Something horrible happened this week. Just kidding, I’m fucking fine.
But now that you’re reading I’ve got some cool new stuff that I’m excited to mess around with! The story goes: for Christmas, someone got me a $50 Amazon gift card. I’ve only used that to get one thing (a PlayStation Network $10 card, to buy into microtransactions on the game For Honor, and which I ended up regretting days later), so this past Saturday I’ve decided to sit down and look through my Amazon wishlist and see what I can spend the rest of the $40 on.
Turns out, I had some stuff I thought would be pretty interesting in the top 5 spots. I got two items: a shemagh, and a pair of diffraction glasses. I guess this will be a review of some sort, seeing as I won’t post this to Amazon unless I put it here, so here we fucking go!
The first item I got was the shemagh. For those unfamiliar, it’s a scarf! Middle Eastern in origin, which means it’s exotic to us Westerners and it’s also associated with a lot of really cool stuff like Bedouin tribes and the Arabians of old. These days, shemaghs are known also as practical tools, to keep the sun off of you, and the dust out of your face. Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones uses a shemagh at some point, as does Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. AND Lawrence of Arabia has been photographed many times with his shemagh; so you know that this kind of thing is associated with cool guys. No worries there.
I got mine after abusing my Amazon Prime trial. I hear that Amazon will charge you if you don’t cancel it in time, so I’m going to remind myself to shut that shit down as soon as I can spend all of this gift card.
The shemagh I ordered was this one: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00X31L2W8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1], the default color was “Camel”, which is a black and khaki kind of color configuration. I was looking for a more dark green/black one, but I didn’t see what I was looking for. Either way, I like what I got, and it arrived earlier than expected as well.
One thing I was looking out for was to make sure it wasn’t going to be made of a shitty, thin, sheer material that would be uncomfortable to wear. Imagine my surprise when I opened this thing and it seemed to have a thread count of 800 (hyperbole). It is insanely comfortable to wear.
Problem is, I look way too much like a European catwalk model when I wear it, at present. Not really the look I was going for. The problem is also that I did the closest shave I ever had the day I got the thing, so that didn’t help. I typically keep a 5 o’clock shadow for that reason: I like that scruff and so does my girlfriend. When that grows out I’m going to like the way I look in it again.
Some people tout it as a multi-functional tool, and to that point there is some merit. It’s neat, especially if you decide to Wikipedia the thing, and look up some guides on how to tie it up in different ways. It’s basically a massive square of material, and the ways you can tie it include a full face wrap, a dust cover, and as a scarf. Pretty practical.
Second problem I encountered: I live in Washington state, and not the Middle East. Here, it’s rainy, grey, and the weather is bipolar as fuck, so to find any reason to wear it outside (if not just for the fashion, which I’m not likely to because I’m not often like that) it’s got to be insanely hot outside and totally cloudless. That’s not to say that Washington doesn’t have really horribly hot days sometimes with a humidity factor of zero, but it doesn’t happen often. Definitely not between Winter and Spring.
Overall, I’m excited to wear it, but at the moment it’s going to have to wait.
Second thing I got, which was one of the neatest things I have ever seen, had been on my wishlist since August.
Back when I was a security guard at the Washington State fair, I ran into a pair of guys while I was working at a bar checking IDs. I got a little chummy with them, and they came around one night holding a pair of goggles. I didn’t think anything of it, but then they told me that I “Had to try them on”. Intrigued, I did. And boy, was I surprised at what I saw.
The goggles they had were made with diffraction lenses. You know how a glass prism will split the visible spectrums of light? Yeah, that’s called diffraction. And these goggles they had did that with every source of light, since that’s what their lenses did.
So in my wishlist were these GloFX glasses. [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CB3PLOE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1], and I got those today. These things put a hazy rainbow around everything you look at them with. If you look at a bright source of light, the effect is more intense (I used the flashlight on my iPhone to test this), and the spectrum is even more clear and bright and fantastic.
In the ‘questions’ section of Amazon, someone asked if it was okay to wear these things while driving. Answer: not at fucking all. They make a super duper cool effect, though. Try wearing them while passenger, instead.
But it was a good get, and I’ve already had a lot of fun seeing how everything looks through them. It doesn’t make my eyes hurt, which is fortunate. In the back of my mind, though, I know that these things were designed for getting high and raving (or some combination).
Either way, that was my weekend.
In other news, that essay I wrote ‘JAKE Theory’ was for my International Relations class. I got a 139 out of 150 on it! Which I really wasn’t expecting, given the devil’s advocacy. My professor wrote to me this in response to the essay:
“Wow, I didn’t see that coming. I’m glad you had fun reading this, because it was also a bunch of fun to read. But in my job as your teacher, I need to point out a couple of things. First, you have an unusual problem in that you have too many interesting ideas- you need to pick out a few and develop them more fully. In terms of the JAKE theory, which is sort of like a new imperialism some authors have recommended something similar (Niall Ferguson a few yeara ago, but his views were pretty watered down compared to you). The biggest substantive objection to your plan is that it resembles the 2003 Iraq invasion, which rather than stomping out terrorism and introducing American style democracy to the region had a contrary, destabizing affect. In fact, Terrorism had a marginal presence in Iraq before we invaded- ISIS was actually an (indirect) result of that invasion! But thanks for your interesting ideas, but in future classes try to discipline these ideas more so you can be sure to get the high A’s you deserve.”
I appreciate feedback on everything I get, so in the future I will take care to discipline my ideas into a better way.
I’m a real blogger now! Talking about my life and crap! Good god, what’s become of me!
Consume Reality! 