The current state of my meat puppet:

(I am beginning to sense the emergence of a voice – we may get a middle class novella out of this wanker yet)

I am sunburned (it’s a mild one) from nine holes of golf this am. But even mild sunburn makes a red head look like a lobster. I am at work now and people keep commenting, “looks like you got some sun” and other variations on that theme, this only strikes me as odd because I shaved my beard off yesterday and no one seems to be noticing that major change (until I tell them-perhaps they are being polite as they are not sure what to make of my face). Beards and shaving are an interesting thing when it comes to identity. To some degree I actually forget what I look like without the beard. If you keep your beard for a significant amount of time you age in this beneath the surface kind of way and then the shave off is this “reveal” (to use the home improvement show/queer eye lingo). Your friends then weigh in on whether they like you better with or without the beard, and that feels like a debate about the merits and shortcomings of your face in general.

I went rummage sale hoping yesterday, after I watched the end of Adaptation, and it was so hot I came home and shaved. I took a pass on a large black ceramic Buddha – heavily Greek influenced in that Northern India kind of way, but with several chips out of the plaster. I also did not buy some lovely ceramic dishes from the fifties and a large aquarium outfitted for reptile raising (junk shop materialist pursued by other people’s possessions). I did buy a rug for 1$ to replace the Ann rug (that’s a story I am waiting to tell), but when I tried it in the living room it just didn’t work, so it is now the laundry room rug. I’m working my way out of a weight thing that is commonly referred to as a beer gut, but also manifests in a swelling of the face and fingers (and if allowed to persist will surely bring about man boobs). I used to have a square jaw, but booze, food and a sedentary lifestyle had swelled me to a thirty something baby face. When I started at the HAC I was up to 210 pounds. I am now a mere 175. This reveal has gifted me with my old chin, a sure sign that I am on my way to face reclamation. Ah vanity, such a singular profanity.

I actually watched extreme makeover the other day, ever since I read the Rhinoplasty scene in Thomas Pynchon’s novel V I have been fascinated by this bizarre cultural wrinkle (talking monkeys get themselves up to the craziest shit). In the same way that one might try to recognize celebrity voiceovers in commercials, I look for the small parts in obscure films where you get the visage of the now famous pre work. Jennifer Aniston in her staring roll in Leprechaun can be seen sporting quite the large nose. Ashley Judd as the drugged out daughter in Smoke also seems to be wearing different nasal flesh. Julia Roberts’ character in Noting Hill bemoans the surgery burden of the high priced female lead in an odd shattering of the fourth wall (Is that what they call it in the theater? Christ, I need an editor to deal with my manifold malapropisms and misspellings – be kind and chalk it up the haste of the blog, the false deadline that undermines preventive perfectionism).

At what point did the razor that sculpts our hair get the hubris to break the surface with intention? Where is Foucault when I need him? It’s a consistent theme in Pynchon isn’t it, and the films of David Cronenberg. Who is doing the work on this now? Who should I read? If I were doing the work what would I say, at least about the cultural representation? Karl’s first awareness of plastic surgery as a possibility: James Bond villains emerging from the mud like Judaic golems to serve as hydra heads for the sinister organization Specter.

If I imagine myself back into the fictional worlds of Humphrey Bogart film noir I see a science that began in the reconstruction of soldiers and accident victims subsumed by those who needed to hide, who needed new identities that were obfuscations of the past. Now we have the same skills going to higher bidders for obfuscations of the future in search of platonic ideals of symmetry and slope. We insert and delete from our malleable bodies in the same way that I am able to manipulate this text. If I had three thousand five hundred dollars to burn, a sanitized suction man could whisk away my weight without the wait of more healthful transitions.

Overly aggressive editing of our bodies must have far reaching consequences and what if they fuck up? You end up on Sixty Minutes Two cautionary segment, trotted out on slow news nights as regularly as unsanitary chicken farms. “The high cost of looking good,” or, “the hidden social costs of today’s cosmetic surgeons,” or simply, “good looks gone wrong” and other Ohio River Basin insipid-isms that we now call journalism (the nighttime newscaster voice is based on an Ohio River Basin accent thought to exemplify North American neutral).

Blah – sometimes blogging is like whittling a stick, you start with the shavings of a topic and you end up with a pointed rant that you prick you finger on when you ask yourself if you have a point. I am out of time at this desk, and must go pick up Angela, so take my metaphorical rant on rhinoplasty, stick a hot dog on it and stick it in the fire.