Oh ballcocks, I'm going all Wm Gibson again.

As for Lennie meditating in sunglasses: I spent the last four years meditating in shades, although I didn't know that I was meditating. It's only now that I can see things clearly that it makes sense.

An absurd pastime, really, trying to 'make sense' of things. But it beats the alternative.

<Strange Stories from the Optician>: so I go to this big new-glasses shop, and they aim lasers at my eyes and measure my index of personal refraction and my temporal bandwidth. The usual stuff. But then I find myself shuffled through 5 or 6 departments until I'm sitting down with the *head spectacle honcho* who has *taken an interest in my case*.

This happens to me way too often, btw. Even in hospitals. I can almost hear the whispers ... "you gotta take a look at this one, boss ... we appear to have encountered an anomaly ... he's got a WHAT? ..." and so on.

Anyhoo, the *glasses honcho* looks at my old, shattered glasses, which survived many things but not a full frontal impact with a steel pole. "They don't use this stuff anymore" he says, "they haven't used it for years". The 'stuff' is what the frames are made of: a heavy, dense plastic like an old bakelite telephone.

I tell him that various people had told me they were 'trendy' and even 'cool'.

"Yes", he said. "They come in here looking for that effect, and we just don't do it anymore. Like, just feel the weight of that stuff."

Very recognizable, too, in my "case" involving a different - prosthetic - device. More appropriate even; a steel plate fiited onto my left femur...

"Look, boss (perfesser), this young man has broken this plate of armoured steel now for the third time..."

Professor: "Indeed, never seen that before."

Me: "Maybe you could figure something out to adjust for the extra amount of medial pressure."

Next time my Professor went "swish swish" to Switzerland and back in his 911 Porsche, he indeed returned with a stack of special all new "contra-flexed" armoured steel plates.

Incident #2, 15 years later, lying in a hospital bed. A consultant or professor arrives with a gang of students and starts to list my 'symptoms', most of which appear to have nothing to do with illness. "Left-handed", he said. "Myopic. Thin, with elongated spine. Anyone see the pattern? No? Check his skin elasticity ..."

Eventually some bright spark came up with whatever he was looking for. I still don't know what it was.

But on re-reading your post the truth dawns. Ouch. Ouch ouch. That ... must ... have ... *hurt*.

And very familiar yet again, dear Dom. When I was 10 "they decided on elongating my femur" - and no brain surgeon required to figure out that a 3-4 inch elongation following osteotomy, severely tested my "skin elasticity" ...

Enough of that, I'll win the ouch muscle flexing contest most of the time. What's the point?

heh - yeah - some pretty attractive girls hinted that I was "kinda cool" as a "jock with a fancy leg."

Great anecdotes the way you tell them. Reminds me of a fine writer and neurologist Oliver Sachs, who wrote the auto-biographical 'A Leg to Stand On' and 'Awakenings', later adapted for the big screen of course, starring Robin Williams and De Niro.

From Wiki: "His descriptions of people coping with and adapting to neurological conditions or injuries often illuminate the ways in which the normal brain deals with perception, memory and individuality."

Years ago there was a pretty well-known British climber named Norman Croucher, who had lost both legs below the knee. An amazing guy.

Anyway one night I was staying in the common room of a hotel in Huaraz (Peru) where all sorts of hikers and climbers had their sleeping bags laid out.

I walked by this guy in his sleeping bag and saw his boots neatly set out beside him, with the gaiters standing up straight. I made some sort of light comment along the lines of "looks like you left your feet in there as well," realizing the truth the moment the words had slipped out.

Croucher made some absolutely perfect reply I wish I could remember, something witty but also serious, letting me know those really were his feet in there.

I'm riffing, hoping it comes back. It's the word for the spatial or geometric relation of a right hand (or glove) to a left one. Seemingly identical mirror images, but one can't be mapped onto the other in normal 3-D space -- you have to rotate it through the 4th dimension.

I find myself doing this a lot with my hands, especially in this cold weather. Nothing like a brisk spin through the 4th, pausing to tap out a tune on Hinton's Hypercube and tesselate a few tesseracts.

This ... bloody ... word. I've used it often, especially when showing off. It *is* lurking somewhere in my brain, but the links to it are down.

*Enantiomorphic*.

You're telling me. About 100 euro for a nice set of frames. And a 2nd pair for free. I'll go for that, I said. And paid another 700 for the lenses, without which the frames tend not to work very well.

And I've only got one pair so far. The others - which I frivolously selected because of the chessboard pattern on the sides - "were broken during manufacture" and have to be reground or re-engineered or whatever.

I just hope I have them in time for a chess tournament in about ten days time. I could opt for the whole tamale and wear the Morphy T-shirt too, if *that* arrives in time. I might look like an ageing chess geek, of course.

Ah sorry to butt in, but I know that you *actually* understand French, as opposed to pretending you understand it like I do.

Would you please check my translation of this beautiful poem from the profile of <I Like Fruit>?

I may be a little rusty and this might need correction, I'm not sure...

<La fêt(e) va enfin commencer Sortez les bouteilles; finis les ennuis Je dresse la table, de ma nouvell(e) vie
Je suis heureux à l’idée de ce nouveau destin
Une vie à me cacher et puis libre enfin
Le festin est sur mon chemin >

Ok if I remember correctly, that means

La vie Jamais on ne me dira
Que la course aux étoiles; ça n’est pas pour moi
Laissez moi vous émerveiller et prendre mon en vol
Nous allons en fin nous régaler

People have forgotten how to make mad passionate babies.

Anyhoo, here's my version:

The party is finally starting:
Bring out the bottles. No farting
about with world-weariness
or maudlin teariness.

I'll wear a table-cloth
And look like a ghost.
I can do what I like
- I'm the host.

It is actually a real poem by "Camille" and a good one. I think. Unless Google just lied to me.