April 10, 2003 | na



It's been almost 13 years since two Calvin folks, Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese, wrote the first poem for the internet, a poem composed entirely of computer keyboard characters.

It's been almost 13 years since two Calvin folks, Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese, wrote the first poem for the internet, a poem composed entirely of computer keyboard characters. It swept through cyberspace with amazing speed for a poem and still lives on in hundreds of website across the globe. In the interest of posterity we reproduce it now below on Calvin's website, assuming that the authors allow it to be so (if they don't, contact us!).
The poem is called "Waka Waka Bang Splat!" It goes like this:

< > ! * ' ' #
^ " ` $ $ -
! * = @ $ _
% * < > ~ # 4
& [ ] . > . /
| { , , SYSTEM HALTED


Read aloud it goes like this:

< > ! * ' ' #
Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,

^ " ` $ $ -
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,

! * = @ $ _
Bang splat equal at dollar underscore,

% * < > ~ # 4
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,

& [ ] . . /
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,

| { , , SYSTEM HALTED
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

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