distccmon-text by default prints empty lines if no compile is running, the patch attached only print's something if a compile is running and adds a timestamp. the patch is from the ML-post in the URL.
Created attachment 94218 [details, diff] distccmon-text.patch
Created attachment 94219 [details, diff] distcc-2.18.3-r10.patch trivial patch for the ebuild
This needs to be posted to the distcc mail list. Gentoo isn't a test bed for upstream patches. Sorry.