I have one of those Canon Powershot Digital Elph cameras that I occasionally use. I'm not really a picture-taking type. I usually only like to take pictures of funny poses and oddball things. For some strange reason, I do not enjoy the task of uploading the photos onto my computer and therefore rarely do it. I might as well make use of the 128M CompactFlash card.

Yesterday I took my camera to work to take a few photos of some kids. Most of them love to see themselves in pictures, especially when they can see them on a small screen. After a while, some kid will want to take the camera and take a picture, either of me or another kid. This sometimes get me worried because I have seen these same kids break pencils, pencil sharpeners, lights, video game controllers, even doors and windows. They have no respect for the property of others (many times, even their own stuff gets mistreated). There are only a few kids I trust to let use my stuff.

I was reminded of a discussion I had with some friends back in high school (probably with De). You know how when you want to take a group picture with your friends, you have to find a stranger to use your camera to snap the photo? (De once spent over five minutes trying to find someone to take a group picture for us at Great America. Probably wasn't his fault. How many people can you find at Great America on a bright sunny summer day anyways?) We talked about how to pick someone to take that photo for you and came up with a few ideal candidate: an adult woman or a guy you know you can beat up. Here is the reasoning:

young kid: won't be able to operate camera properly.

teenager: might be a punk and cut off your heads in the photo (we would have). possibility of camera theft.

adult male: in the event of camera theft, he would be hardest of the candidates to stop. might also act like a punk.

adult female: in the event of camera theft, would be easier to catch than an adult male.

old folks: shaky hands leads to bad pictures. also easily scared off by people asking them questions such as 'Can you take our picture?'


(editor's note: some links have been updated, mostly those who have jumped ship from blogger to xanga. vicky's page was added. no roster cuts have been made yet.)