Smile...or not. I don't give a *bleep*.

I’m channeling my inner Lewis Black, so here goes.

Photography. Well, not really. More photographs. Unless I know you and the other people in the photographs, I really am not interested in looking at them. The last thing I want to do is waste fifteen minutes of my time, fifteen minutes could have been wasted playing Snood, looking at those visual records and going, “Um, and what are you doing here” and “That’s interesting.”

Because they aren’t interesting. The sappy grins and the glassy stares begin to get on my nerves. Years later your grandchildren will stumble upon them and one look at you grinning at them will cause them to forever lose any trace of respect that they ever had for you. I would appreciate it if in future the mindless hordes would cease and desist. Or if they really felt the need to share, they would limit themselves to one photograph. Preferably one that does not have me regretting that wrap I had for lunch.

And I’ve never understood the reason for people deciding to be in their photographs. Are they presenting it as evidence that they were present at the scene of the crime? If they say that they were in Manhattan on the fifteenth of February 2004, I believe them. They do not have to present me with exhibit A- sixteen billion photographs of them in Manhattan. Let them show me photographs of the island without them in it. I rather like the architecture there and I will appreciate it.

The reason for this rant is because people always complain that I rarely show up in any of my photographs. I reply that they should consider this a blessing. I have seen me and I am not a pleasant sight. Apart from that I know what I look like. I see myself in the mirror daily. I do not vary much from day to day, apart from the steady beard growth. I see no reason to mar a perfectly good photograph by inserting me in it.

Say cheese. Now go jump off a cliff.