HyperNormalisation or Welcome to The Age of Absurdity

I added the subtitle above because this is one trippy film, but it's important to see (or read this summary in about 15 minutes) after last night. It actually helps explain Trump. After Adam Curtis’s The Century of the Self, a very straight-forward documentary (albeit 4 hours long), this one, at just shy of 3 hours, is absolutely bizarre by contrast. News footage is mixed with feature film content and inane YouTube videos all with a soundtrack mix of NIN, 80s techno, discordant carnival music, and creepy singing children. It has the intentional effect of a funhouse mirror. It was perfect to watch as the votes came in last night.



We’re living in strange times. Huge superpowers have no ability to deal with extraordinary events and no vision for the future. And the counterculture is also sucked into this make-believe world, so they have no real effect on anything either. Most of events in the film were outlined by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine a decade ago, but Curtis adds in some further connections (like Trump’s involvement) and takes us on a journey through it. It's not just that politics have changed, but the way we've been trained to think has shifted dramatically.


1975: A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Two ideas about how to run the world without politics took hold in 1975: intentional political negotiations of old were being replaced by a market driven trajectory and an absurdist fabrication of government.

New York was on the verge of collapse from politicians borrowing too much and the middle class exodus eroding the tax base. The banks were expected to buy bonds in return for loans, but one day they refused. This started a significant shift in power as banks insisted that if they’re protecting the loans, they must be allowed to take over the city. A committee was formed made almost entirely of bankers, and the financial institution took control, kickstarting neo-liberalism. They enforced austerity and many teachers, police, and fire fighters were fired. In the old system, politicians solved crises with negotiations; now bankers were letting the market run society, and the market can’t be negotiated with.

Nobody opposed this shift. The counterculture retreated. It was concurrent with a rise of individualism that doesn’t support collective political action, so radicals just watched the destruction with cool detachment and criticized it with art and music. Capitalists took advantage of it. Donald Trump recognized he couldn’t get state funding for housing, but could get cash by refurbishing old buildings. He got the biggest tax break ever and huge bank loans because the city was desperate. He transformed NYC at virtually no cost to himself.

David Levine's Kissinger

By contrast, in Damascus, the capital of Syria, a conflict was brewing between the president, Hafez al-Assad, and Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State. Assad wanted to negotiate politically in order to unite Arab countries to be able to stand up to the west. Assad believed there could only be peace if Palestinian refugees were allowed to return to their homeland. They never integrated in host countries, like Syria.

Kissinger leaned towards running the world as a stable market system. He had been an expert in nuclear strategy's "delicate balance of terror" and aimed to keep the world in balance through turmoil, the birthpangs of a better system. Dislocation provides opportunity for a global society. A strong Arab centre would destabilize his ideal balance of power, so he set out to fracture the Arab world by breaking their alliances. He played a double game, "constructive ambiguity," and at once persuaded Egypt to help Israel while he led Assad to believe he was helping the Palestinian situation. When Assad found out, he was enraged and stopped trusting in the global political system.  [The grandson of Salvador Allende is currently calling for the arrest of Kissinger.]

The doublespeak of these negotiations became the norm. In the Soviet Union, technocrats pretended everything was running smoothly even though citizens could all see the economy was falling apart. The people became hopeless and apathetic. Everyone just played along with the fake version of reality; they couldn't see a viable alternative. The people were so much a part of the fake system, that they couldn't see outside of it. This façade of life became hypernormal. (Listen to Curtis discuss the word - why we want change but it never happens.)


THE HUMAN BOMB

Reagan was voted in with a vision of a moral American society, but he was stuck with Kissinger's legacy and the fury of Assad.

In 1982, Israel was determined to destroy Palestine. In Lebanon, where Palestinian refugees were living in refugee camps, the Israeli army allowed the Christian Lebanese militia, Phalange, into the camps and then watched as a massacre took place. Reagan was forced to react and sent marines to Beruit claiming to be neutral. Assad saw the troops as an attempt to divide the middle east into factions, and focused on getting the US out. He formed an alliance with Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. who created "the poor man's atomic bomb" as he convinced his followers to join a suicide mission in order to save the revolution (even though suicide is prohibited in the Qur'an), and mobilized 10,000s boys to walk through minefields to create gaps so the Iranian army could get across.

Assad took this idea of an unstoppable human weapon further and had followers strap bombs to themselves. They drove trucks into US marine barracks in Beruit, killing 241 Americans in October 1983. Hezbollah was formed with Iranians but under the control of Assad [something I've not heard before], and was used to attack America. In February 1984, Reagan became paralyzed by the complexity of the situation and retreated.

But an important part of this is the mythology of the martyr that was created. It has become firmly entrenched. It has to be; it's the only way families of the suicide bombers can cope with their loss.

The origin of cyberspace.

ALTERED STATES

The power of the banks in NYC spread, but it was all covert. Banks and corporations were linked through computer systems that were invisible to citizens AND politicians. The networks gave them extraordinary powers of control. With no laws or politicians to intervene, brutal corporate power could flourish.

Others saw the internet as a platform for a new utopia, a safe place for radicals. Instead of fixing the world, they entered an alternative reality online. This has its roots in Leary's 1960s "LSD country" when the counterculture first looked to be liberated from politics. This is another myth we live by - the mythology that we can live more freely ignoring the political world. It was advance in the '90s by John Perry Barlow who focused on protecting the independence of cyberspace from politicians. He paints of picture of the internet as borderless, anarchist, independent of tyrannies, and free from hierarchies.

But two hackers, Phiber Optik and Acid Phreak, found and uploaded Barlow's credit rating online to demonstrate the hierarchies that exist already. The financial powers online can now know far more about us than ever before and therefore control us far better with less effort. The utopian rhetoric is a convenient camouflage hiding the emergence of the corporate powers.


THE COLONEL

Reagan created another mythology, that of the good Americans fighting against evildoers. He created an imaginary villain in Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. He was rejected by other Arab rulers and without global influence. But in December 1985, when terrorists attacked a Rome Airport, Reagan announced Gaddafi was behind the attacks even though all evidence pointed to Assad. There were far fewer consequences to the US to attack Gaddafi than Assad.

Gaddafi turned the crisis into a global drama and threatened suicide attacks against the US. He promoted himself as a revolutionary to liberate the repressed worldwide including blacks in America. He hired German engineers to build him a rocket to explore space, which gave him the capability of attacking Europe. He became a super-villain at the head of a rogue state. He was blamed for other attacks that he likely had nothing to do with, and he accepted the blame. He wanted an audience for his Third Universal Theory of a utopian socialist state.

Reagan prepared to bomb Libya using Gaddafi's rantings as fact regardless evidence to the contrary. In April 1986, the US bombed Tripoli, and their aim was so inaccurate many children were killed. Gaddafi stood on the rubble and denounced the US.


THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

In the '80s, the US started testing weapons to conquer the Soviet Union, but when spotted, they promoted a fake conspiracy that they were misleading the population about aliens. They chose select people to find fake documents proving contact with UFOs. But the tactics fueled wider growing belief that the government lies and conspiracies are real. The blurring of fact and fiction became a central part of US government's "Perception Management" that aims to tell graphic stories to grab citizen's imagination as a way to distract them from dealing with the complexities of the real world.

