Yesterday, I had my biannual eye exam... I think I should have just saved myself the money and bought a few glass bottles of Coke so I could slice off the bottoms and use them instead...
Eye exams are kind of a bittersweet thing for me... I'm always ecstatic to get new glasses so I'm not like a female Mr. Magoo, but, in the same respect, I don't look forward to finding out exactly how bad my eyes have gotten. As it is, without my glasses, I can barely see the big letter "E" at the top of the chart. I'm surprised they haven't declared me legally blind...
It's an art thing...
One of my favorite parts of the exam comes at the end. After positioning the lenses of the machine to what makes my vision clearest and ends up being my new prescription, he flips the lenses to the setting of what I came in with so I can see the difference between what I'm currently wearing and what I'm going to need in order to see clearly. What a difference! The sad part is, the difference is so great that it's troubling... Soon I think even the eye doctor will say the hell with lenses and just give me the bottoms of glass Coke bottles...
After I got my eyes examined (and received the bad news about how bad my vision is), I went into the frame room to pick out what will be my new frames. I had to make sure I took a picture of myself wearing them and explained to the two women there that I needed it to finish up the new self portrait I was drawing for the occasion. They both seemed rather surprised that I drew my profile pictures as opposed to using a photo, so I decided to show them a sample of my past profile pictures. They were both incredibly floored by my work. I must say, it was wonderful to receive so much high praise on my work. Most of the time, it goes relatively unnoticed and I begin to wonder if anyone likes the crap I draw. But then days like yesterday happen and I find a renewed purpose in my art. It's a great feeling!
It's all about cattitude...
I've come to realize that, most things in life, really are determined by the attitude you adopt. Case in point, I was feeling pretty awesome about my work yesterday and so others thought it was, too. Maybe I should learn to adopt a more positive attitude more often...
But that would require some motivation on my part and I just don't think I have that kind of gumption...
C'est la vie...
Tomorrow is my birthday, though I won't be divulging exactly which birthday it is, other than mine... Suffice it to say, it's a larger number birthday than I care to think about...
Once you reach a certain age, birthdays are no longer enjoyable, save for the fact that you get presents. At some point, it's no longer exciting and you no longer look forward to milestones. It's not like when you're a teen and looking forward to 18 because you'll officially be an adult and no one can push you around anymore, or like when you're a young adult and are looking forward to turning 21 because you can legally drink alcohol. Actually, that's pretty much the last milestone, unless you look forward to 25 so you can rent a car and car insurance rates drop drastically... I don't know anyone that looks forward to that... In any case, that's pretty much it. It's not as if anyone ever says, "I'm turning 40, I'll officially be over the hill, whoo-hoo!" or, "I'm turning 50, I'll be a half century old, go me!" However, I'm assuming birthdays do get exciting again once you're really up in age, but for a different reason. One would think that you'd be excited celebrating your 90th birthday because you're actually still here and not 6 feet under like other people you know...
The timeline of aging...
For years, people have been telling me, "Age is just a number..." I always had a hard time buying that... Oh, I suppose to a degree it is true. The number age you are doesn't necessarily dictate your behavior. I'm a prime example of that. On a good day, mentally, I feel 16. On other days... about 6. Sometimes it's more like 60. So it seems that the old adage is true. But, no matter how old you feel mentally or physically, that number is still staring you in the face and, to a certain point, dictating how you must behave. Think about it, how often do you condemn someone who is in their 40s or 50s for behaving like a teen? Society deems it as shameful that someone of such an advanced age should behave as if they were young. Never mind that fact that the person may indeed feel mentally young... Society doesn't care how young you feel. If you are middle aged, you should act middle aged. In this respect, the old adage is false. I suppose it depends on how you look at it...
Speaking of age... A few years ago, I decided that, instead of telling people how old I was or telling them what year I was born in, that I was going to tell them by way of song how old I was. For example, I've been telling people I came out the same year as the song "Brother Louie". Most people don't even know what song I'm talking about let alone what year it came out, so I'm usually safe and people don't know how old I am. However, thanks to this YouTube video, everyone will know because it's plainly printed on the label...
