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| TRICKY DIGITS |
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| When my wife got a job working at home, we got a new computer. You can't buy a computer without the works these days, so we got it all -- the RAM, the ROM, the RMN. Richard M. Nixon, that is. |
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| Nixon didn't actually come with the computer. He came with the cheapo CD-ROM I bought. Skeptical as I am of high-tech, I couldn't resist a tiny little disc of history, with tiny little videos -- the Hindenburg blowing up, Pearl Harbor going down -- for $14.99 Just pop in the disc and presto -- there goes that Hindenburg again. But all technology carries a hidden cost, and in this case the cost was Nixon. |
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| Surfing through history, I hit the wrong button and there was Nixon on video. "My God!" I screamed. "Now Nixon's on our computers!" My wife came running. There he was giving his Checkers speech. "Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable, Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her she'd look good in -- " |
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| "Shut him off! Shut him off!" |
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| My wife said we weren't supposed to turn off our new computer in mid-operation. But who cared if we blew a ROM or two? This was Nixon! I hit the off button. The computer grumbled and the shadowy face was gone. We breathed again. |
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| For a week, I was afraid to go near the computer. What if Nixon was still in there? What if I turned it on and he was grinning that grin, saying "And our little girl Tricia, the 6-year-old, named it Checkers. . ." |
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| As if having Nixon in your computer wasn't bad enough, we had put the computer in the bedroom. Nixon in our bedroom! This was exactly what some of us feared when he was pardoned. You let him loose, we said, and in twenty years he'll be on our stamps, in our movies, in our bedrooms -- everywhere. How could I sleep knowing Nixon was just a few feet away? |
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| "You're as paranoid as he was," said my wife, for whom Watergate is a blip of history. "It's a CD-ROM. It's not him." |
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| Sure, it was Virtual Nixon, but that only made it worse. Nixon and computers work the same way. You let either one into your life and they take over. Soon they're answering your phone, making enemies lists, ordering hush money. Now there was this cancer growing in my bedroom. I had to get it out. |
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| Steeling myself, I turned on the computer. The machine made gastric noises. I waited. . . No Nixon. Then suddenly, my computer blurted out "Of course, we could get the money. But it would be wrong!" He was there, all right! Like some evil computer virus, Nixon had taken over my hard drive! |
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| I ejected the CD-ROM. As it came out, the computer said, "I am not a crook!" I pushed every button I could until the machine shut down, saying "Not a crook! Not a crook! Not a croooo. . ." |
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| You can get software for any occasion these days, programs to defrag your disk, download your DOS, debunk your driver. Would there be one to remove Nixon from your computer? I began searching software catalogs. As I'd expected, Nixon's latest comeback has him on computers nationwide, so we had a choice of De-Nixon software. We considered No-No Nixon 3.1. We looked at Nix Nixon Pro. We finally bought Microself's Tricky Diskette because it came with a program to erase any files mentioning Spiro Agnew. |
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| Nixon is gone and our long digital nightmare is over. But we aren't kidding ourselves. Any day now he'll be on our microwave, our toaster, maybe the washer. We'll come home one day and our answering machine will blurt out "and regardless of what they say about it, we're going to keep the dog." Once Nixon gets in your house, you're going to have him to kick around for a long time. |
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