You make me laugh, Dwight Schrute.

Although I was a huge fan of the BBC version of The Office, I have also come around on the NBC remake. Anyway, Dwight Schrute, a character on the NBC show (who is based on Gareth Keenan from the BBC version and played by Rainn Wilson), writes a blog on the show's official site.

Some of the entries are outstanding, especially if you know a little bit about the characters Dwight and Gareth. You can check out his blog here.

Dwight covers a variety of topics on his blog, but some of my favorites are:

Sleet: "Here in Scranton it is 46 degrees and SLEETY. I love sleet. It's so bracing. It's not snow (wimpy) or rain (annoying). It's sleet. It's its own thing. Sleet is the most unappreciated type of weather. This winter, let's all try and have a deeper respect for sleet and what it does and what it is."

The Epiglotis: "Think about the way the throat and swallowing works. The epiglotis decides what goes where down the trachea and/or esophogus. But it gets no respect. This tiny flap of skin in your neck decides if something is food or air. The food goes to your tummy. The air goes to your lungs. Without it your food would go straight into your lungs and clog them up. You'd have soup in your lungs. Or a sandwich. Or doritos. Or Fresca. OR you would get air in your tummy and be a big gassy fart bag all the time. All that from the tiny, powerful epiglotis.
In many ways, I am like the epiglotis. Small, unappreciated, not well thought of or respected, but POWERFUL. So powerful that without me you'd have food in your lungs."

And the current entry is a teaser for Dwight's new book about the world of sales, co-written by his beet-selling cousin Mose. It's called SELL THIS!: How to Literally Kill the Competition, By Dwight and Mose Schrute.**

That's comedy. I may start "borrowing" some of his blogisms around here, because sometimes my funny just isn't as funny as Dwight's funny.

Hang in there. It's almost Friday.
T

**Completely off-topic note: I HATE how our society has collectively forgotten how to use the word "literally". To most people, "literally" now means "figuratively" or "if you can believe it". The joke about the above fictional book is that title, correctly interpreted, implies that the book teaches you to kill people, not beat them in sales. Dwight is therefore making the same mistake that most people (at least, around me) make; he means "figuratively" killing the competition.

The other week I was at a bar and a young lady was talking about how she "literally" had to push a co-worker out the window to get them to do something, and was "literally" having to beat people over the head to finish a task. Unless you are actually committing assault and murder in your workplace, you weren't "literally" doing those things. You were "figuratively" doing them. Here's an easy guide to use of the word "literal":

Step 1) If you didn't actually, in reality, do, think, or say the contents of your sentence immediately following the word "literal" or "literally", you are using the word incorrectly. In that case, proceed to Step 2. If you did, and in fact you are expressing factual events, then feel free to express them as they "literally" happened.

Step 2) Don't use the word "literal" or "literally", jackass. Use a) nothing at all, and just let the sarcasm be implied (as in "I was going to kill him!" as opposed to "I was going to literally kill him!"), or b) skip the "literally", finish your thought, and say "figuratively speaking of course" or some such similar caveat (if you feel that nobody will pick up your facetiousness).

Here's the point: people use "literally" nowadays as "figuratively" or a modifier to emphasize their point, as opposed to using it to distinguish actual events from figurative speech. Don't. Don't say "I literally thought my head was going to explode" unless, at the time, your cognitive process was "I am so angry that I am gravely concerned that my cranium is going to spontaneously combust, resulting in my immediate death." Because if that thought didn't run through your mind, you didn't "literally" think your head was going to explode.

Dwight gets it. The rest of you don't.