High atop a mountain spot,
Far above the town of Bloggity-Blog,
There lived a Grinchity-Grinch
Who was the Grinchiest Grinch by at least an inch.
Or maybe two.
Now please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be he had a cat in his hat.
Or perhaps his feet were flat.
Maybe he was in a snitter, waiting for a Twitter,
Or a Facebook friend without end.
But I think the most likely reason of all,
Was that his bandwidth was three times too small, and slow.
Whatever the cause, his head or his heart,
He hated the Bloggity-Bloggers and their chit-chat art.
“One blog, two blogs, good blogs, bad blogs,” he snarled
With a snippety, snarky snear
The Bloggity-Bloggers couldn’t hear.
Staring down from his cave with a sour, Grinchy frown,
At the warm, lighted windows in their town,
The Grinch could see their monitors glowing,
And hear the tippity-tap tapping of their typing.
Then he growled, his Grinchy fingers nervously drumming,
“I must stop this bloggity-blogging, I must!
I’ll do it with electricity! I’ll do it with dust!
I’ll do it with rust and dried-out chunks of crusty pizza crust!”
Then that mean old Grinch had an idea. A wonderful, awful idea!
It was a Grinchy sort of thought–overwrought, twisted and filled with fear.
“I know just what to do,” the Grinch laughed in his throat.
“I’ll use this cheap cloth to make a workman’s coat.”
He snipped and he sewed, and snapped and stitched.
Then he tried it on, and made it fit.
“What a great Grinchy trick!” he clucked and chuckled.
With this blue service jacket,
They’ll think I’m in the computer racket!
I’ll sneak into town and steal their Yahoo and Gmail,
Their Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon.
I’ll shut it all down, down for the count.
I’ll take their AOL and Comcast, their EarthLink and Qwest!
But I won’t stop there! I’ll take all the rest!”
Then the Grinch loaded up his ramshackle van
With his worst Grinchy tools and his pet dog, Dan.
“Let’s go dog, go!” he barked. “Don’t be slow!”
They lurched down the hill, the Grinch beside Dan.
The ride was bumpy. It was lumpy. It was positively glafrumpy.
And the Grinch grumbled.
And moaned.
And griped.
“Blogging,” he spat. “It’s nothing, just rubbish, nonsense and tripe!”
But inside their homes, the Bloggity-Bloggers were writing away,
Posting the stuff and nonsense of their day.
They had no clue what was about to go down.
They knew nothing about the theft, the hatred, the frown.
Then they heard a voice. A Grinchy sort of voice.
“Come out, come out, come out right now!” the Grinch hissed and screeched.
“There’s an emergency, a crisis!
I must see you now!
Everyone!
Each!”
Then the Grinch put on his best Grinchy face.
He smiled, and said he’d done a deep trace.
“The problem is undesirous. Without my help, you’ll catch a virus.
Bring me your computers, and bring them now.
I need your PCs and laptops, and even your Macs.
I’ll fix them up. I’ve got your back.
To save blogging, and save it now, don’t hesitate, just act!”
So one by one, the Bloggity-Bloggers carried out their gear.
They gave the Grinch their monitors and keyboards,
Plus all their boxes and cables and such.
And when they were done, the Grinch, that louse,
Climbed into his van, leaving them nothing,
Not a hard drive,
Not even a mouse.
But before he could go, the Grinch heard a small sound, a coo.
And there at his feet stood little Cindy-Lou, a Bloggity-Blogger who was only two.
She stared at the Grinch and said, “Why, Grinchy Tech, why?”
But, you know, that old Grinch was so smart and so slick,
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!
“I’m taking them to my workshop, dear. I’ll fix them up there,
Then I’ll bring them back here.”
And his fib fooled the child. He patted her head, and sent her away,
Then ordered Dan to steer the Garmin for the cave.
And as they pulled out, the Grinch howled and hooted,
“Boohoo and floggity-flog. Now there’ll be no more bloggity blogs.
