ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

An alternative view of the meaning of peace and goodwill at Christmas...

The Night Before e-Christmas

© David Campbell, 2009 (with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
not a PC was stirring, not even a mouse;
the modems were silent, the printers all still,
this internet season of joy and goodwill.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds
while visions of Game Boys danced in their heads;
or maybe an Xbox or PlayStation 3,
Tomb Raider, Killzone, or Nintendo Wii.

Then all of a sudden the screen sprang to life,
I woke in an instant, and so did my wife.
Away to the keyboard I flew in a flash
to hit the return key, afraid all would crash.
I needn't have worried, I just had to click
the little red icon and there was St Nick,
all laughing and jolly, his arms open wide...
"Come in to my e-store, you're welcome!" he cried.

He put down his pipe, placed his hands on his tum...
"How lovely to see you!" he shouted. "Please come,
I've Apple and Windows, Fujitsu, Novell,
plus Epson and Canon, Toshiba, Intel."
In the blink of an eye he vanished from sight,
the screen filled with goodies, all shiny and bright:
laptops and notebooks…computers galore…
and a hectoring voice that cried: "Wait...there's more!

There’s Microsoft, Macintosh, Pentium 4,
and Lotus and Linux and oh so much more!
There’s zip drives and modems and CD ROMS too,
plus Firefox and Google, Explorer, Yahoo.
It's really so easy, so let's all rejoice...
just point at the icon and click on your choice!
Your credit card number is all that I need...
we'll wrap it and pack it and send it with speed!"

We sat in amazement and stared at the scene
as images darted and danced on the screen,
all bleeping and blinking and buzzing with glee...
a cyberspace nightmare, a cacophony!
I glanced at my wife just as she shook her head
and hammered the keyboard...the screen went quite dead
as all of the pixels just faded from sight,
and glorious silence enveloped the night.

We sat in the darkness, a shared memory
of the stockings we'd hung, the gifts near our tree;
the biscuits left ready as Santa sped by,
the grass for the reindeer to help them to fly.
We spoke not a word, but went all round the house,
unplugged all the cables and banished each mouse.
Then with thoughts of the peace that now lay ahead
we quietly tiptoed our way back to bed.

The shopping trip of the future hey David. Much enjoyed.

Heather

Good work, David!

G'day David,

Lets hope it never becomes quite that bad. I can't say too much about internet shopping because it has draged my hubbie into the computer age. He buys and sells on e-bay and gets all his fishing gear at reduced rates. He has made a little here and there (she says smiling in case the tax man is watching_)

Even has a bookmark on the weather bureau so he can know when to go fishing. Like everything else, it is a only tool. It is how we use it that is important.

..love this David, well done eh!..ho! ho! ho!

and as it is almost upon us again and there's not a great deal going happening on the site I thought to myself now here's a lovely christmas poem hiding away in the corner, lets share it again

An apt modern view of a cultural icon.

Well said David and that was back in 2010

Who said things change


Bob

You're right, Bob, things don't change much...only the names. I wrote the original of this for The Age back in 2000 and updated it in 2009. There was no Xbox or Wii 13 years ago, and nor had we heard of Google or Firefox. But the clamour for electronic gizmos will be as great as ever this Christmas and any further update would probably have to include reference to iPads, apps, and the Android operating system. Technology's moving much faster than I am these days!

Cheers
David

Love it David, very 'now'. Looking forward to next years rollout of - v.3? ....