QUESTION: Where do the characters go when I use my backspace or delete them on my PC?

[crimsonblue]

ANSWER: The characters go to different places, depending on whom you ask:

* The Catholic Church's approach to characters: The nice characters go to Heaven, where they are bathed in the light of happiness. The naughty characters are punished for their sins. Naughty characters are those involved in the creation of naughty words, such as "breast," "sex" and contraception."

* The Buddhist explanation: If a character has lived rightly, and its karma is good, then after it has been deleted it will be reincarnated as a different, higher character. Those funny characters above the numbers on your keyboard will become numbers, numbers will become letters, and lower-case letters will become upper-case.

* The 20th-century bitter cynical nihilist explanation: Who cares? It doesn't really matter if they're on the page, deleted, undeleted, underlined, etc. It's all the same.

* The Mac user's explanation: All the characters written on a PC and then deleted go to straight to PC hell. If you're using a PC, you can probably see the deleted characters, because you're in PC hell also.

* Stephen King's explanation: Every time you hit the (Del) key you unleash a tiny monster inside the cursor, who tears the poor unsuspecting characters to shreds, drinks their blood, then eats them, bones and all. Hah, hah, hah!

* Dave Barry's explanation: The deleted characters are shipped to Battle Creek, Michigan, where they're made into Pop-Tart filling; this explains why Pop-Tarts are so flammable, while cheap imitations are not flammable. I'm not making this up.

* IBM's explanation: The characters are not real. They exist only on the screen when they are needed, as concepts, so to delete them is merely to de-conceptualize them. Get a life.

* PETA's (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) explanation: You've been DELETING them??? Can't you hear them SCREAMING??? Why don't you go CLUB some BABY SEALS while wearing a MINK, you pig!!!!

[JVS]

1. They get sent to the CIA to let them know what you were tyyping

I dare not delete that extra "y", he'll rat me out if I send him there.

[Bucky]

2. Would Peta really call someone a pig as an insult?

you still got a lol from me, altho I didn't actually laugh out loud. The side of my mouth did do a little Tilda Swinton type of half smirk. That's the real world version of a lol.

[ThomCat]

3. This is wonderful!

I hope this gets circulated around the net. This is definitely far more funny than half the schlock I see getting forwarded around.

:applause:

When I see this again (and I'm sure I will) I'm going to make note of how often I see it, and how often I see other people claiming they authored it. :)

[YankeyMCC]

4. Actually the IBM explaination is not far from the Zen Buddist explaination

All characters exist throughout space and time you're perception of them appearing on the screen or not is merely your vision and thoughts reacting to the false reality of the world. But in order to be of use to others and do good you have to stay involved in that reality...so you need to pay attention to the appearance or non-appearance of the character but "where it is" when it isn't appearing on the screen is the same as 'where it is' when it is there on the page. ;)

[OffWithTheirHeads]

5. NO Silly! They go to that place where all the missing socks hide

I'm pretty sure the socks use the dryer vent as an escape route but that's just because they don't know about the internet tubes yet.

[Jamastiene]

6. They hide offscreen and become your next typo.

:P