Subject:      Re: Liberal Hours.
From:         buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Date:         1997/10/04
Message-Id:   <EHIoGq.9JD@world.std.com>
Newsgroups:   talk.bizarre

Lloyd Wood <eep1lw@surrey.ac.uk> wrote:
>I start a pointless followup
>    alone here in the dark.
 I'm drinking from a hollow cup
     with booze by Cutty Sark. [1]
         And my mood grows foul each word I write:
         the post Lloyd hacks s'not at my site,
         and let's not note it's Friday night--
     just logged-in on a lark.

 I can hear the fan that's humming,
     cooling my PC with air,
 and the sound of someone coming, [2]
     walking up the front-door stair;
         I know that as I write each word,
         this is not what I preferred:
         it's not bizarre, and not absurd--
     but do I even care?

 Knowing every gal and man shall
     have the right to make me roast;
 I give in, proceed to cancel:
     what was written now is toast.
         I know that there is one more flaw,
         a thing that sticks within my craw,
         indeed, I wonder what he saw--
     so off to find that missing post.

 I must do some web inspecting
     to get profit from that twerp,
 so it's time for reconnecting--
     this time with dial-up SLIRP. [3]
         I get welcomed to the World Wide Wait
         by banners selling fresh fried bait;
         I ponder just whom I might date,
     delayed by network burp.
    
 E-mail comes, "sorry I missed you"--
     just more spam, another ruse. [4]
 I connect to Alta-Vista
     and I click to search the news,
         then invoke my well-honed skills and powers,
         and search "from:Elspeth" "subject:hours";
         and after that, the newsfeed scours,
     then replies, "Sorry, you lose!" [5]

 Wait, there's more news!  Just a dribble--
     nothing in that tiny batch.
 So I search for "morning scribble",
     with the final plan I'll hatch:
         sometimes Deja News will do things right,
         and sometimes I've searched through the night.
         It's worth a shot--it may, it might...
     it says, "Ok, one match!" [6]

 So I read, and then I ponder;
     now I know which way to mark.
 I return to his post, wonder,
     should I bite or should I bark?
         Did he post this to deride it?
         Hope that his could stand beside it?
         Do you know what I decided,
>    alone here in the dark?

buzzard
[1]  "Absolut" didn't fit.
[2]  Beavis & Butthead bait
[3a] "dial" is monosyllabic
[3b] actually PPP, but I'm not sure how that scans
[3c] This is all true.  I normally use directly connected terminal
     emulator for news and email because telnet over PPP is so latent
[4]  This derives from an actual tactic I read about in a post somewhere--
     spam that appears to be misdirected personal mail.  Didn't happen to me.
[5]  A different search revealed that they, too, had Lloyd's post
[6]  Yes, Deja News had Elspeth's, but not Lloyd's.
[7]  Credit for the form to Elspeth; I just followed slavishly. [8]
[8]  Lloyd bait

time elapsed since
reconnecting:
hours, two,
plus one more halved

read more about the
oneline-follow
-follow project
that's my salve:

<a href="http://world.std.com/~buzzard/tb">http://world.std.com/~buzzard/tb</a>