Subject: To quote, or not to quote

From: [email-masked] (Peter Ellis)
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 7:20:00 PST

To quote, or not to quote;
That is the question.
Whether 'tis cluefuller on the Net to re-post
The tos and fros of diverse opinions,
Or to take arms against such attributions,
And, by excision, end them.
To trim, to snip:
No more, and by a snip to say we end
The widows and the thousand orphaned words
That posts are heir to,  'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.
To trim, to snip.
To snip, perchance too much. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that joyous chop the sense we lose
When we have taken out the fluff and dross
Must give us pause.
There's the factor
That makes calamity of so long threads.
For who would bear the tos and fros of chat,
Th' cascader's screed, the geek's anality,
The pain of misplacéd tags, the reeking trolls,
The cliquiness of in-jokes, and the flames
That studied satire draws from clueless fools,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a mere bobbit?
Who would cudgel brains
To write a piece, witty and thoughtful too,
But that the hope of making people laugh,
That blesséd gift of humour from whose touch
No traveller is safe, spurs on the soul,
And makes us rather bear those ills we read
Than carve them up,and mayhap lose the joke?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And Usenet posters of great sense and content
In this confusion quote more than they should,
And lose the name of Clueful.
Read you, now,
The fair Emilia! [1]  Nymph, in thy reminders
Be all my posts remembered.

--
From the RHF archives as selected by Brad Templeton, Maddi Hausmann and
Jim Griffith.  This newsgroup posts former jokes from the newsgroup
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