What's even scarier, I actually own the 45RPM of this song. It even has the same, odd, Kama Sutra label... Wow, that really makes me feel pretty old, to be honest.
Jazzman, take my blues away...
I don't have a very good view on birthdays... I don't like a fuss being made and I never had. Maybe I never will...
The only thing to look forward to is getting a present and going to dinner at my favorite restaurant (a Japanese steak house) and gorging myself on my favorite dishes.
So, in closing, I leave you with these funky jazz frogs and these words:
Louie, Louie, Louie, Lou-eee
Louie, Louie, Louie, Lou-eye
Louie, Louie, Louie, Lou-eee
Louie, Louie you're gonna cry...
This is a creation by John Asaro... It's meant as a tool for artists to use in order to see how light and shadow fall on the human head. A very useful tool, granted, but seriously, LOOK AT THE THING! It's creepy! This is the kind of shit you see in your nightmares! You can almost hear it saying, "Nothing to see here... Just a creepy, geometrically nightmarish, disembodied head who's watching you... ALWAYS watching you..."
Sometimes, some very random thoughts, such as this, run through my mind... Most of the time, I should say...
But, in all honesty, I like the random thoughts that run through my mind. They're rather like a warm blanket for me, comforting and secure. They envelope me in their bizarreness. Sometimes, they make an excellent point, so much so that I often make note of them for future reference...
As time goes by...
Case in point, the other day I was watching an old episode of Star Trek (yes, I am a bit of a Trekkie and a nerd to boot). The particular episode I speak of was "City on the Edge of Forever" with a very young Joan Collins... Not one of my favorites, but it's a fairly good episode... In it, the crew of the Enterprise experience ripples in time from the planet below that are shaking the ship. During one particularly bad bout of turbulence, McCoy accidentally injects himself with a somewhat dangerous drug, cordrazine, goes mad and beams himself down to the planet's surface. Kirk gathers a landing party and they follow in search of the deranged McCoy and instead find this machine (for lack of a better term) that is the keeper of time. It demonstrates by showing the landing party Earth's history like a video on fast forward and, at one point, the deranged McCoy jumps through the viewing portal and goes back in Earth's history. Unfortunately, the landing party soon find out that he changed something... The Enterprise is no longer there and they are informed by the keeper of time that all they knew no longer existed. Then it's up to Kirk and Spock to go through the portal, to a time before McCoy arrived, to make sure that they prevent him from changing whatever he had.
"But that makes no fucking sense!"
Now, here's where my random thought came into play... If McCoy had gone back in Earth's history and changed things to the point where all the landing party had known no longer existed... why were they still on the planet...?! Think about it... He changed things so drastically that the lives they knew never existed, which means they would have never been on that planet in the first place, so why were they still standing there and why were they able to go back in time also?! Better yet, if the timeline was changed in that fashion, that means that, in present time, McCoy would have also never have been on the planet; his drug-addled mind would never have made the leap into the machine and gone back in time... So then how could he have gone back to change things...? You see, it's a conundrum... No matter how you look at it, it makes no fucking sense whatsoever and you can come up with about a billion arguments to back up the fact that it makes no fucking sense...
And these are the type of random thoughts that run through my mind on a fairly regular basis. It kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it...?
I can't even say the random thoughts stop when I'm sleeping... We all dream several times every night, but most of us don't remember them or remember only one, either fully or in bits and pieces. I'm one of the unfortunate few who remember several, very vividly, every night. And they're always bizarre... It's like my brain just pulls together a bunch of random thoughts from my sub-conscience that are in no way related and throws them all together in a movie that skips around and makes no sense at all...
The orange dragon roll
On a lighter note... My birthday is in four days... I actually don't care for my birthday much. When you reach a certain age, you stop looking at it as a good thing and simply see it as a reminder that you're getting old. No one wants that... But at least it comes with some perks... Every year on my birthday, I go to my favorite restaurant, a local Japanese steak house. Sometimes I get my favorite sushi roll, sometimes I get my favorite hibachi dinner, sometimes I get both. But either way, I get some delicious food. I guess that's all that matters...
