Shalampax Speaks

Nobody remembers when Shalampax adopted its national anthem, Odium of Shalampax. At some point, people here started singing it for some mysterious reason.

The words stirred something deep inside Shalampaxians. It was widely agreed that, yes, this represents us to a T.

All Shalampaxians are familiar with the anthem’s lyrics:

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me,
I guess I’ll go eat worms,
Long, thin, slimy ones; Short, fat, juicy ones,
Itsy, bitsy, fuzzy, wuzzy worms.

Down goes the first one, down goes the second one,
Oh how they wiggle and squirm.
Up comes the first one, up comes the second one,
Oh how they wiggle and squirm.

Until now, nobody had any idea who penned those rousing words. In fact, the composer is still unknown. However, it can now be revealed that, although the title is different, this is a very common children’s song outside of Shalampax.

And we thought our kids were perverse! Ours look almost normal measured against this standard.

Indolence is the only explanation for no one having previously discovered that our national anthem started as a children’s song. A very simple Web search would have found the song, but everyone here was too lazy to bother. I came across it by accident when searching for advice when I had a silly notion that composting using worms might be a good idea.

After I informed my government contacts of my discovery, the Government of Shalampax hired a lawyer to look into whether we could retroactively copyright the song and then extract royalties from the little kiddies of the world for every time they had ever sung it in the past, with royalty payments continuing for every time they sing it from now on as well. This turned out to be impossible from a legal standpoint. And it would have been unfeasible to enforce even if we tricked people into thinking we have a copyright on the song.

Despite not being able to make money out of the song, the government has decided to retain it as our anthem because it so perfectly reflects the Shalampaxian psyche.

Miscellaneous anthem, children's song, national anthem, song