Saint *Nix Song

[damont]

Well, I found this little ditty in punkwalrus's journal; he apparently ganked it from frostedmessiah. The attribution seemed odd, so I did a little digging. Then montuos did some more digging, and in fact found the posting where I first saw the song twenty years ago. The poster at the time worked at the Murray Hill (NJ) Bell Labs plant, a place my Dad often traveled to (he worked in Whippany and then Allentown) -- I fleetingly wondered whether Dad and Mr. Carey knew each other.

However, that's not the whole story. Further digging in the net.jokes archive revealed a post made one year earlier, which I present to you forthwith.


Newsgroups: net.jokes
From: carl...@masscomp.UUCP (Carlton Hommel)
Date: Tue, 4-Dec-84 22:59:40 EST
Local: Tues, Dec 4 1984 10:59 pm
Subject: Re: Computer Languages used for Human Communication

I saved this one from Raytheon Data Systems, before it went belly-up.
Bourne shell, we weren't allowed to use csh.

    From pjw Wed Dec 22 10:21:14 1982
    better !pout !cry
    better watchout
    lpr why
    santa claus <north pole >town

    cat /etc/passwd >list
    ncheck list
    ncheck list
    cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
    cat list | grep nice >giftlist
    santa claus <north pole > town

    who | grep sleeping
    who | grep awake
    who | grep bad || good
    for (goodness sake) {
                        be good
                        }