Playing "Possum"

Inspired by our elder daughter's comment that a passage in a T.S. Eliot poem reminded her of blogs, the parody department got busy mangling a classic:

The ComBox of J. Alfred Prufrock
by Dminor (Apologies to T.S. Eliot)

Let us log in, you and I
When evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table
Let us read through certain half-thought out blogs,
The muttering retreads
of useless tracts with no-account theories,
And two-bit news reviews with pundit claims.

Sites that propose such a tedious argument
of insidious intent
to lead you to their overwhelming big point.
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
We have some other sites to visit.

In the combox, people come and go,
Criticizing Michelangelo.

The yellow dog that puts its bile into your comment box
Unpleasant smoke that blows into the blog
Kicked its gall into the thought-stream of the posting
Lingered upon the words from other brains
Let fall upon the blog the spite that falls from keyboards
Slipped by the readers, a sudden logic-leap,
And seeing that it was a small, religious blog
Cursed once without a cause, and slinked away.

And indeed, there will be time
For the yellow dog that leaves its "presents" in the comment box
Rubbing the readers the wrong way;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a post to meet the bozos that will call;
There will be time to argue and debate
And time for all the posts and trackback links
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred "anonymouses,"
And for a hundred versions and aversions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.