Welcome, Gentlepersons and Gerbils

I recognize that www.patcheye.com is a strange domain name, but www.eyepatch.com was already taken and my eyepatch is probably my single most noticeable feature.  Somehow I feel that it probably says a lot about me.  My problem with my left eye is not all that uncommon, different focal lengths for each eye.  Most people either just live with the fact that they get a fuzzy halo effect from using both eyes, and the headaches that go with it, or try to squint unobtrusively.  Anything to keep from being noticed as different.

I don't care, so my eyepatch is the black type that reminds people of pirates.  I don't use the little disposable type either.  I've had this condition for thirty years now and constantly buying a replacement for a flimsy temporary one is a pain.  I make mine out of black leather.  Durable, easy to make and easy to clean.  Practical, not fashionable.

I also use a cane when I walk, except when my back is really killing me, when I use a wheelchair.  I know that back injuries are not uncommon, but I almost never see anyone using a cane.  The first thing my orthopedist did after diagnosing a bad back, was to tell me to get a cane.  Partly for the help in getting around, and partly so that people would not hand me heavy objects with a matter-of-fact "here, hold this for a second".  That hurts!

Anyway back to my point.  Either I live in an area where no one has ever hurt a back, ankle, or knee, or people are walking around in pain because they don't want to look injured!  What's wrong with looking injured if you are?  Sometimes I think that everyone else was issued a "Manual of Proper Behavior" at birth, and I just didn't get mine.

My back has degenerated to the point where I spend a lot of time in a powered bed or a wheelchair, and I'm even looking into a powered chair.  I get the strangest looks when contorting myself in and out of my car to use my chair.  Am I supposed to stay home because I look different?  Is that the rule that no one ever told me?  Maybe I'm supposed to shop late at night so "normal" people won't be offended.  Well, screw 'em.

When I was younger, thirty was old, and I paced myself so I would last that long.  Here I am now pushing sixty, and I seem to have overextended myself on injuries.  I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up.  My generation was the Woodstock generation, the children of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, the veterans of the police riots at the Democratic National Convention, the "Hell no, we won't go" folks, the guys that burned draft cards rather than go peacefully. Well, I was there, and there were others there too, I know I was not the only one.  I took great pleasure watching the Watergate hearings with my father, a confirmed Nixon republican, and saying over and over: "See, I told you so".

Where are we now?  I look around, in my Levis and blue work shirt, my fringed leather jacket, my tattoos and my graying hair pulled back in a pony-tail and what happened to the rest of us.  Could we have all turned into the idiots I see working as corporate lawyers and stockbrokers, or even just plain conformists who try to pretend that we never were anything different.  "Is a great puzzlement!"

I once took a poll so unimportant that I can't remember what it was about, but I remember one question.  "Do you laugh at most things around you?"  When I answerd "yes", the pollster looked at me and said, "So, you're pretty happy then?".  From his look, I must have puzzled him when I answered, "No, but I find it easier to laugh at incompetance than scream in frustration!"

So there you have me: unregenerate social rebel, practical atheist, rational anarchist, inveterate punster, freethinker and still a child of the '60s.  What happened to the rest of me/us?  We shook the country with our opposition to a war that didn't make sense, and our offspring are going along with one that's worse.  We raised money for the poor guys coming home with Agent Orange cancers, and who is helping with Gulf War Syndrome?  We fought the battle for the eighteen year old vote, "because why should we have to fight, if we aren't even given a chance to vote on what we are fighting for!", and who bothers to vote?

I will admit that the choice is usually between Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, but vote anyway!  Find some third party candidate (Nader, Perot, the Libertarian Party, take your pick) and let the political Bosses of the country know that there is a large VOTING population that can be had for a candidate that will break from the mold.  Hell, my generation was known as the greatest collection of pot-heads in history (myself included) and we have 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, a President and Vice-Presedent, cabinet officers, Federal judges and countless bureaucrats,and the best we get is "did not inhale"!

Hell in the 60s the pertinent question when handed something was not "what is this?" but "what was that?" . Damn! "Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll" has turned into "gender awareness, evian water and Madonna". I know that there are things like Aids out there, but for *******'s sake (I said I was a practical atheist didn't I?... fill in your own name of choice) that's what condom's are for!  I can't believe with all the money we spend on sex and drug education, my wife and I had to make sure our kids knew how to properly apply a condom, and how to notice the symptoms of PCP laced drugs.  'Just say no' my ass!  Did that EVER work?  I can just see cavemen huddled in the back of their cave, complaining about the younger generation that just INSISTED on painting on the cave walls.  Even after being told to "just say no!"  (My apologies to my cave-dwelling progenitors, I doubt any of them were that stupid.)

Well, one rant off my chest.  More will come as I get frustrated again.  I sometime go several weeks between eruptions, sometimes I explode every day!  When I bulid up enough pressure, thar she blows!  I am not the type to hold things in, and this may protect the people around me!  I'll never get an ulcer, I think I am a carrier.

I am also a web enthusiast, I think everyone should know basic HTML (not just use an automatic drag-and-drop editor).  I type everything in on Notepad or Wordpad.  I will be trying to find all my old information to stick on the domain.  Next page is a table I made about four years ago in frustration because I was having trouble with Hex equivalents of RGB colors.  If it helps, glad I made your life easier.  (By the way, I made the thing myself, so no goddamn copyrights, download, print and distribute at will.)