Do you remember my Canon XTi, the DSLR camera that got its jollies by sucking my will to live on a daily basis? The one that hated my guts and proved it every single day by taking soft and blurry photos because it got its kicks out of screwing with my head? The one I affectionately called DSLRTCALOM, short for Damn Stupid Little Ratshit That Costs A Lot Of Money?
I sold it a couple of months ago on Craigslist to a very nice young man, one of the very few who didn’t email me profoundly stupid questions like Does it need a leash? and Does it come with a leather sofa? and, one of my favorites, Can I put mustard and ketchup on it?
And best of all, when he came to pick it up, he did not ask me point blank Will you ship it to me when I get back to my house? But wait five minutes because there’s rush hour traffic.
What is it about Craigslist that brings out the unfathomably stupid in people?
Anyway, I sold it and I’ve been DSLR-less since. I do have my point and shoot and it’s fine and fits in my purse or in Nate’s pocket on those occasions when I ask him to carry it for me because I don’t want to carry a purse. The same occasions when he finds it necessary to roll his eyeballs at me and I find it necessary to tackle him and bellow ISN’T IT ENOUGH I CARRIED YOUR CHILD? IT’S NOT LIKE I’M ASKING YOU TO CARRY A HUMAN ON TOP OF YOUR BLADDER FOR NINE MONTHS AND THEN SHOOT IT THROUGH YOUR PENIS.
This is the Nikon D90, my dream camera.
My own personal nirvana. My little slice of Heaven, smothered in Nutella and Bavarian cream and sitting on a fried donut.
And before anyone asks, NO NO DAMMIT NO. I am not a spokesperson for Nikon. Wouldn’t that be nice? But alas, I am but a pimple upon the fanny of the speck of molecular dust wiped off one of their uber cool lenses.
If I was their spokesperson, I would already own one of these babies and then this entire post would be moot and then I’d have to come up with something totally different to blog about today and who’s got time for that nonsense? So I’d probably get all stressed out about it which would bring on either a cold sore or a bladder infection or both, inciting me to physical violence whereupon I would rip out my own uterus and fling it out the window, sprinkling bacterial laden neon orange pee on everything in its wake.
With my luck, I’d be cited for littering and public urination. Not to mention sued for malpractice for performing a hysterectomy without a medical license.
I’ve been trying to save my pennies to buy my baby which I’ve decided to call Mecca but as it turns out, it’s hard to buy Mecca when you’ve got to feed and clothe and educate two young human beings who sprang from your womb and sort of look like you but mostly look like their respective fathers and speaking of which, once I could understand, but twice? I do all the work, earning 40 extra pounds, a second chin and 152 glistening stretch marks and they get their fathers’ strong jaws and nice height but my astigmatism? What’s up with that?
It’s a slow go, trying to save up the money. And when I say slow, I pretty much mean at the speed of stop. So I’ve brainstormed a list of alternative methods to raise the money necessary to buy Mecca before it becomes obsolete or before I do, when I’m too old to remember what it’s for and I call it Fitz because it looks like someone I never knew and then someone steals it from my room at the Older Than the Hills Nursing Home, along with my teeth and my stash of People magazines.
Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
- Have Nate tailgate an UPS truck and for once, not yell at him for constantly humping bumpers and instead, encourage him in hopes that we’ll crash into the truck and its doors will swing open and the box will fall onto the highway where I can lean out my door and grab it before it gets run over and then we can make a quick getaway lest Nate gets arrested for DUM (driving while under the influence of me) and I have to sell the camera for bail.
- Greet everyone I meet with a warm smile and then punch them in the mouth. With any luck my aim will be spot on and teeth will rain down all around me. They won’t see me scrambling on my hands and knees, collecting their pearly whites, because they’ll be busy being unconscious. Then run the teeth home and hope the tooth fairy is feeling generous.
- For the next four months until Christmas, get all the laundry done and keep my house clean and remember to not call anyone YOU MISERABLE LITTLE SCUMMY SCUZZBUCKET FROM HELL while driving around with my kids and most of all, push my chair in after dinner. Then hope Santa’s lost his long term memory.
- Sprinkle Clomid on my Cheerios and nine months later, give birth to adorable sextuplets and then make tens of millions of dollars over the next few years by exploiting them on TV while simultaneously emasculating my husband. Then, when our marriage crumbles and he leaves me for some drunken bimbo on Youtube, continue to pimp out my multiples on TV under the guise that I need to put food on the table, and certainly not because I’m an attention whore. Do all this while sporting ugly ass asymmetrical hair.
