then I know you've never heard the CLICK-ksssh of a shutter from anything other than your phone. I WANT TO BUY A CAMERA THEY MADE A BILLION OF AND YOU MADE THEM $300. FUCK YOU. I'M TIREd and I should have gone to bed four hours ago

If your "oh god what is this creepy photo I found in a shoebox" isn't 1. printed on film that is permanently curved for some reason and 2. inside of a white and orange envelope along with 600 other photos, 500 of which are boring photos of overexposed trees that no one cares about,

If your scary found-in-a-murder-house analog horror creepy children's show tape doesn't begin with "COMING SOON TO THEATERS" screamed at a volume loud enough to vaporize everything in a half mile radius then I'll know you've never actually touched a VCR in your life.

I don't even wanna talk about Polaroid cameras. You kids with your fukken analog this and analog that acting like a wobbly VHS tape or an out-of-focus photo of a girl sitting on a hillside is the soul of an artist reaching out to touch a stranger through the power of annoying old people.

What the fuck! What the fuck. A brief google revealed that film photography has experienced a resurgence among hipsters and artistes because of course it has, and the popularity of those little Canon AE1 Program cameras has made the price go through the roof because of course it has.

What I mean to say is when I was growing up these things were a dime a dozen. They were easy to start with, easy to get a little more complicated with, used the most common film format, looked cool, and WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY SELL FOR $300 NOW.

I know my bitch mom had at least two, one of which she gave to Nick when he started taking photos, and might have had more than that from going "antiquing" and buying random junk to bring home. Papa must have like 17 of the damn things in his house but he *actually* collects them.

... and you have to either buy and use expired film (which you can do, with mixed results) or physically mod your camera to use a different film format (this also has mixed results). So I was like nah fam I'm gonna get him one of those Canon point and shoots that everyone had in the 90s.

But I digress. I was gonna get one of those 1950s brownie cameras (not the tiny hard corner box, but the slightly larger black and silver bread loaf) because they made a gajillion of them and you can buy one for like fifteen bucks, but they don't make the film for it anymore...

...and also never showed much interest beyond "I would like to do the thing too, so my family will talk to me." (I didn't get good at the thing so my family did not talk to me. Yes, this happened to me a lot. No, I haven't gotten over it. Yes, it is one of the many reasons I'm broken.)

...would be best suited for a beginner on a budget with no access to a darkroom and also no access to a person who knows how cameras work. Yeah, of my family-- bitch mother, Nick the older brother, and our grandparents-- I am the only one who not only doesn't know how to use a camera...

Excitedly, Seb goes, "Oh, I would LOVE to shoot film," in this tone of voice that made me feel unspeakably old. Like that's an artsy retro hobby now, modern-vintage like collecting vinyl records. Anyway he said he wanted a film camera, and I've been trying to research what kind...

btw we have not received SNAP benefits yet and Thanksgiving is coming, I am choosing to be proactive and seek a solution by telling you to donate to my ko-fi.com/suicidesauce

You can do it, Sam's Dad. You can be the change, the means, the hands that grasp and lift me specifically from poverty