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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
(Three quick bits of info on the way to tonight’s main event:
#1. There’s a Zolton Does Amazon number up over at ZuG.com. It’s about hippies. You like hippies, right?
#2. Speaking of Amazon, the new Mug of Woe book Woe of the Road is now on it. I’ve got a piece in there. It’s about Spring Break. Oh, yeah. I went there.
#3. This coming Tuesday — maybe Monday, if you’re good! — I’ll be unveiling a new feature around here. Hopefully, it’ll liven things up a bit. Or at least make you stop thinking about me spending Spring Break with a bunch of hippies gone wild. Stay tuned.)
I thought I had it this time. I really did.
For as long as I’ve been writing here, I’ve been fighting a battle against spam. It’s a cross — a vile, greasy, stinking cross — that the owner of any website open to public feedback must bear. I’ve been lugging it around since 2003. And I thought I might be free of it.
What goes on in my head has no firm basis in reality, clearly. I might as well accept that and entertain myself with daydreams about bacon with wings and unicorn farts.
(Of course, I’ve thought this before. What goes on in my head has no firm basis in reality, clearly. I might as well accept that and entertain myself with daydreams about bacon with wings and unicorn farts. I’ll get approximately as far in life.)
Here’s the sitrep in a nutshell. Lots of people have blogs. Lots of other people have scam pages and porn sites and sleazy barely-legal businesses they run out of the trunk of the Miatas they lease. These latter douchebags want their crappy hokum URLs to rise high in the search result rankings, so that sweet trusting old grandmas like yours and mine might go on the newfangled interwebs one day to look up blackberry cobbler recipes and be tricked into clicking one of these foul damnable links, thereby earning said douchebags a tiny fraction of a penny from some equally smarmy advertiser who deserves to be beaten savagely with a sock filled with his own severed testicles.
And how do I really feel? Don’t ask.
For a fair portion of this millennium, one way to rise up the search result lists on a site like Google was to have your page linked to by as many others as possible. So for years, these incorrigible a-holes would send millions upon millions of automated spam comments — with links to their detritus, naturally — to weblogs the world over. If the muck made it through users’ spam filters (and a lot of it did), and nobody bothered to clean it up (which often, nobody didn’t), then suddenly HotForexYakSputum.ru seemed, to the naive eye, to be really popular, what with all the links back to its hot… er, forex yak sputum resources.
Which were hopefully sparse. And in no way illustrated.
That was annoying enough. But at least there was a point. Cheesy and deplorable and sub-human tiny-wanged slug-people of them though it was, there was at least a plausible path from these godforsaken waves of nonsense to potentially more clicks on their stuff. It’s out of proportion, sure. And unthinkably wrong-headed of these yahoos. To even give them that sliver of understanding is like saying:
“Well, yeah, I don’t agree with the killing spree. But I suppose I don’t much like it when all the spaces are taken in the parking lot, either. So I can see where he was coming from, I guess.”
But! Small slivery bone as that was throw them, it’s now completely irrelevant. From what I understand, Google and the other big-dog search hounds are wise to these shenanigans, and updated their algorithms a couple of years ago to stop rewarding it with search ranking. Spamming comments all over websites now gets you nothing but comment-spammed-over websites. There’s no payoff. No goal. There’s only “Point A”, and these link-peddling cowpatties can shove it up their collective ass.
So. Spam rushes in. So, it seems, it shall always be. Luckily, we have plugins — little bits of code that install into the blogging software to take care of the problem. Which they do — except the times when they don’t, which is actually a fair percentage of the time.
For instance, I’ve been using TypePad AntiSpam. I can’t complain about it — but that’s mostly because I didn’t pay anyone for it. It’s free. So if you have a beef, you can tell the mailman or your mom or Mary Poppins, if you like, but it’s probably not going to get anything fixed. Mostly, it works. And then it doesn’t. And then maybe it does again. You never can tell.
I thought the worst thing about TypePad was that it randomly stops working once in a while — usually early in the morning. It’s hooked to a central database of some kind, so if it goes offline — or the network hiccups just the wrong way — you could conceivably lose that connection for an hour or two. And some mornings — but not all, because that would be predictable, of course — I wake up to two or six dozen spamtastic crap comments left on my site during one of these ‘brownout’ periods.
