Jewish World Review May 17, 2000/ 12 Iyar, 5760
Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder
Computers, OY VEY!
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THIS GUY WE KNOW in the neighborhood wanted to go to
Puerto Rico to visit his hub caps. He was proud to
announce to anybody in the delicatessen who would
listen that he bought his tickets on the Internet. Since this
sounded like a pretty good idea, we asked him to explain
to us just how he went about doing it.
It sounded like two
hours of huffing and puffing: press this key, then that;
compare where he wanted to go to where the airline
wanted to send him; line up the airport he wanted to land
in to where the airplane might have been going; the time
the airplane wanted to arrive to the time he would have
liked to have gotten there. Finally he got his ticket to
Puerto Rico. We decided we were not going to use the
Internet for our trip since we wanted to travel inside the
airplane.
After we listen to his saga, we asked him, "Didn't you
ever hear of the telephone? For ten cents you could have
gotten a human being on the telephone and had a
reasonable chance of going where you wanted to go."
By this time other customers had joined the conversation.
"Do you realize that you can speak to anybody in the
world? Just yesterday I had a conversation with a
mountain climber in Tibet." We thought, "Shmuck. Who
wants to have a conversation with a mountain climber in
Tibet? You go up in the elevator with somebody who
lives on the same floor and to avoid talking to him or
even looking at him you pretend you are so wrapped up
in a story in the newspaper that if Mrs. Roosevelt got on
the elevator in her garter belt you wouldn't look up. But
you are desperate to turn on the Internet to continue the
conversation with the mountain climber in Tibet.
People tout the fact that the computer has replaced the
newspaper. Well, maybe it has. But you have to be a
pretty poor businessman to pay three thousand dollars to
replace something that costs ten cents. Besides, I never
saw a computer that you can put under a dog when he
does his
business.
JWR contributors Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder need no introduction. Comment on this column by clicking here.
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© 2000, Jackie Mason & Raul Felder. This article first appeared in the American Spectator online
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