I am a stickler for keeping my fingers off CDs and DVDs. The idea of coating the plastic surface of all that digital media goodness with my yucky finger oils and dead skin cells just turns my stomach. I’m always neurotically careful to hold them by the edges; it’s a bit of an obsession, frankly. I can’t tell you how many times I receive DVDs from Netflix or CDs back from friends at work or home and they are munged up with all sorts of skin goo. I have to restrain myself from taking the offenders by the shoulders, shaking them violently, and screaming, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You have compromised the integrity of my digital media! DIE FROM SEPSIS AT THE WRONG END OF A RUSTY SCALPEL, INFIDEL!“
So, yes, that is a little unhealthy, I agree.
In any case, today I had burned a “bad” CD — commonly referred to as a “coaster” — and I was carrying it to the media trash pile where we leave CDs and other media to be disintegrated by Martian death rays, or whatever the office is buying these days. I realized I was holding it as if it was utterly critical that the media remain unsullied, all the way to the death ray machine, whence its various molecules would be spread across the known universe in a thin, buttery spread that goes great with marmalade. So I took this opportunity to touch the back side of the CD, where all the data gets written (that information is for the two of my readers who aren’t geeks).
Sadly (and a little disturbingly, to tell the truth), I felt a little thrill of the verboten, almost like Salma Hayek left the door cracked open at Victoria’s Secret, and I just happened by while buying a gift certificate for my wife. Because of course, that’s the only reason you’d catch me in that store. Not the Salma Hayek part, I mean buying the gift certificate. But if Salma was there, I’d certainly be more inclined to buy a gift certificate.
Not one to stop there with one vicarious trespass, I proceeded to smack my grubby fingers all over the back of that CD. My fingerprints will be used to trace my whereabouts when the Besmirchment Police haul me off to a basement interrogation room and give me two to the back of the head. Oh, the forbidden pleasure of seeing all that grimy data corruption!
You better watch out, in case I come to your neighborhood and start taunting very small dogs. That’s right, ladies, I’m the one yo mama warned you about, aw yeah.