The counterculture gave up revolutions and started making workout videos. The population, no longer able to have any effect on politics, focused their energy on something more important: controlling their bodies through a created obsession with workouts and diets. [I knew it!] The old system was dying, and a new system was about to be born.


MANAGED OUTCOMES

The Soviet Union collapsed and it was the final failure of a dream of politics being used to create a new world. In the new system, politicians stopped trying to change things and focused on managing a post-political world. Ulrich Beck was first to describe this change.  Politicians hoping to make changes are suddenly seen as dangerous. Their new job is to predict dangers and avoid risks. The political class has been reduced to trying to steer society, putting out fires rather than doing anything actually effective. The new heroes will be the ones with the most accurate predictions. Larry Fink started BlackRock and built a huge supercomputer, Aladdin, which he used to predict with certainty the risk of any investment or event. He now manages 7% of the world's total wealth. His town is also where Prozac became most popular: everyone's brainwashing each other to be happy.

Other computer programmers were trying to develop artificial intelligence programs. As a joke, Joseph Weizenbaum created a computer psychotherapist that responds like Carl Rogers (by just reflecting back whatever we say) in order to parody the hopeless attempts at AI. But people found talking with Eliza helpful - even people that knew how it worked. It makes us happy and secure to have ourselves reflected back at us. The programmers started making systems to do that - intelligence pages - that gather data about people, look for patterns, and predict what they might want to see or hear or buy. It ordered the world and reassured the anxious. And it was highly profitable.


A CAUTIONARY TALE

There's a dangerous flaw in the system because not everything can be predicted from data. Trump discovered that at his own cost in Atlantic City in 1990. His casino was losing money from a "whale" - a top gambler - Kashimagi. Trumped hired a different whale to set him up. When Kashimagi lost everything to the house, Trump thought he'd get his money back, but then mobsters got to him before Trump could. Banks saw that Trump couldn't pay the interest on his loans, and Trump went bankrupt.

Back in Damascus, Assad wanted revenge against the US. In December 1988, a plane was bombed over Lockerbie. Investigators pointed the finger at Syria, but the US focused on Gaddafi. Some journalists thought it was because the US and Britain needed Assad as an ally in the war against Hussein. Assad had released forces he couldn't control though, and his ideas jumped from Sunni to Shia Islam, and Hamas was formed [but many other sources seem to suggest Hamas is entirely Sunni?]. Shia are seen as the more brutal faction. They used suicide attacks in the heart of Israeli cities and went much further than Hezbollah ever had, which shocked the Sunnis, apparently. [I watched this bit twice, but I'm still confused because it runs counter to every other article I can find. Anyway...] The whole thing worked against Assad's original plan which was to join all Arab countries together to defeat the US.


AMERICA AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Any optimistic vision of the future disappeared. The film has a crazy long montage of all the apocalyptical films created before 2001. Media provoked an intense fear of terrorism in the west. Then 9/11 happened.

In 1980, Reagan had a moment when he could have confronted the complexity of Syria, Israel and the Palestine crisis, but retreated and left Syria to fester and mutate. He went for Gaddafi instead because it was an easier battle to wage. But it changed the way people understood terrorism. Instead of violence being a result of complex political struggles, we got a simplistic image of an evil tyrant at the head of a rogue state and a sense that toppling the super-villain will save the world.

Blair and Bush set their sights on Hussein in Iraq. They believed stories about him instead of investigating reality. This is legend now, but the primary source that he had WMD was taken from the movie The Rock.

Then in 2003, Syria, under Bashar al-Assad (the younger son of Assad), sent Shia suicide bombers to attack Americans in Iraq as the first step in a plot to take over the Middle East. Within a year almost all foreign fighters were coming across Syria. Then things really got out of control as jihadists in Iraq joined Al Qaeda and turned to kill Shiites, and suicide bombers started to kill Syrians. Blair and Bush needed a way to show that the invasion had been a good idea, so they got Gaddafi, the fake super-villain, to become a fake global hero. They got him to publicly state his intentions to dismantle his WMD (which he didn't actually have) as a direct result of the Iraq invasion, and he took credit for the Lockerbie bombings. It was all new lies on top of old lies - the highest achievement of perception management. PR companies were paid millions to go to Libya and "reframe the narrative." As a world thinker, Gaddafi got to explain his Third Universal Theory to the United Nations and Trump offered to let him lease his land for the night, and made a fortune even though Gaddafi never stayed there.


A WORLD WITHOUT POWER

The west has turned away from politics and deeper into cyberspace.

Judea Pearl worked on Bayesian networks which could predict behaviours even with incomplete data. They created software to mimic humans. With our current technology, we can upload millions of images and videos and the web feels much more like the real world. Then his son became the first journalist captured in Pakistan and beheaded on video.

Governments used Optic Nerve to take stills of people to look for terrorists, but mainly found amateur porn. The internet allows users to present themselves as they want to be seen. People are mesmerized by themselves. Social media sites created filters to see what people like and feed it back to them to the extent that people move in bubbles isolated from opposing information. Algorithms ensure that newsfeeds don't challenge preexisting beliefs. A few corporations are shaping everything we see and think. [We're like the robots in Westworld. We feel real, but we've all been programmed.]

BUT, another utopian version emerged when people realized they could use the internet to start revolutions. After the crash of 2008, Occupy Wall Street emerged. It was Barlow's dream incarnate. And then Arab Spring started with the "Facebook Youth" out in the tens of thousands. With social media, a revolution can be created quickly to take down a fascist leader.

But it ended up causing chaos instead of democracy. Radicals thought this new way of organizing was key to real change, but they didn't have a clear vision of the future. They were too focused on how to manage the people because that's what we're all swimming in - management. [I wrote a bit about this trend before, and I think one place to look for leadership with a real action plan is here, but that's just me.] In Egypt, social media brought people together, but once there, they had no clue of what new society to create. When the movement stalled, the Muslim Brotherhood rushed into fill the vacuum, and the left ironically turned to the military for help.

Strugatsky film

In the west, politicians have given so much power away to the banks that they have no real power to effect change themselves. They're just managers with a simplistic vision of the world, which is truly dangerous. In Russia, Putin saw that the lack of any belief in politics could work to his advantage. He turned politics into a strange theatre, which kept his power unchallenged. He was influenced by the sci-fi writings of the Strugatsky Brothers who wrote about the ease of manipulating the masses once we can shape reality to be anything.  Putin's technologist advisor, Vladislav Surkov, went further to take avant-garde ideas from the theatre into politics, to not just manipulate the public, but play with them and undermine their perception of the world to the extent that they're never sure of what's really happening. He turned politics into a bewildering spectacle. The key to this was to let it be known that they were backing opposing groups and clearly lying to keep constant confusion in the air.

