Today was a good day. I uprooted a wart that has been waxing and waning on my finger for the past six months. After several different methods of removal, I decided to try the straight application of salicylic acid. That treatment started two days ago. The bottle, being a puny entity, suggested a single drop be applied twice a day and proceeded to claim it would be a journey of about five weeks.

That is all well and good, but what of the microwave generation that wishes the fungi removed about 4.7 weeks sooner?

Needless to say I drowned the wart in acid like a drunkard drowns his sorrows--straight, for two days, and to the disregard of loved ones' behests.

By this evening, the infected area had softened up. Probably not anywhere near enough to remove even the top-most epidermal layer, but since when has raw meat not-yet-ready to be partaken of really stood in my way? So, I grabbed my trusty pin needle and pair of tweezer and set to poke-tweeze-repeat mode.

I hurt. I bled. I got light-headed. I physically removed all empirical traces of the wart.

I now have a crater in my finger reminiscent of high-altitude photographs of strip mines. It's a lack I love. I would do it all over again if I had the chance--masochistic satisfaction, friends. In fact, I cherish the moment so much, I chose to continue it and even memorialize it through a little something I like to call art.

Have you ever considered how unnecessarily noisy software is on television shows and movies? Many a year ago, I had to watch three consecutive hours of television and documenting station breaks, commercials, promos, and so on for a broadcast class. The third hour had me watching CSI--don't ask me which city or country, as I don't care. For those unfamiliar, CSI follows decades of TV police dramas. Anyhow, I remember not enjoying it. But, I thought it extremely funny how many bleeps and bloops the investigators' software made.

Zoom in on a fingerprint = whoosh
Scan a hair sample = long, ascending beep
Enter key = blip

Apparently the CSI labs across the nation are just big, cacophonous, concentration-destroying workplaces. But, perhaps the low, blue lighting, the stylish glass walls, all the beautiful 20-40-somethings, and the numerous big-screen monitors, all of which seem to be commonplace with the laboratories and headquarters in the modern police drama, would make up for the unnecessary computer noise.

Ever since seeing that CSI, I have noticed that almost all movies and tv programs cannot resist the noisy software. Perhaps there is a media heritage to all this. Think back to 50's and 60's sci-fi for a moment. Do you not conjure up images of noisy supercomputers with huge panels with expanses of back-lit buttons, flashing randomly? How about all of those analogue beeps and blips? It's all the same--just digital nowadays.

There are actually companies "out there" that are contracted to create the fake software for TV and film. It makes you wonder if the computers at these companies have OS's that are cram-packed with these noises bound to every keystroke.

And, on a sidenote, how about the send/receive noises on instant messaging programs? Who in the hell thought it a good idea to make that default to the program? Vomit.

Someone (Josh Spears? Ryan Brown? Norman Maynard?) once told me that one of the professors they knew had all their keys (on their keyboard) bound to noises extracted from one of the keyboard-like interfaces on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Having to work within an audible vicinity would fast get my foot into a noisy, head-kicking mood.