(The hours between 3am and 5am seem to be the most popular. I guess a server’s got to get some shuteye now and then, just like the rest of us.)
This unexpected and unwanted shart-like occasional leaking is not, however, the worst thing about TypePad. The worst thing is, it filters out actual REAL comments, instead of posting them on the site. So three or four days a week — blaaaaarrgh, here’s a bunch of horseshit spam. But a nice, relevant, link-free note comes through, from a trusted user with previous approved comments onsite?
Kick that shit to the holding pen, man. That mother looks like SPAM!!
So no real comments get through. And I spend ninety percent of my “writing” time on the site deleting crap that slipped through the cracks, or — worse by a factor of a thousand infinities! — I sift through thousands of jackass spam comments that were caught by the software, looking for the one or two that might miraculously have been left by a real, honest-to-goodness, interested, engaged, non-knuckle-dragging human. It’s exhausting. And I’m tired of it.
So I tinkered with the comment script. As I mentioned before, it’s not my first tinker rodeo. I’ve adjusted — and completely broken — the commenting machinery before. But this time, I really thought I had the answer. A way of vetting comments that would nip those spamming slackjaws in the bud. It couldn’t fail.
So then it failed. Obviously.
Oh, not completely this time. I actually did make an improvement, and I’m seeing less crap in the spam hole. But it wasn’t a complete fix. What I wanted — and, in an uncharacteristically optimistic fit of unbridled hope, briefly did — was to turn off my TypePad doohickey altogether. To just stand there, naked against the raging tide of spam, seemingly defenseless, only to have the gunk bounce off me like I was a galvanized Firestone radial.
I did that. I turned it right off, and braced against the spam. And indeed, thanks to my homegrown spammolator code, most of it bounced harmlessly away. Most.
But not all. First, just one lonely message. As though the spammers had seen the solution, and wanted to assure me that it wasn’t going to quite do the trick. Like Frank Niddi scrawling TOUCHABLE in blood across the elevator wall. That’s what this one stupid spam message represented.
Twenty minutes later, it was joined by another. And another. And three more within the hour. It wasn’t the massive flood of hundreds of messages a day that normally get stashed, but it was something. And in this fight, anything is too much thing. I turned TypePad back on — on top of my changes, for what that buys me — and admitted defeat. Again.
So now I’m exploring options. Those script weenies won’t stop their pointless spamming any time soon. But I can’t keep poring over piles of their offal every day in search of something from the two-and-a-half people who might actually leave a real comment.
Seriously, I just can’t. I’m starting to see day-trading and penis enlargement URLs in my sleep. Nobody should have those sorts of dreams, people. Nobody.
Meanwhile, the spam comments roll on. Maybe I can live with my partial fix — and TypePad’s mediocre filter — for a while longer. But some day ,some day soon, I dream of a world where I don’t have to see or delete or ever deal with another piece of comment spam again.
Maybe that’s unrealistic. But everyone needs a dream. And that one sure as hell beats the ones I’ve been having lately. By a lot. Yeesh.
Permalink | 5 CommentsThe class my friend Jenn is teaching at RISD is getting curiouser and curiouser.
I have to admit, I had a few reservations early on. The class is titled “Writing Comedy for New Media”, and a few weeks ago, we produced a piece in newspaper style.
(Seriously — newspapers! In this day and age! I thought, what’s next — telling Conan monologues in smoke signals? Dirty Latin limericks? Dick jokes in Morse code?)
“On the other hand, if you’ve ever wondered, “what would a slightly younger, goofier, potty-mouthed and still-breathing Andy Rooney sound like on my laptop speakers?” — well, today’s your lucky day.”
Happily, dabbling in dying media was just a warmup. And now, the class is stretching in ways I’ve not personally stretched before.
(Which is not to say that I’ve told dirty limericks in Latin, necessarily, either.
I was always partial to Sanskrit for that sort of thing.)
This week, we’re exploring the world of podcasting. Which is sort of a new medium/old medium thing, I suppose, since it’s basically amateur self-published radio that any schmoe can broadcast.
And now this schmoe has done it. Which only proves my point.
So, if you like, feel free to read the post below, which is approximately the contents of the podcast, give or take a stutter.
