Chagal4's Blog

A young woman,twenty years old, from London Ontario and three friends cross the border into the U.S. In the dead of winter last week…and believe me the winter in London in the first week of February couldn’t be deader…They headed into a motel filled with yesterdays dreams and tomorrow’s mistakes. They were there to get black market plastic surgery…no hospital…no clinic…just a motel room. She was expecting to put some money down and leave with an enhanced booty…a butt implant. It killed her. The speculation is that they learned about this illicit opportunity on the internet. Not an isolated case…no. I expect that there are hundreds of motel medical teams roaming the world on secret missions of cosmetic beautification.  I’ll get to the idea of enhanced ass in a minute but first I have to take a second to wonder how it became an acceptable proposition to search the internet for someone who would do this…and having found someone… what kind of peer group approval process made it reasonable to load up the car with like minded pals and drive to a motel in the middle of winter?

O.K. enhanced ass…Say,  you’re a teen thing sitting there with your home girls watching a Beyonce video…or Youtubing J.Lo…or the viral Kardassian sisters…and somebody suggests you check the full length mirror to see how you rate your booty. No that doesn’t happen, does it? Your boy friend in an unguarded moment of social insanity says…”uh…yo booty is lacking” and you think…”Lacking!” And then somebody says “I heard about this website…” while this little voice in the background is shouting  “start the car…start the car”. NO…Do not start the fucking car. Leave your ass alone…get a brain enhancement instead. Look here I’m not dissing the young lady who died. I’m sorry and saddened and all kinds of mixed, mostly angry emotions. Even though she made some decisions, she didn’t get there alone and the path to those decisions was travelled by plenty of others.  No ass enhancement is worth dying for…I don’t care if you’re booked into a sex audition with Justin Beiber.

I once had an office next door to a place that made prosthetics. They made legs and arms and hands and things for people who had lost theirs. An honourable business. I’d often talk to the guys  that worked there…between our back doors…over a cigarette or two. It occurred to me that the things they were making ought to be …somehow…more. Like yes they have hands that can actually function now and arms that act like they have muscles…but back then…not so much. I wasn’t thinking along those lines anyway. I knew that would eventually come. No, I was thinking that if you got an arm it ought to have a radio or a watch or tape player in it…a hand could have battery powered razors…tooth brushes…screwdrivers… I was thinking a Swiss Army kind of prosthesis. No reason artificial legs shouldn’t have electronic attachments…storage spaces…We had to stop seeing them as cosmetic or merely functional but…more than that. With today’s miniaturized electronics those prosthetics could have everything from tazers to GPS and telephones…they could have computers and T.V.s…and still have all of the new age functionality available.

I often have odd conversations with total strangers…It used to happen a lot in airports. They’re such sterile and impersonal places, those waiting areas…and really…you’re kind of anonymous. Certainly none of the airport staff give the slightest damn who you are…so I sort of figured it was a license to be whoever I wanted. So this guy and I are talking and he tells me he’s on his way to a clinic in California to get a penis implant. And I immediately thought that was fucking amazing…my imagination picturing all kinds of possibilities. I mean if you’re getting a dick implant it has to have vibrating potential, no? maybe a flashlight? one of those little L.E.D. jobs? Maybe you could get different shapes…hexagonal? Square? Cork screw? Reading the terrible story of this motel tragedy reminded me how bleak our society can be. I was not distressed when I first heard about breast implants . I’m a guy, of a certain age. I was raised on breast  fantasies. At sixteen…the list of things I desperately wanted to get my hands on was elegantly short…my own car and Nancy’s boobs…not necessarily in that order . So breast augmentation didn’t seem all that alien to me…until it became a deadly epidemic and then I had to think about it. I see young girls with boobs like perfectly spherical softballs looking as hard as old Cadillac bumpers…and I’m thinking…why? Do they play music? Do they have some new age humming sound that tranquilizes you when you get too excited? Do they help with swimming? And I’m not unaware that it’s hundreds of years of male breast fixation that has contributed to all of this…and  modern science and modern confused morality that added fuel to the fires. Ass enhancement…surely, that’s enough, and if it isn’t then let’s put it in the absurd perspective that it deserves…How about different shapes? hexagonal? square? How about creased…so it looks like you have two butts? How about with built in massage for those days when you’re on your feet too long and your ass hurts?

