Cannibalizing past creativity again

[avram]

A post of mamishka’s has reminded me of some of the poetical parodies I’ve written over the years. I posted one here, the Frost parody with the botched rhyme scheme, but most of them were born in the Usenet group rec.arts.sf.fandom:

• One-N Canon is archived on Jo Walton’s Interstichia page, and she seems to have almost consistently misspelled my last name.
• This parody of part of Kipling’s “In the Neolithic Age” was inspired by an argument over software interfaces. I’ve always liked this Kipling, even though the savage wit of the first half (“And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart”) undermines the message it seems to be advocating.
• More Kipling — “A Keebler Song” after “A Pict Song”. I’m not as fond of “A Pict Song” as most sf fans seem to be; it seems to feed into a widespread affection for a kind of kneejerk faux-anti-authoritarianism. (Mind, I have a healthy respect for real, earnest, thoughtful anti-authoritarianism.)
• “Attention all passengers” is a parody of the opening of the Tao Te Ching. For a while I was using the last three lines as a .sig quote.
• “Three quarks for muster Mark”, Tolkein meets Joyce meets modern physics. My favorite thing about this one is that it’s one of the top-rated Google returns for the title phrase, which is a quote from Joyce’s Finnigans Wake. I got email earlier this year from a translator asking me about a song of that title that shows up in a 1992 novel; he wasn’t familiar with the Joyce, and assumed it was a reference to my parody.
• This short parody of “Particle Man” came in the wake of the December 2000 Bush v. Gore decision.
• A one-verse “Modern Major General” parody that confuses even me at two years’ remove.
• A team effort: Pamela Dean and I, cross-breeding “Jabberwocky” with “Witch of the Westmorland”.
• This isn’t poetry. I’m not quite sure what it is. Or this, which isn’t even parody.

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Very funny. Do I get a prize? I followed all the links. Hah!

[avram]

That is the prize. Hah!

Re:

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

D'oh!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I love the tree one, and I remembered all of them from when I first saw them. But I'm posting to say I'm very sorry I misspelled your name, it was a long time ago, in another country, but I'll fix it when I manage to make my FTP behave.

[avram]

I meant several times to email you about it, but never got around to it, so I guess it couldn't have been too important.