- Become governor, then run for Vice President, then lose IQ points at warp speed every time I open my mouth and sometimes even when I don’t, then lose the election, go home and pitch a WAH WAH WAH hissy and whine to my state that the media are just a big bunch of meanies who don’t play fair and make stuff up. Then I’ll complain that the big bad meanies took my credibility and won’t give it back and they’re not my friends and I don’t want to play anymore so I’m taking my designer glasses and my folksy speech and going home where I can see Russia from my bathroom SO THERE. Then I plan to stomp off the podium right onto a sound stage and host my own talk show, thereby becoming part of the very thing I claim to despise and make millions of dollars to boot.
Any other suggestions? Because I really really want this camera and I’m getting desperate and knocking off Nate and collecting insurance money is looking tempting, if it weren’t for the fact that I’ll never figure out how he programmed the DVR and I don’t speak thermostat. I’m getting quite frustrated so don’t be surprised if you see a short, round, busty, bespectacled middle-aged woman standing in the middle of a busy intersection wearing nothing but a five day o’clock shadow on her legs, shrieking WHO THE HELL DO I HAVE TO NOT SLEEP WITH TO GET TO MECCA?
Just cut her some slack, OK?
She’d appreciate it.
.
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26 thoughts on “Excuse me, Aladdin? Mind if I rub your lamp?”
OK – you can STILL be my friend, despite going over from the enlightened Canon side to the Nikon dark side.
Are you a professional journalist? You write very well.
Awwww, I hope you can get it somehow! And then not lose your mind over how it works, too… π
My suggestion is to suggest Nate buy you a combined birthday&christmas present – for the next three years. That should cover it. I’m sure he’ll see the benefits in not having to agonise what to get you times 6!
In the mean time, if you’re still having to operate with a point-and-shoot, just get lightroom and turn any not-so-good pics into something artsy!
And as for your daughters and your loins – from the pics I’ve seen that you’ve posted here there is no doubt that those girls are yours!
How about tell the family you’re getting a combined family gift for Christmas this year? I’m sure they’ll all be on board, right?
I saved for 5 months for my D40 & even then it was a anniversary/birthday/xmas present. What I did was decide to cut out anything unnecessary in the budget and put that money toward the camera. The soles might be falling off the kid’ shoes but they still fit him just fine, some hot glue and voila, it would be unnecessary to buy new shoes and that is $20 toward my camera
The Christmas before last, I spent hours and hours and HOURS helping my mom research (and by “help” I mean Mom said “oh I saw a picture of a camera in a circular, they are selling it at a store, can you find it and see if it is good?” and that was *all* the information I’d get, then I’d spend hours poring over various sites on Ye Olde Interwebz and produce insanely detailed reports for my mom of the top cameras and she’d look at the list and say “Well, none of those are that camera that was on sale at that store….”) and choose a new camera for my dad, who is the very definition of a shutterbug (case in point: there is photo documentation of EVERY moment of my life, including, for example, my first diaper rash. I kid you not.) and then go with her to eleventy million camera stores in the greater NJ area and stand alongside her while she asked Really Idiotic Questions of the salespeople and shoot them various “I know she’s totally nuts” looks of sympathy and then translate into Real World Speak what Mom was saying.
At the end of all that and a few bottles of Excedrin Migraine, along with many grateful thanks to the Lucky Stars for having the sense to live 6 hours northwest of my parents, so that such escapades are limited to a few times a year (at least in person), my dad got a brand-spanking new, amazingly awesome, really damned expensive Canon super-fancy camera, complete with tricked out bag o’ accessories like lenses and such.
So, here’s my plan: Wait another month or so, then point out to Mom how massively advanced the digital photography world has become since she last bought Dad a camera, dropping hints to convince her that his camera is utterly obsolete and that she needs to buy him a new one. That way, he can give me his old one and I will sing further praises to the Lucky Stars above since my Sony point-n-shoot is rather craptastic and the only thing going for it is that it is small enough to fit into a pocket or purse, but that’s about all.
And the five day o’clock leg shadow? Hilarious and sadly true. Any news reports you may’ve heard over the weekend about Sasquatch sightings on the southeast side? Guilty – I went to the pool after not having deforested for two days. Whoops.
Egads, I switched tenses partway through that first paragraph.
