Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Poet BASICally and Verbally

Four and one-third pages. Those were all -- four and one-third. There was no use to pretend that the last page comprised two-thirds or even one-half, which might have counted as five if the professor were in a generous mood. This measly third looked exactly that atop a lot of white paper. This was 1986 and electric typewriters were the machines of choice for essays, which meant that one-third of a page certainly looked it.
The essay's topic was the BASIC computer language's use in the binary coding of archaeological sites. I was no expert, so there was no sense of, "There, everything that can be said about this topic has been said in these four and one- third pages of shining prose." My mind drifted to the Curies' naming of polonium so that everyone -- even those in the Russian army (at least those who had access to the Periodic Table of Elements) -- would be obliged to read the reference to Poland, Madame Marya Sklodowska Curie's homeland. The country was then under Tsarist (or, more accurately, the Russian army's rule), and to write or say its name was illegal. But this BASIC author had no true "authority" to wield ...or, maybe?
In a case of a deadline generating inspiration, I filled in the last page:

The archaeologist thus goaded
Who BOOTed the system and loaded,
She applied her might,
And out came the site,
All patterned and binary coded.

The result: B+ and another limerick for the world.

No comments:

Post a Comment