Bloody Cameras

back when i was a camera sales associate, the idea was that every worker should do about 50% of their time on the floor and 50% of their time in the lab-- but nobody liked that idea and ultimately it was rewritten, "if you're a good sales associate you stay on the floor because the lab doesn't make sales."

and in all honesty, certain people seemed more at home in the lab. it's where all the film was processed and digital photos were printed and packaged. it's great for the employees who don't like to talk or just aren't very good at it.

but there would be days when we'd be called into the lab because a customer had taken naked pictures of themselves and that's just the sort of thing that is going to be shared with everyone in the store.

unfortunately, it really is only old people who take naked pictures and actually print them out at a camera shop. i mean that's what picture text messaging was invented to prevent.

so there came a day my manager walked out of the lab looking at me with confused eyes before asking me to check out some of the photos he found today.

i braced myself for elderly vagina and grey pubic hair.

but what he showed me was worse in so many ways-- and it didn't even include actual nudity.

it was kyle. it was kyle soaking his butt in a tub of hot water. because his butthole was bleeding.

and there were several different angles of the activity; several different shots trying to capture the many emotions that kyle must have been feeling as the warm salt water soothed his bleeding orifice.

rosa had stopped by my work earlier to have these pictures printed, but i had no idea what the sd card actually carried till i found myself staring at them awkwardly with my boss.

if i remember correctly, she posted those photos on windows above their apartment's front door. so before they let you in and while you waited outside, you had nothing to do but examine the images.

"do you think it would be worse to have blood leak out of your butt," kyle started, "or poop?"

"poop," i thought, "because it's smellier and you can't pretend it didn't happen."

"yeah, but bloods worse," kyle corrected me, "because that's just never supposed to come out of your butt."

what i find the strangest-- or perhaps the most poetic-- about this situation is that kyle is the one who first introduced me to the cartoonist don hertzfeldt:



i couldn't decide if this was a story or an intoxicated poop segment. sometimes it's a very fine line.