My good friend Laura e-mailed these lyrics to me. Tom Paxton would call this a "short shelf-life song."

Millennium 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 those electrons dance,
And maybe I'd be happy for a while.
But January made me shiver, when no electricity was delivered.
Bad news I'd collected, I couldn't get connected.
I can't remember back that day when I first learned of Y2K
But something touched me anyway, the day computers died.

CHO:
So, ...Bye, bye millennium pie,
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 last day I type
this will be the last day I type.

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 stationary's swell, but you can go to hell!
Oh, 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'... CHO:

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 pencil in their hand and a light they filled with kerosene
And some manuals they stole from you and me.

And while Bill Gates was looking pleased the government stole all his monopolies
The courtroom was adjourned, no verdict was returned.
While Apple was screamin' "I'm Y2K Free!"
PC engineers looked to them for creative steam
And wished they'd copied all of their dreams
The day computers died, we were singin'...CHO:

Intel inside no longer makes sense, the Mac G4's are heaven sent.
Q and A tried for a system crash with the tester on the sidelines in a cast.
Now the internet has room to move while mainframes played a marching tune
We all tried to log in, Oh, but we never could get in.
'Cause the year '1900' tried to take the field, and Windows refused to yield.
Do you recall what was revealed, the day computers died? We started singin'...CHO:

Now we're sharpening pencils and writing fast. Our hands are tired and the fingers won't last
With no eraser left to start again
Oh, this pencil feels funny in my hand. There is no click and there's no command-
How did our forefathers record the history of man?
So come on mouse be nimble, mouse be quick
Don't let my spreadsheet data stick.
'Cause data is the devil's only friend,
They walk through hell hand in hand.

And as I watched him on my screen no cursor did I see.
No angel born in hell, Could run that stupid shell
And as the ball climbed high into the night, to call the sacrificial New York City night
I saw Dick Clark laughing with delight, the day computers died.

The next day 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
The man there said the games there wouldn't play.
But a case of floppies sure makes a nice tray.

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, Websites, Yahoo and Lycos,
Every single one was toast, the day computers died. CHO:

Hope I did all the line breaks nearly right. I can't remember all of American Pie, so this doesn't scan perfectly for me.

Roger in Baltimore