Cross-Polarized Sunglasses.

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I picked up a pair of cheap sunglasses from the local licensed drug-pusher's emporium. Couple of bearded Texans hangin' about, but I didn't think much of them at the time. And a guy all in b&w near the door chain-smoking cigarettes and muttering to the security camera “...at the signpost up ahead...”

I've been favoring polarized sunglasses because they really do help. It's remarkable how well you can see through car-windows with them. And since some auto manufacturers idiotically put the CHMSL behind a sloping rear window, they've saved my life a couple of times. Plus it's a trip to look at the windshields of some minivans: total lsd-coloration that the straights have no idea's there.

But this last pair is special. It's defective. See, one lens is polarized 90° to the other. I suppose that means one lens is “right” and the other is 90° off, but the effect is pretty wild.

No, the sky's still the same deeper blue. And windows are mostly transparent. And minivans' windshields are still purple and gold. But look at your digital watch, and your head will fall off. Try to read the LCD display on the stereo and you'll change lanes. Cellphone display? Fuggedaboutit.

I have some friends who are total astrophotography nuts. I'm thinking of surreptitiously lending them this treasure and watch them wander about agog for a couple of hours.

Another bud works in a 3D movie theater, and he might appreciate them more than average. (Come to think of it, though, I've worn 3D-polarized glasses before, and I don't recall my watch looking like I have an invisible eye-patch...)

Yep, I think of the person working for $.01 per pair (the People's Liberation Army is a GREAT employer!) and running out of stock on the stamping machine that cuts these pitiful excuses for lenses. Reload, who cares about orientation, and off we go again. You'd really never know, my unscientific experiments indicate that the glasses never have exactly the right polarization angle anyway, but at least both lenses are the same!

And how many useless movie plots center around special glasses? Ok, I can only think of that one where the guy can see the aliens when he wears them, so this is a conversational dead end.

But glasses do lend mystery. At the purchase of my 2nd car (The first, a 69 Mustang Mach 1 was, how shall we say it, a less than ideal choice?) had my friend Steve help me with the check-out and negotiations on this little runabout. The rather attractive lady came out to talk, and he politely asked her to remove her shades because he wanted to see her eyes while they discussed the deal.

And how often does the femme fatal lower the shades to check, and raise them again to comment?

But I rest easy knowing that I have the only pair that would've made Lucy Liu flub her line to Mel Gibson in “Payback****.”