Gentle Reader:

Please attend to the following series of email missives between Yours Truly and British Potentate Prince Charles. The dialogue starts quite civily, but true colors eventually appear via a furious fusillade of fomentation. By Jove! But let us begin.

Empire's, how can I say it: massive shrinkage, if you will.

Charles, overcome your fears, and inspire you fellow countrypeople to embrace technology in its various and sundry forms. To shirk this duty will only get you more bad press, which God knows you don't need.

You have our sympathies,

Ridicholas Achilles Exaggeronte, "Lord" J of the MEdia Lab

Date: Sun 1 June 1997 22:40
To: ridicholas@tweak.com
From: charles@palace.com
Subject: Your charmingly "dashed-off" letter

My Dear Pocket-Protectored Pangloss:

As refreshing as you find my deft forensic sallies, so do I find joy in the electronic presence of so pure an example of a much-celebrated millennial persona, to wit: Geekeous Maximus, or "The Big Geek."

It is perhaps to be expected that in America the Tasteless — which is, after all, the home of excrementious assembly line fast-food dungeons, cubic zirconia, disco, and, God Help Us, Jerry Springer — such a walking abacus as yourself could be exalted to the level of "cyber guru," bleating on about how exciting zeroes and ones are as they wing the latest excrement joke from one Texas Troglodyte to another, or as one of the several trillion pornographic photos currently festering on the Net downloads, thus loading down the mind of another Who's the Boss-Addled surburban Power Rangers Devotee addict.

And, yes, we surely are deserving your "sympathy," we who have contributed to the world's cultural treasure trove such quill-pen, "old-media" geniuses as Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and on and on AD ABSURDEM, who, without "word processors" (something like a verbal Cuisinart, eh?) could not hope to reach the cultural heights of your Tom Clancey, your so-called "Kenny G," and your — Mother of God, can I even type the word?!? — Richard Simmons?!?

I must thank you, you of the aptly chosen first name, for enlightening me as to the TRUE intellectual underpinnings of the so-called Digital generation. For now, as I retire to my room overlooking the magnificent gardens of the Palace, as I luxiuriate in the cozy busom of a thousand years of culture going back to Beowulf and beyond, as I sit here writing, in leisurely longhand, this reply to your crazed typings, I feel as triumphant as Henry did at Agincourt, when he vanquished the decadent French (don't even get me started) with 1/5 the troops — but ten times the spirit!

Adieu, Thou Trumped-Up Television Repairman, and may you somehow squeeze enjoyment from the cold steel-and-glass of your loveless, bloodless cyberspace. And if you ever see fit to journey to London, make sure to visit the marvelous British Museum, for there you'll find a superb culture that has nothing whatsoever to do with acidophilus.

Ta ta! Best to Danielle Steele and all the rest of the New Jersey Turnpike round-table!

With just a touch of schadenfruede,

His Royal Highness, Prince Charles of Wales, Heir to the British Throne

Date: Sun 1 June 1997 18:14
To: charles@palace.com
From: ridicholas@tweak.com
Subject: Your recent "technology" comment

Dear Crumpet-Rump:

Be assured that I will, with all due respect, take the tone and contents of your last message with a tremendous, even gigantic, grain of salt, for it is obvious that in the course of your compulsive-obsessive infidelities to the woman you married — in front of the world on television while she was wearing a garish 115-foot-long cape that would humiliate a superhero — yes, in the course of those quaintly inept pseudo-no-mances with women whose features are, at best, mildly equinne, and at worst, downright horsey, your reason has been twisted and warped years of English cooking — an oxymoron, yes, I know. Or, to put it more plainly, all that Mad Cow Disease beef you've been scarfing down has left you dimmer even than those Monty Python characters that say run about saying, "Moiiii Brainnn Huuuurts, Mushter Guuumbyyy!!!" Remember them? Of course you do, why not, they're probably relatives of yours.

Oh, and if you ever do wean yourself of both your technophobia and your Stone Age view of the world, I invite you to ask any resonably well-off American child to show you how to turn on the Tandy 1000 undoutedly sitting in some moldy backroom of Schmuckingham Palace. Who knows? You might get inspired and prevent Sri Lanka from supplanting Great Britain in the G7 summit. Okay, that's silly, I admit there's no way in hell you're going to stop Sri Lanka from supplanting Great Britain in the G7 summit; but maybe you could find a nice group of simpaticos to hang out with online alt.weasels, perhaps.

