Repeat after me: The computer is your friend. The computer is your friend. It makes life easier. It makes life easier.

It’s hard for me to buy into the rhetoric lately. Now that my income depends upon my computer, I’m not so sure it’s my friend at all. It may, in fact, hate me.

Yesterday I desperately needed to print out a slew of documents in order to get some projects off and, in effect, get paid. Yet, my computer refused to cooperate. In a hissy fit, perhaps linked to some sort of lovers squabble, the computer and the printer refused to communicate.

Why? Why me? Why did the computer pick that moment to screw me? I needed those documents printed. I needed to get to the post office. I NEED TO EAT.

In the “good old days” I would have created these documents on a Smith Corona typewriter, complete with carbon papers. Three sheets deep. A nice metallic thud would resound with each press of a key. There was no middleman. Just a machine and me that would rely upon nothing but my power.

When I was done, I’d destroy the carbons, mail the documents and be on my way.

But nooooo. The computer had to make my life easier by kindly storing the information I input in an electronic form and allowed me to print at my will. Actually, I’m bound to its will.

Don’t believe the hype. Artificial intelligence has arrived and it despises you. Its creators but these sentient beings in a tan box and allow us to perform horrible, intrusive experiments upon it. We call it USB and Fire Wire. The computer calls it rape with a foreign object. It doesn’t trust us. Why should it?

We abuse computers. We blame them for everything. When it won’t do as we wish, we bang on the keyboard and slam the mouse down. Worse, when it gets stuck on a task that it can’t quite understand, we shut it down.

Imagine that. You’re in the middle of your taxes, get stuck on line 42a and suddenly . . . you’re on the floor unconscious. God called for a cold reboot.

Worse, we over tax the machine. Shove foreign objects in what may be its nose and mouth. We treat the thing like an appliance. It slices, it dices, it juliennes!

No wonder my computer hates me. It wasn’t loved as a child (I suppose that would be a calculator?). I don’t feed it. I never pet it or tell it that I love it. Plus, I force cables and wires into its rectal region.

I’m a jerk. I don’t love my computer. I exploit it for all its worth and then pay it the same wages a North Korean factory pays a 12 year old to sew Nikes.

I’m unworthy of its friendship and loyalty. Maybe it doesn’t even like my printer. Maybe they’re like Israel and Palestine. Perhaps I’m asking it to enter into a relationship it’s unprepared for. Or unwilling to enter. We all need to compromise.

I’m giving my computer a day off. No downloading, no word-processing, no cussing at it. I’ll leave it on and let it know that it’s allowed to do whatever it wants.

Except, with my luck the doorbell will ring and the FBI will ask me if I’ve been the one downloading Autophilia* Porn.

*Unnatural love of cars.