Mobile Brainfart: National Hooky Day

Seriously, after a long wet winter, how are we expected to work on a day like this?

Mobile Brainfart: Office Gypsy

Moving day @ Le Dew. 3rd move in 7 months, thx to the merger. My next office should be a wagon hitched to a horse.

Mobile Brainfart: Green Graffiti

Someone in the park by my home has been going nuts with the chalk, every day writing new messages of green Earth & Native peace. My fav: "And maybe one day will come when color will mean nothing more than a rainbow in the sun."

Sometimes They NEED An A** Whipping

Every now and then, you read a story about a single Mom who finally gets it right and you can't help but applaud her.

This 13yr old kid in Virginia - for lack of a name, we'll call him Damian - was told to get off his Xbox and do his chores. Clean his room, vacuum, take out the garbage. The usual. The snotty little anti-christ decides to go all 9/11 on his mom, and BROKE THE VACUUM. No more chores, right? La-la-la, ha-ha-ha.

Well the joke's on him, because while my mom would have ripped the cord off that vacuum and beat my brown ass red, Mother Theresa here packs up his Xbox and all of his games, and put them up for sale online.

Fucking A, you go Mom!

The great part is, she doesn't stop there. She checks out his computer, and what does she find hiding among all the cookies? Porn sites. Well hell no, says Militant Momma; she locks down the computer with a password, then decides to give him the ultimate payback by pranking his Myspace page: changing his profile so that it's filled with cutesy Snoopy images all over the place.

Take that, you little shit. Mom 2, Devilchild 0.

I've always said that any kid of mine would have to be infinitely sneakier and smarter than me, to get away with shit - because I've definitely been there/done that, and since I'm a mistrusting bastard anyway I'm damn sure not going to assume my kid is the second coming of Christ. The problem is...if I do find out I've been getting scammed, I'd probably be proud of the kid for managing to beat me.

Then I'd whip his little ass. But it'd be done with love.

This story does have a nice ending. Since word got out, the Dyson company sent Mom a $500 vacuum as a replacement.

Mom 3, Damien 0.

Gives "He That Eats My Flesh" a Whole New Meaning

Curators at the museum of Vienna’s Roman Catholic Cathedral
put on display a set of artwork as part of a retrospective honoring Austria’s cherished artist Alfred Hrdlicka, who turned 80 earlier this year. Among the works presented is this painting, which depicts the Last Supper as a homoerotic orgy.

This bears repeating. The Viennese Roman Catholic Church. Put up a picture of the Last Supper, showing Jesus as gay.

And none of the officials at the church saw a problem with this.

Hmm.

The museum’s director defends both Hrdlicka’s work and his decision to host the artist’s controversial versions of biblical imagery in a museum tied to the Catholic Church.
"We think Hrdlicka is entitled to represent people in this carnal, drastic way," Bernhard Boehler said in his small museum office, across the street from Vienna’s imposing St. Stephan’s Cathedral.

People. We're not talking John Doe here, pal. We're talking a literal or figurative diety, depending on who you ask. Being pictured jerking off his apostles.

"I don’t see any blasphemy here," he said, gesturing at a Crucifixion picture showing a soldier simultaneously beating Jesus and holding his genitals. "People can imagine what they want to."

Of course. I totally understand. A roman sodomizing the Son of God. And there's no blasphemy.

I gotta tell you...I know the Church is trying to be a little more mainstream, but I think this may be taking it *bit* too far. Maybe this is their way of trying to appease the millions of gay and lesbian Catholics back into the fold.

"Look, look, it's okay, Jesus liked a little tickle tickle too!"

Can you imagine the rewrite on that whole New Testament? Maybe Mary Magdalene was really a Mark. Perhaps this is why Yeshua...30 years old and never married, btw...wasn't into chicks. We know he touched the lepers and the lame...but WHERE did he touch them?

Hey, this goes a long way towards explaining the current problems in the Church, doesn't it? "No, my child...I'm not molesting you. I'm reenacting the Last Supper."

Think that'll hold up in court, Padre?

Happy Passover!

