Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 22, 1995                   TAG: 9503230003
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SOMETHING ABOUT ME AND A MOUSE JUST DOESN'T CLICK

We seasoned experts know that a mouse is device from hell that points arrows at little boxes on your computer screen.

I know a lot of computer users get along real well with their mice. That's because they have good nerves and the coordination of a wide receiver. They can put those arrows where they're supposed to go.

You can use this new device right there on the keyboard of your computer. That way you can avoid the life-threatening anger you sometimes get when you try to move your average mouse around on its pad. At least, I think that's the way it works.

With your average mouse, you try to put the arrow on the right box without interrupting your work by going to the emergency room with chest pains. When this done, you have to push down on your mouse in an exercise we computer veterans know as "clicking."

That is to say that if you want to get into the word-processing section of your computer, you may have to click on a little box with a tiny typewriter in it to get something called WriteEmUpGood.

If you are a little nervous from too much coffee, you may accidentally click on something called MegaBusiness. This makes all these funny charts, and things show up on the screen, and this makes you want to cry your eyes out.

Sometimes, innocent clicking will make your machine quack at you, and this instantly instills in the user the desire to kill or maim.

(Your average telephone makes a noise when it rings that has a similar effect. But let's not get into a discussion here of the times now gone when phones rang honestly and clearly and didn't burble. And song lyrics like ``Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven/ 'Cause My Mother's There" made sense.)

I hope this new machine makes a better life for all Americans.

Everyone wants to avoid quacking machines and sudden urges to murder or maim. But people still in the Stone Age of computer technology will have to make do.

I have to say that my old Underwood wireless typewriter never quacked at me. If it had, I'd have hit it with one of those really heavy phones we used to have.