Smile! You're the Candid Camera!

Now you can hear with your teeth.  If you need to.   

It’s not for everyone, of course.  But entrepreneurs in medical science have devised a gadget for those who are deaf in only one ear, or “single-side deaf.”    

Aptly named the “SoundBite,” it’s comprised of two transmitters; the one you wear in your deaf ear picks up sound signals on that side and sends them to pre-wired molars on the other side.  Then the molars use the second transmitter to forward the sound signals through the bones in your skull to your hearing ear.  Weird, but miraculous.   

And it gives an entirely new meaning to ‘Radiohead.’ 

I’m a little hung up on how it works if someone knocks on the door on your left and you hear it from the window on your right.  Or what if there’s signal interference from, say, SETI?   

But hey, my grandma’s knee predicted the weather.  I always knew when to bundle up, so who am I to argue?    

I’m not surprised at this latest invention.  After all, it wasn’t that long ago when we saw pictures of lab rats with ears growing out of their backs.  No, not rat ears.  Human ears.  Lab techs cultivated ears for future use in little peripatetic plantations, like rootless, itinerant Christmas tree farms.  Ewww.  

But it’s all for the good.  Burn victims and anyone doing a few rounds with Mike Tyson could benefit. 

It was only a matter of time before other body parts were re-purposed in today’s “green” climate. 

We have more teeth than we need anyway, so why not rethink the whole mastication thing?  Shift it all to the front, rodent style, and set aside a few back teeth and those canines for a quiet day, if you get my meaning.  The Tooth Fairy will have to reinvent himself, but the world’s changing, man.  Adapt or die.   

Horticultural grafts have had us harvesting peaches from apple trees for decades.  The internet is rife with videos of momma dogs raising baby squirrels.  It’s no wonder we accept these kinds of “cross pollination” as routine.   

But carry it to its logical extreme and next thing you know we’ve got Sodom and Gonorrhea.  No, wait…I didn’t mean that.  Spell check is messing with me.  I meant that Biblical thing.  You know - the foundation of Las Vegas?  Sloth and Greed!?  No – Sparkle and Flash!?  Oh forget it. 

I’m ambivalent, that’s all.  

OK look, at my age, I’m all for it, this new-fangled angle on body parts.  Repurpose a tooth?  Sign me up!  Reuse bone marrow?  I’m there.  Refurbish the ragged, the weary, the long-in-the-tooth?  Oh yeah, count me in.   

I’ll tell you what I’d like to see recycled.  Robert Redford.  Like American Pickers with an eye for treasures heaped up in a hoarder’s back bedroom, new age scavengers could pick him up for a song.  Take him back to the shop; sand him down with #3 grit; rub in a honey glaze and finish him off with a coat of satin sealant.  Hollywood could still get a lot of use out of him.  But no!  We’re all too ready to cast off the classics.  

Instead, we have Wayne Newton.  A cautionary tale of misguided science and misspent technology.   

You can see why I’m torn. 

Just watch.  Now that Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp have crossed the threshold from fresh and plump on their way to shriveled and mossy, like so many Marlon Brando’s, they’ll wind up on a Tinsel Town junk pile when they could be aged like a single malt scotch.   

I’m not a Luddite, really.  I love the gadgets and apps.  I’m young.  I’m hip, or hep, or sick or cool.  Whatever.  Heck, I’ll go bionic when the time comes.  Or piecemeal me.  I’m good with it. 

In fact, in the spirit of progress, I offer these visionary suggestions for advances on the dental front.  Why not put our network where our mouth is?  We could link our teeth to Facebook and chatter away.  We can update our status while whitening.  

And why stop there?  Mount MP3 players, digital cameras, Angry Birds apps and home monitoring systems all around the grille. 

We’ll call it a Swiss Army mouth.  Say cheese!

Cyber-Loafing Monday Blues

So I was hanging out on Cyber-Loafing Monday, you know, just loafing.  In cyberspace.  It’s not like the old days when we loafed on weekends in the back yard, in our swimsuits with the sprinklers on.   

Now, we do our idling of time surreptitiously, under the cloak of a business suit and a laptop, in the cloud.  If you have your computer facing the right direction, you can fool a lot of people into believing you’re working on what - the “Jones report”?  Right.  But not to worry.  They’re probably loafing too. 

Evidently enough folks arrived at work last Monday, got their coffee, logged on, and went directly to wasting time, that researchers detected a surge in web surfing, a disturbance in the force, as it were.  (I wonder if they said, “Surf’s up!”)   

This weakness in our work ethic is attributed to sleep deprivation brought on by the spring-ahead impact of Daylight Savings Time.  But before we get too down on ourselves, let’s think about this.  First of all, who are these “researchers”?  Who documents all those clicks of mice?  Mark Zuckerberg?  I wouldn’t put it past him.  And let me just say, that those who are doing this kind of tracking of slackers are no better than those whom they impugn!  Me hopes I doth not protest too much. 

Honestly, which spy nerds in what dark room are charged with noting that each year, the Monday after implementation of Daylight Savings Time, we exert more effort surfing the web than engaging in the work we’re paid for?  One could argue that that monitoring itself constitutes cyber-loafing in its purest form.  

These phenomenon geeks go on to tell us what we already know but won’t confess - that the bulk of our furtive frivolity is frittered away on entertainment sites!  Translated:  We’re catching up on celebrity gossip!  

Only to prove my point, and for the credibility of this writing, I took a few moments this morning to explore the trend, for my readers’ sake.  Here you have it: TMZ reports that Jermaine Jones is off “Idol” for concealing his criminal record; Charlize Theron has adopted a baby boy; Oliver Stone, Chuck Norris, and Snoop Dog are all supporting Republican candidates; and a poll reveals that Americans think the top three most overpaid in their fields are Kim Kardashian, LeBron James, and Snooki.  And their fields would be reality TV, professional basketball, and vacuous immaturity. 

OMG.  That is a waste of time. 

Anyway, it’s great to have Cyber Loafing Monday formally anointed.  Now we can mark our calendars and do it again next year!  It may not be baseball, but it’s a pastime. 

Since the practice of naming new habits and linking them to days of the week is open for the entrepreneur, I have some suggestions for the remaining weekdays that may resonate with the desperately deskbound:  How about “Angry Birds Tuesday”?  Come on!  You know who you are! 

“Solitaire Wednesday”?  “Talk like a Thug Thursday.”  (Am I trying too hard?)  OK – “Fandango Friday”!  It’s prep for “Cinema Saturday.”  

And thanks to the World Wide Web, whenever we’re in search of a reason to celebrate we need go no further than the special days-of-the-month calendar available online.  This much-needed resource offers an array of parties-in-the-making seeking dedicated party planners and causes awaiting their champions.  

For example we just missed a salute to hiking gear: March 14^th - International Fanny Pack Day.   

My sentimental side speculates that a sweet and tolerant husband somewhere memorialized March 31^st as "National She's Funny That Way" Day.  

Making the most of these newfound tools, I’m trying to envision a way to celebrate Elvis’s birthday, January 8^th, in conjunction with April 11th - "International Louie Louie Day."  On second thought, it’s probably best not to envision such a thing. 

Respecting the value of global relations, April 26^th commemorates “Hug an Australian Day.”  Appropriate to our traditional income tax deadline we find that April 15^th also marks “Take a Wild Guess Day.”  And, in the realm of public service announcements: April 24th – “National Hairball Awareness Day,” a venerated occasion in the Plath household.  

At last.  I’ve got it!  Here it is:  The pushback from Cyber-Loafing Monday:  “Get a Geek into the Sunlight Sunday.” 

Mark your calendar.  It’s got legs.