Bejewels Are A Girl's Best Friend

I have to give this guy some serious kudos for a very interesting way to propose to his girlfriend.

As found in Yahoo! news (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/odd_programmer_proposal):

Bernie Peng reprogrammed Tammy Li's favorite video game, "Bejeweled," so a ring and a marriage proposal would show up on the screen when she reached a certain score.

Li reached the needed score — and said yes.

The reprogramming was a tricky task and took him a month.

This was pretty cool, in a dorky sort of way. However, it begs the question:

What if she sucked at the game?

Bernie Mac there programmed it to a "certain score"; I'd love to know what that score was. Did he set the bar low, making sure she'd get it? Or did he decide to draw it out a bit, give her a high score to reach - so that she'd get that extra surprise when she won?

Can you imagine if she DIDN'T reach the score? "Umm...honey...don't you want to play Bejeweled tonight?"

"Nah I'm SO over that game. I got sick of it and deleted it from my phone."

"Nooooooooooooooooo...!"

Or worse, what if she was more offended that he HACKED her phone for this marriage proposal? "You trashed my game...for this?! No I'm not going to marry you!"

I've got another question. The article doesn't say...but did she get a REAL ring? Cuz if all she got was the virtual ring and she's still happy...

...does she have a sister?

Who Needs Shakespeare When We Have 1,000 Monkeys

You very likely, by now, have heard the Monkey Typewriter Hypothesis. Take 1,000 monkeys (or 1 million monkeys, or 10 Republicans), 1,000 typewriters/computers, and given an infinite amount of time there is a chance that those monkeys will type out the equivalent of one of Shakespeare's plays. Granted that chance is about as slim as Hillary Clinton ever accepting a Vice Presidency, but there's still that possibility. Or so they say.

Well apparently one man decided he didn't want to wait for those monkeys to come up with something, even if it only looks like an article from the New Yorker. Instead he's written a program that does its own research and will then write a book.

It writes a book. You heard me correctly, true believers. The future is now, my friends.

The video is long, tedious and boring - but if your curiosity has the death of thousands of cats on its hands, by all means check out the vid here:


The short story. The man in this picture (he's not in a corner slowly going insane. I think., Philip M. Parker, has written over 200,000 books with the help of this poor slave of a computer program that he, himself created (there ARE child labor laws in this country, pal!). And that number is real, folks; pull yourself a search on Amazon, and you'll find his self-made publishing company that he uses to sell his books, and there you'll find an insane number of books he's authorized.

Parker Posey there lets his fingers do the cyber-walking; he's developed computer algorithms that collect publicly (i.e., on the internet) available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

He's the king of the plagerizers, you might say, and you might have a point. Except the info is public domain, and his 1,000 cybermonkeys aren't writing Shakespeare. More like, How To books on writing Shakespeare.

As a writer...this frightens me, somewhat. I'm still of the opinion that I have nothing to fear from a motherboard, in terms of phasing out human writers - but what if there's a Big Blue out there, it's robotic arm grasping eagerly for a Pilot pen, it's relays firing with anticipation as it begins to pen the Great Cyberamerican Novel?

Books as we know them are a dying art. People on the whole are drifting away from printed media, at least the ones that don't have pretty pictures or can't summarize everything in 100 words or less. Why read a newspaper when you can catch the news on your Yahoo! personal portal? Who needs a book, when they have audio books on CD - or better yet, let's just wait until the movie comes out!

Even as I sit here typing this blog, I'm fully aware of my own hypocricy as I lament over the endangered species known as the Hardcover Book, but I could give a flying fig and I'm going to cry in my milk if i want to, so there. Nyehhh.

Anyway. The point is this: books are already dying...and now there's the spectre of this evil machine out there, slowing growing in knowledge and power and ready to begin its slow takeover of the world via the might of the publishing universe. Book.net is real, folks, it's out there...I know it! And one day, in the distant future, an android will be sent back in time to destroy some poor, young librarian, ensuring that PDAs and eBooks will one day reign supreme!

I know. I sound insane. And I very well may be. But is that any reason not to believe me?

:)

Mobile Brainfart: Chocolate Goodness

I'm going to regret this later, but how can anyone resist the lure of Thin Mints & a Java Chip Mocha Frap?

