Every e-tailer
Down in E-tailville
Liked Christmas a lot.
But the Grinch,
Who lived just north of E-tailville,
Did not.

The Grinch hated Christmas!
The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why.
No one quite knows the reason:
It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been he wanted to see smart alecks fall.

Too much hype, too much boasting, and too much glory,
Led him to pray for a sad end to the story.
Billionaires made from scratch without even one store,
The Grinch thought the whole tale was really quite a bore.
New Edisons, innovators' dilemmas and talking socks,
Somehow had led to skyrocketing stocks.

The Grinch knew that pride often came before a fall,
Both in the traditional and virtual shopping mall.
He cackled as he saw the musical chairs,
Galli and Miller were no longer Sam Walton's heirs.
Pure play dot-coms did Amazon incubate,
Now in bricks-and-clicks lies the company's fate.

eBay and Yahoo! had a flirtation,
But stock-selling execs resisted temptation.
Napster made kids and colleges say wow,
If milk is free, why buy the cow?
eBooks solved a problem no one knew they had,
And the VC's egos came down -- just a tad.

The new-style tombstones were many, the victors few,
As Garden wilted and Boo said boohoo.
Living.com no longer was, and Pets.com was put to sleep,
WebHouse spectacularly joined the garbage heap.
The Grinch laughed, the underwriters cried,
As dreams of life-altering sums died.