Exactly how old are you? 

- Curious in Canton 

I stopped counting at 98, because in another couple of years I would have gotten one of those birthday cards they send out from the White House, and here at the Home that's the kiss of death. 'Card today, gone tomorrow,' is what we say. Then you have to deal with Barbara Walters or Edward R. Murrow or somebody poking cameras in your face and asking you how it feels to be a hundred years old. I'd rather lie low. It's safer that way.

What was life like during the early days of the Internet? 

- Historian from Houston

It was plain awful. We didn't have electricity for the longest time in the hills of Arkansas, which made it even more difficult. I remember when Pa brought home our first computer. He claimed it fell off the back of a wagon. It was a steam-powered Babbage 1900, and today I'm sure you'd turn your nose up at it, but back then it was the greatest thing since Purina made Hog Chow. 

In order to make an Internet connection we had to turn the crank on the side about fifty times. This would wake up our main operator, Blind Tom, down in the valley, who would patch us through to the main trunk lines down at the depot. From there the message would be put on a train and sent freight collect to the final destination. It was slow, but it sure was fun!

What form of address do I use when sending a letter to the President?

- Political in Pasadena

If it's a formal letter, "The Honorable Mister Justice William Pookie Clinton, Esquire" should do the trick. If it's informal, a simple "Dear Bill and Monica," works fine.

I want to caution everyone right here and now that politics should never be discussed on the Internet, as it can be hazardous to your health. If you call that nice Newt boy a slime-sucking polecat, it's likely to cause you to get a lot of badly-spelled letters from farm persons who own considerable artillery and have just whole warehouses packed full of fertilizer ticking away like a time bomb. If you do make a political comment of any kind, soak your mail for the next couple of weeks, send back all packages, and if a Ryder truck parks in front of your door, move to another state.

I'm planning on sending some e-mail to members of British royalty. Are there special forms of salutation to be used? 

- Tory in Tennessee

They used to make a great fuss about this in etiquette books around the turn of the last century -when should you say Your Royal Highness and when you should say Your Majesty, and frippery like that. But British royalty being what it is these days, almost any form of address will do. For instance, both Charlie and Andy, the Crown Princes, respond well to something like, "Hey, sailor, new in town?" whereas Fergie is still attracted by the old "What's your sign, babe?" 

Also remember to put the letter "u" into a lot of places where it doesn't belong, like in color, and to spell certain other words like tire and center wrong deliberately, just to make them feel comfortable. They've never quite gotten the hang of English, even though I believe television was introduced in Britain in the 1980s, and they should be talking better fairly soon.

Dear Aunt Nettie,

How can I upgrade my memory?

--Clueless in Cleveland

You're asking ME? Everything after Pearl Harbor is a blur, dearie. One of the big problems with getting old is that your memory access times start getting longer and longer. You never really forget anything, it just takes more and more time to find what you're looking for. Why, just this morning I finally remembered the name of the darling little hat store in New Orleans that Annabelle Fishkin had been asking me about. So I got on the phone to call her and her granddaughter said that she had gone to her final reward back in 1987. The ingratitude of some people!

There's a dear old fossil in the men's ward here at the Home who can tell you the batting lineup for the 1928 World Series but can't recall if he's wearing pants or not. Not that it matters at his age.

The other problem is that as you get older you kind of switch over from nice Rigidly Ordered Memory (ROM) to Randomly Accessed Memory (RAM). The first kind is what we've depended on all our lives, where Thursday comes after Wednesday and 1970 is later than 1950. The second kind just feeds in whatever it comes across, which can be embarrassing like the time in the barn when Woodrow Wilson we listened to the Ink Spots so Lucky Lindy had the Spanish-American aeroplane will not be anything but fear itself and Tom Mix, long distance operator. Thankfully this doesn't cabbage to me yet.

What do you think about child pornography on the Internet? 

- Loveless in Leavenworth

I really didn’t know how to answer this one, so I asked my eight-year-old great-great-great-grandniece Bimbette during one of her (infrequent) visits to me here at the Home. She said it would depend a lot on how much she was offered, which was just the sort of answer you’d expect from someone who dresses like that to go to a public mall. I don’t know what her mother is thinking of. I suspect Bimbette has already been around the back of the barn, if you catch my meaning.

But I honestly think that what we really have to keep off the Internet is Granny Porn. This is far more insidious and dangerous to the species. Now, speaking personally, I used to have a set of shanks and a front porch that caused men to pop their toppers at a clean hundred yards distance, but today, anyone who caught a glimpse of me in the buff would go blind or insane. You put a couple of centerfolds from the American Journal of Geriatrics up on the 'Net, and you’d be able to hear gent’s equipment sucking back so far up their insides they’d be singing soprano in the church choir. So help fight Granny Porn and Save the Males! Send your generous contributions to nettie@dearauntnettie.com and I will put them to good use.

