As long as this thread has come back to life, it may be a good moment to resurrect one or two sets of lyrics from my personal files (one of these years I will arm-wrestle my Web site into sufficient shape to put the whole archive up again, but today is not that day).

So.

The following was written in 2008, under pretty much the exact circumstances described in the opening verse.

THE ELLIPSE

words: John C. Bunnell © 2008
music: Flanders & Swann (“The Gnu Song”)

A week ago last Friday I was surfing on the Net,
Browsing Craigslist, RSS, and sundry blogs,
When a journal crossed my radar filled with writings rather odd
Praising zombies, selkies, plagues, and mutant frogs.

Now it happened on that morning grammar was the thing discussed;
In specific, punctuation was the theme.
There was talk of semicolons and of commas brought to life,
And I read, and had a most peculiar dream:

I'm an ellipse, I'm an ellipse; I elide and I emote with silent lips;
I'm an ellipse; I work for tips; watch me subtly and slowly sway my hips;
I'm an ellipse; that's three small pips
   (or sometimes four when someone's running out of quips);
I'm that soft and pregnant pause betwixt the yawning and the jaws . . .
I'm enormous, I'm eternal, I'm an ellipse!

Rather later, I had thought I'd quite recovered from the shock
That I'd had when that ellipse burst into song,
So I called up someone's manuscript to read and then critique
For the literary group where I belong.

I was halfway through the chapter, marking busily away,
Making comments, striking commas, and the like,
When my eyes began to water, and the screen began to blur,
And a voice inside my head took up the mike . . .

I'm an ellipse, another ellipse, and I'm not easy to evict or to eclipse;
I'm an ellipse, and nothing slips
   between a breath and its release like . . . an ellipse;
I'm an ellipse, just three small pips,
   and I'm entrenched in movie quotes and comic strips;
For I have style and panache, and far more uses than the dash . . .

I am evocative, essential, I'm an ellipse!
I am evocative, essential, I'm an ellipse!
I am evocative, essential, I'm an ellipse!