Thank you for calling Technical Support. All of our technicians are currently busy helping people even less competent than you. Please hold for the next available technician. Current waiting time is estimated at between 15 minutes and eternity. In order to expedite your call, please enter your 63-digit product identification number onto your touch-tone phone pad, followed by your product serial number, which can be found in a secret compartment inside your computer, where it is printed in the smallest type known to mankind.

[Lengthy excerpt from Mahler's "Lugubrious" Symphony in C Minor.]

Thank you again for calling Technical Support. We recommend that you sit at your computer, preferably turning it on at some point, and have at hand all your floppy disks, CD-ROMs, computer manuals, and original packing materials to allow the technician to assist you in the unlikely event he ever takes your call. It would also be helpful for you to refrain from sobbing while explaining your problem to the technician. Shouting obscenities will cause you to be immediately disconnected and blackballed from further communication with Technical Support, not only ours but that of every other elecronics-related firm in the industrialized world.

[Medley of Hootie and the Blowfish hits, rendered by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.]

Thank you once again for calling Technical Support. In order to enable us to better assist you, it would be helpful for us to know more about you and your equipment. Have you ever called Technical Support before? If you have, please press "one." If not, please press "two." If you are not sure, please spell out, using the letters on your touch-tone pad, "I am confused and despondent and rapidly losing the will to live." Once you have finished, hang up your phone and make arrangements to sell you computer, because by the time the technician takes your call it will be obsolete and you will be too senile to use it anyway.

[Rangoon Opera Company's classic 1963 recording of Wagner's Ring Cycle in its entirety.]

Thank you for calling Technical Support. Unfortunately, all of our technicians just went out for lunch. This means that you may add at least another two hours to the estimated waiting time we gave you earlier.

[Wayne Newton singing "Danke Schoen" 1,742 times.]

Thank you for calling Technical Support. Before talking to the technician about your problem and risking the waste of his valuable time, please ask yourself the following questions:

1. If my monitor screen is dark, is it possible that I have forgotten to plug in the computer, or that I have suddenly been struck blind?
2. Have I exhausted every possible means of getting help before utilizing the sacred, only-as-a-last-resort telephone option? Have I sent a fax to Fast Fax Technical Support? Have I consulted my manual? Have I read the Read-Me notice on the floppy disk? Have I consulted my know-it-all cousin whom I can't stand but who could probably fix this whole thing for me in under five minutes? Have I given my computer's central processing unit a good whack?

[Tibetan monks performing a six-day chant celebrating the reincarnation of one of their recently deceased colleagues in the form of a salamander.]

Thank you for calling Technical Support. You may not be aware that this week we are featuring a discount on a number of popular CD-ROM titles you may wish to purchase, such as our best-selling Porn Doubler, which allows you to access erotic material from the Internet twice as fast. If you would like to hear all 26,000 of our titles read to you, shout "Yes! Yes! Yes!" into the phone now. This will not cause you to lose your place in line for Technical Support; in fact, it may cause you to jump ahead of several other callers.

[Tape loop of background music from the soundtrack of "Johnny Mnemonic," starring Keanu Reeves.]

Thank you for calling Technical Support. Our sensors indicate that you are about to slump over and die from frustration combined with severe dehydration. Before doing so, please take a moment to place your telephone receiver back on its base and switch your computer off so as not to wear down its internal battery. As a non-living person, you will have no further need of Technical Support, and so we must regretfully remove you from our list of registered product users. Remember, we valued your business and were happy to serve your product needs. Do not hesitate to have your heirs or beneficiaries contact us should any further technical problems arise.