That brings us to today and Trump's entire campaign. None of his policies are fixed; everything he does and says shifts constantly. He attacks all sides to perpetuate confusion so we can't quite tell precisely where he sits. Exposing his lies is irrelevant. Liberals are outraged, but algorithms made sure they were only heard by people who already agreed with them. Their wave of angry messages benefitted only corporations who know that "angry people click." Anger is good for business. Trump's strategy is to counter himself constantly. He realizes that the version of reality politics presented is no longer believable. Stories politicians tell don't make sense. In the face of that, we can play with reality and further weaken old forms of power.

Look at how the west dealt with Assad. He's evil, but Britain, America, and France bombed terrorists which had the effect of keeping Assad in power. And Russia sent troops to support Assad. This is Sarkov's strategy of non-linear warfare. The underlying aim is not to win the war, but to use the conflict to create a state of destabilized perception in order to undermine and control the masses. In March 2016, Russia announced it was leaving Syria, and held a concert to celebrate, but never made any motion to actually leave.

And now we have stirrings of fascism in the US.

Curtis leave no sense that we can actually do anything to get out of this mess in any way, but at least we can be aware of the absurdity of it all. And dance.




ETA: here's an interview with him by the Economist

On the Nature of Gifts and Help

Being helped so much by so many has led me to thinking about the idea of help and of gifts and Derrida's idea that gifts are impossible in that, in part and very briefly (he wrote a whole book on this), once we give to someone it sets up a debt, which is poisonous as it becomes just an economic exchange. Even if the gift is abandoned, if it's essentially garbage we're getting - something the giver wanted to toss - then the gift has no actual value, and they're giving us nothing. So, either it has value and then it creates a sense of indebtedness - try as we might to avoid that scenario, OR it has no value (garbage) and then it isn't valued as a gift. To give to someone in a way that's heartfelt requires a loss of something to the other. A sacrifice. And then there's a little sacrifice back to even it out and sully the relationship with a subtle tracking system of who gave what, when, and for how much.

If it's all anonymous, then that doesn't work either. Part of the reason we give gifts, as can be seen by how we try to keep economics out of it all, is to create an emotional bond between the giver and receiver. Whether it's anonymous or all tit-for-tat, or we later google for the price, then it ruins the spirit of giving.

I used to think about all this when my kids were younger and they would make lists for Christmas, and I felt like I was out shopping for groceries. It doesn't feel good to give something expected, or to feel like you have a duty to give back in kind, or to not give back in kind avoiding the call to track. It's really tricky! As it slips closer to a demand, then it's clearly a payment of affection instead of a gift. That can be a very subtle line to cross.

I'm thinking about it now because I feel horribly indebted to people who have helped so much.

I wonder if giving the gift of time when someone needs help is any different. The fact that time is given might change the scenario because it can be an automatic exchange of time for the pleasure of my company. But it is almost immediately sullied by an attempt to be entertaining so as to clearly reciprocate. I tried to take a primary caregiver to lunch today, but the place was closed, and now it really feels like I'm indebted to her. I almost paid the invisible debt, but failed. That nugget will sit in the back of my head until it's been cleared.

It's not much different from the exchange between a friend and me after I accidentally knocked a picture frame off her wall. I called for the dimensions the next day so I could replace it, but she preferred I buy her beers next time we're out. But it's been a while, and that debt is still in my mind, waiting to be erased from the account books with payment rendered.

My dad used to tell me to let people see what you struggle with and let them help you. It's our job here to find ways to let others shine. Helping others raises the helper's value to themselves and others, so it's an act of kindness to let people do things for you; they'll feel better after the exchange. But it still doesn't relieve the feeling of indebtedness on the part of the receiver, unless, perhaps, the help wasn't useful. If we're helped in such a way that it's disastrous to us, then we feel no need to reciprocate even though people might still think you're a douche if you just say thanks and do nothing else. It's understandable why some people hate to be helped.

I have a friend who always picks up the tab when we're out. I've even snuck a word with the waitress, but somehow he undercuts me. So now I'm significantly indebted to him, and he makes it impossible to reciprocate. But it's now to a point that I might stop hanging out with him. The pain of that inconspicuous bill ever growing is perilously close to outweighing the pleasure of our time. I have a hard time heeding my dad's advice.

But that feeling of duty to reciprocate is not such a bad thing. We want to keep economics out of our relationships, but it's necessary to have feelings of indebtedness or else we might just suck kind people dry. Some are already used up by narcissists happy to take them for all they have. This subtle, covert economic tracking is useful to keep kindnesses in balance. It's not necessarily poisonous. It doesn't make gifts any more possible perhaps, but we can give and receive anyway. It only works to ignore that payback urge if we're all pretty equally driven to give to one another, which almost never happens.  People's desire or ability to give is far too variable. I have very limited acceptable ways to give to others much as I'd like to offer a show of affection or thanks. I suck at it. I can write them an essay or build them a deck; I fail epically at shopping and cooking.

In comparing gifts and help, it's hard to find much that differs. They both might be one way to prove love or affection with the significance of the gift signalling the extent of affection. As a symbol of caring, it can be wildly inaccurate, which is a problem. We can care tons but give little, or care little, but want to present the appearance of caring for an ulterior motive - to be perceived as caring or as tightly bonded or as a martyr ever suffering for others. This is the real commodification of affection that should raise concerns.

Gifts and helping both might prove our value to others (to the receiver, bystanders, or ourselves). For some, the favoured payback is to tell others about the wonderful thing they did. We give out of duty based on the occasion or affliction, and the significance of either tells us how much we have to do: Christmas warrants more than Easter, and surgery warrants more than a cold. Last night my youngest was beside herself in tears because she wants to take care of me but she's been really sick, so I've been taking care of her. It's killing her! She wants to show how much she cares and to underscore how close we are, but she's incapacitated. I tried to assure her that her company in front of movies is the best thing ever!

We give and help for the joy of giving. But what is that joy if not the thrill of being showered with gratitude (even if it's our own private self-delight) or power or a boost to the self-esteem when we see ourselves in a better light. It adds to our karma-value. We can show off what we've done and impress others or ourselves with a moment of generosity or kindness. This gets into the question of whether or not altruism is possible. Is it possible to give without hope of getting something in return - even just a warm feeling in the belly? It doesn't mean giving is selfish if we take pleasure in it, but that it's never solely about the recipient.

With both, some people get angry at not having an opportunity to give or help, and they'll bombard the receiver with unsolicited aid. And sometimes it's really clear that it's not because they want the receiver to be more comfortable, but because they want to join in. They missed their turn. They didn't get an invite to the birthday party, so they showed up with a gift anyway. Awkward.

And sometimes people ask for something specific. With gifts, this is fairly common - many of us at least leave hints around Christmas and birthdays when we know things we be thrust at us. Hints are another subterfuge to hide the economics of the whole affair. But it's so much harder to do when it's for help.

A surprising number of people have offered help, but it's typically in the form of taking me for groceries or driving to appointments or bringing over food. What we can ask for is limited. I guess it's no different from gifts, actually, it's just different terrain. In gifts we match the general price to the closeness and salary of the donor. My son might ask for a pricey camera, but my friends wouldn't expect more than drinks. With help, instead of money there's a hierarchy of jobs. The O.R. waiting room is for family. Driving to appointments (and filming them) is for close friends. Bringing food to share comes next, followed by bringing food to drop and go. It's all very lovely and all - I'm not questioning that - but the boundaries around it are also interesting to me.

