The web site you seek
Lies beyond our perception
But others await

These three are certain:
Death, taxes, and site not found.
You, victim of one.

Ephemeral site.
I am the Blue Screen of Death
No one hears your screams.

Errors have occured.
We won't tell you where or why.
Lazy programmers.

Login incorrect.
Only perfect spellers may
Enter this system.

Oops, I have just crashed
You will have to restart me
And you lost your work

I looked at your disk
but there is nothing on it.
Want to reformat?

Hunger, grown in me,
making me ravenous, so
I ate your rough draft.

error 1:
Too many syllables

error 2:
Too few syllables

error 3:
What is it about 5-7-5 that you don't understand, punk?

error 4:
Ok, that's just dumb. Try again.

error 16:
Aren't these things supposed to be seasonal?

error 22:
You can be poetic, and you can be funny, but you can't pick your friends' noses!

error 45:
If that was you trying to be deep, i just don't know what to say.

error 100:
Thanks for the effort. We received many many quality submissions, so yours is definitely not going to make the compilation. Sorry.

Ahh... but do you have any haiku error messages in haiku form?

to make a haiku
five syllables are needed
and you have too few


to make a haiku
five syllables are needed
you have too many


i read your haiku
it was incredibly bad
it made me vomit


you're not a poet
please return to your major
in number theory

I admit I certainly did not make these up, but they are very funny.


In Japan, computers have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with their own Japanese haiku poetry:

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

The Web site you seek
Can not be located but
Countless more exist

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.

ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask way too much.

Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that.

First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.

With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.

The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.

Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down

A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.

Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.

Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

rain, drifting gently
through youthful maple blossom
has fried your hard drive
To have no errors
Would be life without meaning
No struggle, no joy

Seeing my great fault
Through darkening dead servers
I begin again

Visit the home page
It can't be done easily
When the site is down.

Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The server is down

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and retry.
Server shall return.

First snow, then silence
This expensive server dies
So beautifully.

The code was willing,
It considered your request
But the chips were weak.

Error reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.

(From NetPositive, the quirky but delightful default web browser for BeOS)
This is, of course, pure fiction.

The real Japanese Windows has perfectly regular error messages; of course, they are in Japanese, but just being able to read katakana (and being good at the katakana guessing game) already enables you to decipher half of them, since most computer terms are loandwords from English.

What's really evil is when you install Japanese software on a non-Japanese Windows, as it simply won't display most menus correctly, even when you install software like NJWin that makes Windows display Japanese characters.

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