1. Wear that “Canon EOS Digital” neck-strap proudly so the whole world can see what expensive equipment you have.
2. Take the camera on a plane; no need to keep it in your carry-on bag because you won’t be using it. If it doesn’t magically disappear, I hope you like broken glass.
3. Keep all your gear in your fancy new Lowepro bag, then leave it at a restaurant table to go the the bathroom. Don’t worry, it’ll only take a minute!
4. Use a lens with a big red ring around it.
5. Leave your big red ring and “EOS 5D” logo open for the world to admire. Some black tape and a Sharpie marker just doesn’t fit in your budget.
6. Stash your camera and pricey lenses in your hotel room. What could be more secure than a hotel room?
7. Leave it on a beach towel; you have to go surfing after all. Or, for extra safety, walk back to the car and put it in the trunk, then wonder how someone knew it was in your trunk.
8. Have a friend hold your bag. Oops, I forgot about your stuff! It wasn’t anything important, right?
9. Oh no, your brand-new DSLR has dust spots! No matter; just send it back in a big box labeled “Camera Repair Dept.” for warranty service.
10. Family portrait, no one to snap the photo? Just get one of the local bums to assist. Oh wait, he’s backing away slowly… must be to get the most compositionally pleasing shot.
Tag Archives: rants
Write Concisely
New Year’s Day. A time to make commitments for self-improvement and then break them a week later. I have one I’m going to keep.
My resolution is to speak and write concisely and correctly. While filler and disfluencies are excusable in speech, in print they are intolerable. Rewriting is writing, so the standards are higher because you can polish your work easily. “Kinda,” “sort of,” “like,” “more than,” and “less than” have no place in writing. If I ever use “in all circumstances that I know of,” yell at me to replace it with “always.” More examples:
• Don’t say “America has over 300 million people,” say “America has 300 million people.” We know what you mean.
• Use “always” and “never.” English is a language for humans, not computers—treat it as such. If you are wrong, plenty of people would love to correct you.
• We have plenty of words already; don’t make new ones up. “Servers” are waiters and waitresses. A “chair” is a chairman or chairwoman. Unless you are referring to a woman or women specifically, he, waiter, and chairman will do just fine. Don’t use they in place of he; it’s imprecise and dehumanizing. Gender inclusivity is a crock.
• Don’t use “special” to describe the retarded. It takes away from people who really are special.
• All our jungles have disappeared and been replaced with rainforests, while all our swamps have become wetlands. How did this happen?
• People are not sewers! Have a little respect for our tailors and seamstresses.
A lot of the Newspeak doesn’t even make sense. What is a “flight attendant” anyway? I know what a steward is (female: stewardesses), but isn’t a flight attendant anyone who has ever been on (attended) a plane?
English is losing its humanity. Don’t let them steal our language.