What rhymes with "super-fast?"

Like any child whose parents owned a camcorder, I know the meaning of embarrassment. In fact, there are approximately 80 miniature tapes in a shoe box in my parents' downstairs closet documenting it well.

For instance, there is an hour's worth of footage of me reciting poems in rapid fire in my driveway while my brother jumps rope in the background. And there's another tape of me chopping onions for a meat loaf while wearing swimming goggles.

But by the grace of God, the device that allows camcorder-sized tapes to be played in the household VCR is broken.

Coincidentally, I found this out when I asked to borrow the camcorder to film a casting tape for the upcoming season of The Amazing Race. And while that plot was foiled by the broken adapter, I saved myself from having my parents show my potential Amazing Race partner hours worth of dance recitals and an entire Monopoly game that was taped during Christmas of 1992. What can I say - it was a slow year.

Anyway, I thought I made a graceful escape - until I read this message from Mitch Goldstone, one of the founders of ScanMyPhotos.com: “Analog is dead. Now, the race is on to digitally convert generations of favorite memories super-fast and inexpensively.”

Super-fast memory conversion? You don't say.

"If you are plugged-in to the lightning-fast changes in technology," the release reads, "You know your collection of vinyl albums, VHS cassettes and printed pictures must be digitally converted before it fades away."

There are a lot of things wrong with that sentence - and the fact that our family's VHS cassettes could be digitally converted is just one of them. The possibility that my father's music collection could be salvaged is another.

But hopefully my parents won't send in the mini-tapes and stockpile them to be played at my wedding. And seeing as how I'll need to find an alternate route for the casting tape, there's really no need. It seems I haven't learned my lesson about avoiding home videos and there will be tons of fresh material available.

2008: I'm taking my embarrassment global.