On the other hand, if you’ve ever wondered, “what would a slightly younger, goofier, potty-mouthed and still-breathing Andy Rooney sound like on my laptop speakers?” — well, today’s your lucky day. Just click this link right here to find out:
PBS – Yer Doin’ It Wrong Podcast
As for me, I’m not sure I’d have dipped a toe into the podcasting stream, were it not for this class. You can thank or curse Jenn for that, as you see fit.
But if someone had told me my first podcast would include Carl Sagan and Nazis and Salma Hayek and Sesame Street? Yeah. That sounds about right. The more the medium changes, the more things stay the same.
PBS – Yer Doin’ It Wrong
As I get older, I find there are some things you never grow out of. You wish you’d grow out of them, but you don’t. Your pants, yes. The things you wish, not so much.
For one thing, I’m as much of a nerd as I ever was. Probably more. I watch more PBS now than when I was twelve and my parents made me watch Masterpiece Theater so I’d have some “culture”.
The culture didn’t take, clearly. But I still watch the geeky shows. So nobody’s happy.
Personally, I blame Carl Sagan. He’d go on about these “billions and billions of stars”, and made it seem like entertainment instead of learning. Otherwise, I’d have probably dumped PBS when I figured out nobody was ever going to acknowledge the existence of Snuffleupagus. I mean, you expect that kind of thing from Mr. Hooper. But Gordon? Maria? That still pisses me off.
Also, Carl Sagan would probably shit a supernova in his coffin if he knew he was a gateway for people like me watching Fawlty Towers and Antiques Roadshow reruns. That’s probably not quite what he had in mind. But there’s educational stuff still on PBS.
Just last night, I watched this show called “Behind the Doors of World War II“. I don’t know what I expected to be “Behind the Doors of World War II“. Nazis, maybe? I mean, they were pretty much in front of the doors of World War II, so that wouldn’t exactly be a big reveal.
You sort of lose the element of surprise when everyone’s been talking about what you did for seventy years. I’ve been to Berlin. Even there, they don’t walk around going, “Nein! Ze butler did it!”
So I don’t know why I watched it. But I watched it — for two whole hours. And they covered a bunch of interesting things that apparently happened during the war — not just the dusty old facts we learned in school.
Or were supposed to learn, but didn’t. Like, apparently, Italy was involved in this thing for a while? And atom bombs? And I guess we pulled it out in the end? News to me. I guess you miss a lot when you sleep through five semesters of freshman History.
Anyway, the show was interesting. The main focus seemed to be that world leaders are kind of assholes like the rest of us. Which again is not exactly a shocker. But it turns out Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin didn’t much like each other. And they lied a lot. And did some pretty nasty stuff.
See, that I knew. Josef Stalin, not a standup meet-your-parents kind of guy? Yeah. I got that. I didn’t sleep through that many classes.
The weirdest thing for me was the actor playing FDR. I saw this guy in some other movie a while back, and he played the villain. Real smug, douchy kind of guy. So every time Roosevelt rolled on screen — right, the guy I’m supposed to be rooting for, in a wooden wheelchair, for crissakes — all I can think is, “Nah. Screw this guy. He’s an asshole.”
So it was kind of conflicting. It could’ve been worse — they didn’t cast Salma Hayek as Hitler or anything — but it was still a little weird.
Hey, I said I still watch PBS. I never said I did it right.
Permalink | 1 CommentI’m a scientist by training.
Not a lot of training, mind you. I got out of the lab coat game very quickly after college, because — well, it’s pretty hard, for one thing. Who wants to spend forty years curing the common cold when there’s three pints of NyQuil and a bag of Ricola in the hall closet? Frankly, I never quite saw the point.
And not only that. After freshman chemistry class, they almost never let you set off explosions or light things on fire. That’s how they suck you in — and then nada. It’s a periodic table-sized bait-and-switch.
Also? You have to handle chemicals on a daily basis, a single drop of which could kill you or send you into writhing searing agony. When I want that, I’ll mix myself a Jagermeister and Coke, thank you very much, safety goggles crowd.
