WHERE DO THEY GO?
 
 
 QUESTION:  Where do the characters go when I use my backspace or
    delete them on my PC?
 
 ANSWER: The characters go to different places, depending on whom
    you ask:
 
 
  * The Catholic Church's approach to characters:  The nice
    characters go to Heaven, where they are bathed in the light of
    happiness.  The naughty characters are punished for their sins.
    Naughty characters are those involved in the creation of naughty
    words, such as "breast," "sex" and "contraception."
 
 
  * The Buddhist explanation:  If a character has lived rightly,
    and its karma is good, then after it has been deleted it will be
    reincarnated as a different, higher character.  Those funny
    characters above the numbers on your keyboard will become
    numbers, numbers will become letters, and lower-case letters will
    become upper-case.
 
 
  * The 20th-century bitter cynical nihilist explanation:  Who
    cares? It doesn't really matter if they're on the page, deleted,
    undeleted, underlined, etc.  It's all the same.
 
 
  * The Mac user's explanation:  All the characters written on a
    PC and then deleted go straight to PC hell.  If you're using a
    PC, you can probably see the deleted characters, because you're
    in PC hell also.
 
 
  * Stephen King's explanation:  Every time you hit the (Del) key
    you unleash a tiny monster inside the cursor, who tears the poor
    unsuspecting characters to shreds, drinks their blood, then eats
    them, bones and all. Hah, hah, hah!
 
 
  * Dave Barry's explanation:  The deleted characters are shipped
    to Battle Creek, Michigan, where they're made into Pop-Tart
    filling; this explains why Pop-Tarts are so flammable, while
    cheap imitations are not flammable. I'm not making this up.
 
 
  * IBM's explanation:  The characters are not real.  They exist
    only on the screen when they are needed, as concepts, so to
    delete them is merely to de-conceptualize them.  Get a life.
 
 
  * PETA's (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)
    explanation:  You've been DELETING them???  Can't you hear them
    SCREAMING???  Why don't you go CLUB some BABY SEALS while wearing
    a MINK, you pig!!!!