FOR SALE: HP Scanner, five or six years of age, with USB connection and software for MAC or PC. Has magical powers. Indeed, you will have suspected that it has supernatural dirt UNDER the glass, but as you aren’t certain you will simply clean the top of the glass in every manner possible. Then you’ll scan (seriously) OVER ONE HUNDRED PICTURES at a very high resolution to add to the digital images for your beloved niephew’s wedding slide show. You’ll keep cleaning the class as you go along, but you won’t scrutinize the pictures DURING the process because you’re aiming for ultimate efficiency in the process itself. Subsequently, when you start to examine the images, you’ll find that as you have blithely scanned along (not completely blithely, I admit, you’ll have an small and inexplicable feeling of DREAD in your gut) more and more lints and smuts have somehow infiltrated the scanner. The thing seems sealed, so it’s very bad magic that gets the filth inside, I tell you. Even more festive is the green line that began to appear on the right side of the pictures (depending on how they are oriented on the glass).

You’ll get great images such as these:
William and Sarah are matching cows.
Baptism

These aren’t even the worst pictures; they just made me especially sad for some reason.

The magic of this particular scanner is so much more impressive when you look at them in high resolution (as they are for a slide show, remember). These “save for web” versions don’t really impress; you just cannot imagine the extent of the lint and the crud. I assure you that actual, high-resolution scans are UTTERLY FILTHY and get worse with each subsequent scan. Moreover, I think I cropped the second image so that the green line wasn’t in that shot. But I did attempt to take the big smut of my Baby Brother’s lips. It was so large that I ended up recreating his lips. The result was so horrifying that the image longer exists.

So there you have it. Any takers?