Because there are some jobs I don't feel like I could ask anyone to do: the dirty jobs with no entertainment value. I'm not supposed to do housework or lift much of anything for six weeks (although I've been doing dishes and laundry with my daughter's help). But the cats' litter box is overflowing. The whole house needs a scrub down, but that's that box is my biggest concern right now. Even if someone specifically offered, I wouldn't let them. It feels like a debt too big to repay - or something.

I called a cleaning service, and they said they'd come clean everything, but they don't do litter boxes. They'll vacuum around the box, but they won't actually touch the thing. My cats won't be enticed to dig through old crap just because the pathway there is tidy. They're going to start looking for cleaner corners for their toilette if I don't find a means. My older two are back at school, and my youngest is sick, and that's a level of friendship I haven't fostered sufficiently.

The cleaners also won't do my kitchen floor because I let it slip that, the day after surgery, I spilled a beaker of blood on the floor. I was draining my tubes and knocked over the container. I wiped it with paper towels as best I could, and it looks fine, but I'm really wanting that floor scrubbed good and clean. But how does one go about asking a friend - that one's not sleeping with - to get on hands and knees for them?? It's like really needing a new car, but having nobody to buy it for you. Except it's not really a luxury item I'm desiring. It's more like needing a new fridge. It's the kind of thing a partner would do, but few else. Not just do, but it's the kind of thing one can ask of a partner.

It occurs to me I might have better luck with a local teenager than a cleaning agency. This is a situation that's beyond generosity and works better as a purely economic exchange (from a less regulated entity). It's not a matter of needing to be close enough, maybe, but that there's no joy in giving something so practical that can't be delivered with a personal flourish. It's at once too personal and too divorced from the personal.

It helps me understand something else. When I'm on the giving end of things, since I don't have a car and can't cook, I always offer services. I can paint or build or clean toilets and scrub floors. But people don't want this kind of help. It's possible they don't trust my ability with the former (regardless my track record), and don't feel comfortable with the latter. It's not that it's embarrassing to have dirt, which is what I always suspected, but that it's too difficult of a debt to repay.

Something like that.

On Character

Now that I've sufficiently survived surgery physically, the psychological stuff is creeping in.

Creeping is apropos.

People keep telling me I'm so brave or so strong to go through it all and then to be up and at 'em so soon after. But I just happened to survive. There was nothing brave about it. I went through with something scary that could likely save my life. If I hadn't, I would have considered myself cowardly, but it doesn't follow that, therefore, it was an act of courage, but, rather, something in the middle. It's just the reasonable thing to do. I just showed up, went to sleep on the table, and woke up and kept breathing. It's just dumb luck that I'm recovering so quickly. Continuing to exist isn't so much an accomplishment as it is a thing that we do until we don't.

I'm full of weird little phobias that I hadn't really noticed before. I don't like thinking about how my body works. I'm fine with other people's surgeries and gory pictures and videos, but I don't like to acknowledge that my body is full of veins and arteries and muscle tissue. It gives me the willies! And now it feels like there's a metal grate strapped to my chest, but it's just my ribcage!! It's cold and hard. I haven't really touched it yet. It's pretty gross. I was never very busty, but it makes a difference losing globs of fat off your frame all in one go.

I'm hyperaware of every corner in my home now: doors half open, tops of chairs sticking out from the table, the flailing elbows and knees of my gangly adolescent. I'm a total klutz at the best of times, regularly hitting the trim of doorways with half my body as I try to make it through that three-foot-wide opening, but if anything happens now, it's gonna hurt like a son-of-a-bitch! Just thinking about it gives my chest a freaky, cold, tingly feeling! Every angular shape has taken on an ominous tone.

Why did I buy killer chairs??

Why do I even live here??

And I'm nervous about that movie trope when a character makes a decision to further their life, and then they die anyway of something different because no matter what we can't change our fate. Even thought I don't rationally believe in fate at all, not even a little bit, it still kinda feels like the risk of getting hit by a mac truck are higher for me now. Actually I'll probably get brain cancer from sitting in front of Netflix and Facebook and Blogger for two-weeks straight. I've seen all of the movies, and I'm only halfway through my couch time.

I went for a haircut yesterday for the first time in years, just to get my hair washed after a week of not being allowed to shower, and I can't figure out how to do it in the sink without leaning on the counter, which just isn't going to happen for a while (yikes - chest tingles!). I just needed someone with one of those tilty chairs. They should have them at the back of every CCAC so you can get cleaned up after getting your dressing changed. Anyway, sixty bucks later and my hair's sticky with product and all poofy. Is that the style now??  I immediately put it in a pony tail. But I dragged my daughter along in case I passed out walking two blocks. She asked, "What good am I going to do?" but she came anyway.

So, for this I'm not really courageous or strong. I am sometimes both of those, but this isn't a thing to be remembered for. Except I think I'm more thoughtful than I would have thought previously. I was concerned about my kids missing school to sit with me, and the nurses being uncomfortable while they have to bend over me to work, and it kills me that I missed commencement at school this year. But that's pretty standard mom stuff.

Character should be lauded when people stand up against the masses. It's a sign of character to keep doing the right thing when people call you names for it - like Aaron Swartz (watched this great doc yesterday). I'm only just this year not a total freak for actually believing climate change is something to worry about. All eye-rolls and side-eyed grins and open palm to forehead gestures I've tolerated and yet soldiered on, that takes strength and courage up the wazoo. Because it's so easy to be like everyone else, to be a mass consumer and sit on the prosperous team that looks shiny and gets places quickly. And I don't think I actively helped further the momentum of the movement despite attending marches and joining groups and forwarding info and talking about it until people can't stand me; I just worked hard to avoid adding to the problem and to try to help by spreading the word in any way I can through reasonable but gentle persuasion in an attempt to avoid a backlash. It's an accomplishment in that it takes effort just to be heard at all, not that it saved the world.

The many of us who try to spread the bad news know we won't be praised for our courage or strength. But we do it anyway. That's what character's all about.

Preventing Ovarian Cancer Program Logistics

I went down the road to genetic testing all because of a link I noticed on facebook in early May 2015 - just before my 50th birthday, from the POCP. It said that anyone could get free genetic testing to test for cancer if they have a close relative who had ovarian cancer. So I signed up. It sounds a little sketchy to do genetic testing online, but it was through the Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer Clinic at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, and I thought, what the heck. I did it pretty flippantly.

The process took 18 months from start to finish. After completing numerous lengthy forms, it took four months just for them to determine that I was eligible largely because it was difficult to find my mother's medical records because she died in 1996. The span from one step to the next was often so long that I completely forgot about clicking that link months before.

Then they sent me a ton of psychosocial questionnaires and called me at work a few times to ask me a multitude of questions about how I'm coping with thinking about having the testing done, and whether or not I might actually want the information if I do get tested. I got a little impatient with all that. Once the test results came, in February, and I sufficiently convinced them that I actually wanted the results, then it got more interesting. I was able to transfer my files closer to home, and then I got to meet a host of really kind and competent medical professionals for numerous appointments.

