"Eye brake for..."

Inner workings of a state of the art laser weapon or brake light? You decide.

Buzz Lightyear had it wrong...it's not "To infinity and beyond!" - it's "An Infinity from behind...

...is really, really, really annoying!"

Seriously...can someone say "severe retinal damage"?

While my new saying might not be as catchy as the original, I am going to go out on a limb here and say the only man-made objects you can see from space other than "The Great Wall of China" are Infinity brake lights.

If you are behind someone, especially at night, and you feel the membrane peeling off your eye as easily as the skin on a grape, chances are that car in front of you is an Infinity.

If you've ever been patiently waiting behind the guy with 17 items in the "15 items or less" aisle in the store and caught a glimpse of that red multi-light scanner doohickey and it gave you flashbacks to the "Sandman scene in Logan's Run with Farrah Fawcett vivaciously aiding the laser-happy plastic surgeon"...you'll have a tiny understanding of what I'm trying to get across here.

If you've ever had the inclination (with or without having a buzz) to look down the working barrel of a laser pointer and then, like a total idiot, turn it on...well...I think you get the message by now.

Why these lights have to be twice the brightness of anything an arc welder deals with is beyond me.

Have the designers who okayed the 20,000,000 foot-candle luminosity of the light system ever driven BEHIND one of their cars? As with other automotive manufacturers, they might stand behind their cars...but I'm inclined to believe they do so only in the daytime.

I was driving home from Birmingham the other night when what should pull out before me during rush-hour traffic, but a car with tail lights doing more damage to my cornea than any solar eclipse ever could. Between stops I managed to glimpse the type of car: Infinity.

I tried in vain to let someone else get in front of me. I nearly came to a dead stop and signaled to the merging drivers to "go ahead of me". Certainly any car between me and the Infinity would be a welcome change. Any car that is, but another friggen Infinity!

I kid you not...there must be about 170,092 of them in Birmingham and each of them was damned determined to get in front of me on the way home that night. Each time I figured I'd get a reprieve...a traffic light...a guy weaving in and out of traffic like a bat out of hell...you got it -- another Infinity.

My eyes felt like they were bleeding razor blades by the time a late model truck with a missing taillight and a smelly exhaust got in front of me. I thanked God and prayed he was heading the same direction I was.

He wasn't. And yes...another Infinity took his place as soon as he turned off.

I'm just hoping there's some level of Hell they toss the people into who invented this "shield your eyes as if it were Medusa" brake light system. And I hope that level of Hell forces them to have their eyes yanked open wide with a "can't blink" contraption like "Alex" was strapped up to in A Clockwork Orange...combined with being subjected to a never-ending slit-lamp ophthalmologic exam...until infinity...

...and beyond.

(31 Jan 11: I hate when I make typos or other such stupidities which I find days later. This time it was a big technical one -- I meant to say "laser pointer" and had typed "laser printer"...which makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever in the context of what I was trying to get across. I have fixed it and now it reads better - but it's too late for most of you...all three people who read this blog. I had my chance and blew it. I'm going to have to read these things out loud to my kids next time...a fact I know they will JUST LOVE as they nearly feign death to get out of reading them as it is now.)

Map Quest

No doubt all of you have heard or read by now the disjointed remarks made by 18-year-old Miss Teen USA contestant, Caitlin Upton, representing South Carolina, responding to the question "Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?"

If you hadn't seen it, it can be watched here: Miss Teen USA excerpt...and if you can't stop laughing or crying long enough to hear without replaying it 17 times, you can read it here in all its "glory": "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, um, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq and everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future."

Now, I don't know about you, but if that alone doesn't further emphasize and substantiate the claim that the average U.S. student can't point out China on a map, I don't know what does.

I don't purport to know where the Lesser Antilles or Myanmar (yes, read my blog below to "get" this one) are...but I darned well could point out where Argentina, China, Tasmania, or Norway is on a map...or get plenty of other countries at least "in the general vacinity"...not a haphazard "Pin the Tail on the Donkey, spin me 'round and maybe I'll get it right" kind of blindfoldedness about it all. I probably wouldn't stake my whole wad of cash on a 'Final Jeopardy!" answer on Geography...but I'd wager at least $500.

Where is all this getting to? Is there a point to all this silly banter? Yes. I have, as Archimedes reportedly exclaimed, had a "Eureka" moment the other day where it all became abundantly clear to me "why" we are a nation of geographically challenged inhabitants.

"We" don't typically listen to BBC News.

That's it in a nutshell.

Lately, I've been stricken with another affliction besides insomnia: Watching BBC America's "Cash In the Attic" at 4:00 a.m. Sure, it's not first run programming, but I haven't ever seen any of the episodes, so it's all new to me. And what else is new to me is watching the BBC News which follows at 5:00 a.m.

In one short week, I've found out things I wouldn't ever know otherwise...from Moscow's serial killer, Alexander Pichushkin, to Belgian's winning lawsuit against Microsoft to who the Australian Prime Minister is - John Howard, by the way. Yes, to even the mundane fact that Australia HAS a Prime Minister. Heck, I've been walking around for the past 46 years never knowing what the head of state was called in Australia...for all I cared they could have had the title "Grand Poohbah" bestowed upon him as, in all my years of watching American news, I don't think they've ever mentioned him. They would have if Paris Hilton partied with him...I knew all about Prince Albert of Monaco and the fact he dated supermodel, German-born Claudia Schiffer, a few years ago. Oh, that is "must know" information...but where Monaco IS? "Oh, who cares...didn't that old dead guy, Humphrey Bogart do a movie about that place way back when...'Casablanca' was it?"

Um...no.

And this is why people here in the United States, and school-aged children especially, should be strapped to chairs and their orbits forcibly pried open à la Alex DeLarge in Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" - only being made to watch further eye-opening, globe-trotting, mind-expanding broadcasting such as BBC News.

Our news channels should worry less about which ratings place Katie Couric is in, which set looks better, or if reporters should sit or stand while reading the teleprompter...and focus on what is truly important. The citizens of America shouldn't solely get their knowledge of where foreign countries are based entirely upon what countries Madonna's, Angelina's, and Mary-Louise Parker's babies were adopted from.

We, as a nation, deserve more...and we should demand nothing less.