The shy and retiring Microsoft CEO Steve "I suffer for my art" Ballmer tuned up his fiddle, stood on the loftiest tower of the palace of Redmond, and as flames from its latest results licked around the base, composed a poem entitled "My favourite bathtime gurgles."
Ballmer watchers reported that he was "delighted by the beauty of the conflagration", and was clad in tragic costume as the results were released.
Peter Klein, Microsoft's chief financial officer, was left to brief the media while his boss sang the blues.
Actually, the results were not that bad and were fairly predictable, but other than a contribution to the corpus of literary allusions, they cannot have helped Microsoft much.
The fiscal second-quarter profit fell very slightly as lagging computer sales to cash-strapped consumers in the United States and Europe hurt its core Windows business.
Klein said there was a slide as consumers put off buying a PC.
He said that many things were causing that. There were the effects on the supply chain from Thailand, there's some macro-economic factors, competition from alternative form factors such as tablets and e-readers, and especially dogs eating homework.
Microsoft claims that the PC market fell between two percent and four percent in the quarter, almost entirely due to the collapse in the market for netbooks.
The Windows unit reported a six percent dip in sales to $4.7 billion. The situation shows no immediate signs of getting better.
Overall, Microsoft reported net profits of $6.624 billion compared with $6.634 billion, at the same time last year.
Sales rose five percent to $20.9 billion, in line with analysts' forecasts, thanks to improved Office, server software and Xbox businesses.
Skype also helped and brought the Vole a one-time gain of $225 million thanks to favourable foreign currency rates.
What the stock holders should be up in arm about is the miniscule MS market share when it comes to devices like smart phones and tablets.
"Sorry, our sales of horse-drawn carts have been temporarily declining in the last couple of years because everybody was buying automobiles. We have a great plan, though. We'll be squeezing more money out of our customers while we are waiting for the sale of horse-drawn carts to improve. Any time now..."
The guiding example should be the Xbox, one of the smartest things MS has done. The Xbox had a rocky start and it sunk tremendous amounts of money at the start, but they realised that they had to stick with it and work hard. At the market level MS operates (and Apple, Intel etc.), there is not much low hanging fruit to be had.
As a wise man once said: "if you want a lot of dough, you have to start with a lot of flour."