Back at work for yet another week of the strange and stimulating. I really didn't think the day was going to produce anything worth posting about...until I started making copies. The machine itself is a rather remarkable piece of technology, and has several astounding features. First off, one has to but place a paper on the clear plastic shelf, press that fun blue button, and SHAZAM! in an emerald flash out come innumerable replicas of the original. And this whole time I'd been doing it by hand. Now I can't tell you exactly how the machine does it, but judging by the lights show it puts on each time copies are made I have a sneaking suspicion it is a covert member of the Green Lantern Corps. I've since discovered that it can also do double-sided, color, collating, stapling, and I'm fairly certain if I look hard enough I'll find the origami folding function.

What struck me about the copier today was one of the messages that appears on its little screen. After it warms up, in bold print the screen reads READY TO SCAN YOUR JOB. Now, tell me if I just have a dirty mind, but to me that phrase has very strong sexual undertones. I'm almost tempted to look it up on Urban Dictionary because it sounds like a sex act illegal in 48 states. I'm fully aware that most anything can be turned into an innuendo if you say with the right emphasis or in a particular context, but this lends itself especially well. Think about it:

Bro #1: So what'd you n' Becky do last night when you brought her home?

Bro #2: (obviously lying) Aww, you know man, she totally scanned my job!

OR

Husband: Oh come on, honey, just a little bit?

Wife: I said no!

Husband: What if you just scan my job?

Wife: And risk getting crabs?!? Oh HELL no!

OR

Student #1: Did you hear about Janitor Hamburglar? He got arrested outside of school today.

Student #2: What happened, what'd he do?

Student #1: I heard he scanned a student's job behind the tennis courts!

Student #3: You're sick dude, it wasn't that bad...sodomy at worst.

See what I mean? Undeniably sexual, I just proved it scientifically. End of story. The only thing is once the copier forced sex into my head, everything else has subsequently become pseudo-erotic. While eating lunch (peanut butter & jelly, raisins, and dry Cheerios...a meal fit for a toddler) I kept having to lick raspberry jam off my fingers. At first this didn't bother me, but when I began to think about the copier encounter I suddenly became self-conscious. What if people are watching? How naughty is this to do in public? Should I be charging the security guard watching the camera monitors for the the show? And then there were my paper clip sculptures (I have a lot of time to kill, you know that). What had started out as an innocent exploration into the world of abstract art quickly transformed into an embarrassingly explicit anatomy lesson. Each time I bend over now I look behind me to make sure no one is gawking, the Sharpe markers are just a bit too phallic for comfort, and the Eye Evader has finally found something to focus on...yeah, up here buddy, hope you're planning on leaving a tip.

Truth be told I feel like I'm living out a company sexual harassment video.

My filthy mind aside, today is also significant because I am going to the dentist. This usually is not a momentous occasion, but this particular visit marks my first to a big person dentist. Intimidating, I know. My mother figured (this was her decision, not mine) that at 19 years old I needed to move on from fluorescent chairs (which I may or may not be 5 times too big for), free Nickelodeon magazines, and a "you were such a good boy you didn't scream or yell or kick the nice dentist man in the balls this time" prize bin. I can let all of those things go just fine, but one thing I will miss is the obnoxiously loud Ms. Pac-Man machine in the lobby. What am I supposed to do while I wait to be called in? Read Newsweek or something? What kind of pretentious bullshit is that? I want that sexy, made-up-like-a-hooker, yellow chomping dot or nothing.

Plus the paperwork's a bitch, so there's that.

On a completely unrelated note, in making deliveries around the office I saw on someone's desk this cutesy, rustic, homemade, one-of-a-kind, gingerbread man-shaped handicraft (found in the HOME & GARDEN section of your friendly, neighborhood Wal-Mart) which had printed on its stomach, "If life is a cookie, then friends are the chocolate chips."

How sweet.

But seriously, this is ridiculously stupid for two reasons. A) If life actually were a cookie, this would mean that it would have to be baked, which means then that it would find itself, however temporarily, in an environment above 200° Fahrenheit, which, if you hadn't been dropped on your head more than 15 times as a child, you would know to be a temperature that cannot sustain life, except maybe deep-sea tube worms that are heated by vents directly connected to the Earth's molten core, AAAND B) I know if my friends tasted like chocolate, let alone were made of the stuff, I don't believe I, or many people, would have any friends for the simple fact that I wouldn't spend so much time getting to know them as I would gnawing on them. But hey, that's just the world I live in.