‘Space Weird Thing’ Reimagines David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ Using Only the Most Common English Words

“Space Weird Thing” by Alaska Robotics is a music video tribute to the classic David Bowie song “Space Oddity.” Molly Lewis, Marian Call, and Seth Boyer rewrote the lyrics to the song in the style of the “Up Goer Five” comic by Randall Munroe, a comic diagramming the Saturn V rocket using only the 1,000 most commonly used English words.

Ground control to top space man
Ground control to top space man
Take your small food rocks and put your head-safe on

Ground control to top space man
(ten, ten less one, ten less two, seven,
Start the numbers-down, big fires on
six, five, four, three, two, one, up-go!)
Check the start thing and may God’s love be with you…

This is Ground Control to top space man,
you’re really first in class
and the papers want to know which person’s shirts you wear
now it’s time to leave the space-house since you’re there

This is top space man to Ground Control,
I’m stepping through the door
and I’m relaxing in the air and it’s weird
and the stars look very different today

For here am I sitting in a lunch box, far above the world
Home space ball is blue, and there’s nothing I can do

Though I’m past five hundred hundred hundred hundred feet,
I’m feeling very cool
And I think my space car knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much — she knows

Ground Control to top space man,
your talk line’s dead, there’s something wrong
Can you hear me, top space man? Can you hear me, top space man?
Can you hear me, top space man?

Can you….here — I’m relaxing in my lunch box
Far above the space night light ball
Home space ball is blue, and there’s nothing I can do

The original music video.

via Andy Baio