Dear Aunt Nettie,

I respect your wisdom and your willingness to offer it. I have several related questions, which you can answer at your leisure, of course. Lately, whenever I drive somewhere and I'm in a hurry, you seem to be the driver just ahead of me. How do you do that? How do you see over the dashboard? When did the custom of "signal right, turn left" first begin? Also, I have noticed that there seem to be two competing schools of thought among drivers of your age. These might be best described by bumper stickers:

a) "I brake for everything"

b) "I brake for nothing"

Could you please explain the origins, development and current status of these competing approaches to the road? Is there any significance in your evident decision to alternate between these two methods?

signed (with the utmost respect, of course),

"that guy who just likes the sound of his horn"

Land sakes, becoming a millionaire in this day and age is as easy as falling off a log.  First, invest a billion dollars in an Internet company.  It doesn't matter which one -- any Internet company will do just fine.  Now come back in six months and you'll discover you're a millionaire! Simple as pie.  Want some advice on becoming a thousandaire?  Come back in a year.

Dear Aunt Nettie,

What do the letters "URL" stand for? My cousin Earl says it's his name, but why would his name be all over the Internet, I ask you? He can't read!

-- Gullible in Gulf Breeze

Your cousin Earl is as full of it as a double-decker outhouse. URL, as everybody knows, stands for Unidentified Respondent Looker-upper. Let's say you spend a lot of time in a newsgroup, like alt.binaries.erotica.japan.fetish.cub-scouts.paddle.spam.pantyhose.godzilla.bubblegum.lard.handcuffs. squid.marie-osmond. Then all of a sudden one day you start getting mysterious unsigned e-mails redirected from Norway offering you some real "hot stuff" for a couple of hundred in unmarked kroner.

Now most folks would just sit there wondering what on earth a "kroner" was. But if you used the Unidentified Respondent Looker-upper (URL) that comes free with every copy of CPM 2.35, you'd be able to instantly identify the origin of that e-mail. If it returned an answer like "Olaf's Haus uf Lust," you'd be wise to steer clear of it, because it's obvious a front for the Southern Baptist Convention.

But if it returned an answer with fbi.gov in it, why then you could be assured that it had been thoroughly investigated and approved by the United States government, and you could send in your money without a second thought.

You might also want to check out the fbi chat room if you're feeling lonely. Apparently all the agents there are 14-year-old blonde exhibitionists. Strike up a conversation and you might get lucky.

Where is my hard drive and why do I need one?

--Floppy in Florida

Now this note represents just the tip of a very dangerous iceberg I've come to notice. Time was when there was no need to explain to a lad about his hard drive-- it was just something that happened. One day he'd be reading "The Youth's Companion" and collecting stamps and the next day you couldn't trust him around the better-looking sheep. I blame it all on vegetarianism and that Boy George fellow. What with all this male hugging and earrings and hair dye and I don't know whatall, it's no wonder a young man doesn't know the opposite sex from a hole in the ground these days.


I must say in all honesty, however, that there's been one big change in the attitude of many of the males of the species. Back when I was a girl men had to be strong and dominant and above all humorless. Now it seems that half the young men I meet tell me how gay they are. That's certainly an improvement.

Oh, you starry-eyed young people! Always thinking you can overcome society's laws and traditions.

I've seen so many youngsters start down this primrose path, only to come to ruin when they realize the full extent of the differences between them. It's worse in your kind of situation, when the man has the PC and the woman the Mac.

How are you going to explain to her what crashes are, or lockups, freezes and blue screens? Can a sweet young thing ever comprehend the PC male's need for updates, upgrades and patches and fixes? Will she realize her error when she finds out that you consider it perfectly normal to restart half a dozen times a day? Will she understand when you topple over with zero free system resources? Will she be scandalized the first time she sees you using the obscene three-fingered gesture to invoke CTRL-ALT-DEL? And what about the physical differences? What will she think of the second button on your mouse-- or the wheel, for heaven's sake!

But the greatest tragedy of all is if there are children. Unable to find peace at home, many of these poor tykes are driven into the streets, where they become easy marks for dealers in Linux, BeOS or other immoral systems and creeds.

Remember what the Good Book says: "Someday the lion will lie down with the lamb in peace, but until then, haul ass, lambchop."

Dear Aunt Nettie,

My boyfriend Grover and I were thinking about getting married on the Internet. Has this ever been done before? 

