SONG CHALLENGE WINNER!

The Song Challenge:   Whilst cleaning up the old Song Challenge! files, getting ready for the Songbook's big move 'home', I found several Challenge! ideas that seem to be tied together in some, like, ya know, cosmic way, man.   ;-)   So, being that goddesses have to be cruel to be kind (oh behave, Amos!), I've decided to raise the bar for the Whole Bag O' Chips by creating a new award -- The Double Dip Copper Cow Chip (with Sprinkles), which will be awarded for connecting the dizzying dots between two or more Challenge! ideas in a song for any Official Double Dip Dare from the Keeper of the Book.   And for my first 'Official' Double Dip Dare, please do not adjust your seat belts and consider the following . . .

Boys who play with their praties . . . -- (OSLO, Norway) Police have confiscated a potentially lethal home-made cannon capable of firing potatoes up to 160 feet.  Six youths in the seaside town of Kristiansand in southern Norway used instructions on the Internet to build the weapon from everyday household objects.  "This home-made weapon is extremely dangerous both for those using it and those being fired at," a police spokesman told the newspaper Faedrelandsvennen.  The boys loaded potatoes down a plastic tube, where an electric ignition device from a gas-fuelled barbecue was installed.  By spraying a flammable gas into the tube and sealing the open end with a cap, potatoes were converted into projectiles with one push of the red ignition button.  Police said the cannon was capable of launching any object similar in size and weight to potatoes.

. . . grow up to be men with issues . . . -- London's Steve Bennett continues his quest to become the world's most successful amateur rocket engineer, with all systems go for launching himself into space in a "test flight" (to an altitude of 10,000 feet) in 2003 on a venture that most professional engineers called foolhardy, according to a June story reported by the BBC.  The more that is known about Bennett's mission (e.g., he recently said it would be a rocket capsule made from a cement mixer, with modest installation and a small computer), the more rocket scientists believe his launch will result in instant death.  However, the louder the criticism, the more certain of himself Bennett professes to be. He still rejects conventional preparations such as wind-tunnel tests and g-force tests:  "That is what the test flight is for," he said.


Day of Reckoning by derrymacash
(To the tune of "The Rocks of Bawn" (with a bit of shoehorning - let's face it, you have to struggle a bit with the original to get the lyrics to fit the tune!))

Come all you loyal heroyos, who feel the need to soar
Pay heed to me and you'll surely be inclined to fly no more
The tale of poor Steve Bennett is a sad one to relate
But if you attend from start to end you will not share his fate

It was in the year two-oh-oh-one, that first the notion came
To build � bespoke � a rocket yoke to help achieve his aim
To ascend on high, beyond the sky, to shrug off the cocoon
His lowly name would garner fame, as he landed on the moon

He found a cement mixer and from it made a shell
That fitted snug (with shove and tug) and protected him right well
And a barrel, long and sleek and strong, from old scrap steel he cast
And with fertiliser, he did try sir (Sorry!), to generate a blast

But unbeknownst to Stevie boy, the news had spread abroad
And a Norway crew, who were planning to tread the very path he'd trod
Became upset and wouldn't let bold Stevie be the first
And so conspired (so it transpired) his bubble for to burst

Came the day of reckoning and Stevie climbed inside
The crowd were hushed, the button pushed, a crater two miles wide
And Stevie not more than a dot and climbing through the sky
When the Norway clique, who Steve had piqued, caused drama way up high

Those Scandinavian spoilsports set out to cut Steve short
With a weapon cruel, which they'd hand-tooled, and hidden in a fjord
A dread machine, whose contours clean and slick and well-designed
Belied the fact of the deadly act its authors had in mind

It was in the upper stratosphere where the missile struck its goal
A huge King Ed struck centre-dead Bennett's vehi-cole
Momentum lost, he paid the cost, the trajectory was all wrong
Back to the ground, poor Steve was bound, to the Earth where he belonged

The subsequent explosion was heard in Timbuktu
As - justice sweet! - Norway's defeat came right out of the blue
For the looks of scorn of Thor and Bjorn soon changed to looks of dread
As Stevie's shell, like a bat from Hell, loomed above their head

Metal, Stevie, Thor and Bjorn and a cubic mile of fjord
Atomised and vapourised and skywards quickly soared
In a mushroom cloud Steve Bennett proud and those cowards (let's talk plain!)
Bid goodbye, then from the sky, fell to the Earth as rain.

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