Saturday, December 31, 2005

I'm with stupid

I turned to the very last page of my comic book and there it was, right next to the joy buzzer and the trick soap, an amazing triumph of technological achievement, the X - Ray Specs. I never had the spare allowance to purchase them, but countless hours of my childhood had been spent imagining what it would be like to carry a secret as large as being able to see through the whole wide world, without them knowing it. One day my best friend Toni and I had even performed an elaborate hoax on the neighborhood bully, utilizing a plain old pair of Ray bands we set in motion the greatest deception ever preformed in our neighborhood of kiddome, and we didn't have to a say a word. We simply looked at him, handed over the glasses to each other and laughed, he actually was convinced that we held the elusive power of the X-ray specs and the best part, that it was funny. He left the playground, headed for home and we laughed for hours marinating in our success.
So here I am a grown up, (as it appears to the rest of the world) and one day I am browsing around the web and I stumble upon the never attained, holy grail of unrequited childhood desire, the X - ray specs! An inhale of surprise, a bite of the lip, eye brows lifted to the heavens. I immediately made my purchase from stupid.com and waited. Of course the adult in me, knew that the reality was that these glasses "of the unseen" were only going to fulfill my childhood quest to own them, and nothing more, because if they actually delivered what they had promised, we would have all heard about it long ago. But still, I awaited with baited breath and then they came. I frantically ripped them out of their cellophane and in a frenzied state put them on crooked and all .... gee, I can't even see anything out of these things. Hmmm..... the instructions say "hold your hand up to the light and look through the hole in the center of the glasses".


Okay so here is the real deal, if you don't want to know it, stop reading and turn back now before it's too late but if you are prepared to face the truth, continue on. There is a cm of a hole in the center of the cardboard lens and you can see part of your fingers by holding it in front of the light and there is a duplicate of your hand that overlays, sort of, kind of, like, creating the illusion of bones inside. I can reach that effect when my hand and the light meet up at a very particular spot, but when I tried to take photos you do not see the echo (see above image). That's as close as it gets to anything, if I look beyond my own hand, I can't even see a thing, it's all a red blur. I'm glad that I didn't buy them when I was a child, it would have ruined the dream.
I also bought some gnome earrings from the same website. Remember twisting gnome hair on your pencil in class? Teachers didn't like gnomes much. The only problem with the earrings is that when I put them on they naturally swing into a backwards position (see photo - right side) which I think is entertaining, but to remain politically correct I will have to repair by taking off the jump ring and turning the chain around.