Cataract Convertible

Big shout-out today to my eye surgeon, Dr Parris (not to be confused with Dr Connolly, widely known as the greatest optometrist in the nation, if not the entire world.) Dr Connolly spots my cataracts, explains them to me in the most comforting calming manner (even drawing charts, graphs and thumbail sketches of eyeballs as needed), and then I report to Dr Parris to have the cataracts removed and replaced with lenses that don't make everything all cloudy and rainy-night-windshield-y, if such a term exists. I've conferred with my medical people, my scheduling staff and TV Guide, and June 8 will be the day. It's right in my horoscope: "This is a good day to have someone slice the bottom of your cornea."

The cataract in the right eye came out two years ago this spring, and we've been waiting for the one in the left to "ripen" for all that time, a period in which with my left eye closed I've been able to read the Surgeon General's warning on a can of beer being guzzled by a guy riding in a truck coming my way as I drive home. But with the right eye closed and no glasses on, I couldn't tell Rush Limbaugh from a large pile of straw, and there IS a difference. (The straw would never come out in favor of the sea pirates as the radio comedian did this week in his apparently interminable quest to diminish everything that our popular president does. El Limbo even refers to the pirates as "teenage Somali Merchant Marine Organizers," and yet people continue to tune him in.)

Semanticists, please note how deftly we changed topics here from a discussion of an unpleasant growth to a few words about Rush Limbaugh. Now that's no change we can believe in!