Infosphere:Featured article for fortnight 19 of 2013



"The Ballad of Me, Ramblin' Rodriguez" is a folk song that Bender wrote in 3013. It's about a railroad man &mdash; Big Caboose &mdash; who decides to take revenge on a smooth-talking rambler &mdash; Bender himself &mdash; that slept with his lover &mdash; Jezebel. The rambler asks his best friend &mdash; Fry &mdash; for help, but his best friend, too, decides to take revenge on him, for having once abandoned him, and refuses to help.

The song follows the few basic patterns that Bender found after he downloaded every folk song in the universe and analysed them. Before devising it, Bender had Dr Beeler use his 3-D printer to duplicate the guitar of the greatest folk singer of all time &mdash; Silicon Red. The printer began duplicating more, and the song started to turn into reality. (more...)