Smile for the camera!

By Joseph Walther

 

A lot has happened since posting last week’s column. Such is the case whenever I’ve announced a topic for the following week. You readers will recall that I told you that this week’s topic would be SEX. Well, by God, sex it will be! However, I cannot ignore two troublesome items that I encountered since posting last week. So, I’m going to try and infuse sex into these two additional, but seemingly unrelated, items.

 

            First off, prior to posting last week’s column, I had received an email from a loyal reader that contained a newspaper article about male sexual addiction. The gist of the article was that many males—mostly celebrities with seemingly endless strings of sexual trysts—were admitting to being addicted to sex. My reader’s comment was (I’m paraphrasing here.) that women who exhibit strong sexual appetites are called whores, but when men do it, it’s a disease.

 

            Then, within a matter of a few hours after posting last week’s column, another loyal reader asked me, via email, if I meant to say “public sector” instead of “pubic sector” in referring to business. She was referring to the last sentence of the opening paragraph, “He spoke of several problems, but the gist of it all was his conviction that the “pubic” sector is bad and the “private” sector is good.”

 

            Then to top the week off, last Thursday night I overhead this conversation between a potential customer and a sales clerk at the digital camera display of a major discount store.

 

Customer: Do you carry the Olympus Stylus 740BK?

Clerk: Yes, we do. Here it is right here.

Customer: Is this a really good camera? I want to use it to take pictures at my son’s wedding.

Clerk: This here camera will be great for a wedding. You can’t go wrong.

Customer: My friend told me that 7.1 megapixels is important. But what’s the difference between a 5.6X digital zoom and a 5X optical zoom?

Clerk: Actually, sir, this here camera has 7.4 megapixels. As far as zoom numbers go, it’s the TOTAL zoom that counts and this baby has a whopping 28X!

 

            You’re probably wondering what all of this technical mumbo jumbo has to do with sex. It will become obvious, at least to the male readers, shortly.

 

            As I explained to the sender of the first email above, no one I know refers to women who demonstrate strong sexual appetites as whores. Horny, yes. Slut, yes. Nymphomaniac, sometimes. If, regardless of the assigned title, such a woman decides to charge her partners, THEN she’s a whore—referred to in proper circles as a prostitute.

 

            Most people, meaning men, define the term “prostitute” synonymously with the terms, “hooker” and “call girl”; although “experts (meaning the police), tell me that there is a distinct difference. “Call girls”, say several members of the local vice squad, “do not have bumps on their heads caused by steering wheels.”

 

            Where I’m concerned, I wouldn’t know about this, but personally, I have no malice towards call girls. Live and let live, I always say. I know. “Sex without love is nothing more than an empty experience,” you’re thinking. You are correct, but as empty experiences go, sex has to rank in the top two. Give me a few months and I may be able to think of the other one. “But, Joe,” you counter, “money can’t buy real love.” Again, you may be right in the long run. However, in the short run—extremely critical when dealing with call girls—it’s possible to buy some awfully good fake love.

 

            Regardless of whether we find “sexual addiction” plausible, a good, high quality digital camera with lots of pixels and zoom may raise our exploits to unheard of heights of sexual joy, not to mention, the potential for very lucrative levels of blackmail. Um, men, be careful with the latter item, though, unless you’re not concerned with the likelihood of sharing your personal space with a cellmate nicknamed Ramrod, if you get me drift.

 

            Meanwhile, going back to our potential camera customer, I felt obliged to explain to him that the clerk was a tad off the mark in the technical points of his sales pitch. Megapixel ratings, optical zoom, and digital zoom are distinct features found in all digital cameras. While each relates to a camera’s quality, they play different roles; the least important of which is digital zoom, along with any reference to total zoom.

 

            Megalpixel refers to image resolution (quality). The higher the number of megapixels, the greater the image’s resolution and output quality. A 7.1 MP image takes up a lot of digital image storage space on both the camera and a computer. However, it becomes absolutely critical only when printing the image. If you’re going to print a picture of your son and his new bride taken with a 2 to 3-megapixel camera, image quality will suffer if you print it on paper stock larger than 4 X 6 inches. Megapixel ratings of 4 or higher overcome this. Using a 7.1-megapixel camera, you can produce high quality prints in sizes as high as 11 X 17 inches.

