Alas, I Have Never Been Comfortable With Objects

It's not often that I open this forum to suggestions, but the time has come. I suppose you can guess what I need your help with---yes, it's the invisibility ray. I wouldn't usually dream of imposing upon my readers to lend a hand with this, as there's really no way you could possibly know about temporal diffusatory dappling, porro prism quantization, or concavity extract masers, but tomorrow it'll be fifteen years since I perfected my invisibility ray except for a maddening inability to cloak either elbows or gums, and Project Capricorn really can't go on without me nailing this sucker down. So I'm throwing the question open to anyone who might have an idea as to why it took me all of six weeks to invent a virtually flawless invisibility ray which hides 98 percent of the human body but can't seem to do a damn thing about elbows and gums. At this point I will literally listen to ANYTHING that rolls off your tongues. Even SINGLE WORDS might be enough to jostle something, so for instance, if someone were to simply throw out the phrase "irradiant emulsion metrix quotient" maybe it would get me thinking. Seriously, don't be afraid to contribute your suggestions, because there are no stupid ones.

Actually, that's not quite completely true, because telling me there might be a bug in the laser sequencer is NOT helpful, as I've been through the code TEN MILLION TIMES now, and there is NO EARTHLY REASON why my friend Bibby should disappear with a totally cool popping sound when I hit the switch while his stupid elbows and gums keep hanging out there for all the world to gawk at. So DON'T TELL ME about a possible bug, okay? Nor do I need to be reminded that America could have achieved total military dominance over its enemies more than a decade ago if only I had figured this contraption out by now. World peace, world peace, blah blah blah---this is NOT constructive criticism. And no, there is no money in the budget to construct a supplemental invisibility ray to cover just elbows and gums, and I can assure you that Colonel Strickler is NOT AMUSED by this notion. Other than that, let the ideas rip! So on the count of three, everyone start sending in those emails. I know it's been fifteen long years of trial, error, and abject failure, but I have confidence that if fresh eyes come to the table, I might be able to put the wraps on ol' Project C by close of business on Tuesday.

You know what I should think about, actually? Running the thousands of daily pages of complex trigonometric data through something other than my brother's pirated copy of Bert and Ernie Can Add Too! for Windows 98. And I'm again pondering the expansion of the pool of test subjects to include someone other than Bibby. After fifteen years of getting blasted by the invisibility ray, he's starting to get a little wobbly, he smells like doughnuts for some reason, and he keeps forgetting simple facts, like Nolan Ryan's career strikeout total, or his own last name. Which I think is also Bibby, FYI, so you'd think he'd be able to soak that up a little more easily.