This Merchant's Flesh

Circumstances recently led to my discovery of adhesive strips that come in a variety of skin tones. Perhaps they’ve been around for a bit of a while, but I wouldn’t know. I don’t use that stuff. I like to keep my wounds open. Exposed to the elements. That’s how my healing process works.

Anyway, the intent behind their introduction seems clear. The manufacturers must have been trying to address a perceived problem with their product. I just think that they misunderstood the problem.

The fact that their product’s flesh tone was only applicable to white people was unreasonable in their opinion. They set out to create tones that were suitable for various ethnicities. In my opinion, those other ethnicities were the lucky ones in this particular situation.

Let’s take a look at the original flesh tone of this bandage.

Whose flesh is that? That’s not how skin is supposed to look! Even if one Caucasian individual were theoretically lucky enough to have skin of a shade that perfectly matched the colour of this thing, it’s not going to fool anyone who’s standing within 40 metres. It’s rough and slick like rubber. It’s bumpy and ludicrously porous. It’s marked by the same problems that make modern prostheses seem so inimical to me. If I have a choice between something that tries and fails to seem human and something that’s functionally successful in accordance with its own distinct aesthetic, I’ll always choose the latter. Captain Hook’s namesake wasn’t a thing of terror by itself. It was a mere device that afforded its owner some measure of convenience after his altercation with that sneaky crocodile. By the same token, we have that shiny metal hand that Anakin got before he went down the inadvisable path that led to his transformation into the more explicitly robotic Darth Vader.

From opposite ends of the technological spectrum, these prostheses fulfill their duties without making any unjustifiable claims to humanity. Unfortunately, the current state of this science lies mainly in the middle, yet it makes pretensions to the kind of verisimilitude that exists only at the highest end of that spectrum. There’s no use in trying to skip straight to the seamless cybernetic perfection that Luke Skywalker’s replacement hand achieved when you can’t even succeed in replicating the functional versatility of his father’s less comely attachment.

The aesthetic failings of the prosthetic game should be heeded by the makers of these adhesive strips. In both cases, the point stands. If you can’t make the imitation perfect, don’t bother to imitate at all. There’s a reason for which more traditional types of medical dressing have generally been white. It’s a neutral colour. It doesn’t try to seem organic or inconspicuous. It just does its job without putting anyone off. No one feels disturbed at the sight of a white cast. Why did Band-Aid make a mission of mimicking Caucasian skin in the first place? Would a plain white design really be so unbearable? Neither option would fool anyone into ignoring the bandage, but at least the one that’s actually white wouldn’t try to do so.

Now, I haven’t worn one of these things since childhood, but the flesh tone wasn’t preferable even then. The ones that bore bright, gaudy designs were always the clear choice. I think that the last adhesive strip I ever wore had the logo of Spider-Man upon its face. I’d make the same choice today.

The answer to your problem is clear, manufacturer. Remove all the flesh tones. Remove them entirely and replace them with Spider-Man. If that doesn’t work for you for some bizarre reason, plain white is always an option.

Spider-Man’s the safe bet, though.

Update on Sunday, November 24, 2013 at 07:19PM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Best flesh? Young.

Shoelace

I finally managed to get an appropriate pair of resilient shoes a few weeks ago. For the past several years, I’ve gone through a minimum of three pairs annually. I generally prefer to have one pair for everything, but even when I relented and got some leather boots for particularly harsh weather, my main shoes just wouldn’t last. When my most recent favourites reached a state of unacceptable deterioration at the end of the winter, I felt vulnerable enough to temporarily set aside some of my aesthetic concerns. I wanted a reprieve from this cycle of decay, and I decided to provide a bit of extra emphasis to function over form. After a brief search, I found some suitably garish running shoes that seemed to promise a degree of longevity. With that, I resolved to clear thoughts of footwear from my mind for a healthy period.

After a while, this resolution began to lessen. This gradual process was presaged by my first pedicure, which made sandals seem like a possibility for the first time in a decade. The ones I found weren’t terribly useful for frequent wear, but they marked my return to the open toe world quite well.

Right?

Months passed before I began to consider new shoes again, but the incongruity of what I wore on my feet against every other aspect of my appearance was never too far from my mind. When a pair of Hassidic businessmen stopped me during a busking expedition to comment on this harsh contrast, I finally started to actively search for something new.

Eventually, I happened to find a Chuck Taylor variant with shiny black scales. Obviously, I purchased them immediately. Their laces were extremely thick, which was probably why a pair of standard laces was included with them. I liked the aesthetic of the default lace, but the thickness seemed mildly inconvenient, for I like to tie my laces quite tightly. In the spirit of compromise, I switched the lace of the right shoe to the thinner one, leaving the option of a switch for the left shoe for a later date. Following this, I promptly lost the other replacement lace. Within the last week or two, the thickness of the left shoe’s lace started to seem undesirable, but I wasn’t motivated to do anything about it.

Another thing for which I feel no motivation is the prospect of paying for parties. It’s not a big thing for me, and I certainly wouldn’t decide against a good party for that reason, but in most situations, the whole process basically amounts to paying to dance. I am fond of dancing, but it’s generally not something I do with any intent. It’s usually just something I do when the mood strikes. It’s the kind of thing I do to assuage my impatience on subway rides. It’s a good diversion when I’ve completely given up on sleep. It’s an activity that can ably fill a variety of situations, but it’s rarely the central point of the situation. Can you imagine a library with a door fee? That’s how cover charges feel to me sometimes. Reading’s a fine activity, but I wouldn’t pay to do it in a place where I couldn’t even choose the book.

