My computer is incredible. I could go into statistics—giganertz, hard and soft drive space, REM…. you know the deal. But you can just trust me on this. It’s the fastest, smartest, most eerily intelligent computer I have ever seen. It just plain computes like none other.

But I don’t trust it. Because it hates me.

You don’t believe me. You ask, in that smarmy yeah-I-have-a-computer-too voice, “You know that computers can’t hate people, right?” And I reply, have you ever finished a brilliant ten-week eight-page term paper on the Cuban Missile Crisis, gone out for a pizza break, come back, printed the paper, turned it in, and received a D-, a 62 to be exact, because somehow every use of the word “missile” had been replaced by the word “pants”? Have you ever had to explain to your teacher that you know it wasn’t a Pants Crisis and that JFK wasn’t on the verge of arming his pants? If that had happened to you, you wouldn’t question the malice in my computer’s dark heart. And what’s worse—it rarely works alone.

You see, my printer used to work like a charm, in that I didn’t know how it worked but it probably had something to do with the Irish. But then I replaced my trusty Pentium II with this new steed, and any residual leprechauns were gone. You see, it’s not just a printer. It’s a fancy OfficeRocket that can copy, fax, print, and dispense Quackums snacks at the push of a button. Now that it’s gotten to know my new computer, it can do many more interesting things, such as faxing a picture of three twenty-dollar bills with the same serial number to the closest office of the FBI and dispensing Quackums snacks containing sharpened paperclips to the neighbor’s six-year-old when I bragged about its snack-making capabilities. Ha, ha, ha! How clever! On the bright side, I’ve developed a great deal of respect for the FBI’s Criminal Investigations Department and the great American tradition of the insanity defense.

I know what you’re thinking—why don’t I just get a different computer? Well, I can’t afford it now that my mom cut off my allowance and confiscated my savings. All this because she received an email confession from my account describing in great detail how I earned said savings selling crack, smack, hash, and at times my body on the street downtown. She even sent me to a counselor once to help me deal with my “secret attraction to farm animals” and my “love of well-oiled Swedish hats”. That didn’t work out too well, because when my mom walked in his office she screamed and told the man to remove his stuffed animals before I got violent. You can see there’s been a bit of a problem with trust between my mother and I. I don’t know what she’ll do if she sees a Swedish hat, but it might involve the straitjacket behind the couch. I don’t think that was there before.

And yes, I’ve considered selling. Matter of fact, I’ve tried numerous times to trade mine for an older computer, but my computer hates me so much that it just doesn’t want to leave. How do I know? Imagine this. You’re showing someone what a great computer you’ve got—the flat-screen monitor, the expensive speakers, the optical mouse that squeaks when it detects the slightest aroma of cheese, and finally you press the start button. This is where my computer demonstrates its finest improvisational satire. It has gone from demonstrating its impressive ability to copy and paste my head onto pictures of full-bodied women (or sometimes farm animals) to playing an audio “quote” of a realistic impersonation of my voice saying “I really like your mother’s hat. Could it be… Swedish?” Keep imagining. Now you’re trying to persuade the person to leave your house without calling the police. And once again, you’re stuck with the machine. Dude, I should’ve gotten a Dell.

Recently I’ve been trying to understand why it hates me so much. I’ve narrowed my list of possible reasons down to my archived third grade “I love my mother” haikus or my country-western rap remix mp3s, or maybe even my little sister’s Fluffy the Bunny screensaver. But you never know. I’m hoping it’s just one of those phases and that it’ll grow out of it soon, that it’s almost a mature, grown-up PC. It may not seem likely, but no one can predict the future. The story’s never finished, and that’s why I titled this article “INSERT TITLE HERE.”