But, after finding out that you've got the genes that put you in a high risk category for cancer, you want it all to go by in a matter of days. It felt like it took forever to actually get appointments with all the necessary doctors. Once there, then it felt pretty quick to get it on with it.

This is what it all looked like:

I got my last drainage tube out today and had a good look at it. It was HUGE.  I'm really glad I didn't ask to see it when I got the first one out. I pictured a tiny tube in my body about an eighth of an inch in diameter and about an inch long. Nope. It was a good half an inch wide and flat, with holes in it, like a drip irrigation hose for watering plants - except it sucked instead of spraying. And it was many inches long. I'm still getting over it!  But I'm glad that bit's over now.

Now I just have to see if the bits that they took out are cancer free at my appointments later this month, and it should all be over!

ETA: Narrator: But it wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

Sorry, but You've Been Duped into Denial

Alternatively titled, Don't be a Koch Sucker!

In the U.S., about 70% believe climate change is real, 35% believe it's caused by humans, and 16% are worried about it. The 30-minute film, "The Doubt Machine: Inside the Koch Brothers' War on Climate Science" explains how you've been tricked into false belief. It features Michael Mann, who was also in recent films makes by Josh Fox and Leo DiCaprio. What makes him so important? He published the "hockey stick graph" in 1999, which shows how industrialization connects directly to the increase in global temperature, and he was summarily attacked for it.

Later used in Gore's Inconvenient Truth. 

It was a matter of shooting the messenger. There were death threats made to him and his family, and money was offered to his colleagues to discredit him. He was eventually cleared of all wrong-doings. The smear campaign was funded by Charles and David Koch.

The Koch Brothers own a $100 billion oil, chemicals, and minerals empire. They control 1-2 million acres of the Tar Sands in our fair nation. And you thought this was just an American problem! Their number one goal is to stop any climate action. They do this by controlling Congress and the Senate by paying off politicians directly. The 52% of Senators and 39% of member of Congress that are in their pocket have pledged to stop any policy that will impede their business ventures. Because the US is so influential, this is the single biggest obstacle to climate change action.

The film doesn't say this, but if it weren't for the "intent to destroy" line in the definition, what the Koch brothers are doing is genocidal in nature: deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group in whole or in part. Okay, it's not a deliberate intent to destroy life; it's just an unfortunate side effect of their business model that will take down 100s of millions of lives. That's all.

Climate change is all real. The worst predictions keep coming true, and it's going to get so much worse really soon. We stand to pass 2° threshold by 2050. How much money does it take for politicians to allow policies to continue that will destroy the world for your children? About a million dollars on average.

The API - American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying arm of the oil industry, uses the same methods as the tobacco industry to provoke doubt. Remember this?



Charles and David's dad, Fred Koch, was a chemical engineer from Texas who couldn't get an in to promote his tactics in the U.S., so went abroad and set up refineries for Stalin and Hitler. Really. He trained his sons in neo-liberal, small government philosophies. In the 1990s, the Koch family needed clout in Washington to stop regulations that would impact their profits, so they got involved in bribing lobbying politicians for their support. Now their reach is unprecedented in its complexity. Any politician that runs counter to their policies is hung to dry, like republican Bob Inglis.

They have the cash to bombard the public with whatever message they need them to hear. And they have rounded up scientist-types who are making a fortune denying climate change. One of the most famous is Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer who carefully allows people to believe he's a climate scientist, even though the difference is huge. There were some climate scientists who were skeptical, but not now. There is too much evidence matching GHGs to climate change that it's clearly not just a matter of solar variability.  No scientist educated in climate studies is currently denying that this is a human effect that requires human action to slow it down.

In other news, no pain pills today! I'm that much closer to being able to have a beer! And I need it after all this. I mean climate change, of course. Recovery from surgery is relatively easy all things considered. Recovery from climate change will be a bugger! We need the Koch Brothers unceremoniously lopped off from any connection with politics, so we can finally start to heal.

Before the Flood

First of all, I love that this Leo DiCaprio film, directed by Fisher Stevens, was free to watch everywhere on the National Geographic Channel for a while. But if you missed it, here's the gist of it below.

Without ads, it's 90 minutes, jampacked with information. The pacing is good, and that's key. I can't help comparing it to Josh Fox's film, because there are marked similarities - both feature one man, a passionate novice in the field, talking a little too much about himself as he flies around the world narrating his learning experience through listening to a variety of experts - many of the same experts even - as he aims to get some kind of a hopeful conclusion. But Leo's film works so much better. It helps that he has funds and connections - where Fox had footage from drones, DiCaprio had footage from space - and that he's a much better orator and has an incredible cinematography crew (and it doesn't hurt that Trent Reznor did the music), but what Stevens and DiCaprio got from the interviews and what they did with the material, the basic trajectory of the film, is what nails it as the superior vehicle to inspire positive change. In 2000, DiCaprio interviewed President Clinton on Earth Day, and they talked about the need for citizens to use better lightbulbs. He recognizes we're getting nowhere with that kind of rhetoric, and he does a good job at getting at the big picture quickly.

DiCaprio frames the film with a discussion of Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych: The Garden of Earthly Delights, which is timely as Bosch died 500 years ago this year and you can take a really interesting, brief online tour of the work. The painting hung over DiCaprio's crib as a child. My parents were wary about giving me a book of his work when I was about ten. It's pretty disturbing for a little one, depicting our deal with God, our fall from grace, and the hell that awaits us for all our sins.

He also starts and ends the film at the United Nations as he took on the role of the UN Messenger of Peace with a focus on climate change back in 2014 when Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon remarked, "If this boat is sinking, then we will all have to sink together." And then he gets moving. Here's a very brief summary of pertinent remarks made with each place or person interviewed:

ALBERTA, CANADA
Michael Brune of the Sierra Club explained how the economy is based on fossil fuels: oil for transportation and coal and gas for electricity. We're going to more extreme sources now with mountaintop removal, fracking, offshore drilling, and the tar sands - the most devastating way to produce fossil fuels that poisons miles of rives and land and requires the clear-cutting of the boreal forests. On a copter flying over the sands, DiCaprio said "It looks like Mordor," which is exactly what Maude Barlow said about it. He started shooting The Revenant in Alberta, but they had to move to Argentina because there wasn't enough snow in the winter in Canada.


BAFFIN ISLAND, CANADA
Dr. Enric Sala of the National Geographic and Jake Awa, their arctic guide, looked at the sea ice and watched the narwhals passing by. The arctic is the air conditioner for the northern hemisphere, and by 2040, we'll be able to sail over the North Pole, unencumbered by icebergs and all that snow.

GREENLAND
Professor Jason E. Box, a climatologist, thinks our projections are conservative and Greenland will be gone in a few decades if we stay on our current path. He showed DiCaprio how a climate station works and that it just looks like broken down pool equipment.

