A carnival of technology

I’m still coming to terms with the look of my new eyeglasses; some days I think they’re grand, others I think they look like I’m getting a head start on a midlife crisis.  They have a forced European look to them: a Scandanavian minimalism of structure combined with an Italian approach of catching angles and lines.  Maybe it works on my face.  I don’t know.

I bought a fancy, name-brand anti-glare coating this time around.  My eyes are no longer obscured by a curtain of flash.  And the dirt is no longer obscured by a constant, ignorable lens flare.  I have a lot of trouble keeping these lenses clean.  The cloth they came with is pretty  useless, and I spend much more time rubbing away with various careful solvents and microfiber rags than I ever used to.  I’m past the point where I’m comfortable with wiping the lenses on my shirt, but some shirts are better than others: the various soft organic cottons feel like the safest choice, but the roughly textured silks and rayons of my faux-Alohas are the most effective.  Everything else is somewhere in between.  On the most positive side, the lenses have survived my daily carelessness and abuses with nary a scratch, so maybe that expensive coating was worth the trouble.

Did I really buy a pair of Oakleys?  I honesty don’t know what to make of that.  Oakley was the Ray-Ban of the 90’s, but the 90’s are the past, and maybe that’s time enough that Oakley can go back to being just another purveyor of eyewear fashion, something separated by time from surfboards or black trenchcoats or sloppy mod revivals or any of the unfortunate choices and thoughts and decisions and connotations that plague any and every time.  I like the color of my new specs.  I hope that no one notices the logo.