To Make You Smile - If Not, Maybe L.O.L

I Don't Do Windows

I finally did it; I bought a home computer. It can do budgets and banking. It can make maps and do my taxes. It can play CDs. It can speak Creole. Unfortunately, I can't use it.

I've had it for a month and can plug it in and turn it on. After that, I'm lost. I sit there waiting for it to do something magical on its own, as if it's the oracle at Delphi. The only thing I can do on that screen is use glass cleaner.

Here is what the screen says: "C:>." The colon, I sense, is telling me I am expected to do something, so I type in: "Help." Now the screen reads: "C:>Hepl." Oops. I am not good at this. I correct my spelling and hit the "Enter" key. The computer answers: "Bad command or file name." I get nervous and try something else. The computer answers: "Abort, Retry, Fail?"

I want to abort this whole mission. I am unworthy. I am a squashed skunk on the information superhighway. I only got this computer because my typewriter broke. These days, though, asking for a typewriter at an office products store is like going into the pharmacy and asking for leeches. That's how I came to spend $2500 on the world's most expensive typewriter.

The machine came with an instruction book the thickness of Roget's Thesaurus, only in smaller print. After reading it for ten minutes, I felt like Fabio leafing through Kierkegaard. So phoned the store and confessed my computer illiteracy.

They assured me that I could buy a video and that would take me step by step through my computer's operations. I'd do that, but don't know how to use my VCR.

--Tony Kornheiser, "Pumping Irony" (Random House)