FLORIDA
Mayor Philip Levine suggested we bring all the unconverted to Miami so they can see first hand the "sunny day flooding" they get randomly. It's taken $400 million of taxpayer money for a pump project to keep the city out of water, and that will just buy them 40 years of time before they'll have to leave. Yet officials in Florida are banned from discussing climate change thanks to the work of Rick Scott and Marco Rubio.

WALL STREET
Michael Mann, an American climatologist, says we have as strong a scientific agreement on climate change as we do on gravity. There's opposition because of politics, lobbying, and industry creating a massive disinformation campaign. Scientists are vilified and attacked by congressmen. Mann has received death threats, an FBI investigation, and threats to his family. The lobbyists don't have to win a legitimate debate; they just have to divide the public enough for them to stay their course.

Front groups funded by the Koch brothers ensure all legislation supports fossil fuel interests. They're doing everything they can to protect that wealth. They own the house of representatives, with James Inhofe, the snowball dude and the largest recipient of Koch funding in the Senate, receiving $1,837,427. These people are engaged in an effort to lead us astray in the name of short term fossil fuel profits. These companies have invested all their money in one basket, and they're not going to let anything happen to it. And they control the government through cash flow. Check out this 30 minute documentary if you want more info on the Koch Brothers' War on Climate Science.

CHINA
Ma Jun, at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, explained that China has surpassed the US as number one polluter because the pollution of the world's industry is all dumped there since we've outsourced all our factory work. They want to hold power plants accountable, and have made a cool national pollution map database that makes all emissions public, transparent, and updated hourly. They won't let companies operate in the dark. But this was only possible because China's media talked about it constantly. It motivated China's policy of green growth.

NEW DELHI, INDIA
Sunita Narain, at the Centre for Science and Environment, explained that the biggest problem in India is poverty, so energy access is as big an issue as GHGs. There are 300 million people without any form of power generation; they burn cow dung to cook on. Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa, said that they need electricity to be affordable and coal is cheap. But if they all start using it, then the entire world will be fried. One US citizen uses as much energy as 34 Indian citizens, and lifestyle consumption has to be at the centre of the discussion. Sunita explained that if the US will shift to solar and wind, if they lead the way in turning their back on the fossil fuel industry, then everyone will follow. But DiCaprio lamented that it's just not going to happen. It's a fossil addicted country. So then India won't do it either. Here's the thing: if a wealthy country can't find a way to stop using harmful energy sources, then the poor countries look at that and don't see why they should bother. The sacrifice is so much greater for the poorer countries, but the rich countries aren't going to bend on this. So we're screwed. The rich can withstand the first hits of climate change, but the poor are already impacted today. Only the poor really see that it's real and it's urgent.

PACIFIC ISLANDS
Anote Tong, President of Kiribati, regularly deals with severe flooding into fresh water ponds so there's no drinking water on the island. Soon they'll be underwater. They're trying a policy of migration with dignity: they bought land and are offering to relocate people away from the coast by choice. But the reality is that they won't be able to accommodate all their people. Tommy Remengesau, President of Palau, showed an area that was a community just a decade ago, but is completely gone. Small island nations contribute the least to climate change and feel the worst impacts.

ECOSYSTEMS
Jeremy Jackson, PhD, an American marine ecologist, says that what we've done to the rest of the world is criminal. We're reversed half a billion years of evolution by destroying ocean areas that once were dominated by abundance. They went underwater to look at areas with dead coral reef. In the last 30 years, 50% of all coral has been lost. Oceans are a stabilizing force, but they can't take in CO₂ as quickly as we're producing it. Lindsey Allen of the Rainforest Action Network says we're taking away ecosystems that normally help us stabilize climate by clearcutting and slash and burning rainforests. Farwiza Farhan, HAkA Chairperson, flew over the fires in Sumatra, Indonesia. They were intentionally set in order to make way for rows and rows of palm oil tress. It's the last place in the world with elephants, tigers, rhinos, and orangutans living together, but palm oil has taken over 90% of the forest land. Ian Singleton, PhD, runs a sanctuary to try to save them. The animals he doesn't save, die.  (Leo and Fisher almost died filming the fires.)

So, we can't seem to stop people from buying these products, and we can't seem to get the government to stop the companies from destroying the land. What else can we do?

How stupid are we that we can't see the connection between our constant consumption of these products and the destruction of the environment, or, at the very least, the destruction of animal habitat directly leading to significant extinctions?? Buy what you need, not everything you want, and stay low on the production chain.


HOW TO TURN IT AROUND??

Professor Gidon Eshel, PhD in environmental physics at Bard College, says the easiest and most important thing we can do is to change our diet. Tonight. The foremost reason for deforestation is beef, which is an inefficient form of food. 70% of agricultural land in the US is for cattle feed. And cows produce methane, CH₄, which is 20 times worse as a GHG than CO₂. It's great if you can go vegan, but it helps even to change from beef to chicken. And that's something we can all do immediately.

Elon Musk, CEO of Spacex, a Tesla Gigafactory, has made battery storage a priority. He built a Giga factory that can create power with just solar and wind. We just need 100 gigafactories to power the entire world. It's very manageable. We just need a few industrial companies to do the same thing and we'll get there very quickly.

Gregory Mankiw, Professor of Economics at Harvard, says we need a hefty carbon tax on any activity that puts carbon in the atmosphere to nudge people in the direction of doing the right thing.

BUT, my concern with this argument is that when cigarettes are taxed, people don't stop buying them. They need to get cancer to stop smoking, not a price hike. They need to see the direct consequences of their behaviour before they'll change. A gradual rise in price doesn't affect us enough. Maybe if it's a huge increase very quickly we'll actually change. We need a carbon tax that will affect industry enough to change their practices, not citizens.

Then he went on to explain the flow of power. When Obama first started he wouldn't support gay marriage because it polled terribly. But once the people got on board, he supported it. Politicians aren't elected leaders; they're elected followers. They'll say whatever the public will support. So we just need to get the public to really understand how this all works!

John Kerry, Secretary of State, says the Paris negotiations are different because Obama was able to announce his intentions to reduce with Beijing. The two largest emitters made a public declaration to reduce, which is a huge statement. The concern in the interim is that people are being displaced and there will be wars over water, and any extremist philosophy will appeal to a desperate people.

Johan Rockstrom, Stockholm Resilience Centre, says we're moving quickly towards 4° warming in this century, and we haven't been at those temperatures in 4 million years. We're moving faster than predicted and seeing impacts already. At 3° warming, regions will become unlivable and agriculture will collapse. We're hitting feedback loops where the melted ice leaves behind dark earth that absorbs more of the sun's rays. We have a really small window for world leaders to fix it. It can be done, though. Germany is at 30% renewable power, and Denmark is using 100% wind. Once we invest in it, then we have free energy forever.

BUT, I think this is the whole stopper for investors. It doesn't make financial sense to invest in something people will just need to buy once. If we can't get out of our current growth economic mindset, then we'll never survive.

Barack Obama says the Paris summit is a massive step forward, but there's no enforcement and we just have to take it on faith that each country will hit its own targets. It's historic because each country is locked into targets, so the architecture is in place. But we have to have increasingly ambitious targets for the next twenty years.

