If Dr. Seuss Did Technical Writing
excerpt from poem by Gene Ziegler
Cornell University


Here's an easy game to play.
Here's an easy thing to say:

If a packet hits a pocket
on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted
as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory
makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket
has an error to report!

If your cursor finds a menu item
followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon
puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted
'cause the index doesn't hash,
Then your situation's hopeless
and your system's gonna crash.

You can't say this?
What a shame, sir!
We'll find you
another game, sir.

If the label on the cable
on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected
to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel
on another protocol,
That's repeatedly rejected
by the printer down the hall,

And your screen is all distorted
by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window
are as wavy as a souse,
Then you might as well reboot
and make your exit with a bang,
'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, man,
that sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's
getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions
cause unnecessary RISC,
Then you have to flash your memory
and you'll want to RAM your ROM,
Quickly turn off your computer
and be sure to tell your mom.


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