MY COMPUTER has somewhat ignominiously died. I received no warning, no request to dial 9-1-1, no heaving death rattle was emitted, nor did a monotonous beep-beep-beep suddenly lapse into a straight line beeeeep. One moment it was alive; the next it went black. I called the doctor (my computer savvy daughter) but by then it was too late; the hard drive had taken the software and departed for the Great Eternal Everlasting Ktaadn (GEEK) in the sky.

These days, living without a computer can be a shock to one's system. That is not to say that it is necessarily a bad thing. I actually wrote this with an ink pen later to be typed and posted on my office computer. Beyond the simple pleasure of actually WRITING, with the computer down I actually spent a morning READING. No browsing of websites, no Scrabble against the Pogo computer, no sending or receiving of pointless email. It's as if I've involuntarily traveled back in time to a technologically simpler day.

Yet -- okay I admit -- the withdrawal symptoms remind me of when I stopped smoking cigarettes in 1977. My palms are slightly clammy, my left eye has developed a tic, and I have an urgent desire to punch a Dell salesman in the nose.

Which is worse: computer shopping or clothes shopping?