power-hungry teddy bears

Recently my favorite coworker teased me for having the "Ewok Celebration" song from Return of the Jedi on my iPod. Kind of embarrassing, especially since I was going to delete it from the iPod after I got home from work, but not because I don't like the song—I just didn't want the six-minute version I'd found over at Looking at Them. I wanted the seven-minute, 55-second version from 1993's Star Wars Trilogy: The Original Soundtrack Anthology, see, with all the weird Ewok chirping intact. (Once a Star Wars nerd, always a Star Wars nerd.)

But after singing/serenading part of the song to my coworker, I decided to look up the lyrics. I'm glad I did—it turns out the Ewoks were singing "yub nub" instead of "jub jub." That's like discovering Jimi Hendrix was saying "excuse me while I kiss the sky" instead of "excuse me while I kiss this guy." Knowledge is good.

Here are the lyrics in Ewokese:

Yub nub, ee chop yub nub
Ah toe meet toe peechee keene
G'noop dock fling oh ah
Yahwah, ee chop—

Alright, that's enough of that. If you want to see all of the lyrics in Ewokese, go here. ("Peechee keene"? I smell a rat.) It's the English translation that interests me.

Freedom, we got freedom
And now that we can be free
Come on and celebrate.

Power, we got power
And now that we can be free
It's time to celebrate.

You got power? Please. Ewoks, you may have taken down a bunch of Imperial stormtroopers with nothing but slingshots and cuteness, but the Rebel Alliance would enslave your entire race in a matter of minutes if you tried to stage some sort of coup. As Han Solo would say, don't get cocky.