Mein Sehvermögen ist schrecklich

“Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses” wrote Dorothy Parker. My father, a veritable font of crass wisdom, remarked upon this axiom with “True, but who wears glasses to bed?”

It’s a vision thing, you wouldn’t understand.

This afternoon, my wife, in one of those sly moves that anticipated my reluctance to do, well, anything out of my normal routine, dragged me off to an optometrist appointment she made without my prior consent. I really didn’t see (ha, ha) the need. It’s only been six years since I last had my eyes examined, and my current pair of glasses work just fine…as long as I squint, or don’t need to read fine print -- a street sign of a TV news scroll -- at a distance. I usually wait until a few months before my driver’s license expires before getting a new pair of spectacles. If the Department of Motor Vehicles online renewal process means that I only need to get my vision tested once every ten years instead of every five, so much the better.

I consider my light best spent outside the exam chair, and not trying to determine if a long sequence of “Ones” are truly better than “Twos,” based on a haphazardly oriented arrangement of capital letter E’s. I also hate having to sit through a series of tests to determine things that I already know. Yes, I have a severe astigmatism. Yes, I know it carries a heightened risk of detaching a retina. Yes, I know that my eye muscles are abnormally well developed, thus lowering the risk of such an injury ever occurring. I could have told you all that from the beginning and saved us both forty-five minutes of our valuable time.

My new frames are nice enough, I guess, although I was disappointed that I couldn’t find something similar in size and shape to my present pair. Oh, well, it’s my union (Amalgamated Federation of Whiny Bastards, Local 251) that’s picking up the tab, so I can’t complain too much.

After our appointments, my wife and I went over to the comic shop to pick up her subscription and some other titles I was interested in. I got to see a beloved character whose series I had been following since the 1970’s get offed in a nonsensical, pseudo-relevant manner, and the boys behind Phonogram get a weak dig in at bis fans. (It wouldn’t bother me except that it’s avowed Kenickie fans doing the commenting. It’s like a dung beetle making fun of a vulture’s eating habits.) My wife also bought me the new Hourman figure as an early birthday present, which almost made up for the whole eye exam conspiracy.

All in all, it’s been a better than average Wednesday.

Blancmange – Blind Vision (from Mange Tout, 1984) – The synth lines in this track are simply wonderful, but I could have done without with cheesy (canned?) horns. It might have been in vogue at the time, but it’s the sort of thing I’d associate with the mid-eighties Duran Duran, and undercuts the song’s overall solemnity.

Johnny Nash – I Can See Clearly Now (from the Grosse Pointe Blank OST, 1997) – A great mellow soul/pop song that has nearly been ruined by commercial overuse. The song used to (and can still, under the right conditions) evoke pleasant memories of a 70’s childhood, but now I tend to see a blipvert-like progression of products: dishwashing liquid, glass cleaner, an anti-allergy medication, contact lens solution. The funny thing is that I can’t recall the brand names of any of those products.

Fall of Saigon – Blue Eyes (from None Night of Flexipop, Vol. 3) – They’re more of a dark blue-gray hue, actually. This is another Flexipop compilation mystery track, and Google searches have turned up nothing other than a vague early 80’s release date. The song is a pretty decent minimal electronic effort with female vocals, although the production is a bit muddy.