Gimp Rage

Until last week, all I knew about Flickr was that some kind soul duped a venture capitalist into paying to create a Web service upon which I could dump several hundred megabytes worth of Nerd Prom pictures, thus passing my bandwidth savings onto the Phillip Morris tobacco company.

But it seems that Flickr is ever so much more than that. It’s set itself up as an online community of photographers, where people can search for and comment on each other’s snapshots. Had I known this, I would probably never have signed up. I’m all about the free photo hosting, but I have no interest in communicating with serious photographers, and believe me: I have nothing to contribute to a conversation with them. When asked what my favorite F-Stop is, I will respond, “dental dam,” which won’t help them and will only make both of us feel dirty. Or at least, dirtier.

The plus side of Flickr being what it is is that, on top of the seven of you who read this crappy little rag, literally thousands of people have found and looked at my Comic-Con photos (Note to self: quit fighting with success, and change the name of this Web site to “Pictures of Freaks in Costumes”). The down side is, the one picture they’ve all looked at is this one:

Almost 5,000 people have taken a look at this picture, which would be flattering, had a big chunk of them not chimed in on the Flickr comments accusing me of being insensitive to amputees.

Which is ridiculous. First of all: I didn’t cut her leg off. Granted, there are a lot of nights I can’t account for, but because of that, my girl won’t allow me to own or wield anything sharper than the remote control, and she even takes that away from me after a twelve-pack, so I’m pretty sure I’m innocent on that front.

Second: I’m not the prick who put this woman on a platform that required steps to reach.

Third: I’m just an average guy. Which means that, had her agent demanded that her bra be stuffed to standard stripper size, I would not have noticed that she was even missing a leg. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if she were missing a head. Of course, had the top-heaviness caused her to lose her balance and take a header, people would be cursing me on YouTube instead of Flickr right now.

Fourth: I’m offended that people think that, just because a guy with a humor site took this picture, that it means I’m somehow prejudiced against amputees. I’ll have you know that I once knew a kid who lost a thumb in a water skiing accident, and he never let it stop him from hanging out with the other kids and leading a normal life. Granted, it added a certain degree of delicious pathos when he’d try to flip us off for making fun of him, but the important thing is, it created joy. Not for “Fonzie” of course, but the kid with the harelip was ecstatic.

Give me a break, will you? I took a fucking picture of a featured model at Comic-Con. It’s not like I skulk around the prosthetics unit at Mass General with lamp black on my face, a telephoto lens and a pocket pack of Kleenex to hammer off into. Some movie marketing douchebag hired this woman and threw her on a stage; I took ten seconds to snap a picture, two minutes to write a caption, and tried to move on with my life.

I’m not the guy hunched over his computer, pants around my ankles, trolling frantically for the perfect Google query to bring up 2,000,000 amputee pictures with one hand, calling out of work with the other and cursing God for not giving us three hands without a trace of irony.

[tags]San Diego Comic-Con, SDCC, Flickr, Grindhouse, Cherry Darling, amputees, dark humor[/tags]

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3 Responses to Gimp Rage

  1. Lance Manion says:

    I don\’t get it. How does being light a thumb prevent one from flipping the bird. I\’m trying it out here, and the little birdies are launching just fine.

  2. Lance Manion says:

    And what’s up with my punctuation? You bigoted against apostrophes, too?

  3. Rev Darko says:

    I think people are missing the bigger picture, here.

    It’s not so much that you have the well-established prejudice against amputees (I think we both remember that time in Tijuana, or if not, I still have the video.)

    I think the real issue here is the obvious bias for boot manufacturers.

    Let’s face it, you’ve put up a picture advocating the marketing of SINGLE BOOTS over the traditional marketing of boots in pairs. That means that boot makers can now make twice as much money.

    Admit it; you’ve been paid off.

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