It was raining hard and a big puddle had formed in front of an Irish pub. An old man stood beside the puddle holding a stick with a string on the end and jiggled it up and down in the water.
A curious gentleman asked what he was doing.
“Fishing,” replied the old man.
“Poor old fool,” thought the gentleman, so he invited the old man into the pub and brought him a drink.
Feeling he should start some conversation while they were sipping their whisky, the gentleman asked, “And how many have you caught?”
“You’re the eighth.”
Clancy of the overflow
A poetic update:
I had written him a text
Which I’d sent, hoping the next
Time he came in mobile coverage
He’d have time to say hello.
But I’d heard he’d lost his iPhone,
So I emailed him from my phone,
Just addressed, on spec, as follows:
clancy@theoverflow
And the answer redirected
Wasn’t quite what I’d expected
And it wasn’t from the shearing mate
Who’d answered once before.
His ISP provider wrote it
And verbatim I will quote it:
This account has been suspended:
You won’t hear from him no more.’
In my wild erratic fancy
Visions come to me of Clancy:
Out of reach of mobile coverage
Where the Western rivers flow.
Instead of tapping on the small screen,
He’d be camping by the tall green
River gums a pleasure
That the town folk never know.
Well, the bush has friends to meet him
But the rest of us can’t greet him:
Out there, even Telstra’s network
Doesn’t give you any bars.
He can’t blog the vision splendid
Of the sunlit plains extended
Or tweet the wondrous glory
Of the everlasting stars.
I am sitting at the keyboard
And I’m too stressed out to be bored
As I answer all the emails
By the deadlines they contain
While my screen fills with promotions
For ‘Viagra’ and strange potions
And announcements of the million-dollar
Prizes I can claim.
But the looming deadlines haunt me
And their harrying senders taunt me
That they need response this evening
For tomorrow is too late!
But their texts, too quickly ended,
Often can’t be comprehended
For their writers have no time to think
They have no time to wait.
And I sometimes rather fancy
That I’d like to trade with Clancy:
Just set up an email bouncer
Saying “Sorry, had to go.”
While he faced an inbox jamming
Up with deadlines and with spamming
As he signed off every message:
clancy@theoverflow
