1. You haven't specified what it does.
2. After taking a look at what it does I found it to be rediculous and pointless.
3. The <> failed miserably.
4. Never use $chan try to use # as it is faster and simpler.
5. What is the 'Yo-dawg' stuff?
6. You could have used sockets so users wouldn't need to download the lines to a .txt file.

1. It's pretty obvious what it does.
2. And half the snippets posted here aren't?
3. It's pretty obvious he didn't wrap the url with url tags
4. Never recommend someone to take shortcuts in coding.
5. Internet meme
6. It seems like he's a beginner, if he posts a simple $read snippet.

please think before you post

Anyway, instead of going through all this trouble, you could just make an on load event to make the text file with all those things in it.

on *:load:{
  if (!$isfile(yodawg.txt)) {
    var %x = write yodawg.txt
    %x Yo Dawg we heard you like Mickey D’s, so we put a drive-thru in yo drive-in so you can take out while you make out.
    etc..
  }
}