Spare The Rod, Spoil The Child

Believe it or not, this isn't a post on disciplining kids. I happened to see the latest toys that are coming out, specifically in relation to the Iron Man movie. They look good, they do...but it got me thinking. When did we become a society that coddled our kids? These Iron Man toys are...plastic. Plastic Iron Men. That doesn't even sound right. I want an Iron Man action figure that's made of steel, dammit! I should be able to hurl him at a wall and see it DENT!

So I'm sadistic. But those of you from the "older" crowd, you feel my pain, don't you? Remember...Micronauts? Shogun Warriors? The original Transformers? Those...now THOSE were toys. If you wanted to break them, you had to really try to put a hurtin' on them. And boy, did we try! Dropping them from buildings, tying firecrackers to them, standing across a room from each other and throwing the toys at each other, trying to make them crash mid-air...that was fun!

When we did we start being so afraid to let our kids get hurt? One of my favorite toys was Kabangers, aka Click-Clacks, aka Clackers. Take two ceramic balls, baseball sized...insert a thick rope between them. In the center of the rope, add a plastic handle. Package and give to your kids, "Have fun!" I gotta tell you, that thing drove me nuts - but I freakin' loved it! You held onto the handle, and basically tried to get keep the balls "clacking" against each other by flipping the handle up and down. If you missed...your got a nice, nasty bruise for your efforts.

Ahh, good times.

But. Things like this got me thinking about the past, and I remembered coming across a very nostalgic post a few years ago, showing the difference in mentality between THEN and NOW. It makes you wonder, why are we so overprotective of our kids - if we turned out relatively okay?

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem
solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

Mobile Brainfart

It's 70 degrees & sunny today in NYC. I say we all get up, say "screw work" & make today a citywide Spring holiday. Workers Unite! Who's with me?

Gives CyberSex A Whole New Meaning

The human imagination never ceases to amaze me.

This device, if you sicko bastiches don't already know, is called a Fleshlight. It's basically a tube with a latex, fleshy interior lining. It's designed so that you - and by you, I mean you poor lonely video-game obsessed living-in-your-mother's basement guys out there - can...for lack of a more graphic term...get your rocks off. So that you no longer have to date your favorite girlfriends: Lefticia and Rightanna. Basically it's a reverse dildo, for men.

Yes, you put your schlong in it and wank yourself silly.

Now...as oddly captivating as the idea of this is...this device on its own isn't why I'm posting this up here. No, I'm posting this because someone took this idea and decided it SIMPLY WASN'T ENOUGH. No, this poor soul modified this simple gadget and installed wires, a microprocessor and a gasket to control the airpressure...and created this monstrosity:

Do I need to explain the purpose of this steampunkish, "Metropolis"-inspired sex toy? Of course I do!

It's so that you can use your weiner as an input device for your computer.

You've heard the old Yellow Pages slogan, "Let your fingers do the walking?"

...well, you don't need your fingers anymore. Not thanks to the wonderful world of computers!

But wait. There's more!

The genius who came up with this device, not content to simply break the 4th wall, went balls-out (pun intended) with his creativity. I mean, what good is a cybershlong....without cybersex?

Yes, true believers...you have to thrust yourself using the interactive fleshlight to satisfy yourself and, presumably, Nicci the Nurse here. This is probably the most innocent scene I can show you, but the others are considerably more graphic. I don't know what happens once we come to the climatic end - or what happens if your end cums considerably earlier than Nicci's programming - but it is truly amazing what a bored, socially repressed computer geek will come up with.

Now all this guy needs is to get his...hands...on one of those Japanese female robots, and things REALLY get interesting.

Mobile Brainfart

Microsoft has come up with LCD tabletop screens...imagine the advertising u could get with LCD bathroom stall floor tiles. I mean, really...what else are you going to look at?

What's a Brainfart, and Why is it Mobile?

Thanks to the Wide Wide World of Text Messaging, I've discovered that I can add mini-posts to this journal while ON THE GO. A sort of roving reporter, man-on-the-scene, here's what's happening RIGHT THIS MINUTE form of instant journalism. It's exciting, it's new, it'll cure what ails ya.

