Newsgroup Personalities

["a friend sent this to me, with no author -- if someone does know the author I'd prefer to attribute it, but ... and no, I don't think all the stuff in here is aimed at (any particular) newsgroup, I just thought it was funny ..."]

> That was first posted by Tom Holt in rec.music.filk on 7/2/98, > and in less than 24 hours was reposted in soc.history.medieval
> as describing one of the regulars in (whichever) group.

(Exceptionally clever, all the more so if you remember Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore)

I am the very model of a Newsgroup personality.
I intersperse obscenity with tedious banality.
Addresses I have plenty of, both genuine and ghosted too, On all the countless newsgroups that my drivel is cross-posted to.

Your bandwidth I will fritter with my whining and my sniveling, And you're the one who pays the bill, downloading all my driveling.

My enemies are numerous, and no-one would be blaming you For cracking my head open after I've been rudely flaming you.

I hate to lose an argument (by now I should be used to it).
I wouldn't know a valid point if I was introduced to it.

My learning is extensive but consists of mindless trivia, Designed to fan my ego, which is larger than Bolivia.

The comments that I vomit forth, disguised as jest and drollery, Are really just an exercise in unremitting trollery.

I say I'm frank and forthright, but that's merely lies and vanity, The gibberings of one who's at the limits of his sanity.

If only I could get a life, as many people tell me to;
If only Mom could find a circus freak-show she could sell me to;
If I go off to Zanzibar to paint the local scenery;
If I lose all my fingers in a mishap with machinery;
If I survive to twenty, which is somewhat problematical;
If what I post was more mature, or slightly more grammatical;
If I could learn to spell a bit, and maybe even punctuate;
Would I still be the loathsome and objectionable punk you hate?

But while I have this tiresome urge to prance around and show my face,
It simply isn't safe for normal people here in cyberspace.

To stick me in Old Sparky and turn on the electricity
Would be a fitting punishment for my egocentricity.

I always have the last word; so, with uttermost finality, That's all from me, the model of a Newsgroup personality.