Peeking into the rock

So, my glasses are another long boring This System Sucks and So Do I story.

With good vision insurance, my glasses cost nearly three hundred dollars. They're progressive bifocals with a prism. I failed to get new glasses when I last had insurance (there's the I suck part). My old glasses were only about two years old and they were still focussed about right. But suddenly they were very scratched. (It actually looks like the anti-scratch coating is what's scratch, honestly). So I stepped back to an older pair of glass, like four years old, that made me work for it but gave me good vision. But then they fell apart, and kept falling apart, so I went back to the newer glasses. They deteriorated rapidly.

The newer glasses are rapidly approaching opaque. I was taking them off for everything. So I was close to panic. I was wittering on about it and my roommate suggested the Lion's CLub eye care program. So I applied. And then I didn't hear anything, so I figured they weren't going to do it, or at least they weren't going to do it before I go to Prague.

I've been waiting for my stepmother's house to sell before I buy anything, but while that's not off the table there's no longer an estimated time when it will come through, so I had to borrow money to go to Prague, and while I was at it I borrowed a few hundred more than I strictly needed to buy the ticket, so I thought -- okay, I'll use that money. And Costco has cheaper glasses so I flailed around and bought a Costco membership and made an optometry appointment. The Lion's club fellow called and said they were sending a voucher. I asked about my trifocal progressives and he said he didn't know but maybe they would cover all that.

So I hae a Costco membership I don't want, but it's not the end of the world.

Now, the Lion's Club optometrist says I can't get my glasses before I leave for Prague and I can't get trifocal progressives but I can get bifocals with a line. So I can order those for backup glasses and pick them up when I get back, and take my prescription with me to Prague and try my luck there.

Meanwhile, I found an even older pair of glasses which is completely not scratched up. Clear as water. They're horrible for close up work, though, and even driving is uitimately painful with them. Last night I thought I had to take them off to write and then crawl into the screen and get a stiff neck, but today I find that if I sit very tall and tilt my head back I can read what I am writing. Painful but not as bad.

I have been urged to try contacts, and I have been told that trifocal contacts are the best thing in the world. I may be too old a dog to learn such a new trick, though.

And now I am unutterably sleepy so I better get up and move around.

You should be listening to Democracy Now anyway. Reading the site is good too. Today's lead story is about the privatization of water and the lies behind the bottled water boom.

Amy Goodman has quietly become a ubiquitous figure. She's a complement to Michael Moore. She's quiet, she's earnest, she's focussed. When she was interviewed by Steven Colbert, she indulged him but didn't give much in the way of snappy comebacks: it was kind of cute, actually, watching her. Meanwhile, she's on radio and TV every day with Juan Gonzalez, who has an unretouched but unexaggerated New York accent (one of about 35, I don't know which), and carried by more and more venues, she's part of this website, she has a newspaper column that is carried by I don't know how many papers. She's put a lot of effort into being not glamorous. Her hair is grey and cut in a simple fashion, if she wears makeup at all it's just enough to satisfy the TV cameras and their lighting. She starts out from the position that she has a position, so no false objectivity crap and no vicious undercutting of her allies in the name of evenhandedness.

But the research is good, the facts are true, and that's what counts in a news program. The "mainstream" media act as shills for the worst of the ruling class -- and their audience keeps shrinking, because if the news is going to be half as newsy as People magazine, you'll probably choose the happy fun one. And Democracy Now's share keeps growing, despite a conspicuous lack of showmanship, because it's interesting. It's interesting because you hear from people you wouldn't hear from elsewhere, you hear about things you wouldn't hear about elsewhere, and because it has it's own voice (slightly scratchy and definitely not perky, in the case of Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez).

On another front, I have my new glasses and my left eye is exhausted already from not having to yank itself into an unnatural position anymore. But it's the other lens, the one without the prism, which has rainbows on its edge. I may have to edge into using these glasses a little at a time.

And on a still further point, my guys have gotten into a side discussion of how personal "impersonal" art (botanical drawings, in this case) can be. They are completely unruly, these guys, and persist on being the people they really are despite the needs of a romantic comedy. They will not stay on message, even though this is supposed to be the grand reconciliation and resolution scene. They have three little words they have to say, but what do they say instead? Chiaroscuro:sketchy: frenetic.