BUT - the next twenty years?!? That's way too gradual a change! We really don't have twenty years to get to the targets that we should be imposing today. Will Hilary have big enough balls to do what's necessary? Could anyone stand up the the money infiltrating congress through corporations? Which leaders will actually, for real, fight climate change when it means cutting their own funds?

Dr. Piers Sellers, an astronaut and director at the Earth Sciences Division, NASA, with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, says the science community hasn't done the best job of communicating the threat to the public. It's like an ant trying to understand an elephant by crawling around it. From space we can see everything and how it all works together. There are satellites looking at every aspect of earth every day. Their climate simulation tool shows the biggest impact will be the slowing of the gulf stream which will stop the transportation of heat to Europe, so it will get much colder there, and the moving of the precipitation belt, so there will be more drought in hot areas. This is going to fuel conflict in Darfur and Syria. It will make the US dustbowl much drier in the next decades.

The facts are crystal clear, but there are ways out of it. We have to stop burning fossil fuels right now. We need the people to come out of the fog of confusion with the issues, realistically appreciate the threat, and get on with it. 

Pope Francis says this is our home; it is going to ruin. Our common home has fallen into serious disrepair. Hope would have us recognize that there is always a way out, that we can always redirect our steps, that we can always do something to solve our problems. Still we can see signs that things are now reaching a breaking point. He made a call for action to stop global warming and poverty, to accept the modern science of climate change. We must speak out as loudly as we can and immediately take action. 

Leo DiCaprio's address to the United Nations: We have the means to stop the devastation, but lack the will. We must go beyond the promises of the agreement with no more excuses and studies and manipulation by fossil fuel companies. The world is watching. We'll either be laudified or vilified. It's up to all of us.

Now I'm Trendy, Dammit

The NY Times published a piece last night:"'Going flat' after breast cancer," about the nascent movement towards openly having a boobless chest - which is very different than a flat chest. (Brace yourself for the comments there - Frankenstein references, etc.) And here I thought I was doing something courageously original!  Turns out I'm just an early adopter, not an innovator.

When I first found out I needed a double mastectomy, I searched online for stories from women who had and who hadn't gotten reconstruction. Overwhelmingly, those who hadn't seemed to have far fewer problems, both physically and psychologically, and they managed fine with external prosthetics. So for my first appointment with the surgeon, I was firmly committed to a boobless chest. And I didn't want any prosthetics. I was glad that I had a choice at all, though. Many don't due to radiation or other complications. It feels more empowering to choose it rather than to have it the default.

But the doctor got to me. He appealed to my vanity, and I faltered. The one area of my body I'm insecure about and try to hide is the little flap of belly skin that developed after my third child. Tucking it into bikini bottoms and ensuring it stays tucked means always feeling self-conscious at the beach. And I only wear really long shirts in class in case I lift my arms and suddenly expose the horrors of a skin flap to my young charges. I admit I've googled "tummy tuck" previously but was deterred by the $10,000 price tag. Now, without boobs to keep a shirt out from my body far enough to stop it from clinging to my belly bulge, I worried it might be more of an issue for me feeling repulsive.

As I sat on the examining table, topless but with jeans on, the doctor grabbed my flab with two hands, gave it a good shake like he was shaking out a towel and said, "You could get rid of all this fat! Just move it up top, and you've got a flat stomach again. It'll just add half an hour to your surgery, and it's all covered by OHIP because it's reconstruction!"

I hadn't thought of myself as fat until that minute.

My resolve wavered, and I made an appointment to see a plastic surgeon.

But my surgeon was wrong about how it works. Something that surprised me along the way - but really shouldn't have - is that everyone involved knows their own job really well, but doesn't really understand everyone else's expertise. Really, why should they? I'm not sheepish that I can't teach calculus even though I'm a high-school teacher and took it once over thirty years ago. I can send people to the right place to ask those kinds of questions; nobody expects me to answer them myself. Except... I don't ever try to answer them and give the wrong answers with confidence. That might be a bit of a problem that warrants half a star off my doctor's otherwise stellar rating.

Prettiest at St. Elsewhere

The plastics guy was fantastic for telling me all the possible problems and pitfalls. The Times article suggests that plastic surgeons "aggressively promote reconstruction," like you might picture from TV stereotypes of greedy, superficial cosmetic surgeons, but this one didn't at all. He explained that there are two different types of procedures. The one using belly fat is done with micro-surgery that requires moving blood vessels around, and it's a 12-hour procedure that can't be done at my local hospital. It's great because the fat grows and shrinks and ages with you, so it doesn't look like a different entity, but it's a separate, 12-hour procedure!!  AND, right away he told me I don't have enough fat for even one small boob. It's all skin. Somehow, that didn't make me feel any sexier.

The other procedure, that just adds half an hour to the surgery, is with an implant. We played with the saline and silicone boobs on display, but he just uses "gummy bear implants" - solid silicone that won't be damaged by being punctured and can't leak. It feels exactly like a gummy bear. BUT the surgery doesn't all end with just that additional 30 minutes in the O.R. That's just to put in a skin-stretcher: a balloon-thingy that they add to with an injection every week so the skin can slowly expand enough to fit an implant. THEN, weeks later, you have to go back under again to get the actual implant added. AND there are so many complications with scaring and rejection and dimpling around the prosthetic. As he said, it's not a breast implant, it's a prosthetic implant. I can barely tolerate plastics in my life, much less in my body. I thanked him so much for telling it like it is, tucked my flap back in my jeans, and went on my merry way.

At my next appointment, I asked my surgeon how long I should wait before getting a tattoo. I already have vines up each arm and now I can have them join in some wonderfully delicate display on my chest. The only grieving I did before losing my breasts was when I'd think about losing my butterfly tattoo. I got it decades ago when I was trying to wean my son from breastfeeding. He was already three and showed no signs of giving it up willingly, so I was working on getting him through longer and longer periods without. But the little monkey would sneak into my room at night to nurse while I slept dead to the world! I tried wearing a bodysuit to bed, but he was able to get around anything this side of a suit of armour. So I got the tattoo to mark the transformation from my breasts being purely functional to being beautiful again, and, most importantly, to make sure I'd wake up from the pain for the first few days and stop my little snuggler in the act. It worked! And then it became a memento of that precious time of my life with my little ones.

When I was waiting to go into the O.R., my kids asked if there was some way we could keep that bit of skin, and we made some pretty sick jokes involving pressing the butterfly in a book even though there are much better ways to save tattoos. But with the surgeon being pretty old-fashioned about aesthetics to begin with, I suggested they could ask him. I had too much else on my mind. And it can always be re-done among the vines.

My doctor didn't really answer the question about how long to wait to be inked, but advised I wait a good, long while in case I reconsider getting reconstruction. "You're still young!" was his primary argument as if giving up breasts means giving up romance or life itself. I guess it's his experience that women change their mind afterwards, and that it helps them to look like themselves again, but I'd still like my question answered! I know I'm not quite dead yet, but I think I can muster the courage to make it through my remaining years without looking traditionally female. We can totally rock a boobless chest, despite misgivings from the Trumps in the crowd! And maybe the work of art on my chest will be enough to distract from that extra bit of skin sneaking out of my bottoms at the beach. Maybe.

