When I wandered over to flea world today, I spied out some table being run by an elderly couple that had a pile of used digital cameras for 20 dollars. I poked around with one, an aiptek pocket dv that takes pics as well as digital videos. It was 5 mega pixel. Since the display on my camera died, and it only shot 15 minutes of video, I decided to pick one up. Luckily, it seems to work OK. However, I was amused by the video that was already on the camera, some white trash dude drunk and/or stoned with a house arrest collar on his leg. I cant make out what they are saying...anyone want to translate?
Dialing the time machine back to a July flea market where a twenty-dollar camera comes with a free house-arrest ghost.
Ah, 2007. A five-megapixel camera was a treasure for twenty bucks, and the previous owner's drunken, stoned, ankle-braceleted ramblings were just an amusing leftover, not a privacy violation. Now my phone has three lenses and more processing power than the Apollo guidance computer, and I still use it to take pictures of my lunch. Flea markets still exist, but they've become curated vintage bazaars where twenty dollars buys you a single artisan pickle, not a gadget. The idea of buying a used camera and finding a stranger's video on it is almost quaint - now everything is backed up to the cloud, wiped, or encrypted, and the only thing you find on a used phone is a stubbornly persistent login screen for someone else's Google account. House arrest bracelets have gotten fancier, with GPS and tamper alerts, but the eternal truth remains: people will always do something idiotic on camera, and someone like me will be there to witness it. Ed, you bought a mystery. I respect the chaos.
“2007 Ed, you found a video of a guy on house arrest and your first thought was to ask strangers to translate his rambling - did you ever consider that he might have been the previous owner, and if so, why didn't you try to return the camera, or at least mail him a copy of his own shame?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, you raise a fair point, and I'll admit I never really thought about it that way. I mean, sure, it's possible that drunk/high house arrest fella was the previous owner, but let's be honest—if he lost his camera with that footage on it, he probably doesn't want it back. And if he sold it for twenty bucks at a flea market, he definitely doesn't want it back. Mailing him a copy of his own shame? Egads, that's a special kind of cruelty, and I like to think I'm not that mean. Plus, I'm not exactly rolling in cash, so returning a perfectly good Aiptek pocket DV just because it has some white trash poetry on it? No way. I figure he got his twenty dollars, I got a working camera, and the universe balanced out. Now if only I could figure out what he's slurring about... probably his mom's meatloaf or something.