Okay, maybe not. But the idea that I could be sitting somewhere in Central Park on my lunch hour, watching some poor schmuck chat up a pretty girl while she completely ignores him...and I can not only take a picture of this embarassing scene with my cell phone, but I can SEND IT WITH COMMENTARY TO THIS BLOG! God help us, this is a dangerous weapon to put in the hands of a sarcastic, overly-observant cynic such as myself. The possibilities are endless; I no longer have to think back to what's happened over the course of my day and come up with a snapshot, I can literally give you that snapshot LIVE, FROM NEW YORK, as it happens. No waiting, move to the front of the line, that's right people keep it going keep it going...

Oh. You wanted to know, why brainfart? It goes back to a much earlier post, in another incarnation of this journal. Actually it goes back a little further, to a comment I made on someone else's journal; you see some moron had been heckling her on her posts. The reader in question felt she was obligated to respond to his commentary on her posts, because she chose to put her thoughts up in a public forum. In my defense of her, I said the following:

Here I am, she's saying; this is my pense au jour, my brainfart of the moment. I give it to you as-is, unedited and unapologetic. Read it if you will, or don't. It's therapeutic for me, and if you happen to find some entertainment in it...good for you.

I rather liked that word. Brainfart. Much like the lingering odor of a good cheese, the name has stuck with me - and since these mobile messages are going to be short and to the point ("...I can name that tune in 140 characters or less, Alex..."), they tend to be more like mental farts than any of the drawn out, involved ramblings that you're used to from me. It could have been worse, I could have called them Mobile Ejaculations. "Ooo baby, yeah that's it, that's it, OHHHHHH!"

Mobile blogging. "I've got a smartphone, and I'm not afraid to use it!"

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Mobile Brainfart

With all the McD's lawsuits, u'd think asthmatics would sue 4 discrimination over their shakes. *slurp* *wheez* *slurp* *wheez*...

Taking the Wind from Beneath My Wings

You know...I had this whole joking commentary I was going to make about an article I found that noted how Muslims have now outnumbered Roman Catholics something like 19.2% to 17.4% of the population worldwide. There was even a statement by a Vatican official who commented on how basically Muslims breed like rabbits, while Catholics are more chaste. Okay, he didn't put it exactly like that...but the subtext, people, was there.

Then I started reading the comments on the page and, well...angels cried. I decided that it wasn't the article I was there to comment on...it was the responses TO the article.

America. You people are freaks. Xenophobic, bigoted, close-minded Catholic freaks. And by America, I mean the collective holier-than-thou, Father-forgive-my-sins right-wing ultra-conservative red-state thou-shalt-worship-no-false-idols Catholics as a whole, not individuals who may have a more open mind. So don't flip out on me, cuz I know how self-righteous ya'll can be!

Case in point. Some of the responses to the article are as follows:

"Islam is a vile, evil religion of death, destruction, and hatred."

- Matthew from Chicago

Way to spread that message of peace, love and tolerance there Mike. Because we all know how peaceful *coughCRUSADEScough*, tolerant *coughINQUISITIONcough* and loving *coughSALEMWITCHHUNTScough* the Christian heirarchy has been, historically.

"Ironic, though, there are hundreds of movies shown every year depitcing the Catholic religion (i.e. Ten Commandments, The Robe, King of Kings) and numerous books written about the subject.

But I have yet to see anything on the islamic religion, which is basically a cult. Is it because islam is ashamed of it?"

- Schmetterling from Sacramento

Yes, Schmetter("Sieg Heil")ling. Because the measure of a religion's greatness is how many hollywood films get made about it. Mel Gibson is a holy prophet, apparently. Although you'd think with that logic, Judaism would have kicked Catholism into obscurity, since we all know the Jews own it. Hollywood, that is.

"Islam will grow, islam might spread, untill us brits whip your ass's and send ya all packing which will happen :) watch this space"

- ScottishGirl, Port Glasgow

...I don't even know where to BEGIN to make fun of this one. First: get over your identity crisis, because I'm sooooo sure the blokes in Westminster Circle really consider you a Brit. Second: the Brits couldn't whip their own asses if their heads were on backwards. Ehh, I'm done with this one.

