Kodak Moments

So far, I'm one for two on New Year's Resolutions: I bought a digital camera. This camera, which I bought so I could finally join the 21st century(even my mother has a digital camera; she prints out her own photos now), has already proven one thing: I'm the reason they have very explicit directions that insult most (other) people's intelligence.

You see, I couldn't open the battery latch to my new camera. The directions said to slide the battery lock to "open" and then to open the latch. Which I did. The latch wouldn't open.

Holding the lock in the open position with one finger while prying at the latch with two others, I let out grunts of frustration while crouched cross-legged on the sofa. I tried all kinds of hand positions, desperately trying to get the damn latch to open. Getting a fingernail in between two plastic panels, I tried again, pushing the camera away from my body with outstretched, straining arms, afraid I would break my new toy. Nothing was working. I wanted to use this thing so badly, why would they make this first step so impossible? Did I get the one defective battery latch in a thousand? Fuck this! I thought, Open...Open...ohhhh-penn....OPEN! OPEN!! OPEN!!! I gave up, covered in the slight cold sweat you get from frustration and embarrassment.

Peering down at my new camera - that I couldn't even put batteries in - I scratched the top of my head, palmed the camera and dragged my knuckles across the arm rest, lurching over to my room to look up the tech support number. Assuming I could still operate my MacBook correctly. I briefly pictured myself as the last man on an apocalyptic Earth, with a can of creamed corn in one hand and a can opener in the other. Looking back and forth at each one, considering each carefully, before muttering "er..derr..derf?", and starving to death. Thus ending humanity, and paving the way for a more worthy species, one whose members won't struggle with their digital devices. Maybe mice, or those really smart dolphins who rescue people. Sorry everyone.

ANYWAY, the guy I talked to at Cannon did his best not to laugh at me. Apparently, you push the lock to "open" then you slide the latch, and open it. The second he said "slide" - and then put me on hold, so he could get the camera-specific procedure for my dumb ass - I understood what I was doing wrong, and I felt really, really, reallllly stupid. I stayed on hold, just so I could tell the guy when he got back that I had figured it out and I wanted my gold star.

So, now I have a camera. And I'm in New York this weekend, so there should be plenty of photo opportunities.

Something else bizarre happened to me with this camera, now that I think about it. It arrived from UPS at my office, and still in the box, I put it in my bag(my man bag, my messenger bag, my card-carrying metro-sexual bag) and started home.

Waiting for the Greenline at L'Enfant plaza, a group of extremely pretty girls got out of a Yellow line train. The leader was a very Nordic looking, tall blonde. I assume she was the leader because she walked right up to me and made the universal camera gesture: the raised hand snapping off a photo. Maybe I was stunned because she seemed to be walking in-step with the music(although I can't remember what was playing on my iPod) but, for some insane reason, when she made the universal camera gesture for a split second I thought How the hell does she know I'm carrying a camera - still in it's box - inside my bag? Is she reading my mind?

No, she wasn't a mind reader after all. All she was doing was asking me to take a picture of her and her friends, with her camera. Something any idiot could have deduced. Any idiot who could later go home and put batteries in his new digital camera without the assistance of an 800 number.

Anyway, she says "Could you take a picture of all of us, and get the Metro sign in it? It's for our job."

I said yes, thinking Sure, I'll take your picture and get the L'Enfant plaza sign in...wait, it's for your job? Then, as I get ready to take the picture, this group of about eight pretty girls all take out Groucho Marx glasses and put them on.

What the hell kind of job involves getting your picture taken at Metro stops wearing a god-damned pair of Groucho fucking Marx glasses? This is still blowing my mind two days later. Someone, someone out there must know what job these girls had. Please tell me.

Fooled Again

I've hesitated to write about this; it didn't seem right to throw dirty laundry onto the lawn for the neighbors to see, especially when the bedsheets were shared. I wasn't going to write this.

Then, a vivid memory came to me: another blog, written over a year ago, where the author proclaimed to anyone with interest or a MySpace account she had left her husband and was looking forward to a new future without him. Below were one line comments of affirmation from people who knew only what they could learn from a lone paragraph on the internet. It confronted me in the cold glow of a monitor in a half-filled apartment that had been full the day before.

So fuck it.

For now, I'll focus on the most recent business. Maybe, someday, you will be regaled by my divorce scabs and scars(but those are my responsibility). No, what is most pressing is something still the responsibility of two people: money, of course.

My ex-wife and I were a couple just starting out, young and poor. Our first - and only - major purchase was a stylish couch. We shared a nice one-bedroom apartment in a good area of town, blocks from her job. Neither of us had much.

When she left, there was a huge tax bill, credit debt, and six months left on our lease. A lease signed with the assumption there would always be two incomes paying the rent.

The day after she left, I was fired. That was not a good week, unless you count the record number of 151 shots I did that Friday, which I don't.

Despite my one week alcoholism, I found a better job, a better girlfriend, and I paid everything off. It wasn't easy after two months of unemployment, and it took nearly a year, but it could have been much, much worse.

The divorce was finalized a day before what would have been our third anniversary; one of those meaningless coincidences that reminds you the universe is an uncaring mean place. My ex-wife, albeit late, took care of the papers(papers that came to me on Valentine's Day, another coincidence - or the job of a well paid mailman, I suppose) and she even promised to start paying me back her half of all the debt I had paid off for us. She would start in September, she told me in an e-mail that also gave me updates on family members I would never see again.

It's mid-October. Nothing, not a word.

I'm not surprised...no, I'm lying, I am surprised. The money means nothing at this point, it's a past hardship I'd like to forget. The gesture, though, the sign on her part that the marriage at least meant something, even if it was just a debt to be repaid; that meant something. To me, it meant a tiny bit of satisfaction you get from a little respect. I still craved respect from this woman, or I at least liked receiving it.

What can I say, I'm a sucker - I don't learn. And in a year plus since I last saw her, my ex-wife can still remind me of that.

A Pattern Developing

I don't know if I could take it if another girl, after telling me how I'm the best thing to ever, ever happen to her, leaves me for not being interesting enough. The downside to dating artsy types I guess.

The beautiful people, the beautiful people,
It's all relative to the size of your steeple,
You can't see the forest, for the trees,
You can't smell
your own shit on your knees!