so i had this great idea for a story for the campus echo - i wanted to do a photo-essay on the blood drive. my head was filled with possible neat pictures of needles and fainting students and iodine swabbing and nurses and all..

unfortunately i have never used a digital camera before, so to help me out dp (my teacher) trained a guy at the office how to work it - that way i'd be able to direct him to take pictures while interviewing people. all well, the guy learns to zoom and focus and all that jazz.

so we leave, and immediately there is trouble. it takes 5 minute to walk to where the blood drive is located. stupoid boy says "let's take the bus!" ... 15 minutes later we get to the union. great idea, lazy-ass...

so we get in there and i start asking him to snap pictures and - HE COULDN'T REMEMBER HOW TO! he spent 15 minutes trying to figure it out, and all pictures he took while figuring out he deleted by accident. by now we've lost half and hour and have one sad picture and quote to show for it.

next issue. STUPOID BOY suddenly runs OFF to fucking nowhere and i'm stranded looking for him. after walking through the maze of needles and faint-y students and nurses and all i find him... in the waiting line. he result of his excursion? 6 pictures of girls sitting on chairs waiting to donate blood, 3 of girls sitting by a table eating food after having donated blood. now there's a photographic dramatic genius, eh??? ARGH.

by then i was so pissed off i hauled out my own little disposable camera and proceeded to snap my own damn pictures. fucker. i got fainty first time donor, iodine swabbing, arm in the air, my nurse, the whole sha-bang. thank ghod i had it in my purse.

after a bunch of interviews (standard answers: "yes, i was nervous at first. no, it didn't hurt as much as i thought it would. i will give blood again because it is a good thing and it helps people.") and desperately yelling for my 'photographer' to get pictures of, oh, i don't know, PEOPLE INTERVIEWED instead of nameless faces chewing pizza (he never asked people for names, and barely for permission.) i gave up.

i got my little plastic bags, snatched the fucking camera from him, squirted blood on record time (he was stuck for 20 minutes. HA HA HA HA!! JUSTICE!!) i snagged some pizza while interviewing cantina people, went back to the office and exploded in a scream... "WHAT A FUCKING DUMBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSS!!!"

and that was that. ah well. at least i got to develop my own film on the papers expense (i got two sucky kristin hersh photo's i'll post tomorrow.)

dumbass. arf.