I talk to my computer. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I realize there’s a 12-step program for this sort of thing, but I love my computer.

It’s not any sort of Her thing, though I do call my computer “her,” though not in her listening range (betcha never thought you’d get the word “her” three times in one sentence — that was like hurdling a her-dle).

I talk to my computer because she’s old and might go away soon, so I try to persuade her to stick around just for a while longer. C’mon, I say, we’re not done just yet, employing some candles (historically always great with computers), some Emmentaler or Appenzeller, some pâté de campagne, and a bottle of Château Margaux or Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Some flowers, too, of course.

Daffodils work just great with computers, just as they work with former KGB agents. There’s some scientific evidence that there might not be much difference between computers and those hard-case, narrow-eyed would-be dictators who look as though they just stepped out of film noir.

Take daffodil aficionado Vladimir Putin.

What? You didn’t know that the Russian leader (for life, apparently) has an affinity for daffodils?

Women should remember that. In fact, today is the perfect day to give your hard-case guy a daffodil. Or two. He’ll remember you forever.

In any case, that’s why Putin invaded Crimea. Being a former KGB guy, he had sniffed out that Western intelligence agencies (no, Virginia, that’s not an oxymoron) were on to his obsession with daffodils.

Of course, he denied that, as hard-case, noir guys with a secret daffodil obsession do.

“No Russian troops yak-booting through Crimea,” Putin said, imitating young adult Americans’ disdain for conjugating English verbs.

“Ve haf no yak-booted troops,” he said in an unfortunate live recording, demonstrating he had learned from English from sessions with the KGB while listening to the American TV series “Hogan’s Heroes.” Or perhaps that was listening to young adult Americans who were exposed to “Hogan’s Heroes” at too young an age to understand that verisimilitude is merely an amusing trope.

And yes, I, too, am a bit puzzled why Russian troops would wear yaks instead of the more standard jackboots. It probably has something to do with daffodils. So much does.

Which  brings us, as cable news so often does, to that missing Malaysian airliner.

It’s simple. Putin, of course, caused the “disappearance” of that Malaysian airliner to take creeping Westernism attention away from the Russian troops seizing Crimea.

Putin was also distraught to learn from one of his geoscientists that the North American plate extends nearly hundreds of miles into Siberia. Talk about creeping Westernism. (That geoscientist is now living in Siberia.)

Of course, the real reason Putin disappeared the Malaysian airliner to divert attention from the seizing of Crimea was all to cover up (it’s not the crime [or Crimea], it’s the cover-up] the daffodil-lover’s real plan:

Russia has launched a secret manned mission to Mars. Never again, Putin has declared, will Russia allow the United States to beat it to a celestial object.

So, in a few years, the world will be treated to Russian cosmonauts landing on Mars and planting a daffodil in the dusty, dead soil.

Remember the daffodils. They’re the gift that keeps on Kieving.