Dear Amritsar,
I work in the finance department of Montenegro Meats, a wholesale slaughterhouse that supplies pork lips, hippo hips and rhino spines to the greater tri-city area and the Lesser Antilles. (And, yes, the lesser said about the Antilles, the better.) Antigonish Montenegro views providing meet to a hungry populace as a form of performance art but, aside from a fawning profile in Performa Magazine, nobody has recognized him for the genius he clearly considers himself to be.
Across from me in the office sits junior accountant Mandelina Croixset. She has the dusky good looks that only somebody born in Sweden could have, and a voice so sultry you would have thought she was a reincarnated garburator. I worshipped her from afar. Well, less than six feet. It would probably be more accurate to say I worshipped her from anear, or, at best, from amiddle distance; however, until the language catches up with reality, I'll settle for afar.
There was something about the way Mandelina asked me about depreciating assets that made my spine do the sub-zero temperatures mambo. Then, one day out of the blue, she asked me to come over to her workstation to "Go over some figures." Clearly, she was asking me for much more than just spreadsheet advice. As tempted as I was to go over there and immediately spread her sheets, I asked her for a rancheck (it's like a raincheck, only it happens on family farms). Before I can take this relationship to the next level (an IRS audit), though, I need one pressing concern addressed.
Can I get AIDS from using a co-worker's touchscreen computer monitor?
Bruno Civet
Hey, Babe,
You were sounding so reasonable, and then you actually had to go and ask a question. Amritsar has had a mild aversion to emoticons since an encounter in a dark attic when she was just a baby advice columnist, but, sometimes, only an emoticon can express one's truest feelings, so: :-(. (The period is a...birthmark.)
AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease. Put another way, it is a disease that is transmitted sexually. Or, to come at it from a different direction, it is an illness that you catch by having intimate physical relations with another human being. Do you see what I'm getting a - no, of course you don't. If you did, you wouldn't have asked the question in the first place!
The AIDS virus can only exist in liquids such as blood and semen. If you are a vampire, you are at high risk for contracting AIDS through the blood you suck out of other people's bodies; but, since you're basically immortal, that's probably not a pressing concern. I suppose it's possible that semen could be teleported out of a man's testicles directly into a woman's vagina; that would certainly bypass the awfulness of the dating scene. Still, the ability to deconstruct/reconstruct matter isn't quite there yet.
So, given the current level of technology, the only way you could get AIDS from a computer screen would be if you had sex with it just after somebody else had had sex with it and left one or more of their body fluids on it. Ick! Double ick! Double ick with a side of groooooosssssss! An advice columnist has to inure herself to the seamier side of human existence, but you just triggered my sonic squeam! Only two other men in the world have done that, and the monasteries where they currently reside have to be hosed down every three days and seven hours as a result!
The odds of you getting AIDS from a touchscreen monitor are less than you winning the Miss Pottsylvania Beauty Contest and, unless your parents were being disreputably whimsical when they named you and the country of Pottsylvania disreputably decided to come into existence in the real world, that isn't very likely!So, you're saying that I should definitely stay away from touchscreen computers at my office? You know, for health reasons?
Bruno Civet
Hey, Babe,
Touchscreen computers, other human beings, life forms generally - somebody with your unique obtuseness should stay away from a lot of things!
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: This is why we need sex education in our public schools - stat!