Spider-Like Entities
Feast Upon Dignity
Ann Murray
From: "Ann Murray"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Is it trivial?
Date: Thursday, August 10, 2000 12:23 PM
I have to tell you something, because I feel about to explode with annoyance, and you will understand exactly why. I just finished writing a poem about the autumn coming on. In it, I used the term "last supper". The line is: "Spiders, their webs strung across rose bushes, prepare for the last supper." Word 97 took it upon itself to suggest as a correction: a capitalized "Last Supper."
It is insidious. Man! Is it trivial? Don't waste your valuable time answering this probably picayune question. Just think about the implications for a moment. I feel very sorely put upon by that. Et tu Microsoft?
Perhaps I should be using their opposed to the, but nevertheless...
Crazed Murray
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Ann Murray"
Subject: Re: Is it trivial?
Date: Thursday, August 10, 2000 1:07 PM
However, don't you sometimes feel as if the (capitalized) "Last Supper" might be hosted by voracious, spider-like entities feasting upon the dignity of us "bugs"?
Ah, but even that wicked atheist Bill Gates is a fair employer, not allowing himself to discriminate against the narrow-minded among us.
To answer your question, no. It's not trivial. It would only be trivial if it occurred so seldom as to be quaint. On the contrary, it is so common that most of us (even us atheists) have become numbed to it -- like from the venom of a spider seeking to paralyze us for later use.
Meanwhile, I still use WordPerfect for all my text processing (I do all my HTML formatting "by hand" in ANSI, and use NetScape 3 for code and character-set standardization, and to create links here and there). Though it may harken from central Utah (a modest town called Orem near BYU which, last time I checked, had one tavern), WP has never been guilty of letting you know -- even through such hints as you describe -- where they're really coming from. I mean, even the books of the New Testament flag as misspelled in the WP spell checker, as do most of the names of the books in the Book of Mormon.
Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
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