Still. I do like the scientific train of thought. Formulating hypotheses, and then designing tests to study each in turn, ideally changing just a single experimental variable to mitigate the effects of complexity, error and random chance. There’s a real thrill in knowing there’s a right answer out there, somewhere, and zeroing methodically in until you find it by excluding all other plausible options.
Which brings me to the dog. More specifically, to the dog’s butt. And to the various substances taking turns climbing out of it.
Don’t fret. I’ll explain.
“Some people can light up a room with a smile. My dog knocks passing pedestrians unconscious with air biscuits.”
The dog has always been a fairly disgusting creature, odorwise. It’s no surprise, and hardly her fault. If your diet consisted of horsemeat and rawhide and the occasional turd, plus whatever happened to fly into your mouth while you flapped your snurfly gums down the nearest sidewalk, you’d probably smell like a Bulgarian sewer backed up with week-old borscht, too.
Some people can light up a room with a smile. My dog knocks passing pedestrians unconscious with air biscuits. Say what you like – it’s a gift.
I just wish we’d kept the receipt, so we could return it.
The point is, the dog is a farter. A bona fide paint-peeling, room-clearing stinker. Always has been. But — on the bright-if-no-less-stinky side — she’s usually been a solid pooper.
(I don’t mean ‘solid’ as in ‘damned solid job repelling the Germans, old chap, what what?’ Though, truth be told, she’s also been that. Any sort of poop supervisor would have no issue with her work — neither in shape nor in plentitude. Quantity and quality — this is a mutt who takes pride in her turdage.
But what I’m talking about here is consistency. Her poops are ‘hard-boiled’, for the most part. Not over-easy. Not scrambled and runny. Nice and firm. And I’m stopping with the egg analogy here, before I turn myself off omelets for the next fourteen years. Suffice it to say: ‘solid pooper’.)
Sadly, this has not been true in recent weeks. Not long after we pacemakered the pooch, her pooping took a turn for the… shall we say, ‘sunny side up’.
(I know. I said I’d stop. What can I say? I always strive for eggcellence in my analogies.)
Most people would simply be grossed out and sad. But not I. I was grossed out, sad, AND saw the potential for an experiment. Because something had changed. What went into the dog was the same as before. But what came out — not so much. So something, somewhere — probably in that fuzzy little rump of hers — had changed. And I wanted to change it back.
Good god, did I want to change it back. Holy cow. The horror.
So we changed one variable. Instead of the solid kibbly food she’d enjoyed — or rather, scarfed — for a dozen years or so, we started giving the dog canned food. Little aluminum containers that purportedly held chicken or turkey or even chopped-up bits of lamb and beef — though frankly, what I saw inside would be jealous of that hot pink slime people are so up in arms about these days. In my book “chicken” shouldn’t look like tapioca pudding and mushy oatmeal had a love child. Or a hate child. Or whatever ungodly gelatinous creature was trapped in that can. But there it was. So we gave it to her.
And she ate it. Oh, yes. The dog ate the shit out of it. And somehow, miraculously, her poops turned firm.
I have no idea how this works. I didn’t stay in science long enough to learn anatomy, and everything i know about the insides of dogs comes from Tom and Jerry cartoons. But just intuitively, now, you’d think solid food would lead to solid poops. And mushy food to mushy poops. But in this case, no. She wasn’t back to her old pooping majesty, true — but the beast went from unspeakable drippy nightmare to…
(Look, I’m sorry. There’s just no better way to put this. But seriously — last food-related turd reference all week. Cross my heart.)
…’soft serve’.
So. Not only was the experiment a success, but it helped the patient, too. Wonderful! This is what real medicine is line, except the food in this case is a little better, and instead of an orderly emptying the bedpans, it was me with a shredded plastic bag on my hand. All was, in the grand scheme of things, well.
Or so we thought.
As it turns out, this wet food only took us so far. As the disgusting critter-from-a-can experiment rolled on, we realized that the dog was backsliding. A few days encouraging, a few days of deluge. Running smooth, then “running smooth”. Wax on, wax coming out. I think you get the picture.
So we changed the variable again. This time, instead of your plain abattoir-variety pureed fowl and game, we had the vet prescribe our pooch some very special canned food, especially formulated to calm a dog’s spewing sour tummy. It’s from Science Diet, which seemed highly appropriate to the experiment under way.
