Scholars Online Banner

The Waste Page 404

The Burial of the Link, and others

Apache is the cruellest app, breathing
Links out of a dead page, mixing
Up the files we desired, stirring
Dull inodes with tabled hash.
Windows kept us bored, covering the screen
With error codes, feeding a few notices
To hapless users, while Mac was greatly insane.
Sumer surprised us, coming across the Euphrates
Bringing cuneiform and steles for no particular reason.

Out! Out of this stony rubbish! Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you have only
A heap of broken links, wherein the server is stymied
And the search tree responds in octal: Acht? Achtung.
Pay attention. I will show you zweimal vier in a handful of bits.

A crowd of files flowed over the routers, so many.
I had not thought data decay had undone so many.
The copse you planted in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? What about the robbers?

‘You wanted to see some file?’
I'm just a machine: Unreal City.
‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—unité de disques,—mon logiciel!’

You want a target? A spicy target? Then name the system.
‘So I tells him, Herb — Herb, I says
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS THYME
If you don’t like it spicy you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can’t read a directory.
Give me a good URL, or talk to the webmistress about it.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS THYME.
Living nor dead, I know nothing.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS THYME.
The thyme is up in a garden, with a copse au rebours.
I’m Eager enough, I says.’

These fragments I have ruined in my backing store.
Why then Ile fit you. Mac is mad againe.
Bond. James Bond..
Shandy.   Tristram   Shandy.


If you find this enlightening, (or even if you don’t) the original T. S. Eliot The Waste Land awaits you in Senior English. If you really want help tracking down the page you’re looking for, though, contact the webmistress at the link below.


© Copyright 2023, Bruce A. McMenomy

Contact the Webmistress



Scholars Online is fully accredited through the Middle States Accreditation Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools.