Diary of events for The Newbie's Song

Netiquette disclaimer:

To the best of my recollection, all the information in this diary is derived from sources in the public domain, may be freely deduced from sources in the public domain or, if derived from private e-mail, presents information in an anonymous form. If I have slipped up anywhere and included personal details from a private e-mail, please e-mail me and I will gladly remove the offending item.

Please note also that no attempt has been made to check that url's mentioned in this account are still valid.

c.29/8/96

Original suggestion on Monty Python's Flying Talker - first line suggested as "...chatroom individual".

30/8/96

Downloaded Pirates libretto, started writing.

16/9/96

Original post to alt.fan.monty-python in the thread "Re:Posting of Binaries (part 2)". This was therefore the primary source.
First verse reposted to alt.religion.scientology - attributed to Bonni Hall, probably from ahbou repost (time zones?)

17/9/96

Reposted in alt.folklore.urban, David Lesher.
Reposted in alt.humor.best-of-usenet, Bonni Hall.
Request for publication in U. of Idaho Argonaut.
Request for permission to distribute in a humor mailing list.

18/9/96

Request for inclusion on a personal WEB page.
Secondary source: I e-mailed a copy to a friend in Norway.
First request for repost in alt.music.filk.
Reposted to uk.misc twice, Iain Hotchkies and dom@i-cubed.co.uk.

19/9/96

Reposted in afu, Shelby Greiner, attribution lost - 3 days after first post!
Second request for repost in alt.music.filk.
Reposted in ba.singles, Dave Kirby.

21/9/96

Reposted in rec.arts.drwho, attributed to Dr. Who with correct attribution attached but marked "alleged"; presumably an in-joke.

23/9/96

Shelby Greiner afu repost re-reposted to alt.music.filk, via local mailing, by rak@netaxs.com.
ba.singles repost reposted in rec.humor, Stuart A. Bronstein.

24/9/96

ba.singles repost reposted in uk.singles, Stuart A. Bronstein.
Third request for repost in alt.music.filk.
uk.singles post reposted in an internal newsgroup - first loopback, 8 days.

25/9/96

Repost of Stuart A. Bronstein repost in soc.culture.african.american by space for rent .
Reposted in rec.backcountry with full history by Eugene Miya:
- Forwarded-by: jmorton@euler.Berkeley.EDU (John Morton)
- Forwarded-by: mbkomor@remarque.berkeley.edu (m.b.komor)
- Forwarded-by: satai@deepthot.cary.nc.us
- Forwarded-by: Cameron Dixon
- Forwarded-by: Bonni Hall
- Forwarded-by: dave.rogers@bt-sys.bt.co.uk (Dave Rogers)

27/9/96

Repost, song only without attribution, in comp.arch.storage, by Rick Collin, apparently as a stock "clueless newbie" flame.

28/9/96

Reposted in ca.general and ba.general by Eugene Miya, appended to an administrative posting.

29/9/96

Extracted from Eugene Miya's administrative posting and posted to alt.2600, by Joel Rubin.

30/9/96

Seen on the Forteana list "a couple of days ago".

1/10/96 (approx)

Sighted on mailing list network2d-l@austin.onu.edu (for lawyers interested in office technology).
Reported as having been mailed to the Geeks List twice within a week of the a.h.b-o-u repost.

2/10/96

Reposted a second time in rec.humor, by Stuart A. Bronstein

4/10/96

Reposted to alt.pub.coffeehouse.amethyst with new introductory text - attribution lost - by harper@tribeca.ios.com (Robin Carroll-Mann).
Above version reposted to alt.best.of.internet by Ellsworth . Route unknown but involved at least one e-mail hop, and one followup mentioned three e-mail forwardings.

8/10/96

E-mail from Yahoo Magazine, inquiring whether I'm the author as they plan to use part of the song in their December issue.

10/10/96

ABOI repost posted to alt.sex.bondage and alt.sex.femdom by fredm3047@spamtrap.halcyon.com (Dr. Benway)

12/10/96

alt.pub.coffeehouse.amethyst version reposted to alt.kalbo by Journeyman (andy@argus.demon.co.uk).
Posted to alt.tv.space-a-n-b, no attribution or additional text, by Greyhound .

15/10/96

e-mailed by a friend from Monty Python's Flying Talker; some friends want to put it in a PC user group newsletter. They e-mailed me and I gave them permission.

16/10/96

Found on the WWW at http://www.iam.com/maryanne/newbie.html, no attribution.
Posted to alt.tv.kids-in-hall by shiraleah@aol.com (Shira leah); no attrib, followup text altered slightly but significantly to:
(P.S. I've been looking for an excuse to post this on alt.tv.kith, despite it being flagrantly off-topic, because I got the idea from somebody else in a.f.m-p. We now return you to the normal KitH-related service.)

20/10/96

Found at http://caliban.physics.utoronto.ca/neufeld/humour.txt, a site containing a large number of humorous USENET postings. Appears to be an a.h.b-o-u archive site.

24/10/96

Found at http://www.ucalgary.ca/~thrcrawf/funny/newbsong.txt

28/10/96

Eugene Miya's admin posting on ba.general. This is now a regular monthly appearance, so won't be tracked further.

29/10/96

Posted to alt.aol-sucks by smythe@slip.net (Smythe), source not identified and no supporting text - poster is in SF so may be from a Eugene Miya post.

31/10/96

Excerpt posted to uk.gay-lesbian-bi by Matthew Malthouse (matthew.malthouse@guardian.co.uk), in a discussion of the Nieman-Marcus cookie recipe UL.

2/11/96

Shelby Greiner's AFU repost re-reposted to alt.support.depression by aurienne@access5.digex.net (Aurienne)

4/11/96

More WWW entries discovered:

http://www.texas.net/users/mrbill/swgoths/archives/0004.html
http://wave.park.wy.us/bbs/codyboard/messages/19.html (not found)
http://www.ljx.com/mailinglists/cyberia-l/4328.html

14/11/96

Posted to alt.kids-talk by blevenso@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Bryan D Levenson) in three sections.
Found at http://www.src.gla.ac.uk:8000/~sam/humour/binaries.html (alt.humour.best-of-usenet post.)

2/12/96

Yet another post to alt.folklore.urban from clarke@concentric.net (Lance Clarke); complete except for author attribution. Corrected subsequently by the AFU community.

19/12/96

Posted to alt.support.headaches.migraine by wavsrus@softcom.net; appears to be the truncated version from YIL.

14/3/97

Found at:

http://www.merton.ox.ac.uk/fun/computing/usenet.html, attributed to Bonni Hall.
http://djinn.cs.berkeley.edu/lorch/humor/newbie.html, attributed "Sent by bonni@prarienet.org".
http://www.ariel.com.au:80/jokes/The_Newbie's_Song.html, attributed to "anonymous".
http://www.cios.org:80/mailboxes/ethno\10126161.017, no attribution.
http://public.logica.com/~stepneys/sf/filk/newbie.htm, from one of the alt.music.filk reposts. Correctly attributed.
http://www.happmis.com/wprog/fun-recent-archive/latest/132 (superseded - looks like a "joke of the day" type site).
http://www.optera.com/~invid/humor/usenet.song, part of an extensive personal humour collection.
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/lsh/quotes.html contains a four-line excerpt, correctly attributed.
http://www.jlc.net/~np/omega/ultimate.txt, unattributed - personal humour collection.

24/3/97

Found at:

http://www-ucsee.eecs.berkeley.edu/~benco/humor/I-AmTheVeryModelOfA-UsenetIndividual, personal humour collection - the a.h.b-o-u repost.
http://www.cps.msu.edu/~korthmat/newbiesong.txt - unattributed.
http://users.the-link.net/jgreen/newbie.html - unattributed.
http://www.ii.uib.no/~kjartan/humor/computer/news.newbie, correctly attributed and apparently taken directly from the original a.f.m-p post.

27/3/97

Found at:

http://www.mech.uwa.edu.au/postgrad/acd/stuff/newbie.html, the a.h.b-o-u repost.
http://www.thesite.com/0197w2/thebin/devfri.html, the Dev Null site; "sent to us by Karen at Planet Out".
http://dcpu1.cs.york.ac.uk:6666/~davidl/personal/usenet_individual.html
http://hagbard.ncsa.uiuc.edu/uiuctest/arts/art.17381, apparently archived from the uiuc.test newsgroup.
http://users.the-link.net/jgreen/newbie.html, refers to the Dev Null site.
http://www.nyx.net/~gfitzger/home.html contains a link to http://www.iam.com/maryanne/newbie.html.
http://www.empire.net/~psl/Fun_People/1996/1996BSH.html, from the 24 September 1996 entry in the Fun People Archive.
http://cam053212.student.utwente.nl/misc/fun/newbie.html, the a.h.b-o-u repost.

2/4/97

Found at:

http://www.svaar.no/peter/usenetindividual
http://www.haven.org/~dkap/humor/usnet_newbie - sent by Eugene Volokh, UCLA School of Law, who also sent it to the Cyberia mailing list site.
http://http.cs.berkeley.edu/~bmah/Filk/NewbiesSong.txt - the song seems to be doing the rounds at Berkeley.

8/4/97

Found at:

http://www.idyllmtn.com/archives/lsh-l/current/0039.html contains a quote of the first two lines.
http://tamvm1.tamu.edu/~WHIM/LOG9610.txt - appears to be an archive of a humour mailing list.

11/4/97

First verse appeared at the end of a Eugene Miya post to rec.backcountry, apparently a reference to his regular ca.general and ba.general administrative postings.

15/4/97

Found at http://homepages.enterprise.net/mb/fun06.html, no attribution.

21/4/97

Found at:

http://blargh.res.wpi.edu/~moron/newbe.htm - linked as "The AOL Theme Song". No attribution.
http://www.imsa.edu/~matth/doc/fun/u/usenet1.html - no attribution.
http://www.ca.sandia.gov/~bmah/Filk/NewbiesSong.txt
http://netrover.com/~stevem/jokes/computer05.html

28/4/97

Posted to uk.media.tv.sf.babylon5 by cat@cyberenet.net, taken from the a.h.b-o-u repost with full attribution.

Found at:

http://www.voicenet.com/~xavier/aol/newbie_song.html - attribution: "By Anonymous Author"
http://www.peg.com/wprog/fun-recent-archive/1996/132 - Mailing list archive, no attribution.

9/5/97

Found at http://www.concentric.net/~dcashman/humor/songs/newbie.html - attribution: "Posted on Rec.Humor by: Stuart A. Bronstein (adam@crl.com)".

15/5/97

Found at:

http://www.magmacom.com/mailing-lists/inet-access/0500.html - mailing list archive.
http://acc.jc.edu/~lolson/lynx_bookmarks.html, contains a link to one of the above sites.

16/5/97

Found at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~valkyrie/parody/newbie.html - the Gilbert and Sullivan Parody Archive.

23/5/97

Found at http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~koffman/humour.html

26/6/97

Found at:

http://pitel-lnx.ibk.fnt.hvu.nl/~warp/fido/fido1422.nws - Appears in the "Net Humor" section of Fidonews vol 14 no. 22, p. 26 - "By anonymous author". Presumably this counts as a mailing list.
http://www.illuminated.co.uk/humour/binaries.html - The first repost from a.h.b-o-u.
http://www.alink.net/~tomki/Funnies/usenet.txt - No attribution or source.

1/7/97

Found at:

http://pecan.srv.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/jeliza/www/parody/newbie.html - an alias for the G&S Parody Archive.
http://www.aloha.net/~pazuzu/nfnewbie.htm - taken from the original a.f.m-p post and correctly attributed.

15/7/97

First verse quoted in a post to uk.politics.misc by spin@aster.demon.co.uk

5/8/97

Found at:

http://auchentoshan.pdl.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/jeliza/www/parody/newbie.html - another version of the G&S Parody Archive.
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mb/fun/index.html (moved from http://homepages.enterprise.net/mb/fun06.html)

18/8/97

Found at:

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mertinfo/fun/computing/usenet.html - attributed to Bonni Hall. Probably an alias for http://www.merton.ox.ac.uk/fun/computing/usenet.html.
http://www.itc.org/ncte/ncte-talk-old/msg03544.html - mailing list archive.

1/9/97

Found at http://www.ece.cmu.edu/afs/ece/usr/bracken/humor/newbie.song.txt - Bonni Hall's a.h.b-o-u repost.

5/9/97

Found at http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~ej22/text/computer/Newbie.html

23/9/97

Found at http://www.zedtoo.demon.co.uk/humour/unet.html

11/10/97

Posted to alt.music.moxy-fruvous by thrawn@ohio.net (Grand Admiral Thrawn), no attribution.

14/10/97

Found at:

http://www.empire.net/~psl/Fun_People/1996/1996BSH.html - mailing list archive, traced back via a.h.b-o-u to the original a.f.m-p post.
http://lamp.infosys.utas.edu.au/jokes/msg00006.html - no attribution.
http://www.zen.co.uk/home/page/g.mcvey/other/usenet.txt - no attribution.
http://www.sdmedia.net/argarg/spam93.html - no attribution.
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~vandeuse/usenet.htm - no attribution.
http://www.illuminated.co.uk/humour/binaries.html - correctly attributed, with supporting text, directly from a.f.m-p
http://christine.res.wpi.net/~moron/newbe.htm - no attribution.
http://www.vixensinblack.org/~kamen/newbie.html - "Author Unknown".

3/11/97

Found at http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/djm2/archives/sent.97.03/gilbert.and.sullivan.net - no supporting text but correctly attributed.

10/11/97

Found at:

http://www.dorje.com:8080/netstuff/jokes/comp.usenet.individual - song only, no attribution or supporting text
http://www.cris.com/~dcashman/humor/songs/newbie.html - apparently moved from www.concentric.net
http://www.duke.edu/~jlg1/humor/computers/internet/usenet-individual.html - song only, no attribution or supporting text.

19/11/97

Posted to alt.callahans by Andy May (andy@argus.demon.co.uk), without attribution - he's forgotten my name and e-mail address.

10/12/97

Found at:

http://www.jurai.org/~funaho/humor/usenet.song - no supporting text
http://www.dimensional.com/~rooth/plan.html - first eight lines only, no attribution, as part of a "thoughts and musings" list.

30/12/97

Found at http://infinity.nus.sg/cypherpunks/dir.archive-96.09.19-96.09.25/0614.html - another CYBERIA-L mailing list archive, Eugene Volokh's posting.

14/1/98

Posted to alt.fan.pratchett by Steph@ypsl.snuffle.demon.co.uk (Zappy) - "by anonymous author".

25/1/98

Posted to alt.music.pink-floyd by potwng@aol.com (Potwng), from a website - correctly attributed.

5/2/98

Posted to alt.vacation.las-vegas by Mark Bentkower , from a private e-mail - no attribution.

19/2/98

Found at http://wombatinfestation.unm.edu/~lillith/texts/new/songs/parody.newbies - couldn't access the site.

25/3/98

http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/Jokes_and_Fun/Usenet_Model - copied in full from a.h.b-o-u.

28/4/98

http://alcor.concordia.ca/~smw/home/resources/net.html - contains a link to a version at http://www.sdmedia.net/argarg/spam93.html, the basic text with no attribution.

1/5/98

Found at:

http://fenn.feline.pp.se/text/usenet.txt - "anonymous"
http://home.samurai.com/lists/bryans-list/0142.html, anonymous, reprinted from a private e-mail (I think).

1/6/98

http://pfaol.for.net/pfaol/newbie_song.html - "by anonymous author".

10/6/98

Posted to rec.arts.sf.fandom by Fran Dowd , no attribution - presumably at least one intermediate hop by e-mail.

24/6/98

http://www.anglia.ac.uk/~operag/humour/others/mgsong.html - a personal net humour archive.

14/7/98

Found at:

http://www.rio.com/~crazymax/jokes/newbie.html - no attribution.
http://www.oocities.org/Hollywood/Hills/7289/newbie.html - no attribution.

28/8/98

Posted to rec.gardens.roses by "BAT" (tiede@rocketmail.com), sourced from the ba.general regular post. I have no idea *why* it was posted here.

16/9/98

First two lines quoted in a post to rec.arts.comics.dc.universe by The Great and Powerful Danny Sichel (eds7466@umoncton.ca) - sig?

26/10/98

http://lamp.man.deakin.edu.au/jokes97/msg00006.html - this has been there since August 1997, which should give an idea of search engines' coverage of the WWW.

16/11/98

Found at:

http://www.dreamhaven.org/~catlin/Thoughts/newbiesong.html - appears to be based on the edited Yahoo magazine version. Correctly attributed. What worries me is, it's filed under "Serious"!
http://www.sandwich.net/kalten/newbiesong.txt - no attribution or supporting text. The site owner is Matt Korth, which suggests it may be related to the second site listed under 24th March 1997.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ofcalba/fun179.htm - 404 when I looked. Owain F. Carter's fun pages, attributed to Bonni Hall. Page now moved - see below.
http://www.thelitterbox.org/public/fido/969798/FIDO1422.txt - another Fidonews archive.
http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~neil/Jokes_and_Fun/Usenet_Model - also 404, but looks like another Neil Franklin page.

13/1/99

Reposted to alt.callahans by Andy May
Post in alt.fan.pratchett refers to a recent post by Denise Connell, which DejaNews doesn't seem to have archived.

16/1/99

Posted to alt.autos.corvette by toy_boy@my-dejanews.com

16/3/99

Found at http://www.aber.ac.uk/~ddb4/humour/usenet_song.html - arrived via an e-mail.

6/7/99

E-mailed by Owain F. Carter, whose fun pages entry has now moved to http://homepages.tesco.net/~scotsnet/o.f.carter/fun/fun179.html with an offer to fix the attribution, duly accepted.

