Dealing with my demons

Right, so I’ll get straight to the point: MY COMPUTER HAS BEEN POSSESSED BY A DEMON!

And this demon is really fond of purple Times New Roman font justified. And I’m not down with that so, naturally, since I’m all kinds of sensible I went in search of a computer exorcist. Naturally.

After a bit of insightful reading I found out that – and I’m sure you’ll be appropriately shocked – according to a Reverend Jim Peasboro, it was only a matter of time until my computer got possessed.

My hands trembled as I read the following article:

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Your computer may be possessed by a demon, a leading minister warns.

“While the Computer Age has ushered in many advances, it has also opened yet another door through which Lucifer and his minions can enter and corrupt men’s souls,” said the Reverend Jim Peasboro, author of an upcoming book, The Devil in the Machine.

Demons are able to possess anything with a brain, from a chicken to a human being. And today’s thinking machines have enough space on their hard drives to accommodate Satan or his pals.

"Any PC built after 1985 has the storage capacity to house an evil spirit,” the minister confirmed.

The Savannah clergyman says he became aware of the problem from counseling churchgoers. “I learned that many members of my congregation became in touch with a dark force whenever they used their computers,” he said, “Decent, happily married family men were drawn irresistibly to pornographic websites and forced to witness unspeakable abominations. Housewives who had never expressed an impure thought were entering Internet chat rooms and found themselves spewing foul, debasing language they would never use normally. One woman wept as she confessed to me, ‘I feel when I’m on the computer as if someone else or something else just takes over.’ ”

The minister said he probed one such case, actually logging onto the parishioner’s computer himself. To his surprise, an artificial-intelligence program fired up — without him clicking it on.

“The program began talking directly to me, openly mocked me,” he recalls. “It typed out, ‘Preacher, you are a weakling and your God is a damn liar.’ ” Then the device went haywire and started printing out what looked like gobbledygook.

“I later had an expert in dead languages examine the text,” the minister said. “It turned out to be a stream of obscenities written in a 2,800-year-old Mesopotamian dialect!”

Since then, Rev. Peasboro has researched the problem further and uncovered alarming facts.

“I learned most of the youths involved in school shootings like the tragedy at Columbine were computer buffs,” he said. “I have no doubt that computer demons exerted an influence on them.”

The minister estimates that one in 10 computers in America now houses some type of evil spirit. Rev. Peasboro advises that if you suspect your computer is possessed, you consult a clergyman or, if the computer is still under warranty, take it in for servicing. He says, “Technicians can replace the hard drive and reinstall the software, getting rid of the wicked spirit permanently.”

Dudes, do you know what this means?! All I need to solve my problems is to learn how to say, “Hello there! Could you please replace my hard drive so that my computer demons don’t exert their influence on me? I’m afraid I might find myself in the centre of the street covered in purple glitter…and ONLY purple glitter.”

Then wink inappropriately.

Give me a couple of months. Also I have to get my hands on that book!