Annnndddd....to show I'm not so biased:

"Muslims proably do not molest the young believers either as a big majority of catholic priests do to their young male church members.In certain countries you would proably be put to death for doing this if you are a muslim."

- Annie, Florida

Now there's an advertising slogan. "Islam: Our priests don't diddle the choirboys."

They get my vote.

A Rose By Any Other Name

....would still prick your finger and draw blood, right?

So why the name change? "Trick Shots" yesterday, "Dreamcatcher" in L33t-speak today. Hell I can take it further back, when it was once "Brainfarts du Jour", and before that "the Monkey House".

Evolution, that's why.

I'd ignored this blog-space for a while; I'd been turned off by some people and their response to the things I wrote. So the Drama! It beat on me, wore me down. Maybe I'm older, maybe I'm wiser, maybe I'm not really giving a flying fuck...but I miss writing here, even if it is irrelevant, irresponsible bullshit. See, I'm not writing for YOU, and by you I mean the collective YOU out there who may stumble across this speed bump on the information highway and decide to stop and take a photograph. No, I'm writing this for me.

Dreamcatcher is both a way for me to reconnect with the person I once was, and tie that in to the person I am today. The l33t-speak lettering is my way of saying that with Dreamcatcher, I'm going to tie in several different concepts: creativity (dreaming), technology (l33t d3wdz); spirituality.

And really it's just to fuck with your heads. I'm not writing it for you, but that doesn't mean I won't mess around with you while you're here. Sort of like that freak museum in the opening scene of House of 1000 Corpses. You think it's there for you to go in, gawk, and have a good time...but really it's a trap to sucker you into their little freakish world.

So. Welcome. Or not. Totally up to you.

It All Began With A Rock

Coundown, 24hours to Zero hour. Or 20-20 Hour, as the case may be.

People keep asking me: "So, are you nervous? Excited? Scared?"

I don't know what I am, to be honest. Right now I'm pretty apathetic about it, because I'm waiting. I'm not building anything up with anticipation; I'll deal with whatever fears I have when I'm sitting in the chair and they hook up their neutron laser device to hover menacingly over my eyeballs. I'll become giddy with joy when I open my eyes for the first time, sans glasses, and I'm able to see the clock on the far wall.

But right now, I'm very "blah" about it.

If anything, I'm fascinated by the whole process. Looking up how it got started, you can't help but wonder if this is part a folk tale regarding Lasik surgery, to make it seem more interesting a field than it really is.

The story goes something like this:

It all started with a miracle (their literature, not my words). One day, in rural Russia (as opposed, I suppose, to metropolitan Russia because that makes all the difference in this story) received a chip of stone in his eye.

(Now...let's stop here for a second. I'm 38 years old, and I'm done some pretty stupid, dangerous, limb-risking stunts. I've climbed the walls of buildings, hopped mailboxes and parking meters, slid face-first down slides and ice mountains on old schoolbags and folded cardboard. I've climbed trees, dove into the dark and murky fluid we here in New York pretend is ocean water. And I've broken more eyeglasses than I can remember, quite a few of which were subsequently repaired with Krazy Glue - on one such instance, bonding my glasses to my own face.

I have never, ever, ever, had a chip of stone lodged in my eye. What kind of silly shit do you have to do, to get SHRAPNEL lodged in your eyes?! Back to the story.)

So, distraught (you think?!) and in pain, he ran to the hospital and was treated for a corneal lesion (note: apparently this town in Russia wasn't as rural as we've been led to believe. And where are his parents in all this?)

After a few days, the pain began to subside and the blurriness got better. And better. And better. In fact, his eyes would not stop getting better. Within a few weeks, he could see even more clearly than before the accident! (again, how rural was this place, really? They had detailed medical charts of this kid's occuity on hand from before the accident? Come on!)

Later, doctors found an explanation for this miracle: the boy was nearsighted before the accident and the gravel carved a small incision in his cornea, making it flatter and easier to see in focus (...translation: he kept rubbing his eyes and scratched the shizzit out of them.)

