Given that this is a monastery and all, it would have been nice if I'd been able to come up with a meditation titled "Perl Eschatology", but I'll have to settle for "Perl Scatology."
Flipping through the pages of one of my favorite Perl scriptures, the exalted Perl Cookbook, I chanced upon a disgusting little joke I had not noticed before. On recipe 17.20 Program: backsniff, p. 713 (3d ed.), the following logfile entry is shown:
May 25 15:50:22 coprolith sniffer: Connection from 207.46.131.141 to 207.46.130.164:echoHere "coprolith" is the name of some server (coprolith.frii.com, to be more precise). As it turns out the same server makes other cameo appearances throughout the book (e.g. in the e-mail address gnat@coprolith.frii.com). The juxtaposition with the word "sniffer" makes it pretty clear that this was meant as a joke.
Or rather, a crypto-joke. After some Googling I can say that the joke went, if not unnoticed, at least unremarked upon.
I wonder if the editors of O'Reilly were/are in on the joke. I also wonder if FRII ever had a server in their domain with the name "coprolith."
I suppose this belongs in the annals of Perl Humor.
the lowliest monk