illuminator

By anders pearson 08 Jan 2001

today i bought a fishing watch. i don’t fish. i don’t plan on fishing. why did i buy a fishing watch? because it was the only decent watch i could find that didn’t glow permanently.

for some reason, just about every digital watch that they are making now seems to be permanently illuminated with this annoying green light. they don’t actually have a light on, they just use some cleverness with reflective materials so that if there is any light in the room whatsoever, they look like they’re illuminated.

i think this is about the most irritating thing in the world. having something on my wrist that glows at me out of the corner of my eye all the time is bloody distracting. i have a hard time walking when i’ve recently polished my boots because the shine on the toes keeps catching my eye and i can’t look away. i’ve been known to walk into walls.

i don’t know, maybe i’m just weird. anyway, i now have a watch that doesn’t glow at me unless i press a button telling it to light up. it also shows the phase of the moon which, admittedly, is pretty damn cool. now i have to go find out what the longitude of new york is so i can punch that in and always know when the high and low tides are. never know when i’ll want to go swimming in the hudson.