"Australian Nights" (Aladdin parody, Aimee Terese tribute)

I recently picked up Aladdin on DVD and watched it for the first time since the '90s. Naturally the MENA baddie princess and it being a musical made me think of setting new lyrics to some of the songs, in tribute to the muse Aimee Terese.

I'm not sure how many of these I'll do from the same movie, but here's the first one, to the tune of the prologue song "Arabian Nights" (original lyrics). The point is to lure the audience into an exotic, dangerous, exciting place, where the plot is set.

I think it translates well to Australia because of the wild desert Outback, and their famously being a super-race of shitposters and descendants of convicts -- and even there, more of the petty criminal type, charming and brave enough to escape their confines, rather than violent psycho felons. Most of the allusions are to Australia and its people, whether online or IRL, with only one reference to Aimee herself. But the point of the prologue is to establish the environment that produced her, what she is adapted to, and what to expect from the plot in which she is a character.

The meter is anapestic (da-da-DA), with some beats silent in syncopation, and others drawn out into two beats (e.g., the last syllable in "Thunder" is drawn out for another beat, just like "camels" in the original). For "criminally," the schwa vowel "a" is elided altogether in speech. And the split rhyme in the second verse is to rhyme "fest" with "west" in the original lyrics, not with another word in the new lyrics.

* * *

This unknown southern land of the vast cyberspace
It's a shitposting Thunderdome
Where we lack in pretense, take the piss, no offense
We are criminally quite at home

When the mods are asleep we'll have fun as our fest-
-ival reaches the gates of the site
So log on and subscribe, come and troll with our tribe
On another Australian night

Australian nights
Like Australian days
Well-rested or not, we'll be stirring the pot
In a Red Bull-fueled craze

Australian nights
With Australian goons
A noob or a tard will get rekt and rekt hard
In our online saloon