How the World Wide Web Works

So you do a little surfing. And you find out that Alex Ross, the music critic of The New Yorker magazine is back from vacation and is blogging again. One of his posts about Tikhon Khrennikov makes one wonder if maybe he wasn't such an evil person after all, but the interesting thing about the post is that it's entitled: "Mithridates, he died old."

Now, where have I heard THAT before? Oh, yes! That poem by Housman. Quite good, but not the best known of the poems from A Shropshire Lad. Just like music, the best poetry is stylistically unique, you can recognize it immediately, which also makes it easy to parody. Which, of course, Sir Owen Seaman, future editor of Punch Magazine, couldn't resist doing which led to these memorable and very funny lines:(*)

What, still alive at twenty-two,
  A clean upstanding chap like you?
Why, if your throat is hard to slit,
  Slit your girl's and swing for it!
Like enough you won't be glad
  When they come to hang you, lad,
But bacon's not the only thing
  That's cured by hanging from a string.
When the blotting pad of night
  Sucks the latest drop of light,
Lads whose job is still to do
  Shall whet their knives and think of you.

And that is how the world-wide-web works. But you knew that already, didn't you.

(*) This is probably funny only if you are familiar with Housman's work. If you are not, I'm sorry I ruined the joke for you.