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T'was
the 'Net Before Christmas
A Holiday Fable for the Information Age
By Mike Stimson, Mary martin, and Donala
Monet
(Very Loosely based on "The Night Before Christmas" By
Clement C. Moore)
T'was the 'Net
before Christmas
When all thru our house
Not a creature was typing
Nor moving a mouse.
Our monitors
hummed
And were glowing within
In hopes that Saint Nicholas
Would soon "modem" in.
The teenagers
were crashed
In their messy bedrooms
And dreaming of boxes
That made sonic booms.
Mom back from
aerobics
And done kissing me,
We'd just settled in
For some much needed "zzz's"
When in the home
office
There arose such a din,
I shot down the stairs!
Had that fax just come in?
Away to the
keyboard,
Leapt into my chair,
Typed in my password...
But no fax was there!
My screen came
alive,
It was wildly aglow,
The hard drive went crunching
The "one" and the "0",
When what to my
bifocalled eye
Should I see,
But a brand new web browser,
Not AT&T.
>From a server
so rapid
(Not one on the slates)
That I thought for a moment,
"It must be Bill Gates!"
Incoming more
quickly
Than 14.4 fame,
Screeching, now flashing,
Calling "plug-ins" by name:
"Now Java!
Now Shockwave!,
and Real Audio!
On Webchat! On Quicktime!
And 3VDO!
To the World Wide
Web system!
To the great hackers ball!
Now cache away! Cache away!
Cache away all!"
Beyond all the
strengths
Of the new chips I see
This CPU giant
Brought power to me,
And into my RAM
A new browser sublime!
Brimming with programs,
Saint Nick's on my line!
Then I, in a
second,
Heard soundboarding in,
Saint Nick's jolly laughter
Above all this din.
I pulled back my
hands
And fell out of my chair,
In shock at the sight
Of Saint Nick standing there!
Tho made up of
pixels,
He seemed very real,
With clothing quite modern
And full of appeal.
A bundle of CD's
Were slung from his bag,
He looked like an "X"er
With middle-aged sag!
He wore cool
sunglasses,
His face was electric;
His cheeks two Mac Apples,
His nose neon pink!
His handsome full
lips
Were set in a grin,
With a snow white
Bohemian beard on his chin.
With the butt of
a Cuban
Lit up with a flair,
I saw cyber smoke
Making rings in the air!
He'd got that
"hep" look
And acted so mellow,
But his belly still shook,
Still a jolly old fellow!
Flashing peace
signs to all
And nodding his head,
Led me to think
I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a
word
But went straight to the show;
Left shiny new laptops,
And then turned to go.
And laying his
finger
Aside of the node,
As quick as a wink,
Thru the monitor he flowed.
He appeared on
the screen,
On the keys poked delete,
And transported away,
His mission complete!
But I heard him
exclaim
As the screen had turned white,
"CYBER
CHRISTMAS TO ALL,
AND TO ALL A GOOD BYTE!!"
This poem can be found with illustrations at:
http://members.aol.com/jasper5581/net/net0.html
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