This morning I was following Twitter when Riptide Furse sent out a link to this site which showed a zen-like error message. I thought it was funny and sent a reply with a Haiku I had originally saw at a presentation by Ladd Skelly a few years ago.

Serious Error
All Shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen.Mind.Both are blank

Apparently Salon.com hosted a contest around 1998 looking for Haiku style error messages. They received entries from over 200 people with many people submitting multiple entries. The winners were:

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

– David Dixon

Everything is gone;
Your life’s work has been destroyed.
Squeeze trigger (yes/no)?

– David Carlson

Here’s an honorable mention

I’m sorry, there’s — um –
insufficient — what’s-it-called?
The term eludes me …

– Owen Mathews

If you want to see more check out the following links:

From Salon.com- The 21st Challenge
From StrangePlaces.net- Haiku Error Messages
From FunnyPoetry.com- Haiku Error Messages
From ariel.com- Haiku Error Messages