From last October's Stereophile mag letters section sent in by a fellow from Colorado.
A very clever audiophile poem.
A Tweaker's Lament
When I notice my system
Is off by a bit
I give my cartridge a nudge.
Sometimes the tweak
Decreases the peak
Sometimes it adds to the sludge.
Engineers call it voodoo
and readily pooh-pooh
Improvements there's no way to measure.
Some think the ear--
Not geek-happy gear--
Is the road to audio pleasure.
So I nudge back and forth
for all I am worth
My effort all out of proportion:
Spending days with the groove
In hopes to improve
or remove the last bit of distortion.
But it's all been worthwhile
and I feel myself smile--
when i'm hearing those musical strains;
Though enjoying the tune
Has come none too soon:
Cause I was ready to bash in my brains.
Trivia, origin of testes: taking an oath while touching one’s or someone else’s testicles was common in the ancient Near East (Abraham also orders a servant to do just that in Genesis 24:2). Its linguistic memory survives in the word “testify”—testis being the Latin both for “witness” and the male generative gland.