Musings from Brian J. Noggle

The Shidoshi of Paranoia Speaks

So my beautiful wife has bought a shredder so that she can get rid of old, possibly sensitive documents from her files. So she's running credit card statements, bank statements, and other good stuff the bad men want through the shredder before disposing of them.

Unfortunately, it's becoming fairly easy to reconstruct shredded documents, even ones cut into tiny little pieces (see Church Street Technology for visual cues). Essentially, the bad men (or the government) can scan the shredded documents and then put super computers, like the latest "e-mail only" machine at Best Buy (if not now, then in the next year or so, werd) onto assembling them like puzzle pieces until the little ink smudges make glyphs which then make words or numbers or credit card numbers or evidence that yes, once you did accidentally have a copy of 2600 in the house (but it all was a mistake, sir, I thought it was a magazine about my favorite game console).

Your Shidoshi of Paranoia knows of only one way to truly, effectively, and cheaply dispose of your sensitive documents:

Ingestion.

The human body can process, and pass, your documents in an unreadable form, whether by human eye or machine. You can consume several pages of documents a day, enough to easily accommodate the day's receipts. Processing your document elimination in this way is economic and ultimately the only way you can be sure no one will even want to examine your sensitive information.

You ask, "But Shidoshi, how does one eat these documents?"

I am a master in the realm of document salad. Look at this beauty.

Ingredients, you ask?

Bank statement, laterally torn and then shredded.
Credit card bill, ripped into pieces.
Note to self, minced.

I usually drizzle this with balsamic vinegarette, if you consider 1/2 a cup a "drizzle." Also, don't forget to pile on the salt. Goes well with a bottle of Les Bourgeois Riverboat Red wine, particularly if you have had most of the bottle before you start on the salad.

Of course, if you have a higher volume of document destruction needs, you can include them within more of your diet or as part of your family's overall nutritional plan. Remember, wood pulp contains fiber, and a lot of things are printed with soy-based ink, so that's got to be good for you, wot?

And on a personal note, it's during file-cleaning season that I am glad that we have ~~five~~ four cats.

Your Shidoshi has spoken. Pay mind.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:40 PM