Twas the Night Before ChristMOS
Or …What You Should ASCII Santa Clause for Christmas

A DoubleTake™ Pairody™ Parody
From the Poem by Clement C. Moore

‘Twas the night before X-MOS, when all through the house,
Not a computer was whirring, not even a “mouse”.
The “statements” were hung by the chimney firewall with care
In hopes that St. Gates soon would be there.
 

The sub-routines were “nested” all snug in their beds,
While “visions” of spyware danced in their (disk)heads;
And Unix with her mainframe, and I with my Lap-Top,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s Nap(ster).
 

When out on the hard-drive there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was wrong with the platter.
Away to the “Windows” I flew like an EPROM Flash,
Tore open the shutters and threaded up the cache.
 

The Spam on the Outlook made everything slow;
Gave the cluster of email to every micro,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature E-Bay and eight tiny Trojan Horses, so dear.
 

With a little old software “driver”, so lively, but, of course, ill
I knew in a moment it must be St. Bill.
More rapid than broadband his CRT “cursers” they came,
And he whistled, and shouted and “called” them by name!
 

“Now Hacker! Now, Vista! Now, Buffer and Shell!
On, Google,! On, Yahoo on!, On Monitor and Pixel!
To the top of the menu! To the top of the compatible!
Now MAC away! MAC away! MAC away all!”
 

As dry lasers that before printing fonts on-the-fly,
When they meet with a Server, “mount” to the sky;
So up to the browser  the “cursers” they flew,
With the ‘net full of tech-toys, Saint DOS, and Windows’ CPU
 

And then in a twinkling, I heard from a dupe,
The porting and processing of each little loop.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the gateway Saint Gates came with a bound.
 

He was dressed all in fir-mware, from his head to his Root,
And his clones were all tarnished with Upgrades that wouldn’t even boot. 
A bundle of software he had flung on, along with a fax
And he looked like a software peddliar (sic) just opening his pack-et.
 

His Icons – how they twinkled!  His displays, how merry!
His screens were like roses, his code like a cherry!
His droll little joystick was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as no-color video.
 

The stump of his pipe(line) he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a spreadsheet.
He had a broad case and a little portable “telly”
That shook when he laughed, like tremors in Silicon Valley.
 

He was chubby and plump, a right floppy old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his web,
Soon gave me to know I had everything to dread.
 

He spoke not a WORD, but went straight to his (Net)work,
And filled all the “stackings”; then turn-keyed with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his macro’s,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!
 

He sprang to his array, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down(time) of a peripheral.
But I heard him exclaim, “error” he drove out of sight,
“Merry X-MOS to all and to all a good night!”