The Big Board

The stock market, which is not to be confused with the economy, soared yesterday and closed at its highest point ever. This makes rich people happy because it makes them richer. Interestingly, the Complete and Total Loser also gains from this because the money his late parents left him was in the form of stocks and he reaps the dividends, which this month were more than he'll earn at his low-paying job as a store clerk. 
This has put the Loser in an odd position; he hates a system that benefits him. Despite the extra money, he lives as he did before, eating out once every two months or so with the one friend who will dine with him. His only extravagance in the past year has been the occasional accessory for his early model digital SLR camera. A lens, a larger memory card. Even then, the Loser shops around, checking craigslist for weeks and, if he gives up, looking online for good deals. He's talentless as a photographer, as he is in everything else, but has the childish, warped notion that if he bought something better photographers used he, too, would be better. 
He knows, however, that it's not about the camera. It's the person using it.

A woman stands in front of a big building.

The Saddest Photograph

He's had his bouts with craziness, the Complete and Total Loser, but no true madness. A boring level of dysthymia, which he tried to pump up to a level of manque worthy of an art major while in college, but failed to cause alarm or interest when he did. It's just as well. He's had enough trouble getting the simple jobs he's existed on in the thirty years since without having to explain a stint on the funny farm to potential employers.

Female Patient, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, c. 1850. On view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Look at this photo. The title is "Female Patient, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum." Hugh Welch Diamond, a British psychia- trist known for pho- tography, took it circa 1850. The poor woman no more belongs locked up than anyone you'd see in a supermarket or walking down a street. She's just sad.

The Loser's Mother

Below is the Complete and Total Loser's mother, who died early yesterday morning at the age of 80. The photo was taken well before the Loser was aware of what cameras were and possibly before his existence. He's unsure. He found it in a photo album when he was a boy and always liked it. The Loser can tell that there was love between the photographer (his Dad) and the subject. 

Ten things the Loser has learned from Flickr

The Complete and Total Loser is a voyeur, peering into the lives of the successful and happy. In the past he stared at the photos coming down the little slide on the photo machines in pharmacies while pretending to peruse the batteries. Now he needn't leave his apartment. He can go to flickr.com and click the reload section on the home page and bring up photos from all over the world. He can click on those and enter the photostream of a complete stranger. It is as if he has broken into an apartment building for the United Nations and is entering the apartments where all he does is thumb through their photo albums. He has learned the following:

It's not supposed to be, but this photo is sexy as hell.

1. South Americans are sexy. Europeans are stylish. Americans are fun-loving but often overweight. Asians are cute.
2. You can never take too many photographs of: Parties, weddings, your baby.
3. Provocative: Girls taking pictures of each other in come hither poses. Creepy: Men taking pictures of women from behind in public spaces.
4. Cats are calm and often half asleep. Dogs are eager to please and as active as the people they're with. The result: Cats are easier to photograph than dogs so there are many more cat pictures.
5. When young people, especially men, are photographed they make fake gang signs in the belief this makes them witty yet mildly threatening.
6. There are hundreds of photographs of wool. Or is it yarn? Is there a difference? Is yarn just wool that's been turned into string?
7. Professional photographers take the least interesting photographs.
8. Photos of the elderly are usually sad.
9. Never show your friends photographs you took of: Sunsets, flowers, interesting cloud formations, most landscapes, interiors of the room you stayed in while on vacation. In fact, limit most vacation photos. Getting drunk on a beach was fun then. The memory of it is pathetic.
10. Very few people look good while singing or playing musical instruments. Never photograph someone while they're eating.