Stingray tears

After enjoying a brief respite from last week's eye problems, I've found myself in ocular hell all over again, when my lifelong battle with dry eyes finally reached breaking point (read: having trouble seeing the TV). Granted, I do have prescription glasses that I don't wear for medical reasons (I'm medically vain), and I don't imbibe any liquids that aren't diuretics, so it's not exactly nature's fault, but it's finally gotten to the point where five-and-a-half senses* isn't going to cut it, and something's got to be done.

Probably not the best hangover cure. But so pretty.

According to the good people at agingeye.net, which I imagine is the least beat-off to site on the internet, this can be caused by a number of things, including decreased lubrication as we age (no, you're not weird because you just pictured your grandmother's snatch. It's a perfectly natural reaction), or the lack of blinking that typically accompanies activities such as "watching television or looking at a computer monitor", which pretty much describes 87% of my waking hours(the other 13% breaks down to time spent in transit between said monitor and said TV, refilling of my glass, and the occasional how's-your-father given to the undercarriage).

Basically, they're telling me the cure for my chronic dry eyeness is to blink more, which is just about the most patronizing prescription ever given, second only to that given by my father, an incredibly intelligent and infuriatingly calm Physician's Assistant, who, upon telling him that your arm/wrist/back/leg is causing you excruciating pain when you move it a certain way, will simply look at you and say, "Then don't." By nature, I think blinking, like breathing, is supposed to be a sort of involuntary process, one that I pay my autonomic nervous sytem good oxygen to perform, so attempting to make it voluntary is both frustrating and fucking impossible. I'll remember for a minute or so, get caught up in the ramblings of the good people at Cracked or Unleashed, then suddenly remember my vow and blink 20-30 times in rapid succession to generate some lubrication (hey baby), which results in me looking like a coquettish young vixen, attempting to seduce my computer. If I had to use this much effort to breathe, you'd have found me living the Arthur Digby Sellers life long ago, purely out of sloth.

So, you like pizza and sex?

Apparently, there is one drug out there that can cure this, and it's shown results in 15% of those that take it, though frankly, with those odds, I'm probably better off splitting threes. I've gone to Duane Reade to purchase Artificial Tears at the low cost of $4.99 per half ounce, but that seems a little pricey for an excretion. If I'd known what the going rate was, I would have been saving that shit all along- I probably waste at least fifty bucks every time I watch the end of Armageddon. The final option is to cut out my own eyes, but I think that 's more of a last resort (shout out to Oedipus, for setting that bar pretty high). We'll see.


*No, not dead people. I'm just really good at touching things.