(Though frankly, it looked just the same to me. If you’ve seen one set of animal parts shoved in a can, you’ve seen them all. And I’ve had Spam. So I’ve seen them all.)
This leg of the experiment also yielded measurable results. The poops, solid. And consistently so, over the course of several days. The messes and drips and — my god, you think I’m not being kind, but the shit I’m not telling you about would haunt you beyond the grave; you do NOT want to test me on this — runs are, so far, a thing of the past.
Only, there’s another thing. The farting?
ONE THOUSAND TIMES WORSE.
I’m beginning to understand how this food works, precisely. Instead of drying up the dog inside or cramming her with fiber or — heaven forbid — actually fixing the gastro-nastestinal problem, this food makes all the ‘bad poops’ shrivel up and die inside her. Where the only escape is in gaseous form, every forty seconds or so, into the airspace of whatever innocent souls happen to be within a four-mile radius.
If the mutt could peel paint before, now she’s stripping off primer and pulling plaster from the lathe. I haven’t been able to smell straight for days — and I know enough science to know how this shit works. A long enough exposure, and those olfactory receptors are going to freeze this way. Permanent stink bomb. Like a human centipede Dutch oven. Homina.
So the experiment, I suppose, tells us something scientifically. But with this horsemeat haze hanging heavy in the air, I’m too dazed to focus on what the hell it is. We don’t have much choice left but to feed her this ‘fart food’, but I don’t know how much more we can possibly take.
And that is not an ‘experiment’ I’m eager to perform. I’d sooner drink the Jager. Or eat a can of that liquefied chicken. Anything but the stench, doggie. Have a heart. Anything.
Permalink | 1 Comment(Just in time for Tax Day — you did remember Tax Day, right? — it’s the latest
Zolton Does Amazon joint: Taxed to the Max.
Funnier than an audit, and simpler to read than a 1099-EZ! It’s tax-tastic!)
My business jaunt from a couple of weeks ago continues to haunt me.
(More realistically, my failure to adhere to common social practices that a crack-addled gibbon could pick up is what haunts me.
It’s just more fun when I take it “on the road”.)
A quick recap of the journey: I flew from Boston to Chicago on a Friday evening, stayed overnight, attended a meeting and flew back late Saturday night.
Number of flights paid up-front by my company: Two.
Other expenses paid up-front by my company: None.
Other expenses cheerfully reimbursable by my company: All of them.
Nights stayed in a swanky hotel room: One.
Cabs caught to and from airports: Four.
Meals eaten on the road: One.
Total number of receipts in my pocket at end of trip?: One.
The business travel, she is a fickle mistress. When you’re a gawking doofus who forgets to ask for receipts, apparently.
“So I did what I figure most real big-boy-pants-wearing businesspeople do: I guesstimated.”
I did have one thing on my side. The lone receipt I managed to grab — from the cabbie who careened me to the hotel — wasn’t filled in. It was completely blank — no fare, no tip, no nothing. So I did what I figure most real big-boy-pants-wearing businesspeople do: I guesstimated.
Which is to say, I tallied up a ballpark of all the other cab fares, the room rate I saw on the bill I left on the bed, the book from the airport, the pack of gum, the minibar cashews and the dollar I gave to that homeless Cubs fan, and I wrote it down on the receipt.
Plus tip, naturally. I’m magnanimous that way.
So I turned in this gaudy cab ticket as my lone road expense, figuring it all sorted out in the wash. The cashflow was about right. Who quibbles about details in finance these days?
(I left the meal off the bill, as some friends that I met up with at the meeting very graciously paid for my lone out-of-town dinner at a charming Japanese joint nearby.
In retrospect, if I’d gotten my hands on that receipt, I could have turned that in to cover the weekend. Four of us plus tasty fish plus a few rounds of beers would just about do it. But then I’d have to say I ran up the tab alone:
‘That’s right, I ate fourteen pounds of raw fish by myself. DO NOT QUESTION THE MIGHTY SUSHISAURUS, GAIJIN! THE RIVERS RUN GREEN WITH WASABI TONIGHT!‘
It might even work. Sushisaurus don’t take no lip from nobody.)
This morning, our office manager called me into her office. It went about as well as you might expect.
