The Itenerant Gourmet

Here's a poem from 1829 about gay marriage:

I will tell you a Joke about Jewel and Mary
It is neither a Joke nor a Story

For Rubin and Charles has married two girls
But Billy has married a boy

The girlies he had tried on every Side
But none could he get to agree

All was in vain he went home again
And since that is married to Natty

So Billy and Natty agreed very well
And mama's well pleased at the match

The egg it is laid but Natty's afraid
The Shell is So Soft that it never will hatch

But Betsy she said you Cursed bald head
My Suitor you never Can be

Beside your low crotch proclaims you a botch
And that never Can serve for me

The poem was written by Abraham Lincoln, 180 years ago.

State of the Internet - In Verse

In nineteen hundred and fifty-seven,
The Soviets were the first to leaven
Into orbit a little ball of tin
Entitled Sputnik, which, to the chagrin
Of a mortified American pride,
Signaled to the world a colossal stride
In the national race to outer space.
Quickly the Yanks, fearing further disgrace,
Directed the Department of Defense
To spare – as usual – little expense,
And see ordained with urgent fervency
The Advanced Research Projects Agency,
Abbreviated – as per convention –
To ARPA, whereat anal retention
Was a dubious trait among the staff.
‘Twas the ARPAn charge to redeem the gaffe
Of a languorous technical culture,
And salvage from that lauded sepulcher
Of the second world war some remembrance
Of minds that minted atomic ordnance.
So in the service of militant might,
The scientists, often into the night,
Researched and reported on their findings.
For the most part, there were little tidings,
And they may or may not have been aware,
When, in sixty-two, by the constant glare
Of the Cold War, the American Air Force
Set the RAND Corporation on a course
To study how the military brass
Could maintain its command o’er the ass
Of every missile and B-fifty-two
Bomber in the unthinkable boo-boo
Of a thermo-nuclear snack-attack.
To its eternal credit, RAND came back
To recommend a “packet switched network,”
Which, to those for whom such jargon is murk,
Suffice to say is what started the fun.
And so at last, by ‘sixty-nine, ‘twas done:
Together were linked four physical nodes –
Minicomputers from the brains’ abodes
Of S.R.I. Stanford, UCSB,
UCLA, and Utah U. You see?
Now, with its architects fully acclaimed,
The ARPANET was their cartilage named,
And slowly its number of nodes increased
Until, in ‘seventy-three, with at least
Twenty-three machines in operation,
The developing conglomeration
Bodied from it forth TCP/IP –
A protocol built to become the key
By which diverse networks could integrate.
‘Twas from this arrangement did circulate
The first coinage of that word, “Internet,”
And slowly therefrom advanced the onset
Of additional nodes, exacting codes,
And ARPA-funded academic odes.
By ‘eighty-three, sporting some five hundred
And sixty-two host computers, kindred
But by their mundane, numbered addresses
That, for to recall, caused many stresses,
The U of Wisconsin – praise them their wits! –
Fashioned a means where the network transmits
Its delicious packets to domain names
Instead of numbers, and thus the mainframes
Assumed a more humane disposition.
Seven years later came the fruition
Of hypertext, a system to provide
Wanted information in simplified
And more efficient form across the means
Of three hundred and twelve thousand machines.
Two years later ‘twas nineteen ninety-two.
The number of hosts connected thereto
Had by exponential explosion grown
To over a million, and formed the zone
To be known thenceforth as the world-wide web.
‘Twas a breathless place of negative ebb,
Where, with the following year’s addition
Of a graphical user condition
Called Mosaic, one could request a page
To prove the Internet had come of age.
So from this story, told a priori,
What, pray tell, hath become of its glory?
Emoticons! Quote-a-thons. Fucked-up views.
Fan-fics, tittie-pix, monetary news.
Policies: Privacy, Piracy, Spam,
Pop-up ads, silly fads, yet another scam.
Chain letters, game debtors, meaningless shrines,
Guest books, best looks, apocalyptic signs.
File-sharing, couple-pairing, wireless LANs,
Broadband, viral-scanned, hacker-friendly WANs.
E-mail fraud? E-mail God! “Enlarge your Cock!”
Mortgage rates, candidates, self-serving schlock.
Armies of shoppers with credit for cash,
Pirating swappers of digital trash,
Consummate lippers with nothing to say,
Farcical ‘shippers all ‘blogging away.
Please create a username: something Zen.
Now relate a password – six keys to ten.
Make it oblique, to none of it speak, then—
Oops! Invalid password, please try again!
Needless to say, I’m dismayed at the way
Its fleshy content ‘pon the vertebrae
Of electronic phonic has fattened:
‘Tis too far gone fast beyond the satin’d
Simplicity of its body’s intent—