Good On Paper.

Often you will hear that something is ‘good on paper’.  This means that while it would seem like a delightful idea in theory, once you actually play it out, it doesn’t quite live up to the beautiful list of benefits that may or may not have once listed onto some sort of paper at an earlier moment in time.  There are things out there which are more obviously ‘good on paper’ but ‘bad in practice’, such as Communism, Adult Diapers, Napping, Water Beds, or Unprotected Sex.  However, some things are much more covertly ‘bad in practice’.  Leave it to me to assist you in avoiding the following list of ‘good on paper – bad in practice’ things and shit and whatnot that may otherwise take you by surprise.

Smelly Candles.

Who wouldn’t like fresh cookie smell?  Or pumpkin pie smell?  Or laundry smell?  Or Christmas Tree?  The thing is if you have a bunch of good smelling candles lying around, at some point, you’ll end up lighting one up before sex, or, on the opposite side of the spectrum after taking a huge dump.  And given how connected smell is to memory, over time, the given smell will act as a trigger.  Which means that this particular smell will either make you pop a boner or completely relax your colon, neither of which are very desirable when you are standing at ‘Mrs Fields’ at the mall, or cutting down the Griswold family Christmas tree, or eating dessert with the In-Laws, or folding clothes, and so on and so forth.  If you are female, replace ‘pop a boner’ with the female equivalent.

Digital Cameras / Camera Phones.

I realize that this is old news, but I wish that I could have prevented this one, and warned so many people of what was to come.  On paper, it reads that “I can take so many pictures!” In practice it becomes “I must take so many pictures” or “I need to take pictures of everything forever” and everyone ends up with a never ending library of photos that no one will ever look at.   I’ve covered this before, though (see: Picture Perfect).  I guess I’d just love to go somewhere, ANYWHERE, and not see people taking pictures of everything.  Just once please.

Netflix.

Again, I’m far too late to have prevented this, but on paper, we all love the ease of use, the accessibility and the huge selection that Netflix and the like have to offer.  In practice, however, there are no more movie stores and I miss browsing.  And fuck Redbox too, especially since the one at Shaw’s was busted tonight.

Drinking Eight Glasses of Water per Day.

On paper – I’ve never felt so alive, hydrated and healthy.  In practice – I’ve never peed so much.  I can’t commit to a one hour meeting, out of fear of pissing myself.  The commute home becomes a race to not pee all over my car.

Stalls with Walls that Go All the Way to the Floor.

I learned this on a recent business trip, where the office building I visited had bathrooms equipped with stalls of this kind.  I know what you’re thinking “but Kev, what about the added ankle privacy?”  While it is true that no one will be able to figure out who you are by the crumpled up pants and shoes normally put on display, it is also horrifyingly true that every smell that has ever been in the stall up until that point will be trapped in this poorly aerated stall, possibly forever and ever.  The smells all mingle together to create some sort of perpetual super smell mixture. Stepping into the stall is like being slapped in the face by an old sweat sock drenched in piss, chock full of shit, and sprinkled with some sort of onion-garlic-curry hybrid.  Too much?

Ice Makers.

I agree that the old school method of having to fill little ice cube trays is both tedious and slow.  And I ALWAYS spill water on the floor when travelling from the sink to the freezer… But I don’t think I’ve ever had ice cubes from an ice maker that didn’t smell funny.  And not ‘ha ha’ funny.  I prefer my ice non-smelly.

Alpaca Sweater.

I honestly liked how it looked on me at the store.  It was slimming, it was warm.  So, dagnabbit, I bought it.  What I didn’t know about an Alpaca sweater, and you should know, is that little fluffs fly off the sweater and go everywhere.  The floor at home – covered.  The floor at work in and around my cubicle – also covered.  Belly button and ass crack – full to the brim.  But seriously, my little fluffs are all over the office.  You can actually tell where I have been.  And forgive me for once again bringing up the workplace poop, but I left more than just trace amounts of Alpaca on the floor in the stall.  HENCE, EVERYONE KNOWS WHERE I’VE BEEN – the frequent trips to the kitchen area and to the bathroom.  Alpaca Sweater makes my workplace routines completely transparent!  It didn’t take me long to throw it away.  I felt like taking it back to the stupid GAP where I bought it.  I don’t remember seeing fluffs on the floor around the display.  FALSE ADVERTISING.  They must have had someone armed with a ‘Ghostbuster’ backpack style vacuum cleaner to run out and clean house every five minutes while no one is looking.  Damn you GAP, your Alpaca sweaters and your stupid staff of vacuum ninjas.

Well, I’m sure there are plenty more examples rampaging out there and maybe I will get to them one day.  For now, I think that is a good start.  You’ve been warned.

That’s it.  My Alpaca just came out of the dryer and I need to use the potty.

Picture Perfect.

You need to stop taking so many pictures. Digital cameras came along and suddenly everyone’s an artist. Everyone loves photography. And because memory is cheap, there’s no discrimination at all with what to take pictures of. People take pictures of everything. It’s always ‘the blurry picture of the street lamp’, ‘the upside down shot of your friend doing a cartwheel’, ‘the sky at night all blurry and shit’, ‘landscape shot number seventeen thousand’ or the dreaded ‘shot of oneself taken with the camera at arms length’. Enough! Use a fucking mirror! I liked when there was a limit on the number of pictures. You’d buy a disposable camera for your vacation, and then you'd get twenty six or seven pictures for the whole trip. And you couldn’t check how they turned out immediately after taking them. You had to wait. Now people are reminiscing about moments just moments after capturing said moment. Stop trying to create needless instant nostalgia!

