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Was FuzzyWuzzy WYSIWYG?

I recently had occasion to remember my proudest moment as a contender for national Poet Laureate. I know we’re not supposed to reveal such things, but enough time has passed that I think I can speak of the grave injustice that was served to me on a platter of shame. (It’s writing like that that got me onto the short list.)

It was in the late 1980s or early 1990s when I was working in the marketing department at Interleaf, the creator of the first fully WYSIWYG electronic publishing package. At that point, being WYSIWYG — “What you see is why you get” — was novel because it was damn hard to put text and graphics on the same page in real-time editing mode. Plus, Interleaf’s text and graphics editors were ahead of their time, providing near typeset quality text, and integrated raster and vector graphics, all elements adjusting their layout as you typed. And much more. It was truly amazing software, and included functionality — including an extension language — that has still not been fully matched.

I spent eight years there learning about technology, including tech that presaged the Web, and about tech businesses. It was a great experience.

Then one day as I sat in my office, a poem flowed from me as if I were a teapot and the keyboard was a cup. (Again with the great analogies!) It turned out to be the poem that brought me to the attention of the Federal Department of Poetry, and I present it to you as best I remember it:

FuzzyWuzzy the Bear

FuzzyWuzzy was a bear.
FuzzyWuzzy had no hair.
FuzzyWuzzy wore a fuzzy wig.
FuzzyWuzzy wasn’t WYSIWYG, was he?

Or possibly the bear’s name was WhizzyWhizzyWig. Or maybe just WhizzyWig. Either way, it is a reference back to Ovid’s immortal “FuzzyWuzzy,” which was later stolen from the commons by the CoolTime Kids, with the copyright assigned to “Music Sales Corporation” which is clearly a cover for SMERSH, as exposed in the 1963 James Bond movie, “1 800 Kars for Kruschev.”

But I digress.

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One Response to “Was FuzzyWuzzy WYSIWYG?”

  1. For Pete’s sake, you should know better by now not to post just after smoking pot. This was complete gibberish!

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