robert_cringely
Columnist

Cringe sings songs of high-tech cheer

analysis
Dec 19, 20073 mins

Editors note: Cringely has taken the rest of the week off (frankly, we haven't seen him since the office party two nights ago), so we hired old Tin Pan Alley songmeister Skip McJingle to reinvigorate some holiday classics with high tech themes. Feel free to sing along. Vista Wonderland (sung to the tune of "Winter Wonderland") Laptop's on... is it frozen? No that's just Windows loading Your workday has stalled Y

Editors note: Cringely has taken the rest of the week off (frankly, we haven’t seen him since the office party two nights ago), so we hired old Tin Pan Alley songmeister Skip McJingle to reinvigorate some holiday classics with high tech themes. Feel free to sing along.

Vista Wonderland (sung to the tune of “Winter Wonderland”) Laptop’s on… is it frozen?

No that’s just Windows loading

Your workday has stalled

Your PC now crawls

Working in a Vista Wonderland iPod fails, needs new software

Microsoft — why should they care?

You’ll soon grow quite sick

Of confirming each click

Working in a Vista Wonderland When there’s trouble you’ll call their support crew

And provide a credit card or two

You’ll reach a technician named Narasu

And he’ll help you to endlessly reboot

Later on, when you downgrade

Old XP will seem so great

And you will regret

The time that you spent

Working in a Vista Wonderland

The NSA is Comin’ to Tap

(sung to the tune of “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”) You better not surf

You better not chat

Watch your IMs

I’m tellin’ you that

The NSA is comin’ to tap They’re makin’ a list

And checking it twice

They’ll know when you give

al Queda advice

The NSA is comin’ to tap They’ll read all of your email

They’ll know just what you say

They’ll pack you on a plane and ship you

Straight to Guantanamo Bay

AT&T, Verizon and Qwest

MCI, Sprint, and all of the rest

The NSA is comin’ to tap

The Cringemass Song

(sung to the tune of “The Christmas Song”) Ballmer’s throwing furniture again

Google does just what they please

Facebook wants to throw sheep at your friends

Before Yahoo turns them in to the Chinese

Everbody knows, Bit Torrent and encryption may

Help make Comcast’s network blue

The RIAA and the MPAA

Will find there’s no one left to sue

We know that Jobs is on his way

He’s bringing lots of iPhone goodies on his sleigh

And to the Apple blogs each Mac fanboy will cling

To see if he’ll stop and say, “Just one more thing…”

And so I’m offering this simple phrase

To geeks from one to 92

Thanks for reading this blog every day

Merry Christmas to you

Got more holiday cheer? Share it here or email it to Cringe. He’ll get it eventually, we hope.