Her: So… did you take a cab while you were in Chicago?
Me: Of course.
Her: For four hundred dollars?
This is the first hurdle in selling a ridiculous lie — the perfectly reasonable incredulous response. The key is to remain calm. Make it seem normal.
Me: Yup. Sounds about right.
Her: Four HUNDRED?
Me: Could have been three-ninety, I guess. Should I not round up?
Naturally, this never works. Be prepared to be pelted with follow-up questions.
Her: What, did you take it to Detroit? Or Canada?!
Me: Nope. Straight to the hotel.
Her: Were there… hookers in the cab or something?
Me: I didn’t check the trunk. But no. I didn’t see any.
Her: Did you buy this cab?
Me: With that upholstery? Child, please.
This is usually followed by stunned silence, as the lie-ee tries desperately to reconcile this new information with a version of reality that isn’t completely batshit whackadoodle. It’s also a good time to be proactive.
Me: Look, let’s be honest.
Her: Yes? Please do.
Me: Have you taken a cab in Chicago lately?
Her: Well…
Me: Come on. It’s the Midwest. You know how they are.
A calculated risk. If she grew up in Omaha, I’m cooked. Maybe fired. And possibly hog-tied. But what are the odds?
Her: Oh. Yeah. They kind of are, aren’t they?
Turns out she’s from Connecticut. Mission accomplished. Reimbursement check, cut. Some cabbie in Chicago, possibly in a lot of hot water right now.
But hey, don’t feel bad for him. With that upholstery? Child, please.
Permalink | 1 Comment
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Eye Am Not an Animal!
Three lightning-quick points of order before we set sail tonight:
#1. Contrary to my hard-earned pessimism from last time, I re-tinkered a bit and believe I’ve finally solved my spam comment problem. With custom code of my own, no less. I’ve been running naked, with no “official” spam filter for three days now, with nary a trace of spam slime around. The “rock star” pride, she swells in my bosom.
However. To ensure that the three-and-a-half of you who actually read this drivel from time to time can still be heard, please leave me a quick comment on this post, when you have the chance. And if you hit a snag, a quick email to tell me I’m an idiot would be much appreciated. Thankies!
(Ema, you’re excused. Forty-three comments on the last entry is all the data I need from you, buddy.)
#2. Over the weekend — and with thanks to Jenn‘s RISD class grueling schedulemaking — I finished (and submitted for contest judging) my first solo sitcom pilot script. It feels pretty good.
Sure, I never want to see it again. But it feels good. Mighty good.
#3. I’m tired of having days go by with nothing new posted on the site here. I used to fling nonsense netward every freaking day. But I’m just not able to work a lengthy daily post into my schedule right now.
Finally, I’ve found a compromise. A way to bring fresh original content — if only a leetle beet — on otherwise-off days. I think it’ll be good. It’s coming in May.
As in tomorrow. I know, right? *squeeeeee!*
Meanwhile, back in my nightmare…
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was hopefully overdue for an optometrist appointment. I skipped a lens checkup two-and-a-half years ago, and couldn’t fathom a protocol for re-establishing contact. Or contacts. So I didn’t dare show my retinas around the place again.
Finally, I found a new joint for ocular-opathy. It’s near my work, miles away from the other place. I picked it so there’d be no chance of hard feelings, or running into my old eye doc, or any sort of uncomfortable dealing with that old forgotten appointment.
Naturally, the place is a LensCrafters. Just like the last place. And they all share patient records. So as soon as I handed over my insurance card:
“Oh, I’ll just pull up your file from… oh, my. It has been a while, hasn’t it, sir. Tsk tsk.”
(They laid on a guilt trip almost as thick as my mother’s when she stumbled on that post and found I’ve been wearing the same pair of contacts since the Clinton administration.
I was going to send a snarky response to her email, but it was kind of all blurry and out of focus. So I figured the optometrist was a good idea. If only for the sake of preparing my scathing reply.)
“I just know it was big, it was six inches in front of my nose, and it was winking at me.”
We eventually meandered past the “disapproving look” phase, and they took me in for a peek at my peepers. They ran a few tests, then had me take my current contacts out.
(We didn’t have plastic back then, of course. They’re made of wood.)
