I Am De-Dumbo

I simply cannot figure out how to use this camera.

I tried to take pictures of the ornaments as they went on the tree, but they came out too dark.

Or all pinkish.

Or fuzzy.

I did (you might want to sit down before I finish this sentence) read the owner's manual. The owner's manual told me how to change the settings on things like “exposure” and “white balance,” but it didn’t so much explain what these things were, and/or what settings might be optimal for, say, taking pictures of Christmas ornaments at night in a room lit by 900 tiny white bulbs and a few of those stupid so-called energy-conserving, world-saving fluorescents.

(Which, by the way, are going in the trash when they burn out, mercury or no, and I’m never buying another one of the damn things again. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, either, I’m just stupid enough to admit it. So I’ll be seeing the rest of you, whoever you are, in the whole new circle of hell being reserved for those of us who Don’t Do Enough For The Environment. Where, I imagine, it will be Globally Warm.)

By fiddling around with high and sharp and +3 and whatever, I did manage to squeeze off a picture or two that looked right. Which is good, because when you’re in nursery school and you deliberately leave a big chunk of empty space between the gingerbread man’s neck and arm for fear of chopping off the poor paper cookie’s head, the last thing you want, thirty-five years later, is an off-color depiction of your slightly retarded motor skills.

But then, if you don’t pay attention to it for a minute and a half, the camera has a hissy fit and shuts its whole system down. Sheesh, if I wanted a wife…

And when you, after much coaxing and stroking and cooing and maybe a doghouse rose or two, manage to turn it on again, it acts like it doesn’t remember who you are. All its settings have defaulted back to “auto” and all your pictures once again come out like ass.

Man. I sure hope I didn’t get caught taking that one!

So here’s a picture of my finished tree.*

It’s the best I’ve managed to do. Trust me that it’s prettier in person than I’ve managed to present it here. If we’re all still doing this when next Christmas rolls around, I’ll give you a better tour of the rest of my retarded ornaments, I promise. If, that is, I’ve by then somehow figured out what to do with the device that takes the pictures.

Or else just broken it and got a new one.



*I couldn’t find the snippers to cut that top branch down a bit, so it wouldn’t look quite so much like the Angel was doing all she could to disassociate herself from what had been so ceremoniously stuck up her ass. Johnny was supposed to find the snippers for me last night. Needless to say, he didn’t even look. I won’t bore you with the daily updates of my not-getting-the-snippers, but I will tell you when it happens. I recommend that you not hold your breath.