I have measured out my life in login codes.

September 21, 2010 9:23 PM

The .Doc File of J Alfred Prufrock "Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a laptop, put in sleep mode on a table..."
posted by magstheaxe (32 comments total)

Does it make me a bad English major that I liked this WAY more than I ever enjoyed the original?
posted by epersonae at 9:50 PM on September 21, 2010

Okay, now I'm both amused and depressed.
posted by MrVisible at 9:52 PM on September 21, 2010

I'm going to go with: "almost".
posted by freebird at 10:11 PM on September 21, 2010

I performed Prufrock in Speech & Debate in high school (did quite well, won some trophies).

I heartily approve of this.
posted by yiftach at 10:55 PM on September 21, 2010

Now do Four Quartets.
posted by tigrefacile at 11:13 PM on September 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a
posted by From Bklyn at 11:37 PM on September 21, 2010

...blue screen of death?
posted by wayland at 11:51 PM on September 21, 2010

Poetry-mangling techno-filk? Really?
posted by lumensimus at 12:37 AM on September 22, 2010

"When the evening is spread out against the sky/ like a patient etherised upon a table" is one of the few bits of poetry I actually really like. :(
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:07 AM on September 22, 2010

First two lines are great!
posted by chavenet at 1:13 AM on September 22, 2010

I Heart Sam's Ficta. :)
posted by tilde at 4:05 AM on September 22, 2010

Creative people should create new things instead of drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.
posted by codswallop at 4:27 AM on September 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

That really amused me. The original has been rattling in my head for a week, time to dig it up!
posted by dragonplayer at 4:33 AM on September 22, 2010

To prepare a face to meet the icons that you meet

Man if you screw with 'To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet' you have destroyed everything!
posted by shakespeherian at 4:53 AM on September 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

This ol' lit major found this highly amusing.

It is a measure of the poem's greatness that fun may be had with it which in no way detracts from the original. Having had my hearty laugh I must now go find my copy to absorb its truths anew, even though with each passing year it strikes a more resonant, painful chord.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:45 AM on September 22, 2010 [4 favorites]

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

v.

I grow old... I grow old...
I shall add some links to my blog roll.


He gets points for giving us a line with the same mouth feel, but the original is still better.

(And is, incidentally my favorite line of poetry. It's a short list, the only other item is "We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground")
posted by oddman at 5:51 AM on September 22, 2010

Creative people should create new things instead of drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

Yeah, Shakespeare, don't be such a hack. Half your plays are just Holinshed fanfic! And Milton, you've clearly got issues if you need to write Biblefic. Use your own characters if you want them acting out your fantasies.
posted by kmz at 6:07 AM on September 22, 2010 [13 favorites]

Creative people should create new things instead of drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

I am hoping there are no MetaFilter injokes in your comment history.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:12 AM on September 22, 2010

In the room the players come and go
Talking of their scores on Halo.

I've been told many times now: "don't hate the player." And I'm trying. I'm really trying. But sometimes it's hard, y'know?
posted by .kobayashi. at 6:13 AM on September 22, 2010

Way to break the original's rhythm.

Someone needs to point out to the author that it's not just the rhymes and the syllable count. The stresses are pretty important too.

        !          !        !            !      
Talk | ing | of | their | scores | on  | Ha | lo

        !          !                !          !
Talk | ing | of | Mich  | ael    | ang | e  | lo

posted by seanyboy at 6:24 AM on September 22, 2010

Really wish I had the facility to edit comments right now... I'm pretty sure I got the stresses wrong in that example.

Anyway. My point is that the rhythm is all wrong. My point is not that I can correctly tick the stressed syllables off on bad verse.
posted by seanyboy at 6:29 AM on September 22, 2010

I think I would like it if there was a point other than stuffing computer references into the poem.
posted by Nothing at 7:07 AM on September 22, 2010 [2 favorites]

I was prepared to hate this; "Prufrock" is probably my favorite poem of all time. It's kind of sacred to me. But I laughed. It doesn't diminish the original in any way; it's homage. I liked it.
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:22 AM on September 22, 2010 [3 favorites]

What seanyboy said. Cute idea, but executed with a tin ear.
posted by aught at 8:01 AM on September 22, 2010

I am hoping there are no MetaFilter injokes in your comment history.

MetaFilter injokes ≠ the Mona Lisa
posted by applemeat at 8:17 AM on September 22, 2010

It doesn't beat The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:36 AM on September 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: ≠ the Mona Lisa
posted by shakespeherian at 9:21 AM on September 22, 2010

This is great. Thanks!
posted by homunculus at 9:44 AM on September 22, 2010

I think it's pretty clear he knows he's breaking meter here and there. Most internet pastiches/parodies/homages/wtf-ever do it without any sense of purpose; doesn't seem like this does.

Reminds me of an article I read in the Chicago Tribune earlier this year about how the current tv schedule is addict-heavy; out of nowhere, in an otherwise-vaguely-interesting-yet-still-somehow-boring piece, the author breaks out:

On our screens, the addicts come and go
talking of Vicodin and Frangelico

Sure, it breaks the hell out of the meter in the second line, but I was laughing my ass off at the Surprise!Prufrock in the middle of the "what's on television" section of a major city paper.

Anyway. ".doc File of J. Alfred Prufrock" is pretty funny stuff.
posted by tzikeh at 10:29 AM on September 22, 2010

For cyber laments this doesn't beat or come close to the amazing (and original) "Windows is Shutting Down" by Clive James.

viz.

Windows Is Shutting Down

Windows is shutting down, and grammar are
On their last leg. So what am we to do?
A letter of complaint go just so far,
Proving the only one in step are you.

Better, perhaps, to simply let it goes.
A sentence have to be screwed pretty bad
Before they gets to where you doesnt knows
The meaning what it must of meant to had.

The meteor have hit. Extinction spread,
But evolution do not stop for that.
A mutant languages rise from the dead
And all them rules is suddenly old hat.

Too bad for we, us what has had so long
The best seat from the only game in town.
But there it am, and whom can say its wrong?
Those are the break. Windows is shutting down.
-- Clive James
posted by storybored at 12:01 PM on September 22, 2010

When thinking about how every year that poem strikes a more powerful and resonant chord, don't forget that Eliot started Prufrock when he was 22, and it was published when he was 27.
posted by georg_cantor at 4:43 PM on September 22, 2010

S'i' credesse che mia risposta fosse
a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
questa fiamma staria sanza più scosse;
ma però che già mai di questo fondo
non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero,
sanza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
....

Dante is @ 2.0 too.
posted by infinite intimation at 7:42 PM on September 22, 2010