[Maryann Corbett]

My husband loves to razz me about my poetry-related computer dependency. His one-liner of the evening went, "Wasn't there some old line in a poem about 'the wine-dark screen'?"

Now, there's got to be something we can do with that idea: parodies of classical verse--meter and/or phrasing and epithets and/or themes--but actually about the woes of dealing with computers.

"Speak to me, Memory, random and read-only: gigabytes, terabytes..."

Any ideas? Feel free to amend this in order to up the humor quotient.

[Robert Meyer]

Calliope As Spider

"Read only me,"
in webs she writes.
Her memory,
from terror, bites.

Robert Meyer


[This message has been edited by Robert Meyer (edited June 13, 2007).]

[Maryann Corbett]

Nice, one, Robert! A better result from brevity than what I was getting from onrushing dac-hex.

[Catherine Chandler]

Maryann,

I have one about defragging the mind, but I will have to rummage through some old papers in order to find it! Hope to be back with it in a few days' time!

Catherine

[Marion Shore]

I think that I shall never see
a Mac that sucks like a PC.


How 'bout those ads?


P.S. As I was writing this, my PC crashed. (Second time this morning!)

[Maryann Corbett]

Marion, I just laughed out loud here in the office at those lines! I'll have to be more careful.

Maryann

[Marion Shore]

Thanks, Maryann. Glad you enjoyed. Perhaps this can be taken as a cautionary tale.

I realize I may be treading on dangerous theological ground by envoking the Mac/PC schism. But, what the hey--!


Crash, crash, crash,
On thy cold blue screen, PC!
And I hope my cube-mates don't listen
To the swears coming out of me.

O, well for the programming wizard
That he taps day and night on the keys!
O, well for the system designer
that he dreams in Computer-ese!

And the cryptic messages flash
from the circuits buried below;
But oh for the sight of a vanished text
That I never more will know!

Crash, crash, crash,
Thou user-unfriendly PC!
But the contents of the file I just lost
Will never come back to me.

--Alfred, Lord Notagain!

[Michael Cantor]

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who only had eight megs of RAM.

[Roger Slater]

The Web is too much with us, late and soon.
Clicking and sending, we lay waste our powers.
Little we see in cyberspace that's ours.
We have given our blogs away, a sordid boon.
This browser that consumes our afternoon,
This screen at which we sit for countless hours
Googling aimlessly through birds and flowers,
Our speakers blaring some downloaded tune,
They move us not. -- Great God! I'd rather be
A luddite suckled in some chipless bourne
So might I, far from plastic mouse or key,
Dismiss the Worldwide Web with holy scorn,
Not click on every banner ad I see
Or spend my days and nights exploring porn.

[Maryann Corbett]

Fortunately, I was at home when I read Alfred, Lord Notagain!, for his very name cracked me up. And your final couplet, Bob, did the same thing.

And Michael, that was an antique land for sure! But I gotta quibble: both for reasons of meter and consistently formal diction, shouldn't it be eight megabytes of RAM?

Maryann