Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

This is a rather sensitive matter and I don't quite know how to account for it, but I have become convinced, mainly because there is no other rational explanation, that my computer has anti-Semitic tendencies. When I broached this to my computer guru, who is Microsoft Certified, he pooh-poohed the idea. He told me that not only was it not possible, but that Bill Gates had, to his certain knowledge, many Jewish friends.

And yet the doubt lingers. My computer crashes, without fail, on the eve of every important Jewish Holiday, making it impossible for me to pretend that I'm facing a set of crucial deadlines and therefor have no time for Temple. And in those rare instances when I do manage to get it up and running, the momser makes me pay a price.

One time I was putting the finishing touches on a family memoir for a Jewish Heritage writing competition when my computer decided to change my name from Meister to Mister where ever it appeared in the text. An especially irksome problem when I was trying to refer to my father as Mister Meister. After automatically deleting the "e" from my last name, the cyber-monster had the audacity to chastise me for being redundant.

Another time the machine would not let me hyphenate Abramo-wich from one line to the next. It kept insisting that "wich" ought to be which or witch, and to take my pick. (This time I out foxed the machine by clever editing; I deleted some extraneous verbiage until Abramowich fit on one line.)

I tried to reach my rabbi and alert her to this potential problem, but her office told me she wouldn't be in the rest of the week. She's attending a computer seminar.

The War Effort: I got a tip from an unconfirmed source that the American Civil Liberties Union is gearing up for a role in the John Walker case. Seems that the ACLU has learned that Mr. Walker, that nut job from California who ran off to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban, has been denied access to dental floss since being captured.

While I don't think that his loss of flossing rights will put a serious dent in the government's case, we might have to wait and see how many Hollywood committees are formed in Jihad-Johnny's behalf.

Questions are being raised as to why the Taliban and al Qaeda "detainees" are being held at our Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, instead of right here in the good old U. S .of A. The answer is simple: no diversity! Our Constitution, as interpreted by The New York Times, mandates that all prisons in America must be ethnically diverse. Clearly, what is going on at Guantanamo is a case of racial profiling by the Pentagon, which, luckily for us, is not against the law in Cuba.

And the situation with Richard Reid, that failed sneaker bomber, is taking some weird twists and turns. Since the madman could not set his sneaker on fire, there has been talk that some advertising agencies feel this could be a one-in-a-million endorsement opportunity for Nike or Adidas. I'm not so sure. I still think any sneaker company would be better off (and safer) with Michael Jordan, although Dr. Scholl's might be another story.