It was a few months ago now that I had to kneel down and surrender to a standard, popular antivirus software package.

Even earlier, in October, I had procured a series of trojan horses so bad that my computer literally coughed, shut itself down, and then wouldn’t start up again, like a cranky child (or teen) who wants to sleep for five more minutes.

My laptop pulled the blanket over its head and, two weeks and a couple hundred bucks later, it was returned in its original state.

Another virus scare right after that prompted me to buy the damn software. The firewall, and my prayers, just weren’t enough to protect the machine.

Of course, when I downloaded and installed the software, it didn’t work. Well, it did work, but all too well — it protected my computer so much from outside viruses by DISALLOWING internet access.

I cannot claim this initial glitch to be a part of a subliminable moral-right conspiracy for the encouragement of abstinence, as opposed to safe internet…sex, because, after much fiddling, I got the program and the internet to work on my own about a week later. But, despite the fact that abstinence is practical, in sex and computers, let’s not ignore the curious metaphor.

My problem, and Latent Truth #4, starts with the seed-idea that there doesn’t seem to be a computer virus so potent that not even anti-virus software, or the government, can eventually stop it.

This is not a biological concern, this is technological. We may not know how to control anthrax in our system, but within machines we create, yes, we can indeed figure things out. By design, they work even more precisely according to our rational thinking.

So I’ll run this one up the flagpole:

Someone’s holding the marionette (don’t know who), but whoever it is, is in cahoots with certain hackers and pays them to create the viruses that offend us.

I’m not saying the viruses aren’t real, because people’s information does get stolen from online.

That reality perpetuates the fear, and also could be under-the-table payment for these certain hackers, who are paid to find loopholes in our systems so that:

1) the establishment — those with classified information — is kept on its toes and knows how to protect itself AND

2) the helpless, fearful, unknowing American public (right here) willingly hands over $50 a pop to obtain the software that tells THEM which viruses are harmful.

Anyone see Sneakers? It’s like that.

Oh, and the color scheme of this popular program is eerily similar to another such table — the Homeland *cough* Security *cough* Advisory *cough* System *hack*.