Seeing as how I’m a bit of a gadgetphiliac (which is like being a fecalphiliac but with marginally less, you know, poop), I cannot tell a lie: I love the new iPhone. I covet it. Deeply. Which is completely stupid because it’s a PHONE. A $600 PHONE. (Which I want.)

But I won’t buy it. (Not least because if I spent $600 on a phone there’s a non-trivial chance my wife would kill me with a thatching rake.) I just don’t need it, which is how I justify most of my expensive doohickey purchases:

  • New acoustic guitar: $800. Needed because my sister wanted back her guitar, which I had been borrowing. Or something. (I’m not sure she noticed she didn’t have it.)
  • New camera: $900. Needed to take pictures of my adorable infant. (The camera I already had, well, it just didn’t DO it right.)
  • New 50mm lens for camera: $100. I totally needed it to take more pictures of my adorable infant INDOORS. (I will use a similar justification next year when I spend $400 on an external flash with wireless remote.)
  • New 28mm-300mm zoom lens for camera: $250. I just wanted to take better pictures at baseball games, really. But I do take pictures of my adorable infant/toddler with it.

Spending money is like an addiction, though, and sometimes it takes a hard moment to break one of it, like when one checks one’s bank account and discovers that one has overdrawn same. Not that I have, of course. But in the last few weeks, I have discovered that I need new pants, so I had to buy those; I couldn’t find my softball glove, so I acquired a replacement; I needed new batting gloves, so I bought those too; it adds up! Luckily, when taxes come around, I will deduct all these expenses because I’m writing a new novel about them, or at least that’s what you’re going to tell the IRS on my behalf if you get subpoenaed during the audit. (Burning questions: can other people be subpoenaed? Is “subpoenaed” the hardest word I’ve had to type all day? If I sell a single picture of Charles to my mother for like 50 cents, can I deduct all the camera-related purchases?)

Categories: dear diary, wtf Tags:
  1. Stringer
    June 27th, 2007 at 17:59 | #1

    dude. Take current camera. Take pictures sideways. Show them while one hand on scroll button. Hold finger on screen, keep still. Move phone across finger while pressing scroll button. Presto: redneck iPhone.

  2. Rob
    June 27th, 2007 at 18:26 | #2

    Yes, you should claim all camera equipment, and then you should claim a SUBSTANTIAL loss on a home business. Of course, you MIGHT want to acquire, I dunno, a business license first.

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