Teapotta Protocol

His existence predates the logging.
Nobody remembers his blogging.
He just sits there, stout,
Full of tea and of doubt,
And the RFC keeps on clogging.

“Don’t ask,” said the sign on his face,
While he occupied server-side space.
His function was nil,
His purpose a thrill,
And the nonsense was perfectly placed.

He floated away in a dream
Of a protocol nobody’d deem
Worth implementing—
But still representing
The internet’s weirdest regime.

He was born before logging existed—
An artifact, never delisted.
The spec was a joke,
The internet spoke,
And Teapotta just quietly persisted.

He appeared on a protocol chart,
Redacted and circled with art.
In crayon, no less,
“TEAPOT” was the guess,
And the whitepaper fell right apart.

He steeped in a request that never would end,
Each timeout returned as a friend.
The brew never forms,
Just status transforms,
And 418 bends and re-sends.

He stamps dates that never happened
On documents carefully fashioned.
The metadata’s fake,
The ceremony opaque,
And the brewing is strictly rationed.

So if HTTP 418 appears
And the response brings only tears
Of confused delight,
That’s Teapotta’s plight:
A teapot. For all of these years.