Russian doctor Slava Fydorov reported the case in 1972 and turned this accident into a new field - refractive surgery.

(Okay, I need to ask this: what was the testing process like? "Come here, let me use this scalpel and cut into your eyeball, you'll see better - trust me!")

So there you have it. I'm trusting my future vision propects on a science founded by a kid who wouldn't stop rubbing his eyes.


8:29 AM

Foster Grant Saved My Life Today (Myspace Archives)

It goes without saying (so I'm saying it anyway) that I was happy as a tick on a dog this morning, when my vision cleared up. I mean, sure I'm still blind-ish - but it's my normal eyeglasss-wearing level of blind, not this new old codgerish "where's my reading glasses" crap I went through last night. I was pumped, jazzed, ready to go out and carpe the fucking diem. Stepped outside with a smile on my face, a GPS in my pocket and no plan in mind.

Motherfuck, it was like the sun had split itself in two, shrunk itself down to pinpricks and landed themselves on my goddamn eyelids. It wasn't that it was a very sunny day, no; it was more like I'd woke up and been transported onto the surface of the sun itself. There was no COLOR in my sky, just this blinding, oppressive FORCE that, in another life, I would have called light - but there is no word in the English language to describe this entity that filled my retinas. Calling it "sunlight" is like calling a nuclear explosion "fireworks".

I made it as far as my car, one block away. I shut the door and sat there, catching my breath, hiding from the monster energy being that filled the sky. Driving was out of the question; even through my tinted windshield, I could feel it clawing its way under my eyelids, tearing away micrometers of fluid from my cornea, layer by layer.

I knew I was going to expect some "sensitivity to light". Fuck you, Doc. Ya'll need someone to write your literature for you, because in no way does what I felt compare to "sensitivity to light". Vampires were hiding in the shadows, laughing at my stupidity.

I made it back home, determined to try again. I mean come on, this was silly; it's just sunlight, for gods' sake. That's why we have sunglasses, right? And lo and behold, I have 3 pairs that I barely wear anyway - I mean, they aren't prescription - but I was sure as hell going to put them to good use now!

Bold, confident, and shielded behind the subtle tints of a pair of sports shades, I strode back outside once again.

It was a joke. I may as well have taken pats of butter, placed them underneath my eyelids, then covered my eyes with magnifying lenses. Maryjesusjoseph, that sun was fucking mocking me. Stubborn as I am, I refused to back down; obviously to my desperate brain, all I needed to do was ADJUST. Calm myself, let my eyes get used to the light again. Be all zen and shit. I couldn't drive, but I could walk - so I did.

I made it two blocks to the park before I stopped, resting under the protective canopy of the trees. Oh blessed trees!

You can't imagine the frustration going through my mind. It was too bright to be outside?! This is insane!! I took a deep breath, manned up, and kept going.

Now...I want you to picture this scene. I was standing at the exit of the park, ready to step out onto the busy afternoon Broadway street in Inwood. There are no trees where I'm about to step out into. No shade, save where I'm standing. Yes, standing - literally in the last spot of cooling shade, with a sea of sun-lit concrete before me.

I stood there for...maybe 5, 10 minutes. I couldn't move forward. I was afraid to step out into that sunlight. Suddenly I'm on a goddamned episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I'm the vampire. I was scared to step out into the light! And when I did....oh holy moses, was it agony! The shades were absolutely useless, I would have stopped and stopped that plastic piece of shit into the ground except it would have meant I'd be in the sunlight for even longer, and it wasn't worth it. I made it another block before I stopped into a Rite-Aid for refuge.

Then, like the fabled Burning Bush, I saw it. The sunglasses rack. I swear I heard angels singing in the background.

I must have tried on every single pair they had, searching for something that would work. Most were useless, but I settled on these yellow-mirrored, black-framed pair of Foster Grant sunglasses that hugged my face so snugly I doubt oxygen could have gotten in. I didn't care what they cost, as long as they worked. I put them on, and stepped out into that visual inferno once more.

