1 Shakespeare: {typing} Not marble, nor the gilded monuments/ Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime;/ But you shall shine more bright in these contents/ Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
2 Mercutio: Don't quit your day job, Will!
2 Shakespeare: <sigh> I suppose you're right. {turns back to computer}
3 Shakespeare: {typing} The primary software component functionality interface utilises strategic high level drill-down performance offering methodologies.
4 Mercutio: {looking over his shoulder} Let's see that poem again...

That's the opening of Shakespeare's Sonnet 55, which is a love poem with a bit of a twist. Shakespeare very cleverly made the underlying meaning of the poem an extended boast about what a great poet and writer he was, by using the device of comparing his beloved's beauty to the immortality of his own poetry.

Try getting away with that in your creative writing class.

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2015-02-12 Rerun commentary: I think the real Shakespeare would have had a great time with business buzzword speak. A great time making fun of it, that is.

Unfortunately, as is the case with several things I've linked to in old annotations, the link to Sonnet 55 above had suffered link rot, and I have had to replace with it with a more up to date link. The interesting part is that the link originally pointed to a server in Rice University in the USA. The server seems to still be there, but the page I linked to has been replaced with a redirect to another site. Here's the weird part: The redirect points at a personal website based right here in Australia, and owned by a friend of mine, who as far as I know has no affiliation with Rice University whatsoever. Unfortunately, the redirect erroneously points to a completely irrelevant page on a different poem altogether, so I can't actually point you at it for reference here.

Weird.