Can't We Have Fun With Technical Posts? (by John Koziol)

It began as a total lark. Back in 1998, I was a frequent contributor to the Universal Thread (www.universalthread.com) which is a good web-based support forum (pre-blog tech). One day, I noticed the rhyme of what I was about to post followed the metric of a limerick.  More or less.  So I recast the post into limerick format and for the next few days, all posts of mine were limericks.

Others, notably George Tasker, followed suit.  A bunch of us had fun with this and - yes - technical issues were being resolved but with a bit of verve. Some were amused, some were confused. 

Months later, I was bored and decided to start posting in iambic pentameter. At first, this was met with hostility by the board ops but eventually they saw the humor and the fact that the technical side of the information posted was still there and readable. In fact, the sysop posted alerts eventually to look out for the poetry as a highlight.

Once there was a move towards song parodies...I posted something called “My NDA” which was a spin on “YMCA” by the Village People. There were other parodies, some funny as hell and some plain gruesome.

Maybe it's time to do this again. The old Queen song “I'm In Love With My Car” keeps reverbating in my head as “I'm in love with the CLR” ...