- Betrothed in Birmingham

Land sakes, yes! You can't have any sort of new technology without people wanting to get married on it. Let somebody invent a steam locomotive or an airship and the next thing you know it's all draped in crepe paper and dragging tin cans behind it. That's the American way!

My cousin Grundig was the first person married by telegraph, and I had a niece that was married over wireless radio when it first came out.

Grundig was a nice enough boy, but he was too far ahead of his time. He was what we used to call an "early adoptee," back in the days of orphanages. He set up the very first Morse Code Theater, thinking he could make a bundle by introducing culture to the new frontier by way of the telegraph. His first production was "Romeo and Juliet," which took him 14 hours to send, since he wasn't the fastest finger on the key, as we used to say. Needless to say, it was a failure. A pirate group on the Barbary Coast recorded the whole thing on paper punch-tape and sold it unlicensed, so poor Grundig never made a red cent, and died broke.

So you go right ahead, honey. I'd suggest changing the ceremony a bit, though. Add in some stuff about certificates and accepting cookies and whatall. You can't be too careful these days. After all, Grundig's wife eventually ran off with a railroad telegraph operator who could send with one hand and receive with the other. Gave me the hot willies just thinking about it….

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I recently started chatting on-line. Are these people speaking English?  What do these words mean?

AFAIK (Is this some kind of obscenity?)

LOL (I thought I knew this one but it doesn't seem to be spelled correctly, now, does it? One does not lol around, one lolls around)

RTFI (Really, all I was doing was asking how to install the WorldNet Connection Manager)

Acronymic in Akron

Well, this is certainly an easy one. Since most of us have to use a keyboard to communicate on the Internet, it's only natural that people would start using abbreviations for commonly used expressions to save wear and tear on their fingers (WATOTF). Some of these abbreviations, or acronyms, can baffle the uninitiated (BTI)

BLT, for example, stands for Best Local Technology-- that is, the fastest telegraph connection in your area. PB&J means Press Backspace and Jiggle, a workaround for when your ribbon jams because you have too many carbon copies rolled into the platen. IHOP means I Have Overclocked Processors. BTW means Beta Testing WordStar. And so on and so forth. (ASOASF)

The examples you gave are a bit more obscure. I believe AFAIK means A Feeble And Incomplete Kilobyte. It refers to poor download speeds. LOL is a kind of high-speed processor that uses Lanthanum-On-Lithium technology. You may also see ROTFLMAO, which is a special case, not being an acronym at all, but rather an anagram which stands for FLOAT ROM, the numerical processing function of a CPU (Certified Public Underwriter).

Finally, RTFI and RTFM mean Reset The Function Indicator and Restore The Format Manually. Don't ever confuse these two, or you may RFUYC.

Dear Aunt Nettie,

My friend Bitsy says I should be on the lookout for Trojans. I am shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you! What should I do if one arrives?

-- Shocked in Sparta

Sigh. Yes, the world has changed a lot since we were young, hasn't it, dearie? Time was that a proper young lady wouldn't even know about such things, and now they're freely available in stores and schools and cereal boxes and I don't know what-all. I've even heard of couples living in condom-in-iums, if you can imagine such a thing. It must be hard.

We've certainly come a long way from the original story in Homer's Iliad, which I'm sure they don't even teach in schools any more, they're so busy handing out condoms and searching for weaponry.


As the story goes, several devious computer Geeks hacked into a huge hollow horse. Since they didn't have McAfee or Norton back in those days nobody detected them but Cassandra, daughter of King Priam, but she was overruled by her systems administrator and the rest is ancient history. The Geeks took over, trashed Troy's operating systems, and the inhabitants were reduced to manufacturing male contraceptives from used sheep parts which they sold to passing sailors for exorbitant sums of money. That's why to this day Trojans are also called robbers.

Dear Aunt Nettie,

My friends and I spend a lot of time on our computers, and since we're all pretty much social outcasts and despised by the opposite gender, we've never learned some of the social niceties, like, what's the correct way to line up the forks you use to eat the different parts of a microwave dinner while you're online? 

- Clueless in Columbus

"Clueless in Columbus," my glass eye! Thank the Lord for the Finger utility, which spared me the embarrassment of working up a serious answer for you perverts out there in Stanford. Taking time away from your studies to harass a poor old woman who's just trying to make a couple of bucks to eke out her Social Security entitlement. You should be ashamed! 

But, kind-hearted soul that I am, and not wanting to screw up my karma when I'm this close to cashing it in, I'll say there should be a table fork nearest the microwave tray on the right, followed by the vegetable fork, then the dessert fork on the outside. Now don't you feel bad? You try to tease me and waste my time just to get your virtual rocks off, and here I've sweetly and in good temper instructed you in the proper fork queue…
p.s. …and the horse you rode in on, putz! 

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