While they worry about spam,
I’ll be eating green eggs and ham,
Laughing about my scam!”
Up the hill they went. Dan the dog pulled the van
Until he was dog-tired, and nearly spent.
And when they reached the top at last, that mean old Grinch
Cupped a Grinchy hand to his Grinchy ear, and listened fast.
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow.
But it wasn’t sad. It was merry. Very merry.
The Grinch stared down at Bloggity-Blog.
He stared down as if through a fog.
The Grinch popped his eyes! Then he shook!
What he saw was a shocking surprise!
He hadn’t stopped the blogging, he hadn’t stopped it at all.
Because the Bloggity-Bloggers had Textity-texters.
Blackberrys, iPhones, Droids and the like.
Wireless blogging devices all!
And the Grinch, with his Grinchy feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling, until his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.
“Maybe blogging,” he thought, “can’t be stopped anymore.
Maybe blogging…perhaps…means a little bit more!”
And what happened then?
Well, in Bloggity-Blog, they say it was a miracle.
A real Internet tech showed up at the Grinch’s cave
Two days and two years too late.
But he installed a high-speed modem and other stuff that was great.
And the Bloggity-Bloggers say the Grinch’s bandwidth grew three sizes that day.
And the minute his computer didn’t seem so slow,
The second he could download movie clips on YouTube and all,
The Grinch whizzed downhill and straight back to town.
He brought back the desktops, the laptops, and all the Macs,
Including a pink and purple one for little Cindy-Lou from Radio Shack.
“I know what was the matter,” he told the bitsy blogger.
“I felt like a fish out of water.”
And then he…HE HIMSELF…started blogging, and did it very well.
And he grinned with Grinchy glee, as his readership swelled.
With apologies to Theodore Geisel, who was a genius.
Bravo, well done!!!
For Blogger Mike
To stay afloat
Please go now
And cast your vote
Taaah-daaah
Thanks for the plug, Me-Me! (And I love the Taaah-daaah at the end. Very musical and lighthearted.)
Awesome.
So thorough. Good stuff!
BTW, While reading this, I imagined Boris Kharloff’s voice doing the narration.
I’ll go check out this competition-thingy, now!
Cheers, Chris
I also imagined Boris as the narrator. Wouldn’t it have been fun to have announced in his voice somehow?
I hope I got your vote!
Very nice. The Grinch is one of my all time favorites as well. Where can I find Cindy-Lou’s blog? I’m sure it’s fantastibulous.
Cindy-Lou grew up and now gives sex advice to transgendered individuals on her blog http://www.cindylouandthemagicwoowoo.com
I’m surprised you haven’t written about her in one of your “What Ever Happened To” columns, Knucklehead! (You should read ‘em, folks. They’re pretty damn funny and, better yet, original.)
Ah, although I could blog using my iphone I just don’t do well with that tiny keyboard… thanks, Grinch, for giving me my Mac back!
Well done, Michael! You’ve got my vote again this week!
That’s why I don’t Twitter, too. Texting is just way too slow. As a master of the 1,000-word blog post, though, I could probably benefit from it.
Thank you so much for your vote. I believe I’ll lose this time, so every vote actually means something.
Well done, Contestant Mike.
I googled Bloggity-Blog.
Yeah, well, I wanted to go there.
I thought I made up the word Bloggity-Blog, and I’m saddened to learn it isn’t so. There’s nothing new under the sun, they say.
Wow! You outdid yourself on this one. Fantastic Dr Seuss style. Well done!
And here I didn’t think it was possible to outdo myself! I’m flattened. I’m mean flattered! Thank you!
Love it…you have my vote:)
Thank you, Sister Phillipia of the Slow-Loading Website. It’s a vote I treasure. Truly.
I clicked on the link and voted for you
Before my eyes had even time to view
All the words that were on this screen…
And then I thought, “That’s kind of mean.”
For what if the other stuff that’s writ
Is a little bit better, by just a bit?
