The Pilot's Log

I went to the eye doctor to see why my left eye was killing me. They told me this and they told me that and they must know what they're talking about because they live in million-dollar houses on the river.

But I still needed to do something about why my eye was killing me. Then it occurred to me — really it was obvious — it was those artists again.

Once again, fashion had overcome common sense, form had conquered function, and I was a victim of style.

In this case, it was those groovy tiny glasses that everyone's been wearing for the past decade or so.

Sure, I had considered the eye strain from reading more than 100 e-mails I read each day, the stack of faxes I scan, the pile of snail mail spilling across my desk, the hours on end I spend glued to the computer monitor copy-editing public-service announcements, obituaries and letters to the editor — me.

But when I put on my old-fashioned disco-era glasses, the problem with my left eye went away. It turns out high-fashion glasses are really high heels for the eyes. Not very practical.

Nothing startling in this revelation. For millennia, artists have brought civilization some incredible forms of torture in the name of fashion — from feet-binding in China's Sung dynasty to neck-stretching by the Karen of Burma and lip-stretching by the Surma of Ethiopia today.

Not every artistic idea caused direct physical deformity. Bauhaus minimalist architecture turned 20th century office workers into mind-numbed automatons, and 500-pound chrome bumpers and foot-high tail fins from the '50s made people feel fast while gouging the wallet.

Fashion marches on. All men wore hats 50 years ago — and not baseball caps with sports logos or beer advertising. And only a decade or so ago school kids wore purple, like their good friend Barney. Now they dress like gangsters and little hookers.

We can thank all those hard-thinking artists for that. In the meantime, I'll wear my practical glasses and keep processing all that information my readers crave.