15/5/99

Yahoo Internet Life abridged version posted to alt.parenting.solutions by Kendra U (kendrau@aol.com.block)

8/7/99

Found at http://www.south-of-heaven.demon.co.uk/tom/funny/usenet.html - full song but no supporting text, no attribution.

4/11/99

Posted to rec.backcountry by Eugene Miya, not as part of his regular propagation probe but apparently as part of a mild reproof to a rather clueless poster.

12/11/99

Posted to alt.fan.furry.politics by Bahumat (Lord_Bahumat@nocrud.yahoo.com), no attribution.

16/11/99

Found at:

http://www.ampac.com/inet-access/1997-05/msg00145.html
http://swirl.mcc.ac.uk/hfiles/aaadbk.html (unattributed, but provision to contact webmaster to update attribution)
http://www.jokeindex.com/joke.asp?Joke=67
http://www.oceanwave.com/technical-resources/humor/usenet-newbie.html

13/12/99

Paraphrased on alt.politics.british by Malc92.

2/1/2000

Opening couplet used as a .sig file on alt.parenting.solutions by Kendra (kendrau@aol.comhairle)

8/3/2000

Posted to nz.general by Robin Halligan (radarman@ihug.co.nz), complete, no attribution.

7/3/2000

First verse posted to freeserve.webspace.au by Paul Baker (newsjuly@levante.demon.co.uk) in a discussion of karaoke.

11/3/2000

Posted to soc.singles by enialle (ohwell@greenheart.com), part of first verse missing and attributed as anonymous.

3/5/2000

Found at:

http://www.illuminated.co.uk/searchengines.html - a "Stupid Search Engine Goofs" page - as an example of something that will be reliably found.
lanminds.com/~mohanraj/Amusing/newbie.html - a new hit, but looks familiar.
http://195.40.112.14/leon.phillips/humourpages/newbys.htm - no attribution.

5/6/2000

Found at http://wreckedhumor.tripod.com/songs/newbie.html - contributor attribution only.

18/7/2000

Found at http://ology.org/eschat/parody/newbie.html , a new url for the G&S parody archive. Properly attributed and nicely formatted. I like these people, whoever they are.

27/7/2000

Posted to rec.outdoors.fishing.fly by Mark Anderson (mark.anderson@sonoma.edu) with the comment: "Here's a very old newbie usenet lyric. It's been around since at least the late 80's. Every couple of years I have occasion to post it again. Enjoy!" Late 80's, is it?
Posted to rec.skiing.alpine, sourced from the r.o.f.f. post, by Space Elder (Luv2Camp@ADingoAteMyBaby.com).

7/11/00

Found at http://lab.caw.fsu.edu/~dlaroe/humor/usenetNewbieSong with no attribution, a personal Internet humour collection.

29/12/00

Found at http://dopey.rediris.es/ftp/docs/faq/ca/general/[l_m_2_4_97]_[b|c]a.general_News_Quiz - unable to download page, but from the title it appears to be something to do with Eugene Miya's ca.general administrative posting.

15/2/01

Posted to rec.arts.mystery by WareWolf (dustyr@nc.rr.com), no attribution.

25/2/01

Posted to uk.rec.waterways by Neil Arlidge (neilarlidge@tuesdaynightclub.co.uk), no attribution; later in the thread he comments that "I nicked it off a mate's website, credited anonymous".

19/3/01

Posted to uk.gay-lesbian-bi by Owain (usenet@gowan-hill.com), no attribution in post but linked to Owain F Carter's humour archive which is fully attributed (see above). Much appreciated, Owain.

23/7/02

Posted to alt.fifty-plus.friends by Marian, no attribution.

23/7/02

Posted to alt.sixtyplus by Lanky, no attribution.

26/7/02

Posted to alt.society.zeitgeist by Joel Olson, no attribution.

7/10/03

Posted to uk.rec.sheds by Frank Erskine, no attribution. A lengthy thread ensued on the topic of "What is the British equivalent of a Hershey bar?", for some reason.

23/2/05

First new sighting in a long time, although I haven't been looking much lately. Found at:

http://forums.firstones.com/showthread.php?s=e89463a29c19ec457215a344ab7be6ce&threadid=4761&goto=nextnewest - a Babylon 5 discussion forum. Full text with correct attribution, which is nice. Posted 24th April 2004.
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=8&threadID=168198&messageID=1717184 on a discussion board thread under the title "Friday Yuk", apparently a weekly funnies thread. Full text, attribution is "Author unknown". Posted 11th February 2005.

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