The Reluctant Virgin

"You've come a long way, baby," Virgil declares in his best Virginia Slims accent. He's referring of course to the new blog.

Virgil is the one alligator I know who is actually drawn to the high-amp, boisterous ravings on the Internet. He thinks Google, for instance, is the best thing since Wonder Bread and fairy godmothers.

I'm not a net monkey myself. I'm on the outside of all this, still waiting to come in. You can think of me as refusing the Annunciation, like those reluctant Virgins sometimes pictured in pre-Renaissance art.

"Oh no, not me!"

In fact, I'm one of those pathetic twits who still likes snail mail. I've only had a computer for seven years. Before that, you could have found me on the lecture circuit, delivering my anti-cyber manifesto, called "Delia's Gone." It bewailed the disappearance of the 3-d world into mind-numbing codes, bleeps, microchips, and databases.

"Delia's Gone." It's an old Johnny Cash song about a man who murders his wife, and then becomes overwehelmed by grief at the loss of what he most loved. One guru of artificial intelligence I read about at the time claimed he preferred virtual sunsets, because they are perfect and you can have one whenever you want. Another claimed that people who refuse to get involved with computers were only hurting themselves and their ability to survive, if they did not get with the program. It's a matter of sink or swim.

"Personally I just love swimming in cyberwater," says Virgil, relishing the sheer Kabukiness of its temperature. "But there are likely to be folks out there who'll think I'm not real either, right?"

If I were Dick Cheney, I'd have the perfect answer for that: "Hogwash!"