“Yo, check the picture I just took of that tree.”
“Nice. Nice pic. I remember that tree. Man, good times. We had such good times with that tree, roughly ten to twelve seconds ago.”
“Hey, take a picture of me looking at the picture of the tree. I want to capture how great this new thing is, I never want to forget the experience of remembering the tree.”
“Check out the picture of you checking out the picture of the tree!”
“Awesome, that is so going to be my next Profile Pic, on Farcepoop.”
“Do you want a pic of you checking out the pic of you checking out the pic of you checking out the pic of the tree?”

This exchange continued for several more minutes.

And what’s with sharing all of the photos too? It takes away some of the magic, doesn't it? Remember when receiving ‘doubles’ of someone’s pictures used to have a certain amount of meaning? It used to be special. Doubles were a hot commodity. Very few people had doubles of your pictures, and you didn’t have many of others’ artwork either. Most pictures in your albums were your originals. You used to have to really want the doubles, and make a special request.

“Can you get doubles for me? It turns out my disposable camera wasn’t waterproof.”

Still, it was rare that you really gave a shit about getting someone’s doubles. Suddenly with digital cameras not only is everyone taking pictures of everything, but everyone is posting them for everyone to see, and, even worse, everyone wants to see everyone’s pictures of everything, for some strange reason. I mean, at least when someone gave you their doubles, there were only twenty or so pictures, generally. Now people are viewing hundreds of randomly photographed bullshitshots. Sometimes it will be an event that you yourself were also at. And you have your own pictures of it. And still you want to see other peoples’ pictures of the same thing you already have pictures of. Is it that you secretly think that they got some super shot from some super angle that will change your entire life forever?

“Thank God you had your camera there at that time too, because I hadn’t gotten a really good picture of everyone dancing to the Village People’s ‘YMCA’ the second time that they played it. I only had pictures from the first time around. What a great time, now I don’t even have to try and remember what it was actually like, I have the picture.”

All of this is beside the point that, it seems to me, at one time, viewing a slideshow, of someone’s vacation or whatnots, was a drag. Not just a little bit of a drag, but a big fucking drag. You know, like in those campy old sitcoms when the main character, the really super cool good looking person you’re supposed to identify with and think “hey they’re just like me”, gets stuck at the neighbours’ house watching the slideshow of their recent vacation to Niagara Falls, with the big smelly projector and the weird children? And then you know, the regular cool person tries to sneak out the back door but one of the neighbours catches him over in the kitchen near the refrigerator and makes him sit back down on the couch and now they have their arm around them so they’ll never get away and the laugh track just goes bananas? There’s always this super clever witty banter too.

“Gee Wally I sure hope it’s as good as the slideshow of the Poconos” says the main character so sarcastically that it is just insane. “It is. It’s even longer” confirms the wacky nutso-wutso neighbour. “And just when I thought my day couldn’t get any better” says the main character, once again sarcastically, but this time looking directly at the camera, breaking the fourth wall.

Then a fog horn sounds, a beefy laugh track goes off and finally a commercial break comes just when it was getting so good and funny and hilarious. I could keep going with the awesome sitcom plot, but I won’t (spoiler alert: it comes back from commercial break and the slideshow still isn’t over…at the bottom of the screen it says something comical like “three hours later”, then there’s another fog horn sound, and then the biggest damn laugh track you’ve ever heard comes in with a woman saying “OH MY GAaWD” explosively).

Alright, let’s flash forward to nowadays when, all of a sudden, people are going out of their way to view these slideshows, online, and by choice. People even make requests for them now.

“Hey, you’re back from your trip, oh god show me the pictures, did you post them yet? lemme see, lemme live through your eyes. OH GOD I NEED TO SEE THEM NOW! POST THEM POST THEM POST THEM!”

Plus everyone gets to put their comments on the photos, which absolutely enriches and enhances the photo slideshow viewing experience for everyone else.

- u look so drunx haha
- i love this picture where you look so cute you guys im so happy 4 u
- oh man best night evah lol
- nice face looks like he farted hehe whats up yer butt hehe
- wish I coulda been there
- wtf that the guy that took out his weenis and got arrested later outside?
- I REMEMBER THAT GUY!!!!!
- when’d u take this? omg soooo funny where was i
- oh man best night evah lol
Pictures used to be worth a thousand words, now they’re worth a few syllables at best (sometimes they are worth little more than ‘lol’, ‘fail’, ‘omg’ or ‘wtf’). Take a picture it’ll last longer? Really? You know what? Most moments being captured by cameras these days don’t need any lengthening to begin with. They’re just fine and dandy the way they are, occurring once, lingering for a sufficient amount of time, and then being mostly forgotten about. Live in the now! Let’s all put the cameras down for a little while and start experiencing things as they actually happen, in real time. Stop being so worried about capturing the moment, because chances are, you just missed the moment, while you were busy looking at the little screen of your camera making sure everything was lined up just right, or while you were checking out the blurry failed photo that you took of the previous moment that you missed one second earlier.

That’s it. My photos are done uploading. I’m going to stop typing now.

Important Note:

I wanted to say a little comment on the photo I used up at the top. It was meant to mock how some people must view the world, always through the eye, or lens, of a digital camera. But then I looked more closely and started thinking, who took this picture? Is there a fifth biker? Did they put it on a timer? Because it would be very difficult to get back on the bikes in a line like that, in time, and from that distance. How did they time it so well? I’m thinking that, unfortunately, it’s someone creepy that they don’t even know, since none of them are actually looking at the camera. And then I thought that this is probably not the best marketing strategy, to target 'that Stalker who is constantly on the go'. Just a thought.