On 7/20/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
In short, if you have to steal material for Wikipedia, don't steal like a plagiarist; steal like T.S. Eliot. And if you can't steal it, quote it & provide a source so we know who the words belong to.
As a poet (example below) I can appreciate this stealing of material. Robert Heinlein used to say much the same thing except he always added something about filing off the serial numbers.
My problem with this is that if we steal something and alter it enough to be unrecognisable, then how does this square with "No Original Research".
Now that poem. I stole this from an anecdote by a columnist in an Australian newspaper about being in a lift with Lionel Murphy.
Your task: to write the funniest poem you can, in any style, on the subject of mistaken identity.
Sunday Morning Coming Down and Letting Go =========================================
After service this morning we lingered, we three, The reverend Golightly, my dear wife and me. The sun streamed in as we talked at the door; The stained glass tinting the old wooden floor. I relaxed for a moment, and then with a sigh My breakfast beans blew quietly by.
I thought I'd escaped, and I would have had if It hadn't been *quite* so much of a whiff. My wife stopped her chatter, sniffed and said "Pooh!" Then gazed at me sternly. "Was that awful smell you?" She gave me a Look and my heart gave a lurch, What, admit before God that I'd farted in church?
"Me, dear? Of course not!" I said without thinking. Holding my ground as they both stood there blinking. A moment of hush and the reverend mused "Oh it must have been me, then. Please do excuse!"
Pete, all his own work