Before she set off on her summer hols, Verity Stob was in lyrical mood.
Love poem
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee with my burgeoning. The fruit
Of our unwitting union shall take root
On this PC beneath thy foolish gaze.
I love thee with my pois'nous jealousy.
A cuckoo hatchling clearing out the nest,
Unslain sibling script files I detest:
Know no other VBS but me.
I love you for your nave double clicks.
Up your virgin reg'stry my love sticks.
I love to rifle through your ddress book,
I love my half-wit slave, your bleak Outlook.
O Lover, when you next read 'I Love You',
Remember the old song: be sure it's true.
README.TXT
(Familiar riff.)
Dear Trial User, thanks for pulling this down
It's a beta really but you needn't frown.
The install is dodgy and the archive's large
It's too big for the Net but I haven't got a CD-ROM writer,
CD-ROM writer.
CD-ROM writer
writer
writer
It's a dirty hack of a dirty script
With a two meg runtime, even zipped.
I'll rewrite it soon in C++
I need to steal a compiler so I've gotta get a CD-ROM writer
CD-ROM writer...
(Air guitar solo)
If you find it useful will you spread the word?
And ask for new stuff, please not too absurd.
Registration is just twenty quid
And I want the dosh 'cos I've gotta get a CD-ROM writer,
CD-ROM writer...
Gloomy thoughts over an old PC
I rest my head on yours, dear,
I fiddle with your keys
They're stiff with dirt and dead skin
A haven for disease.
Your mouse is dead, your cover's off,
Your network card is raided.
Your 'mobo' now is obsolete
You cannot be upgraded.
When you were new, one hundred meg
Seemed really rather fast,
But now they count in gigahertz
I fear our time has passed...
Some day they'll dump me too, dear,
For exactly the same cause.
Until they come to get us
I shall rest my head on yours.
Out to lunch
Oh the English say the weather's English grey all year
Except for three weeks in July
When there's some 'blue cloud' in the sky.
Then office workers, diligent and shirkers, cheer.
They eschew their daily Wimpy
To squeeze into something skimpy and sip beer.
But as they lock the door to go and score a tan
An irritable voice cries, 'Leave that fan!'
Vampires and programmers
Stay in in the lunchtime sun.
It would be most invidious
To claim techies aren't fastidious.
Direct appeals, offers of free meals,
Won't convince them that it's done
To eat their treat from Tesco
Al fresco.
On a nearby green there's a pleasant scene
Of hilarity and snickers
'Cos an HR lass, lying on the grass,
Is showing us her knickers.
Her would-be bloke would swear fit to choke
But he's not here to stop the fun:
For vampires and programmers
Stay in in the lunchtime sun.
Vampires and programmers
Stay in in the lunchtime sun.
Our intellectual elite
Are ineffectual in heat.
Hidden in the gloom of a fetid room
Browsing Grauniad or Sun,
They waste Lunch Hour in this shelter,
And swelter.
At the Ball and Crown an accounting clown
Is getting rather merry.
Near the south car park see the sales girls lark
As they lick their Ben and Jerry. (Who?!)
By the cricket square romps a naughty pair
Her top has come undone.
But vampires and programmers
Stay in in the lunchtime
in in the lunchtime
in in the lunchtime sun!
How about that, dear boy?
Verity Stob apologises to Elizabeth Barret Browning, Lennon & McCartney, Tom Lehrer and Nol Coward.
