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Dude I hate printing Christmas photos, it's all-- here's the kids smiling under the tree, holding up presents, out-of-focus, with crazy demonic redeye. Here's grandma, too senile to even know it's Christmas, asleep at the dinner table. Here's the dog with a stupid santa hat on (okay, those are cute sometimes.) Always crappy underexposed yellow indoor light or awful washed-out flash. And why does everyone decide that NOW is the time to haul in the 50 rolls of film that have been decaying slowly in a drawer in their house since the mid-eighties and "let's see what's on them!" I'll tell you what's on them-- grainy, faded, discolored crappy-ass snapshots of the same shit you took pictures of this year. If it wasn't important enough to get developed back when they were taken-- really, just throw them away. And FUCK if I'm going to spend a half hour color-correcting THAT shit.

I sound like I hate my job, but I actually like it a lot still.

Did you have to work on Christmas Eve? I did, until 5:30. It was awful. Besides the whole not being with my family and getting to cook the big fun elaborate dinner I usually do (which was sad and made it feel not like Christmas)... who the fuck takes pictures in to be developed on Christmas Eve?? I mean really. Don't they have better things to do? Well apparantly a lot of people don't have better things to do-- and they're all FUCKING WIERDOS. On Christmas Eve I printed:

10 rolls that this woman had taken where her husband is in the hospital getting some elaborate surgery and she's stuck in whatever city the hospital is in with nothing to do but wander around the city and take pictures of stuff. It's really sad-- there's all these shots of the guy in his hospital bed, then pictures of the hallway at the hospital, then city street scenes, random buildings, the inside of a museum, more pictures of the husband in his hospital bed. They're obviously taking place over a period of time, because then we start seeing the recovery shots of the guy-- he's naked in his bed showing off these INSANELY huge nasty awfull looking scars that go from one side of his back diagonally across it, with all these staple-type marks. I've never seen anything like it. I can't even imagine what kind of surgery involved getting cut open like that. There's also a big scar across his heart with some staple marks and wierd holes, and several small x-shaped scars along his side. There are a lot of these scar pictures, from different angles and under different lighting conditions. Then things start to get weird-- I start to see naked photos of the woman, that she's taken of herself in the mirror of a public restroom. More scars, more sleeping husband, more city street scenes. Then there's (WARNING: this is nasty) all these shots the woman has taken of her pussy, on the toilet, with a tampon string hanging out. Then there's more museum shots, it's some kind of natural history museum with displays of different animals-- but most of her pictures are closeups of the various animal's TESTICLES (between the legs, from behind--porno style.) Then husband butt-naked in his hospital room. Then.... at this point I stop looking at the photos and I just hold up the negatives from the last roll, and see--- naked husband, naked husband's flaccid uncircumcised penis, naked husband sitting on toilet and... a number of closeup shots of the CONTENTS of the toilet. Which, though very small and in reverse, appear to be... not what one would normally see in such photos. I decide that this roll is PROBABLY properly exposed and free of dust, and decide to skip looking at the actual photos. It was the first time I've ever been unable to look at the pictures I was printing, and I felt kind of disapointed in myself for being freaked out by it-- but for Christ's sake-- it was 11 AM on Christmas Eve! And I hadn't even had any coffee yet.

After that experience, photos of anything else would seem normal-- but there were a few exceptions. Most notably, 5 rolls from these two guys on vacation in Thailand-- cavorting with underage prostitutes (some of whom were clearly underage transvestite prostitutes.)

Also a lot of randomly dispersed blurry dick and tit shots, but those are very common. It's the contexts that never cease to amuse me though. Like here's a family on vacation-- shots of the mom and dad and young son at Disneyland-- oh and here's Mom back at the hotel room taking pictures of her tits in the mirror. What the fuck? With the vacation photos?? She's going to get these back and take them to Christmas dinner and be showing the whole family the cute pictures of her kid and then-- oh yeah, that's me groping my boobs!?