Skeptical to the very end

Thankfully I shaved my head last week or I would've spent three hours last night pulling out my hair in the worst graduate class of my life.

First off, there's the Boy Wonder, named for a superhero with "spidey" powers. As one of my friends put it: "I was scanning the room to see who the professor was, and I would've never guessed it was him!" It's a game he calls Who's In Charge Here? Not only does Prof. Wonder allow Student J. to teach the course for him (which thankfully it is someone who at least knows what he's talking about ... despite the fact that Student J. is the most stubbornly obtuse and willfully Philistinian graduate student I know), but he even raises his hand to ask Student J. questions, further corroborating who wears the pants in this seminar.

Then there's Weezy--short for Crazy Fucking Retarded Red-Haired Girl--who practically sat on my lap last night. She's a mover: constantly shifting from side to side, trying to mesmerize all of us with her slippery stupidity. She's the one who nods her head and verbally agrees with absolutely every single statement made, especially the ones she makes the speaker repeat because she wasn't paying attention in the first place. She did that four times. And her most impressive contribution to the class thus far: "What was that anti-essentialism that wasn't really essentialism essentially called by the essentialists who essentially believed in essentialism?" (My parody of her actual question makes more sense than the crazy shit she was talking.)

Sitting at the corner of the seminar room was Pontiff Jerkopedia: "Pontiff" because he profusely pontificates ad nauseam, and "Jerkopedia" because he knows absolutely something about almost everything and wants to share his encyclopedic wisdom with the rest of us. In 6th grade, he would've been the student the teacher described as "having diarrhea of the mouth." I was underwhelmingly impressed. Yet he presented last night, taking approximately two hours to fill in the gaps of the eight-page, single-space "outline" he handed out. His one truly savant quality: taking something that a smart person says and writing missives on that topic, posting them on WebCT. Hence, I no longer log in to WebCT.

And these are only a handful of the colorful folks who populate my Thursday evenings. I won't even begin to describe the lame-ass reading requirements, except to say they are from a poorly edited and thrown together anthology Prof. W. worked on as a TA when in graduate school. As he described the course on the first night: "This is the best I have to offer." Really? You can't teach a class on a topic you actually know? God save us all! I usually spend a few hours after class decompressing with my intelligent cohorts over several drinks, but our debriefing last night was pre-empted by Valentine's Day obligations. Thanks for allowing me to rant a little this morning.

Perhaps next Thursday evening I'll just gnaw my arm off.

Scars & Wrinkles

Several years ago I blogged about scars. Here is an updated engagement with that post as prompted by a question that came to me out of the blue (from where all interesting questions arise):

As for “fetish,” it’s definitely a bit too loaded for me to fully embrace. If we use the term not in its Freudian sense—I’m not sexually stimulated by scars—and probably not even in an anthropological sense, but rather in a purely “pop cultural” sense, then yes, I have a scar fetish ... in that I am at times mesmerized, enchanted, and intrigued by them. I’m also not sure I find scarred people more beautiful; probably more often, I find them ugly(-ier) ... or at least their scars. But I perhaps feel a bit more compassion toward others with (visible/revealed) scars.

What fascinates me is the scar as trace—what remains from something/someone in a person’s past that is brought forward and carried over into the present/future. “Embodied” or “incarnate” in a fundamental way. It’s much more narrative than, say, a wrinkle. Every scar has a story to be told ... or hidden.

And the entire ethos of scars—their permanence, for example—means, at least for me, that they must always be confronted/regarded; in some ways, it’s as if they open up a space (for the possibility) of pure self-acceptance: they’re never going away no matter how you may try to hide them; they will be with you “till the end.” So maybe I’m much more interested in what the scar hints at instead of the scar itself.

That said, I do tend to like scars in the brow—little lightening bolts that disrupt the hair growth, and I find abdomen scars kinda sexy … on the right abdomens, of course!

Perhaps I was just trying to draw attention away from the tribe of wrinkles that have colonized my face over the past several years: scars have stories to tell! Pay no attention to the wrinkles!

Skin Deep

There are already so many things wrong with the story about the French woman who received the first face transplant. Like how did she “lose” her face to begin with? Well, she took an overdose of sleeping pills in a botched suicide attempt. She didn’t wake up when her pet Labrador retriever started chewing on her face. But she did wake up after it had already gnawed off her lips, chin and most of her nose. Note to self: feed the dog before killing yourself. Or better yet, kill the dog first!

I’m thinking this would’ve been a ripe time for another suicide attempt, but no: instead medical science in all of its vast uselessness decided to cut the face off a brain-dead woman and transplant it on our heroine. After a couple of near rejections of the face—we could be here all night if I was going to pursue this line of thought!—it seems the face was there to stay. Now she has regained nearly full use of her facial muscles. Or the facial muscles of the other woman. I’m not sure exactly where one woman ends and the other begins! Our heroine is currently “satisfied with the aesthetic result,” according to her surgeon.

Of course, none of what I’ve written or thought about thus far concerns the real problem at hand. The most disturbing aspect of the article I read in the New York Times is the final two sentences:

Ms. Dinoire’s [face] is a bit crooked, with one side slightly higher and one eye more open. But it is not unlike that of a typical Frenchwoman trying to convey a vaguely insouciant sarcasm, with hints of mordant wit and a certain je ne sais quoi.

I have lost all respect for the New York Times for publishing such an offensive, misogynistic and xenophobic article. I have lost all respect for modern science for thinking it was within acceptable ethical bounds to perform such a surgery in those circumstances. And I have lost all respect for Labrador retrievers, or as I shall henceforth refer to them: “face eaters.”

It all reminds me of something my mother used to say when I was a kid: “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugliness goes clear to the bone.” (She would know.)