 

            Oh, before I forget, the clerks reference to “7.4” megapixels needs some clarification, also. The camera’s specifications refer to 7.4 MP as a “gross” rating. While there is a technical tie-in to digital zoom, it means nothing in the practical sense relative to print quality. Think of it this way. You earn a “gross” salary. Other than the fact that the more you gross, the higher your net, it’s meaningless. Just as you can only spend what you net, your print quality is only as good as the net (7.1MP in this case) rating of a camera.

 

            Digital zoom is equally meaningless when it comes to printed image quality or the ability to bring a target image closer than its actual physical distance. Digital zoom is an internal function of the camera itself. It’s how a camera eliminates the need to reframe an image internally. Since you can accomplish this using a computer and image editing software, do not fret over a camera’s digital zoom.

 

            OPTICAL zoom is, on the other hand, CRITICAL. Most women, reading a camera’s operating manual, will understand the significance of optical zoom and the role it plays in picture taking. Many (meaning most) men, however, need a simplified explanation that is also meaningful on their respective levels of critical thinking. So, before you women send me hate mail expressing your disgust, please remember that I’m just trying to be helpful here.

 

            Think of optical zoom as the camera’s ability to bring an image closer than it actually is. Men, this means that if you are taking a picture of someone who is 100-yards away, the camera can make HER appear much closer. Optical zoom can be anywhere from ZERO to 10X, pronounced as ten-by. Also, think of the optical zoom number as a fraction, a reciprocal as it were. Instead of thinking in terms of 3, 5, or 10 closer, consider the numbers as fractions, as the image being only 1/3, 1/5, and 1/10 as far away. Let me explain in plainer terms.

 

            Men, you are standing on the goal line of a football field. Standing on the opposite goal line—100-yards away—is a female streaker. Now, you can barely make her out, but others are yelling that she is completely naked. As a man, you are completely unable to ignore this. You aim your digital camera to snap her picture.

 

            If your camera has NO optical zoom, you’re out of luck. All you can see, if you are lucky, is a small image standing on the other goal line. You probably can’t even make out the fact that she’s naked, let alone capture anything “worth while.” If your camera has a 3X optical zoom, you can see a lot more. If you optically zoom to the full 3X capability, you can see the woman as though she were standing only 33.3 yards away. If you have normal male eye sight, as you look at her through the camera’s lens, you’ll become dumbfounded and mumble something like, “Those are NICE!”

 

            If you have a camera with a 5X optical zoom, she now appears only 20-yards away. Not only can you see “those”, you’d be able to see other interesting features, were it not for some mysterious force that prevents most men—at least most that I know—from moving the camera downward, away from “those.” If your camera has a 10X optical zoom, she appears only TEN yards away. You can’t miss anything from this distance. Not even that mysterious force can prevent you from looking at her entire naked body! “Thank God for…I mean damn, optical zoom is SO important,” you say to yourself.

 

            I hope this clears things up for the reader who brought the “pubic/public” distinction to my attention. Also, I hope all of you readers can now see how intricately entwined sexual addiction, the pubic sector, and digital cameras are. Is it any wonder how little attention the “private” sector receives? Let me reiterate quickly, one more time.

 

            At zero optical zoom, both the “private” sector and the “pubic” sector look the same. It’s virtually impossible to tell if one is “better” than the other is. At a 3X optical zoom, we begin to see a little differentiation between the “private” sector (Well, normally it’s private.) and the “pubic” sector. At a 5X optical zoom, we can clearly see the “pubic” sector, provided that we’re able to overcome that mysterious force and move the camera downward. At a 10X optical zoom, you can’t miss anything. The “pubic” sector takes on new meaning. Ten-by optical zoom provides us with an indisputable ability to determine, FINALLY, if the “private” sector is, in fact, ALWAYS arbitrarily better than the “pubic” sector. Of course, women have always known that, either way, it’s no big deal.

 

See you next week.

 

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.