Seriously, there needs to be a law: HEATHER PROOFREAD YER DANG COMMENTS BEFORE HITTING SUBMIT!!!
Oy.
This is funny! I’m hoping to get some kind of fancy shmancy camera, but don’t know where to begin. Thanks for the laugh.
Stopping by from sits…
rofl..I want the same camera dh is a cannon fellow. Though they take a bit more of learning curve than nikon.
Bwahahaha!! Spluttered coffee all over my screen when I read this! You have an awesome way with words π
hi, i have recently picked up this passion for photography and cameras have started to pull me towards them like crazy. You shouldn’t have posted the picture of this cool camera…:'(
LOL
This post cracked me up. Don’t hit me but I got the D90 last fall after two years of lusting after a DSLR. It just so happens that I got a retention bonus and was on the verge of being laid off. I decided it is now or never and I was ready to hit the “buy” button on the D80 when luckily my friend and former boss Stephen said, wait a couple more weeks for the D90. Of course he just got the D700. But his advice to me was buy the D90 and spend your money on the lenses. I’d say make it my Christmas, birthday, mothers day, anniversary, and valentines day present (and I’ll put every penny I have toward it) and make it worth your while! (Check out Stephen’s photography blog: http://stephentrainor.com/blog/?c=Equipment)
funny stuff m’dear. why this camera? Im a scrapbooker/photo stalker, so Im always on the lookout for a good camera…
This one gets my vote:
“For the next four months until Christmas, get all the laundry done and keep my house clean and remember to not call anyone YOU MISERABLE LITTLE SCUMMY SCUZZBUCKET FROM HELL while driving around with my kids and most of all, push my chair in after dinner. Then hope Santaβs lost his long term memory.”
Or do like I do…promise hubby that if he buys X for me now, I’ll never want to eat out again and he’ll always have clean socks in his drawer. FOREVER.
He buys it every time. Don’t believe me? Just how many horses do I have now? Well, there you go.
P.S. He currently has NO clean socks in his drawer and probably won’t for a least two more days.
LOL!! sigh. you KNOW i want this camera too!! you KNOW i’m trying to make $$ too!! that means YOU have to come down to KY! the fair is goin’ on this week, we’ll help put the rides up, take them down…that’ll be a little $$!! THEN we can enter the lawnmower demolition derby!! first prize is 100$! We just need to get 10 lawnmowers and enter 10 times under someone else’s identity not to mention we have to win! if not that we can always enter the greased pig competition! LOL!! we’re both used to chasing kids around, we can WIN this thing I’m tellin’ ya!! π
buzz me babe!!
looks like a fantastic camera and LOl at your stories at the beginning!
If you dont mind not having the video record feature (who watches home movies anyways?!) I would go for the D80. You can get a great deal on one, look on Amazon or Ebay under powersellers. I got mine for $1200 with 4 lenses and more accessories than I could ever need! The prices came down when the D90 came out. And I for one didnt want the video on the camera!
Right now, while the post is till up, contact a local retailer who sells these. Ask them to donate two – one for a giveaway and one for you. Write about it [favorably] and mention the store that gave it to you. They get publicity, you get a camera.
You can borrow mine! I’m not sure though how much it cost, it was a present from my soon to be ex-husband. But with how everyone talks about it, apparently it’s a lot of money. I love it though. If only I knew how to use it properly. That’s why I’m taking classes for it. I feel guilty having such a great camera and not really understanding how to use it.
NICE…Although I do love Cannon’s… π And as usual…you always have me giggling as I read your posts. π
Go Nikon if you must (Canon girl here)–could you sell some eggs?
Blessings!
BTW…I did give you a blog award. π You can grab it here: wifeandmomof3.net/2009/08/03/its-a-major-award/.
I don’t want to add to your misery in waiting, but I just told dh today that the best investment I ever made was my Nikon D80 . . . LOVE that thing!
You have to stop stressing – you have to be out of names for the cold sores. I like Dee’s suggestion about contacting a local retailer and pimping it. Or better yet, get the Nikon’s reps name and strike a deal.
Stan at Scrappers Workshop
http://www.scrappersworkshop.com/blog
OMG, your reference to Jon and Kate cracked me up!!! I can’t stop laughing even now as I’m trying to type this comment!
You should write to someone at Nikon and see if they’ll send you one, for review on your blog. Seriously, if those people don’t recognize yet that blogging moms are one of the best ways to spread the word about their product, they are really missing out!