$ perl -Mstrict -e 'say $x'
Global symbol "$x" requires explicit package name (did you forget to declare "my $x"?) at -e line 1.
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.
With the addition of `Coy` module [1]:
$ perl -Mstrict -MCoy -e 'say $x'
-----
Gautama dies near
a monastry. Two woodpeckers
fly over the lake.
-----
Or Wunt's commentary...
Global symbol "$x" requires explicit package name (did you
forget to declare "my $x"?)
(Analects of -e: line 1.
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation
errors.)
Juniper networking equipment has a hidden CLI command that spits out a nerdy or sleep deprived haiku:
E.G
Juniper> show version and haiku;
IS-IS Screams,
BGP peer flapping;
I want my mommy!
TTL down one
the end nearer with each hop
little packet, poof.
Amazing photons
Carry our data worldwide
Never seem to stop
My session is dead:
Forgot to commit confirm.
Where are my car keys?
For some reason, it’s hard to find all of them compiled in one place. I think it changes over time depending on the version of JUNOS and the hardware platform.
It was always a little uplifting when you had an incident occurring and you needed a little something—anything—to keep you going (:
What is it with Haiku? The whole 5-7-5 structure just doesn't ring true with me at all. I mean, I get that it is enigmatic, but it just seems like it's enigmatic purely by virtue of not having any other redeeming quality.
As a (sparsely) published poet, I find most English Haiku not particularly inspiring. There may be an aesthetic quality in Japanese Haiku that does not happen when using other languages, or there just may be a large body of bad Japanese Haiku that non-native speakers never learn about.
I believe that the reasons that attract mediocre poets to Haiku are:
* They follow a formula that is easy to understand and reproduce.
* They are short.
So it's reasonably easy to produce something that fits the form, and mediocre poets will leave it at that and not reflect on whether the result is any good.
In general, I think beginning poets prefer somewhat more formal poetry, but even a Sonnet takes a bit of effort, and something like a Villanelle or a Sestina gets quite hard already.
Comparing what is described in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku with what I usually read in "Haiku'ified" content (such as these error messages), it doesn't surprise me that I also found most Haikus largely pointless. On top of the 17 syllables aspect, "good" Haikus seem to involve:
- Some form of contrast, tension or juxtaposition (see "cutting word").
- Your mind having to "color in" the scene around the written words (see "metonym"), leaving you with deeper imagery.
- Importantly, they are not just a dull sentence condensed to 17 syllables with line breaks added.
But I'm probably as far from an expert on this as you could be. I just wanted to share my realization that most Haikus you encounter on the internet are probably missing key elements compared to "real" poetic ones, thus making the format seem bland.
This reminds me how some Russian poets in the year 2000 decided that as a replacement to the elements of Haiku lost during an adaptation they need to create a new dimension to it, and so Huiku (Хуйку, from the Russian swear word хуй (dick)) was made which additionally requires first letters of every line to combine into a Russian cursing.
Сижу один под кустом,
Рот открыл в изумленье.
Удивительно лес красив.
Which literally translates into "I am sitting alone under a bush, My mouth is open in awe. The forest is amazingly beautiful." and first letters of each line combine into "сру" which means "I am shitting".
May be similar idea can be used for English. Sadly English has way less three letter swear words than Russian.
This is particularly good. Apart from the already mentioned seasonal references, a common element is that the thirst two lines should seem completely unrelated and the third one provides synthesis/closure.
Of course you could have dozens of mac users working from home during the crisis, where a minor version VPN update requires an os upgrade but if you upgrade the os some other software won't work.
Some Linux distros are like that too. The users are just better at figuring out why. (I recall updating Ubuntu breaking DNS and killing my internet, and tracking down the issue to needing a new symlink after a service was changed or something like that)
These are lovely and lighthearted with a 5-7-5 structure, but for anyone interested in how English might actually express the spirit and content and structure of haiku, here's a nice article.[1] Or, of course, WP as a jumping off point.[2]
But long live creativity in constrained form, whatever the label!
Well, I'm not a poetry buff either, but my superficial understanding is that a haiku is characterized by humour and ambiguity, so that it would leave you contemplating multiple possible senses, perhaps each one funnier or more intriguing than the next. And perhaps there would be some tension in understanding which meaning would be most intended, as it were. "...expressing much and suggesting more in the fewest possible words." (Britannica) I think a lot of contemporary haiku express little and suggest nothing.
Nothing wrong with the page or the writing there, I'm only saying that as the word is increasingly used in a more superficial way as I think is the case here, the historical form of poetry known as haiku has no name of its own any more, which becomes a problem especially in the age of search engines where present usage is all that matters.
