Why Blogging is way cooler than posting to Newsgroups, part XXVII.

An old friend of mine from my Usenet days recently e-mailed this to me, and I found it quite funny. (It's even funnier if you're familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan, specifically The Pirates of Penzance.) I thought about changing it about to refer to bloggers as opposed to newsgroup people, but it still seems to me that blogging is much less given to endless flamewars than the newsgroups are, by virtue of the fact that blog posts inevitably sink farther on the main page and, ultimately, into the Archives. Plus, blog posts that are part of a larger debate -- even a cantankerous one -- still tend to exists side-by-side with other posts about other things, which is not really true of the newsgroups. Anyway, here it is:

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

Your bandwidth I will fritter with my whining and my snivelling,
And you're the one who pays the bill downloading all my drivelling.
My enemies are numerous, and no one would be blaming you
For thinking me a dickhead 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 limit of his sanity.

If only I could get a life, as many people tell me to;
If only mum 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 forty, 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 prat you hate?

But while I have this tiresome urge to prance around and show my face,
It's 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 utmost finality,
That's all from me, the model of a Newsgroup Personality!"

(I don't know who the author is, because several searches turned this thing up in a number of very disparate newsgroups.)