Bliss! I couldn't believe it, they were actually working! Sure it was still blindingly bright, but at least now it was tolerable! I didn't feel as if gravity had centered itself on my eyelids, and lifting them to open my eyes was no longer a herculean effort.

So, if you're in the market for a good pair of sunglasses: Foster Grant, "Daytona" model. They saved my life, and FG - if you ever need anyone to do a commercial for you, I'm your man.

"Sensitivity to light". Under-fucking-statement of the year.


1:03 PM

The Eyes Have It (Myspace Archives)

So I got my eyes dilated today. It's the first time I can remember having it done, although I'm sure it was done to me many times as a child. I've been wearing glasses since at least 5 years of age, and I wore an eyepatch (arrrgh!) for months before and during. Seeing clearly, at least visually, has never been an option for me my entire life (but like Matt Murdock, my other senses have adapted to compensate...)

The question is, why now - at 38 and 7 months - did I suddenly decide I needed to have my eyes dilated?

Because I'm opting to have my eyes lasered in a week. Woot!

Still, it's an odd experience, this dilation. I feel newly blind. I'm naturally near-sighted, which means of course that i can't see clearly at distances. My vision really isn't that bad compared to some, and again its something I've dealt with my entire life. But this is a whole different experience.

I'm typing this squinting at the computer screen, because if I put on my glasses I can't see the screen at all. I was looking at the newspaper on the subway on the way home from the opthalmalogists' office, and after a while I realized it was hard to see very well - so I put my specs on.

Blind as a bat. Oh, don't get me wrong - I can see at a distance fine enough, although it was slightly more blurry than usual. With my glasses I actually have something like 20-10 eyesight, but suddenly it was like wearing a pair of old glasses that you'd outgrown.

I'm sitting here with my glasses perched atop my head; to read i take them off. To look at the television, I put them on. I feel like I'm 80 years old, putting on a special pair of reading glasses. I went to check my phone for messages, I couldn't read the screen without putting it up to my nose! "Mama, where's my metamucil? Who turned up the heat? Where's my reading glasses?"

They told me it'll be like this for hours, possibly until tomorrow.

*sigh*

So how's YOUR Friday night? :)

May Day

WARNING: The surgeon general has determined that reading this post may cause a severe shock to your sense of humor. If you have a weak or deficient sense of humor, you should avoid reading this at all costs. Really. I mean it.

In honor of May Day, also known as International Workers Day, I'm doing my part to show solidarity with the immigrant workers here in the U.S. who have chosen today to hold demonstrations against current (or potential) U.S. immigration laws. So without further ado, my ode to the International Workers:

Q. Why doesn't Mexico have an Olympic team?
A. Because everybody who can run, jump, and swim is already in the U.S.

Q: Did you hear about the Italian-American who emigrated to Poland?
A: He raised the IQ of both countries.

Q: What's two miles long and has an IQ of forty?
A: A Saint Patrick's Day Parade.

Q: Why are camels called "Ships of the Desert"?
A: Because they're full of Muslim semen.

Q: What's the difference between a bowling-ball and a West Indian girl?
A: You can only get three fingers in a bowling-ball.

Q: What do you get when you cross a Puerto Rican and a Chinaman?
A: A car thief who can't drive.

Q: What do you get when you cross a Mexican with an octopus?
A: No idea; but it can sure pick lettuce.

Did you hear about the Polish library that burned down?
It's okay... they saved the book

And finally, just because I like this one:

A little black boy goes into the kitchen where his mom is baking. He puts his hand in the flour and wipes it all over his face. He looks at his mom and says, "Mom, look, I'm a white boy!"

His mom slaps him in the kisser and says, "Go show your father!"

He goes to his dad in the living room and says, "Look dad, I'm a white boy!" His dad slaps him hard in the face and says, "Go show your Grandmother!"

The boy goes in his grandmother's room and says, "Look granny, I'm a white boy!" His grandmother slaps him in the face and sends him back to his mother.

His mother says "See. Did you learn anything from that?!"

The boy replies, "Sure enough did. I've only been white for 5 minutes and I already hate you black people!"

4:23 AM