2004-06-04 - 4:11 p.m.

There�s a water cooler in what we laughingly refer to in the office as a kitchen. No cooking actually goes on there, outside of the zapping in the company microwave of overpriced jacket spuds that you can buy from the surly Russians across the street. But anyway. The water cooler has a little company logo, which is a water cooler with a big glass of water in its hands, beaming a big grin of thirst-quenched satisfaction as it pours the contents into a plastic orifice of no fixed description � a mutated hole that apparently serves as a mouth and stomach. This means that the water cooler is not only digesting its own internal fluids, but is also pretty damn ecstatic about the situation. Me? I can only think that I�m about to fill up a glass with happily recycled robot urinevomit that has passed god only knows how many times through the digestive workings of a manic self-ingesting automaton. But I do get thirsty, so what�s a boy to do?

It reminds me in a way of the newspapers in this country when we have a hot day. Alongside the usual checklist of a big thermometer on the cover, a scantily clad secretary enjoying the lunchtime heatwave (�Pretty blonde Hayley, 27, said she�d rather be stripping off on the beach. She still managed to get OUR temperatures rising!!!� or some such) and the headline PHEW! WHAT A SCORCHER!, there is always always always a picture of a cartoon sun, who is a) wiping a couple of drops of sweat off his dripping forehead and b) and this is the real headfuck, WEARING SUNGLASSES. What, the brightness of the mercury-expanding sunshine is so intense that the sun himself has to wear sunglasses? Let�s even go with the fact that the sun has eyes, and then ask yourself if they really need to be shielded from himself? Michael Jackson and that freakazoid Liza Minelli married � yes, they should be given impenetrable eyewear that shields them from having to regard their own image, but you�d imagine the sun had pretty much gotten used to that solar glare, what with being the sun and everything.

In my mind now I see the sun taking a glass of water to cool down