocks the ritual rather than the people.
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 Put The Translation Where Someone Owns It.
When two sites store the same code in different shapes, the useful question is not where the translation could live but who will notice when it is wrong.