Millennium Pie (with apologies to Don McLean - American Pie)
1. A long, long time ago...
I can still remember how
Computers used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance,
That I could make electrons dance,
And maybe I'd be happy for a while.
But January 01 made me shiver,
It chilled me deep down to my liver,
Bad news I'd collected...
I couldn't get connected.
And I can't remember back that day,
When I'd first read about Y2K,
Something touched me again that way,
The day computers died.
So,
Chorus:
Bye, bye the next digit of Pi,
Ran my PC on some DC but the voltage was dry,
And good ol' boys were sending e-mail replies,
Singin' this will be the day I retire
..this will be the day I retire
2. Can you write in C-plus-plus,
And do you have faith in your local bus,
If the driver tells you so ?
Do you believe in Compaq's goals,
Can software save your mortal soul,
And can you teach me how to type real slow ?
Well I thought that you were all prepared,
'Cause your memo said you weren't impaired,
Your stationery's swell,
But the rest has gone to hell.
I was a lonely teenage Unix hack,
With an incantation and a modem jack,
But I knew the cat had left the sack,
The day computers died.
I started singin'...
(Chorus)
3. Now for 10 years we've ignored the threat,
And we haven't solved the problem yet,
But that's not how it used to be.
When the luddites read for the king and queen,
with a light they filled with kerosene,
And some manuals they stole from you and me.
And while Bill Gates was looking pleased,
Father Time stole his monopolies,
The courtroom was adjourned,
No verdict was returned.
While Apple tried a new color scheme,
The engineers returned to steam,
And we had purges of their dreams,
The day computers died.
And we were singin'..
(Chorus)
4. Intel inside in an iron smelter,
Eating food scavanged from my fallout shelter,
Twinkies old and aging fast.
I think I'd rather eat the grass,
Q & A tried for a system crash,
With the tester on the sidelines in a cast.
Now the timeshare net was running Doom,
While mainframes played a marching tune,
We all tried to log in,
Oh, but we never could begin.
'Cause Cobol tried to take the field,
And Holerith refused to yield.
Do you recall what was revealed,
The day computers died?
We started singin'...
(Chorus)
5. There we were all in a state
A generation past pull date,
With no time left to start again.
So come on mouse be nimble, mouse be quick,
Don't let my spreadsheet data stick,
'Cause data is the devil's only friend.
And as I watched it on my screen,
My hands and face were drenched and green,
No angel born in hell ,
Could run that evil shell.
And as the ball climbed high into the night,
To highlight the sacrificial site,
I saw Dick Clark laughing with delight,
the day computers died.
And he was singin'...
(Chorus)
6.. I met a girl with Airtouch One,
And I asked her for a dial tone,
But she just smiled and turned away.
So I went down to the software store,
Where I'd seen computers work days before,
But the man there said the games there wouldn't play.
And in the streets the daytraders screamed,
The analysts cried and the coders dreamed,
No interface or token,
The ISPs all were broken.
And the three things that I connect to most,
The Website, Lan and the Network host,
Every single one was toast,
The day computers died.
So...
(Chorus)