So to two other entries I went and read
And then I felt ashamed of the doubt in my head
Mike, you are clearly not a talentless hack
I’m not ashamed of my vote, I’ve got your back!
If you don’t win this battle of blogging
I think someone, somewhere, deserves a flogging.
Hey, no fair! Comments can’t be better than the original post, can they?
Oh, and I must add, Ah shucks, Lorena, you’re embarrassing me with your kind and rhyming words.
Please don’t stop. I enjoy being embarrassed.
I wrote that whole comment so I could use the last two lines. They were the first (lame) things that popped into my head after I read this and I just had to incorporate them.
Not lame at all. Very Seussian (Oh, I just made up a word. He’d be proud.).
That was brilliant!
I really enjoyed reading it.
But one question. Did you know that Cindy Lou rhymes with Quirkyloon?
It could have been the cherry on top Mike.
Just saying.
*smile*
Once again in my excreable excuse for a life, I missed a golden opportunity that was so clearly knocking on my door. My apologies, Quirky, and thank you for still finding a way to be kind and complimentary.
Well done!
Thank you!
Well done!
Thank you. But I’m trying to figure out if you could’ve been more brief. Something like, “Excellent!” or “Fantastic!” or “LMAO!”
Wonderful Seuss! And the “two years and two days too late” nailed tech help perfectly.
I was speaking from experience with the cable tech. Unfortunately.
Yay, Mike! Very nice.
I will be wary next time I enter Best Buy and some green guy approaches me wearing a “Grinch Squad” jacket.
I tried and tried and tried to incorporate Geek Squad or Grinch Squad into this poem and couldn’t think of a way to do it without shoehorning it in. I should’ve just done it anyway.
Thanks!
I applaud your grinchiness oh blog meister. Very entertaining stuff, as always. I read this story to my Buggy girl at bedtime…she’s still awake! Thanks for that. Once again, you have my vote. Loved it!
I’m sorry I couldn’t put your daughter to sleep. I think, I’m sorry, anyway.
That was wonderful, Michael. Your genius would do Dr. Geisel proud. You had my vote from the beginning with the reference to Tenacious D.
Oh, wow, that was fabulous. It makes me wanna say “And now comes an act of enormous enormance! No former performer’s performed this performance!” Well done Mike. You’ve got my vote.
Thank you, NoName. I’m doing OK in the voting so far, but it’ll probably end up being a close race between me and 365. He finishes strong.
I love this. We have a Christmas Eve tradition in my family where my dad reads The Grinch to us before we all go to bed. I guess I have sentiment attached to all things Grinch related. The only thing that could have made this better was if it was in Dad’s gravelly-Grinch voice.
That’s a wonderful family tradition. In my house, we gather after Thanksgiving dinner and watch the DVD of the Grinch and Rudloph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. My wife, Kerry, collected all the stuff-animal versions of the characters, and we each get one and act out the parts we’ve memorized. Sounds silly, I know, but it’s fun, especially for the little ones.
You’ve got my vote
And that’s no joke
No thanks to Qwest
The net’s a mess
I have no phone
At our shared home
The line is out
Without a doubt
A technical boo boo
We might get through through.
(I might think it was a conspiracy if they weren’t so incompetent!)
It’s a conspiracy. And they’re incompetent.
Thanks for the vote!
It must be a conspiracy AGAINST ME! Jay called and they fixed the problem with the hour. They hate me. They have notes on their computer about me. Ha ha ha (en route to area hospital)
Made me laugh. Loved it. That must have taken hours to do.
Maybe 15 minutes tops. And I was having problems with my cell phone service and kept having to re-text it over and over again. And I thought I’d never get my calculus test finished, either. Thank goodness I had a soduko puzzle to do. It helped keep me from getting frustrated!
I think Theodore would be extremely impressed. Great work…you’re so good (and don’t try and deny it)!!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you. If only you were in charge of my salary.
That was marvelous. Now everything I read today will be in iambic pentameter in my head.
Or trisyllabic meter. Either way, though, that sounds fun.