January 12, 2007

"I write tales with brave Ulysses but I prefer the WriteRoom with black curtains."

Possibly the cleverest -- and creamiest -- Metafilter comment ever. Must be read in context.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That was awesome.

I am reminded that I have no Cream on my iPod, and I have no idea how that happened.

Robert Burnham said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

I like the guy further down the string that says: "I like pens."

He's like the guy in discussions about which Stooge is your favorite that blurts out: "I like Shemp."

Fantastic Cream White Room Video Goodness: Hydraulic License Rock

Richard Lawrence Cohen said...

Quill pens are best. You have to take extra time to dip fresh ink every few words, and you can think of the greatest stuff in the intervals. Oral bardic composition is better than any pen, though: that's how you discover tales of brave Ulysses.

Anonymous said...

Green blink the screens of our youth while black curtains close upon our boomer lives.

Anonymous said...

The default appearance of WriteRoom is weirdly retro. It caused 70's flashbacks and inspired my last comment.

A little while later my thoughts coalesced, for some reason, in Elizabethan blank verse:

Green blink the screens of youth, while hands of time
Draw blackest curtain 'cross our boomer lives.
Yet still the verdant glowing line is writ
Sputtering upon a darkened page
Just as it was so many years gone by
When we in mystic springtime yet did dwell.
In those past days there sat the long-hair'd lads
Before grey painted, humming boxes that
Dispens'd a wisdom digital so rare
That they did willing by the hour stare
At flick'ring bilious green and darkest black.
O power of the necromancer's art
Cannot compare to knowledge thus imbib'd.
'Twas like the bargain Faustus made, to wit:
A share of riches, modest fame, stock options
Thy fate will be if only thou wouldst peer
And learn the meaning of these phantoms that
Do spring upon the screen without relent,
And trade thy soul for work at Microsoft.

By software made upon a distant shore
Where programmers and fishermen are met,
We have again what eyes should ne'er see:
The phantoms of our youth in green and black.
O cursed shades! Go from my living sight!
And let me live with naught but pixels bright!