The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #59418 Message #1606517
Posted By: Amos
16-Nov-05 - 12:05 PM
Thread Name: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
They never know, as he walks by,
The clerk or nurse or teller
But the man who wears the wire-rims
Has the Internet in his cellar!
He keeps it hush, he isn't vain,
A style of self-effacement
Disguises he who keeps the whole
Internet in his basement
Yes, every server, every node
And every porn-site bitchin'
Is in the nooks of this man's home
Just downstairs from the kitchen.
Each fiber-optic link and line
The laptops linked through air;
The mega-servers Google owns,
Are hidden there, downstairs.
He's kept it there since '89
Determined, lion-hearted;
It's grown to near a million times
The size when he first started
Back then, it all fit on one shelf
A shoe-box of connections,
An archie file, some FTP,
And FIDOnet directions.
But now, it really is not safe
Even with better lighting
To go down there -- those cellar stairs
Are risky, jammed, and fright'ning
There's just too many lines and nodes
They're wedged from floor to ceiling
The hum and heat of CPUs
Can leave a strong man reeling!
And as for pages, sites, and GIFs,
The biggest mind would founder!
It's all too much -- you could get lost
In meand'ring, awe-struck wonder!
And that was how we lost Rapaire!
Last Thursday, after sup.
He wandered down that cellar stair,
And never did come up!
The Wild Frontier Electric--Ballads of Cyberspace
Redd, Ruffin, Reddy, eds.
Bizarro Publications, New Haven, 2001