"The TLD Song"

To the tune of The Elements and The Major-General's Song.
With apologies to Tom Lehrer and Gilbert & Sullivan.

ICANN's top-level domain expansion scheme can be called a lot of things: expensive, deceptive, exploitive, extortive, enraging, confusing, embarrassing, and more ... but when you actually look at the massive, rather insane list of TLD applications submitted so far, I'm forced to admit that ICANN's plan can also be called ... entertaining. And so, with apologies to the great Tom Lehrer and his Elements song, and of course to Gilbert and Sullivan and their Major-General's Song from the Pirates of Penzance, I offer ... The TLD Song.

MP3 Audio Performance (2:30 minutes / ~2 MB)

YouTube Performance (Click "CC" for closed captions and settings.)

Lyrics Copyright © 2012 Lauren Weinstein. All rights reserved.

There's matrix, merck, memorial, guitars, guru, gap, guardian,
And theater and shangrila and mutualfunds and volkswagen,
And music, telefonica, kerryhotels, jpmorgan,
And sex, adult, motorcycles, realtor, ram, and ericsson.

Estate, events, equipment, enterprises, med, eurovision,
And network, neustar, netflix, netbank, nab, and new, mini and men,
And health and healthcare, helsinki, global, goodhands, and fujitsu,
And mba and mcdonalds, and maybelline and justforu.

There's free, frontier, frogans, flowers, firmdale, firestone, and financial,
And fishing, finish, fish, finance, final, forex, solar, social,
And infosys and insure and academy and transunion,
And auction, menu, mlb, redstone, repair, and liaison.

(OK spammers and other crooks, are you ready to start raking in that cash?)

There's jewelry and jlc and jll and hospital,
And caravan and capital, capetown, quebec, islam and shell,
And prudential and progressive and qvc and radio,
And spreadbetting and ibm, icbc, and studio.

And stroke and sucks and storage, stream, hiphop, hermes, and hitachi,
Design, dentist, dental, clinique, movie, monster, love, seek, city,
And seven, sew, security, secure, webcam, college, coffee,
And commbank, cloud, clubmed, comcast, computer, chat, community.

There's zulu, zone, zara, zero, zuerich, tata, tax and tattoo,
Gay, grocery, gripe, gratis, graphics, gucci, paris, porn, payu,
And persiangulf, party, training, kosher, lawyer and ksb,
Carinsurance, bloomberg, blue, blog, book, trust, actor, and attorney.

These are but a small fraction of submissions far from frugal,
And most will be an utter waste 'cause everyone is using Google.

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--Lauren--