Just a Flesh Wound

This is a figuring kind of post wherein I try to make sense of it all. I have all sorts of thoughts about breasts now.

I had to get the dressing changed today, so I got a glimpse of myself for the first time. The nurse at the CCAC was wonderful. She taught me to "milk" my drainage tubes so they don't get clots in them. When she asked how's my milking going, I thought she was talking about lactating, and I was baffled that it was still possible. It's not. Nobody had mentioned clearing the tubes before, so good to know. She was very gentle taking off all the bandages, and the only place that hurt were my armpits, which I predicted with all my feminist hairiness and all. It felt great to have the bandages off, to be able to scratch the sticky places and get nice and clean before it was all covered up again. I didn't look too closely at where the drains went in; that might have turned my stomach. But looking down at my flat chest wasn't so bad. It's absolutely amazing how quickly we can adapt to some pretty significant changes in our lives!

I'm deliberating over posting a picture of myself, not because of any sense of decency (since I have little in that respect), or because people might say mean things about my middle age body, but because I'm a teacher. We get fired or otherwise penalized for weird things from time to time. Supporting the BDS movement can be enough to get suspended. I'd hate for someone to be traumatized and then it be decided that the community has lost all faith in my ability to school the young because I'm willing to let people know I look like a boy. So maybe another day.

Pietro Boselli in some tiny shorts.

I didn't march in the topless parade, which happened here just over a year ago, for the same reason. Teachers generally have to remain covered up. Well, actually, it's perfectly okay for male teachers to have their shirts off. So, is it the case that it's okay because there's less fat on their pecs? Because then flat-chested females should be okay, but they're not. Facebook policy makes it clear that it's female nipples, specifically, that can't be seen. Women of any cup-size can bare their breasts if they have their nipples covered, but male nipples of any size or shape aren't nearly as offensive, which spurred the whole "free the nipple" campaign. Then Rolling Stone said they'd show uncovered nipples on men and trans women only, which implies that women's nipples are still offensive, and, worse, that trans women aren't really women so it's okay to show them too. I'm not sure if I fit in with the men or women now, but if it's only women's nipples that get censored, the fact that I don't have any nipples at all should mean it's okay to be topless, right? And it's legal in Ontario anyway. But there's always that community standards thing that can costs someone their job. Even this paragraph might be enough to do me in!

When I first signed a teaching contract in the early 90s, I was unmarried and just that day found out I was pregnant. A few older teachers I barely knew came out of the woodwork to suggest I couldn't continue to be pregnant and teach - that I'd have to make a choice - because what will people think?! I'll tell ya what they'll think: I had sex outside the confines of matrimony, like most people do. I wasn't doing anything harmful or immoral or beyond the boundaries of current customs, but carrying the pregnancy to term, unmarried, made it clearly known that this is what's acceptable to us now. I kept teaching and even had two more little bastards to complete the set. I was just showing us what we all knew already but weren't quite ready to see.

Mastectomies are nothing new, but I'm wary of sharing too much because it's still something women do privately. We're not really ready to see this part of our reality yet either. Women without breasts typically use something to make it appear that they have breasts sometimes just so as not to offend. Which is a shame. I don't think it's a problem if someone feels like breasts are an important part of their identity - that option of reconstruction should definitely be available, but I do think it's unfortunate if some women only want prosthetics so they don't freak people out.

Normal is overrated.

My surgeon did a great job! I was worried that I'd have little dog ears of fat or uneven bits, but it's pretty smooth. I feel like I'm ten-years-old again! And there's just enough fat in the middle that I could fake a bit of cleavage if I were so inclined.

I have some knitted knockers that I ordered weeks ago just in case. They're cute, soft prosthetics that a small army of volunteers knits and sends to women losing a breast or two. I can add or take out stuffing to make them any size I need for the occasion. I have a couple dresses with darts in them where breasts would go, so the top would droop and flap on someone flat-chested. I'd hate to never wear them again, but now I have options. I can use my prosthetics in a bra when I'm feeling like looking tailored and womanly, but when I'm biking or building or doing anything useful, I can be completely unencumbered.

But can I really be a different shape each day? It's curious that there's a certain consistency expected in our appearance. Changing wigs or style completely throws people off - unless someone changes styles so regularly that that is their style. Actually, on second thought we're okay with someone getting a hair transplant, or a good dye job, but not a crappy toupee or have monochromatic Grecian Formula hair. Sitcoms teach us it's acceptable to laugh at people doing a bad job of trying to improve themselves. I guess it's more the case that if we fake it, we have to fake it well enough to pass.  If you're going to the trouble to make yourself look better, then you have to do it well. You can get a boob job, but get caught stuffing with kleenexes and you risk being a laughingstock, like Jenna in the first ten seconds of this trailer.




Or in the last 20 seconds of this oldie, when Rob Lowe makes fun of her Spanx.



People laugh when we try to be something we're not, but only if we're not savvy enough to carry it off. It's the Caitlyn Jenner effect that she can be lauded because she's got the money for the best surgery and outfits going, but it's that much more difficult for Cathy down the street to be accepted in old Value Village outfits and falsies. It's not cool that we do that, but there it is.

So what drives that? It's curious that I'd also roll my eyes at anyone trying but failing. I'm wondering to what extent I can change my boob size daily as the mood shifts knowing that I might raise an eyebrow at someone stuffing their bra.

Natural beauty is what it's all about, right? We used to be told to accept ourselves as we are. That's trickier to teach now. It's still a good lesson in general, to appreciate what makes you unique instead of trying to match an inaccessible ideal, but then there's a wall that some people hit there. I can embrace who I am as a very short, stalky woman. I was never bothered by taunts of "thunder thighs" because somehow I had internalized how useful it was to have strong tree trunk legs (well, stumps really). I have no idea how to teach that kind of self-acceptance, though. The quest for perfection is a problem individually because it's unattainable and socially because it has us ignoring useful differences in a move towards uniformity, which, worst of all, is really boring. But if it can get us through the day, if it can help us to reach a modicum of social acceptance that allows us to manage our lives with fewer hassles, then sometimes a shift towards the narrow range of media-driven ideals might create more personal benefits than is lost by a rejection of our own "natural" beauty.

Watch out for some nightmarish results.

But sometimes we don't look anything like we think of ourselves as looking. Somehow I just adapt to however I look and move on even when others might be horrified, but others can't move on so easily. When my son was seven, he got some skin tags removed from his face. I left them there until he was old enough to make his own decision about them. If he ended up punk, I wanted him to have options of more things to pierce! But he wasn't headed in that direction, so off them came. It was a really minor event, and at no point did I think it necessary to try to convince him to embrace his natural self. He's still himself, just without the extra bits that didn't quite fit with his personal perception.

Sometimes the natural self isn't quite what works for us. So maybe it's not such a big deal to stuff and squeeze, to paint, powder, and pad as it suits us each day. Hmm...

Oh, what the hell:

72 hours after surgery.