I am writing this from Sam’s computer.

The day after my last post, my six-month old computer quit working.

Initially, I was really annoyed, but my annoyance quickly turned to suspicion. My most recent post was critical of the U.S. government’s response to 9/11, and hours after the post went up, my computer went down. I began to think that maybe this wasn’t a coincidence.

It occurred to me that I’d looked up stuff when I was writing the post that might potentially raise a red flag. Not only had I Googled 9/11, but Iraq, South Tower, Baghdad (so tricky to spell!), and March 19, 2003. Did these Google searches signal to some nerdy government operative that I might be dangerously subversive? Several of my more paranoid friends thought I might be on to something. Maybe certain key words caused the computer to crash automatically. I had a number of people convinced that I was a target when it came up that my computer is a Dell. This put a swift end to the conspiracy theory.