What's up with all that sort-of-sticky clear plastic that covers new electronic gadgets? What IS this stuff, anyway? Is it window tint material that got rejected? I ask, because waaaaay back when I was a late-blooming hotrodder, I tried (in vain) to affix something similar that covers the outer edges of new keyboards to the windows of my beloved '71 Dodge Charger. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that the stuff I was smearing all over the inside of the windows was tinted. And didn't stick to anything except dead bugs and dust.

Mind you, I DID wash those windows until you could perform surgery on them. You'd think that Windex would dry fairly quickly in the heat of a New Mexico summer. This marvelous space-age material peeled faster than Marsha's flipflops when someone yelled, "PINWHEEL COOKIES!" I ended up tossing $20.95 worth of glorified Saran Wrap in the apartment dumpster because, apparently, I was the only hotrodder in Dona Ana County who couldn't quite master the four inch squeegie that came with the kit which extolled the virtues of dark tint ("guaranteed to reduce the heat of your interior by 50%", which, um, means I'd have climbed into an all-vinyl interior whose temperature would have been reduced to a balmy 900 degrees Celsius).

Now, after the Charger has long since been recycled into a new refrigerator for Lillian in Akron, I type this blog, shaking like a leaf due to the five square yards of failed window tint which adorns this keyboard so it wouldn't get scratched or dinged during shipping from Beijing. Perspiration frames my face as if it were an 8 X 10 glossy from MGM Studios. 3m's latest attempt to induce Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in my psyche has, for the moment, failed.

I've considered removing it, but there's something irresistable about new electronic gadgets staying wrapped in failed window tint.

It must be that new electronic gadget smell.