I got my first laptop in 1991. It was a 286 gem of a Toshiba that kept me entertained for four or five years. It had no hard drive, a whole 2 megs of RAM, and a cga monochrome screen. It was as behind the times as one could get, but I loved it. My trusty Toshiba kept me out of trouble by keeping me busy with stupid crap that meant nothing to no-one but me.   It was a neat gadget. It had a resume feature that allowed the user to keep the RAM active even after shutdown. When I was in a hurry, I could shut off the laptop and restart again later on without having to go through a reboot. (This resume thing was good until I locked up the computer so bad that even Ctrl/Alt/Delete wouldn't reboot. Whenever I turned it on, it would "resume" in the totally locked up state that it was in when I powered down. I finally resorted to ripping out the battery while repowering the computer. This someohow screwed up the RAM and forced a hard boot. Why am I telling you this? Who knows?) Part of the RAM could be partitioned like a hard drive and kept active all the time. It was lighter and smaller than most other laptops (I believe it was one of the first real "notebook" computers ever made). It was a great little machine.   I used some early version of MS Works on diskette, I think it was 2.0. At the time I spent my working nights on the psych ward typing up one thing and another while sitting through a Line-of-Sight watch.   NOTE: A Line-of-Sight is a watch where the psych tech watches the current "suicidal" Borderline Personality Disorder [BPD] to make sure that this latest BPD is not going to actually kill herself. While the previous 137 "suicidal gestures" may have only been attempts, the 138th one might be the real McCoy. In the event of such an occasion, there may be a need for a psych tech to attend the BPD to ensure that this "suicidal gesture" also doesn't succeed... "No, Mrs. Smith, I believe that you really mean it. I believe that you are really going to kill yourself this time. Now, please, put the bag of cotton balls down. Yes, I'm sure that you could unravel all the cotton balls, reshape them into some rope, attach your slipper to the ceiling with some chewing gum and hang yourself from the slipper with the cotton-ball rope. No, really, I believe you, now give me the cotton balls..."   Where was I? Oh, yeah, the MS Works thing. Prior to this, I had only worked with Tandy word processors and other assorted shareware junk. I found that the Works program was a surprisingly versatile one and I used it for everything. I made paranoid databases about people I hated, I wrote articles for my short lived 'zine, and I wrote all of the lyrics to my first CD with the Works program. I was a big fan of Microsoft back then.   Anyway...   A friend of mine, Lisa, had asked me to put together a church bulletin on my computer while I was sitting around, I figured, "what the heck..." and did it for her. After putting the thing together, I started screwing around with the Search/Replace feature and found out that I could knock out entire trains of thought and replace them with new ones. I also found out that I could "Pryor-ize" documents in seconds, this process turned mundane works into outrageous works of profanity. The more boring a document was, the more likely it was a candidate for Pryor-ization.   When Lisa came to review the bulletin, I showed her how I could butcher it with Pryor-ization. When she saw what I had done to the church bulletin, she laughed until she cried.   RICHARD PRYOR-IZATION: The Early Years The search and replace function has been in use on the internet for a few years. There are a number of sites that will "translate" to muppet swedish, gangsta, southern drawl and other modes of speaking. The more fundamental "translators" do nothing more that seek out certain words and replace them with another set of words. This is how Pryor-ization works.   Open a document in Microsoft Word.   Go to Edit-> Replace. This brings up the following window.     In the "Find what:" window, type "_the_" with the spaces instead of underscores. In the "Replace with:" window, type "_the_fucking_" with the spaces instead of underscores. Click the "Replace All" button and you should see a window like this:     This method works well with replacing words like "the," "this," "a," and "his" to transform these phrases to things like "the fucking," "this retarded," "a stupid," and "his worthless." To make the effect even more outlandish, go to the internet and copy paragraphs for Pryor-ization.   You can trash news:   "The fucking quake was centered in the fucking Hindu Kush mountain range in Afghanistan, about 110 kilometers (70 miles) west of Chitral, Pakistan, the fucking U.S. Geological Survey said. It was felt first in the fucking Afghan cities of Kabul and fucking Jalalabad around 11:35 a.m. (2:05 a.m. EST)."   You can screw up the weather:   "Buffalo made enough progress digging out from a fucking 7-foot snowfall to fucking re-open for business Monday, but work remained to fucking be done. City and county offices re-opened and most major roadways were passable. a fucking New Year's Eve ball drop and a fucking celebration around the fucking arrival of the fucking Olympic torch would go on as planned, Jeff Hammond, spokesman for Erie County Executive Joel Giambra said Monday."   You can tear up sports:   "Banished to fucking the fucking bench for the fucking first 24 minutes of the fucking Orange Bowl, Grossman led Florida to fucking touchdowns on his first six drives and the fucking No. 5 Gators set record after record in a fucking 56-23 crushing of No. 6 Maryland. "Grossman threw for 248 yards and four touchdowns. Another so-called backup, third receiver Taylor Jacobs, caught 10 passes for fucking 170 yards, both Orange Bowl records, to fucking help turn Spurrier's quarterback shuffle into a fucking stunning offensive highlight show."   And, yes, you can trash religion:   "God created us in His own image so we can know Him personally and have a fucking joy-filled life. He did not make us as robots to fucking automatically love and obey Him, but gave us a fucking will and a fucking freedom of choice.   "Since the fucking beginning of time, we have chosen to fucking disobey fucking God and go our own willful way. We still make this fucking choice today. This fucking results in separation from fucking God and ends in fucking misery."   Normally I would end this document with some sort of inspiring note that allows the reader to feel enlightened by my words, but I think in this case it's better to just leave it as is and pray that no one sues me.