From: Gideon Hallett
Subject: If...
Date: 05 February 1999 12:07
If you can keep your cool when all about you
Are getting ired and flaming off at you
If you can trust your sense when posters doubt you
But have tolerance for their doubting too;
If you can post and not be bored of posting
Or, being dealt a clout, don't deal out more
Or, being roasted, don't give way to roasting
And yet don't look too pure, nor act the boor
If you can quote - and not make quotes your master
If you can joke - but not make jokes your chain
If you can talk on buckyballs and plaster
And let those two discourses tax your brain
If you can bear to see the thread you've woven
Branched by folks to take in power tools
Or see the point you thought that you'd proven
Fail - and yet not call your former cohorts fools
If you can make a list of all your postings
And look at it with the critic's gaze;
Junk it, and start again with no boastings
And never say how bright your former days.
If you can force your brain and wit and heart
To carry on, despite the dross and fluff
To post with care even as you wield the LART
And be polite, despite the message tough.
If you can talk with folk and keep good repute
Or have your word writ up as common sense
Nor newbie hordes nor clueless rants dispute
Your clue, nor make the old farts take offence
If you can make brief lines full to the limit
A joy to read, despite the topic wild
Yours is Usenet and everything that's in it
And - which is more - you'll be a Clue, my child!
(Usual aplogies to Rudyard, etc. And I *know* woven doesn't rhyme with proven, so ner.)
Gideon.
(by the way, if a filk is a rip-off of a (folk) song, what's a rip-off of a poem?)
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