And all those young guys out there thinking that this is just girly vanity. Forget dat…guys are getting implants and enhancements, ass jobs and chest jobs…liposuction and silicon…and let’s not forget those ads that pop up on our computers promising a penis that can drive your car when you’re too busy texting with both hands.

No more young people dying in motel operations.

Please…Stop.

A friend once told me that there is no such thing as stupid…which, considering the guy, was pretty much an open question and charmingly self-serving. He went on to defend himself on a dealing charge (after selling a suitcase full of weed to a couple of cops) by claiming, first of all, that he was temporarily insane because he was on acid at the time…and secondly that he should be tried by a jury of his peers…therefore…they should be on acid too…or at least have used it previously. Oddly he was almost on the right track since Harry Anslinger had generally convinced the government of the United States and several other countries, back in the sixties, that marijuana made you crazy…the insanity defense should have worked, especially with the acid argument. Alas he was but one among many of my friends and relatives (and I must count myself among their company) whose bizarre antics have kept me in stitches for over sixty years. My seventieth year is fast approaching and I’ll count myself lucky if I make it, but it has stirred a bubbling kettle of ruminations and looking back at some of the bone headed moves I’ve made I began to wonder why “stupidity” got such a bad rap. I mean, where would we be without it? There is probably no other single thing that so occupies our time as much as pointing out stupidity in others and thus demonstrating our own brilliance. You’re walking down the street, it’s a lovely day, sun shining, birds singing in the trees (assuming the trees and the birds) up ahead there’s a young man dressed in the fashion of the day…pants belted somewhere in the O’zone between the waist (what’s dat?) and the knees. He’s busy walking and doing something electronic on a small gadget in his hands…when WHAM…he walks smack into a parking meter that jumped right into the middle of the sidewalk. O.K.  you saw it coming. You’re at the airport…it’s been a long day and it’s getting longer by the minute…there’s a line from here to last month at the check in counter and you can just see from your place in line that the agent is swamped and way over her head…she’s as red as a Mexican sunset and she’s hot enough to steam people’s glasses six places back in the line. The over head signs have been announcing flight cancellations for three hours. You finally get to the counter and the guy in front of you says “Hey lady…when’s the next flight out of this dump?” H-M-M-M-M I’m guessing in about a second and a half. Then there’s my pal Bob who climbs a ladder with saw in had …rests one foot on the ladder and the other on the branch… You know the rest. Over dinner a year later you can still smile about it. These things happen a million times in a million places every day…they’re part of the human condition…and I’ve already told you about my incredible car cover …so my credentials are solid. I guess my problem is that we’ve come to overburden “stupidity” , piling on malicious baggage. Stupidity has somehow acquired the odour of evil intent…or worse…the implication of terminal inferiority. Balderdash! I think we’ve been using the term inappropriately. When our esteemed politicians and captains of industry, having arrived at high office, make pronouncements that rattle in our ears like a pocket full of loose change…our expectations of common sense and wisdom are shaken out of proportion. Seemed like a good idea to give weapons to Saddam Hussein until he started killing the wrong people…Drilling holes in the Gulf of Mexico brings the oil closer to Cleveland than that stuff that comes from Saudi Arabia…except that it’s a hole in the bottom of the sea!!! Weren’t they afraid the water would run out? Did they forget that the oil was under pressure?… and who was watching Wall Street when the money disappeared? And whose idea was it to give our money to the guys who lost our money to replace the money that they lost? Why didn’t the government just give the money to us? Stupidity? Absolutely not. These things are happenings on an entirely different quantum. Stupidity ought to be returned to its rightful owners…you and I…and our pals. There are plenty of other terms that come to mind when we see some of the grand scale catastrophes engineered by people who should know better. Sometimes they don’t know any better…or at least they say so after the fact. Corruption, criminality, greed, malfeasance, ignorance, avarice, malevolence, congenital banality, habitual illegal parking and the urge to disregard warning signs are all in a different category from stupidity. I say we should liberate stupidity…take it back…before somebody does something really bad…and blames it on stupidity. Well..yes…I suppose it’s too late. What was I thinking?