Sweet, Dark and Crazy

Monday, August 24, 2009

People Please...

Recently, an acquaintance came back from a trip to see her family. She brought back pictures and was eager to share them with everyone. "Okay," I thought to myself. You can gain some insight by seeing people and their families, what harm could there be in looking at a few photos?

So she whips out her camera and proceeds to share over 100 photos. 100! And, she expected us to look at ALL of them. It wouldn't have been so bad if there were 100 interesting pictures - but, in all honestly, she could have easily whittled that batch down to 15. Okay, I saw her brother waving, so I didn't need to see seven other pictures of him waving. I saw the photos of her mom, one was clear but why did I have to endure five more blurry ones? And who can forget the series of some poor relative shoveling food in his mouth. He puts the food on the fork. He lifts the fork to his mouth. Now the fork is closer to his mouth. The fork is in his mouth. The fork is out of his mouth. Finally, he sees the camera and smiles fork still in hand!

Then there is my stepbrother, he and his wife just had a baby, their first. I'm sure, if I every have a baby, or a husband or something signficant that has two legs instead of four, I'd want pictures. But, come on. Really.

He sends us photos of the new baby. Okay, I want to see the cute little baby, so I log on to the photo album. There are over 70 photos. And it starts with five photos of his pregnant wife showing off her belly from every angle imaginable. Then we have to photograph the car ride and the hospital room and the nurse in the hospital room and another series of him mugging for the camera in the hospital room with the wife showing off her belly while the nurse lurks in the background.

And then ... BAM ... after I've been lulled into a semi-sleep state by the utter boredom of these mundane pictures, the very next one ... BLOODY BABY!! What in the hell! I don't want to see that! No one wants to see that. Show me the crappy, poorly lit, scrunched up baby photo with the blue or pink hat. You know the one that's taken AFTER the kid's been cleaned up.

Don't show me live-action, birthing drama. These are baby pictures not the Discovery Channel or TLC. Who wants to see that? As far as I can tell, the only use for graphic baby photos (or God forbid a birthing video) are for use as punishments when the kid gets older. "See what you put me through! Look at it! And yes, that's my va-jay-jay getting all distorted and stretched out. Things haven't been the same with your father since. And this is how you repay me? Look at what you put me through! Look at it! And you better think twice before you cut class again, Mister!"

Then again, I suppose they could be used as a deterrent for teenage girls thinking about having sex. "It's real simple, Meagan. The dick goes in and nine months later, this comes kicking and screaming out. The truth hurts, darlin' and so does childbirth. Plus, you don't even want to know what that can do to your va-jay-jay."

Back in the day, when we used film, and it had to be developed and processed and paid for, people used a little more discretion when it came to snapping photos. Not anymore. People, just because you can fit 500 pictures on a memory card doesn't mean you should. And it definitely doesn't give you the right to inflict those photos on unsuspecting people. Delete damn it!

This is a longer post than I intended, but getting back to the point, the moral is simple. Don't just snap pictures all willy-nilly. Edit. Make judicious use of the Delete key on your camera. And for the love of all that's holy, if you absolutely must take the live-action baby photos, don't share them with the rest of us. We will be polite and look at the them if you shove them in our faces, but we really don't want to see that. We really don't.

Labels: People Please, Rant, Sex

posted by SDC @ 7:58 PM

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