Cringely murders a holiday classic. (With apologies to the late Theodor Geisel.) Every Steve Up in Redmond Liked Vista a lot But the Cringe Who lived quite south of Redmond Did NOT The Cringe hated Vista and Microsoft too Oh he had his reasons — maybe more than a few It could be that his machine never really quite worked It could be he thought that guy Ballmer’s a jerk But the most likely reason (and the easiest rhyme) Was that he simply enjoyed giving them a hard time But it wasn’t just Redmond, oh no, not at all That caused the Cringe’s green skin to crawl It was Apple too, and the Apple boo-hoo-ers Those iPhone and iPod and MacBook froo-frooers With their silly white earbuds and smug little grins Who think saying anything bad about Apple’s a sin He stood there in Cringeville, hating those knobs And the god that they worship, the one they call Jobs With his black turtleneck and his oh-so-hip glasses Whose overpriced gizmos earned the love of the masses If you listen too closely you can hear them all sing: One more thing! One more thing! One more thing! One more thing! You’d think the Cringe heartless, but that isn’t quite true There are geeks he feels sorry for, at least one or two Like those poor Yahoo girls and sad Yahoo boys Who’ll wake up on Christmas without any toys Jobless, flat broke, down and out, on the skids Don’t call them orphans — they’re just Jerry’s kids Even the Cringe found some things really scary Like the bobblehead Google twins, Sergey and Larry Who could buy up the world with their endless Goo-dollars And have money left over for diamond dog collars When you’re richer than rich, who needs to be evil? Just me, thought the Cringe, as he rolled up his sleevil “Why,” he thought, “there are a million things I could hate Like pimple-faced CEOs who can’t get a date And all of those social networking freaks Who spend all day tweeting and all night throwing sheep Not to mention Dell, Sony, HP, and Cisco Gateway, Amazon, and of course SCO.” Then the Cringe remembered whom he REALLY despised Who should be whacked with a stick and poked in the eye: The spammers, the scammers, and slimy flim flammers The Bit Torrent blockers and neutrality knockers Web censors from China to Kalamazoo NSA snoops and the RIAA too All of them this year were badder than bad All should make Cringesters sadder than sad So the Cringe waited, and waited, and waited some more For the whining and moaning, the gnashing of teeth The cries of despair, the calls for relief He listened, and listened, and listened for it But the geeks out in Cringeville didn’t whine — not a bit They kept Digging and Stumbling and gladly Slashdotting They kept surfing and roaming and WiFi hot spotting Their Blackberries glowed from all that tap tapping Their Flickr streams flowing, their Google Maps mapping Amidst all this bustling, happy computing They didn’t even mind the Windows rebooting What happened then? Well in Cringeville they say The Cringe’s snark supply shrank three sizes that day Finally, exhausted, the Cringe gave up the fight And he said, with a sigh, as he turned off the light, “Merry Cringemas to all, and to all a good night.” Software DevelopmentSmall and Medium Business