Millennium Pie
    (with apologies to Don McLean, American Pie)

    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 made me shiver,
    it chilled me deep down in my liver,
    Bad news I'd collected...
    I couldn't get connected.

    I can't remember back that day
    When I first knew the Y2K
    But something touched me anyway,
    The day computers died.

    So, ...Bye, bye to 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
    Saying this will be the day I retire
    this will be the day I retire

    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 prepared
    'Cause your memo said you weren't impaired
    Your stationery's swell
    But you can go 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'...

    Bye, bye to 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
    Saying this will be the day I retire
    this will be the day I retire

    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
    Time stole his monopolies
    The courtroom was adjourned
    No verdict was returned

    While Apple tried a color scheme
    The engineers returned to steam
    And we had purges of their dreams
    The day computers died
    We were singin'

    Bye, bye to 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
    Saying this will be the day I retire
    this will be the day I retire

    Intel inside in an iron smelter
    The food leftover from my fallout shelter
    Twinkies old and aging fast
    I'd rather eat the grass
    Q and 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 singing

    Bye, bye to 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
    Saying this will be the day I retire
    this will be the day I retire

    There we were all in a state
    A generation- really late
    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.

    As I watched him on my screen
    My hands and face were drenched in steam
    No angel born in hell
    Could run that stupid shell

    And as the ball climbed high into the night
    To call the sacrificial night
    I saw Dick Clark laughing with delight
    the day computers died.

    I met a girl with a cell phone
    And I asked her for a dial tone
    But she just smiled and turned away

    I went down to the software store
    Where I'd seen computers years before
    But the man there said the games there
    wouldn't play

    And in the streets the children screamed
    The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
    their interface was spoken
    The Internet was broken

    And the three things I connect to most
    The Website, Lan and the Network host
    Every single one was toast
    The day computers died
    They were singin'

    Bye, bye to 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
    Saying this will be the day I retire
    this will be the day I retire

    Copyright Scott McNulty.
    July 1999