Speculation on Spectacles

It is a simultaneously thrilling and pathetic realization when you become verily cognizant of the slow and inevitable deterioration of your own eyesight; thrilling, in that certain daily, mundane tasks grow potentially dangerous, for example, the commute to work, and pathetic, in that your commute to work can somehow be construed as thrilling. I am, naturally, speaking in jest; my commute is only of interest when I happen upon a new or unfamiliar artist on the famed Newark jazz station, or occasionally an archived interview with an author or poet on the equally famed Columbia University station. While many a car crash have been artfully averted during my daily commute, my mere five miles of daily driving to and from the office, these risks can be attributed to the vapid and selfish worldviews of the drivers around me, their obsessive clinging to technical devices with frenetic phalanges, their refusal to observe simple and rational traffic laws, not to my own failing retina. It is at this point, finally, that I have truly grown to appreciate the many lessons and lectures given to me on defensive driving from my father. I owe him my life, many times over.

I digress; my eyes weaken, and, alas, the 2007 to 2008 grueling presidential campaign that hurled and thrust the feminine and political monstrosity that is Sarah Palin among our society has rendered my current eyeglass style disdainful and revolting. Invisible, subtle frames, popularized and then sodomized, have been replaced with the equally ubiquitous and possibly equally embarrassing bombastic hipster frames. The choice of sharing a semblance with a crude and laughable and fame-hungry political figure or a crude and laughable and fame-hungry, unemployed, could-be-should-be artist is perhaps a toss up.

Cat eye frames, reminiscent of those worn by the lovely, iconic, fame-hungry turned fame-averse Marilyn in her rendition of a modest and shamed four-eyed bombshell in How to Marry a Millionaire may, then, be my only remaining resort. With a large, oval-shaped face, I think I can rock them.

(image taken from Culture of Cute)