That’s when they wheeled me up to “The Machine“.
I forget the name of the machine, exactly. Optchuck, maybe? Optonogood? Doc Optopus? No idea. I just know it was big, it was six inches in front of my nose, and it was winking at me.
And that’s never a good thing. It’s that strip joint in Alabama all over again.
Only this time, I was told I should wink back.
(So not like the strip joint in Alabama at all.
More like the Port-A-John in Memphis. Don’t ask.)
I asked the eye tech what the hell I was getting myself into here. She explained, sweetly, that a while back this machine replaced the procedure where the doc puts drops in your eyes to swell your pupils up like little optic Violet Beauregardes, leaving you squinty and pained and dark-closet emo for the rest of the afternoon.
(She also mentioned that they no longer use leeches for bloodletting or anesthetize with ether-soaked rags, which might also be changes from the time of my last appointment.
A smartass half-doc dissing me while I’m unable to see her clearly, and almost sucking face with what looks like a washing machine. Oh, yay.)
I swallowed my pride, so I could tell her in no uncertain terms that if this machine meant I wouldn’t have to go through the usual dilation routine, I’d give it whatever the hell it wanted, up to and including third base.
She ignored me. It’s possible I was talking to a hat rack.
Then we performed the test. She told me to put my face nearly up against the machine and look in one direction, ninety degrees from the winking little peephole. Then swerve my right eyeball around, so I was looking directly into it.
While breathing hot and heavy on its neck, had its designers seen fit to supply it with such.
I did as she asked. She counted down from three, and in a flash, the pale green pinhole exploded into a bright emerald burst. I knew they could see the back of my eye from the picture — because I was seeing afterimages of the back of my brain when I blinked.
And yet. She said, “no”:
“Let’s try it again. You must have moved.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I mean, I thought the involuntary convulsing had come well after the flash. But if she said no, then I suppose not.
“See this image? That’s clearly no good.”
Right, of course. “Clearly,” I nodded. What the hell did I know? I’m blind without my contacts. I couldn’t see the stupid computer screen, much less the image. For all I knew, I was getting an eye exam from Chewbacca. Blurry brown thing told me to give it another try.
I did as she asked, again. Looked left, peered right. Just a little down. Closer. Closer. Too close. To the left. Hold it… hold it… three… two… one… atomic flash, and “good job!”
“Wait… no. That one’s blurry, too. See?”
Not even if you taped the monitor to my forehead, no. I don’t see. If I saw, I wouldn’t be here licking your fancy space camera, now, would I, Chewie?
No. I would not.
We tangoed this way for the better part of an hour. We’d try a couple on the right — “nope“, “too shadowy“, “did you blink? — and then we’d try a couple on the left. None of them turned out, I was told. None of the little fuzzy gray blobby things was good enough. Meanwhile, I was starting to feel like I was getting a lap dance from Green Lantern.
The problem, it turned out, was light leaking in between my eyeball and the machine, causing splotches where the image should be. No matter how she told me to sit, or turned me, or crammed my head into the lighthole when she snapped a pic, none of them turned out right. Which led me to one of two conclusions:
Either she wasn’t handling the equipment correctly, or I have a supremely misshapen face that was gumming up the works.
It was no real surprise to learn that she’d be operating this doodad for almost three years. It was clearly not her first rod-eye-o. So that sealed the deal. I’m the Elephant Man.
On the plus side, we finally snapped enough pics that they got a good one — or ran out of digital film — and I got fitted for new contacts. That tech and the doctor are probably back there right now, wondering how a face could fit one-size-fits-all machinery so poorly. But at least soon I’ll be able to see them laughing and pointing clearly, so that’s an improvement.
And it’s not like everyone in the shop thought my face was all lumpy. That Optopussy machine was into me. Oh yeah, I could tell. She just wouldn’t stop staring dreamily into my eyes. One at a time, but still. Hot.
So — third base, indeed. When I go back for the fitting, I’m getting her number. Phone number, serial number, whatever she’s got. Giggity.
Permalink | 1 CommentCategories: Awkward Conversations, Grooming Gaffes, Just Life
Tags: comedy, comments, contact lenses, doctor, eye, fun, funny, humor, LensCrafters, Optek, Optometrist