Anyway, ferret physiognomy, I must away: my beautiful, completely non-horsey wife Dante has prepared a delicious-looking melange of foods from many continents for our repast, and besides, all this time travel is wearying to my soul. Which, I might say before I close, is in fact being enriched, not murdered by technology. And thus we come 'round again.

All my best,

Ridicholas Achilles Exaggeronte, "Lord" J of the MEdia Lab

P.S.:I notice the Queen has quite a nice Web site up these days: you must say hello to that spunky little Java Monkey for me.

Next Issue: Lawn bowling with Tony Blair.

Date: Fri 30 May 1997 22:34
To: charles@palace.com
From: ridicholas@tweak.com
Subject: Your recent "technology" comment

My Dear Prince Charles:

Greetings; I hope all is well with you and yours. I should like to enquire regarding a quote recently attributed to your Highness, to wit:

Technology is in danger of becoming the eventual murderer of the soul of mankind.

If I may address the quote in question: Perhaps you are being a bit hasty in your judgement. After all, throughout the ages, the English have long been technological innovators: indeed, maritime science made possible the very Empire itself, through the marvelous ships that your ancestors sent 'round the globe.

I must say, it seems to me that the very thing you are attacking has been one of the key elements in the rise of the British Empire. Would you concur, and if so, how would such concurrance affect your earlier comment?

Respectfully,

Ridicholas Achilles Exaggeronte, "Lord" J of the MEdia Lab

Date: Sat 31 May 1997 14:00
To: ridicholas@tweak.com
From: charles@palace.com
Subject: Your charmingly "dashed-off" letter

My Lord of the"MEdia Lab," or Something, For Which You Apparently Work:

I've just returned from a go with the hounds, and came across your extraordinary message! During my customary post-hunt steam and massage (Gretchen! What would I do without her?!?) I rolled your, uhm, let's call them, say, comments, over in my mind, my chief motivation being akin to "Where does one begin to set our vociferous Yank pixelpal straight?"

So many choices, but let me attend to the main chance: surely, my good man, you must be cognizant of the vast difference between ancient Englishmen girting the globe with the largesse of our economic and political systems, as compared with the puerile doodlings of illiterate, spotty youth in so-called "chat rooms" and the like! Or between the sublime brilliance of, say, Sir Isaac Newton's ouerve and the neon-dipped cyber-twiddle-twaddle that appears monthly between the covers of what I they tell me is called, ehm, Wired?

No, no, surely some tromp d'cogitare is preventing me from apprehending your true meaning: someone as educated as you claim to be, even if by American standards, could never forward such a banal and unsubstantiated thesis.

Could one?

Cheers,

The Monarch Formerly Known as Prince Charles

P.S. (One hopes you can appreciate my little tip 'o the crown to another one of America's great artistes. Next I suppose you'll be comparing his, how do you say, Raspberry Beret to Handel's Messiah.)

Date: Sat 31 May 1997 18:20
To: charles@palace.com
From: ridicholas@tweak.com
Subject: Your recent "technology" comment

Prince Charles:

Ahh, how refreshing to see a true-blue specimen of reduction ad absurdem!

Of course, when stated in the manner of your response to my trenchant analysis of the contradictions inherent in your technological musings, my thesis seems as silly as one of the charmingly mongoloid Benny Hill shows from your our own native land. Allow me to elucidate the actually quite sturdy foundations for my critique of your comments.

Though you may not understand the following parable — owing quite naturally to your "never-worked-a-day-in-his-life" existence — I believe it cuts to the heart of the matter. To wit:

Unemployed (meaning, Charles, neither possessing a means of gainful employment nor a cozy Habitrail in Buckingham Palace) Ditch Digger to His Also-Unemployed "Mate" (as you Brits so butchly say): Well, if they didn't bring in that damned crane, there'd be ten of us out there digging with shovels.

Fellow Unemployed (But Much Brighter, Apparently, Mate): You wankah! If it weren't for our damned shovels, there'd be a hundred of out there digging with spoons!"

Get it, My Regal Friend? Technology is everywhere, wherever the human mind can apply its powers to the gifts Mother Nature so lavishly provides us with. Everything from the first sharpened stick to the Hubble Telescope exists under the same proud aegis: That of Technology! And, if I may be a bit frank here, it is widely accepted here in America — the world's technological nation par excellence — that this uniquely British computerphobia is a major cause of the