I’ve been meaning to put up some sort of mention of this site for at least four months, but circumstances today—which are elaborated below—dictate that I finally do so. So, without further ado, in the spirit of Bonsai Kitten, allow me to introduce:

Lasik@Home

I don’t even rightly remember where I first got wind of this; all I know is I laughed my ass off and bookmarked it for later consumption.

The reason my awareness of this bubbled back to the surface has to do with my addiction to AM radio. I work at my desk in my home office all day, and I desperately need something to occupy at least one other sense during my nine-plus hours of staring and typing. Talk Radio fits the bill nicely. I am also lucky enough to live in a region with a lot of decent programming at my disposal. Three hours of Dave Ross, followed by an hour of Ron Reagan (no, not that one, the live one; my receiver doesn’t get EVP, that would have cost extra), then either the afternoon lineup on KUOW—or perhaps a DVD playing on one of my three monitors—is plenty of tertiary stimulation to keep my brain from glazing over.

It is from the heady waters of the AM radio pool of advertising that I caught the very worst ad for a Lasik clinic ever, sponsored by the Luna Eye Center of Seattle (Funny….every time I hear that name, I hear it as “Luna’ai“, which is the name of a street in Maunawili, a small community on the Windward side of Oahu, where I grew up. Apropos of nothing, of course, save the bizarre cross-talk of miswired neurons in my over-stimulated head). They’re currently advertising 50% off any competitor’s price on Lasik. This may actually be a great deal. I’ll never know, because I’ll never, ever set foot in a medical clinic that thinks it can win me over by touting itself as having the lowest price in town on a sensitive medical procedure involving, of all things, my eyes. Never. Ever. Sorry, but I can’t help but wonder what it is I will not be getting with my super-saver econo-tastic discount-o-licious surgery. Anesthetic? Surgeons trained in actual medical schools? The power of sight? Makes me even more sympathetic to the plight of my wife the veterinarian, who has to deal daily with the cognitive dissonance of people who firmly believe that

1. premium emergency health care for their pet is a constitutional right—and therefore Margaret must perform hundreds of dollars of surgery on the Chow they just backed over in the driveway irrespective of their ability to pay, or
2. emergency medical procedures for pets are, for some poorly defined yet heartfelt reason, not as intensive nor as sophisticated as similar procedures performed on humans—and therefore Margaret must agree to charge only as much for her services at her top-flight critical-care medical facility as would be charged at the pet owner’s regular, scrungy, parvo-puppy-in-a-cardboard-box-in-the-reception-area, run-by-a-octogenarian-who-last-took-a-continuing-ed-course-in-1982 vet clinic—or, even weirder,
3. all of the above.

In this topsesque-turvoid world of unrealistic expectations and quick-fix marketing, who wouldn’t imagine that something like Lasik@Home might come to pass, even make a killing in the lucrative niche market of questionable medical DIY products?

In fact, only three things kept me from being suckered in by this site. First of all, I am not a complete rube. Secondly, the site features Google ads for Lasik@Home’s “competitors”—highly unusual for an actual commercial enterprise.

And threethly, the “Scal-Pal™ Hand-Operated Combination Femtosecond/Excimer Laser” bears a more-than-passing resemblance to the handle of our vacuum cleaner:

All in all, though, an “A” for effort. 😉