But I did say that I don’t avoid good parties, and I maintain that position. Thus, I eagerly accepted a friend’s invitation to join him at his organisation’s concert on Friday. In fairness, the deal was lent a touch of extra sugar by the discount that my friend’s relationship with the party’s benefactors afforded me.

The whole night was great, and it certainly would have been worth the $5 on its own merits. I was therefore surprised and gratified to receive a gift bag as I left the club. A gift bag that contained soft, vivid shoelaces! I still don’t really know what else is in the bag, and I don’t really care. I switched out the lace in my left shoe with this shiny new one at the first opportunity. Now my awesome shoes match each other in comfort even as they maintain the visual asymmetry of which I am so fond.

This is what happens when I pay to dance.

Update on Sunday, November 17, 2013 at 11:10PM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Best lace? Old.

Grampa Gal

I’ve been thinking that Galactus is basically the ultimate expression of that old stereotype of the bitter, entitled old man. For the sake of clarity, I’m not endorsing faith in that stereotype. I know the folly of such things. Indeed, I could almost be the face of the stereotype of the entitled young man, but that does little to bolster its validity.

Anyway, I’m thinking about this guy. This guy who holds on fiercely to the fashions of a bygone era. This man who refuses to give up his giant old car despite its obvious inconveniences and the fact that he doesn’t even really need it.

Your grandfather's Edsel fills the entire garage. Galactus's Worldship fills an entire solar system.

He devours worlds for a living. The consumption of planets is literally what he does to live. Healthy planets. The sorts of planets that often support life. Despite the gargantuan scale of the atrocities he has committed in search of a good meal, he seems less willing than most to countenance any aspersions on his morality. On the contrary, he feels that whatever he's done is fair because he's been through a lot. Nothing's going to change him. He's old and set in his ways.

“You’ve really got to stop eating all of these planets, Galactus. It’s bad form.” “But I’m an old man!” “That’s not an excuse.” “I’ve been through hardships!” “Like what? World War II?” “The death of my universe.” “Yeah, well. We’ve all got problems.”

Bugs in Beds and Heads

I happened to leave the movie theatre tonight just as a shift was ending, and I overheard the farewells of the counter staff as I wandered towards the exit. One individual chose to recite a series of platitudes to a colleague in an apparent attempt to send her off with high spirits.

"Good luck. Drive safe. Don't let the bedbugs bite."

That last phrase provoked sincere nervousness in the girl. She protested the very mention of bedbugs and expressed her vicious aversion to the mere consideration of the potential for bedbugs in her home. 

I was struck by her reaction, which mirrored a stark sense of sober unease about bedbugs that seems increasingly pervasive in today's society. I'm 23, and I think that this girl might have been younger by a few years, which would fit with my casual observations of the prevalence of this attiude among people around her age. I suppose that these people are technically quite close to my age too, but I feel that the difference of a few years is somewhat significant in this case.

Working in the gay club scene in 2012, I'd often hear people hastily beseech each other for impromptu trysts around closing time. Such encounters could usually be arranged with little bother, for the night's chill can combine with inebriated passions to soothe any sparks of worry or reluctance that a potential lover might feel. However, some people went beyond the standard claims of their homes' warmth and proximity in these perfunctory invitations. One feature that seemed to recur in these discussions was an assurance of the destination's absolute freedom from bedbugs, and the people that included this addendum generally fell within the fairly narrow age bracket of that girl from the cinema.

As I am not exactly a man of the people, I'm reluctant to speak for everyone, but I can say that my ignorance of the bedbug scourge is strongly tied to the fact that my childhood fell near the end of the era in which these creatures scarcely had an existence outside lullabies. When I heard that rhyme, the subject bore no weight but that of a harmless hobgoblin. However, what fell beneath my notice was the very real renaissance of the bedbug plague in the years after I outgrew that facetious bedtime maxim. While the children whose births came shortly after mine grrew up in a world where bedbugs were a true concern, I'm unable to feel any kind of actual fear for the minuscule beasts because my conception of them is forever stuck in that childhood mode.

On the other hand, my mother, who holds a bit of contempt for my deep loathing of spiders, has become quite wary of the bedbug menace in the years since she jokingly whispered of their bite to my infant self. This implies that my inability to partake in this modern sentiment is partially due to my stubborn psyche, which makes a bit of sense too.

Update on Monday, November 4, 2013 at 03:02AM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Worst part about this post? I lost the entire thing when my computer froze in the middle of the last sentence. 

Armgasm

Recently, I was fortunate enough to hear from a friend who decided that he’d like to drum in my band for a while. That seat has been empty for most of the last year, and when we got together for our first practice session, all of us were gratified to finally play with a full band again.

Since the spring, I’ve been having some problems with my left shoulder. The whole thing started when a seizure caused a dislocation, which seems to have loosened things to a point where new dislocations are wont to occur with randomness and relative ease. Fortunately, I’m almost always able to sort things out within a few minutes. I even dislocated it once in the middle of a busking session during the summer, but no one noticed because Dave was playing a guitar solo at the time. If I’d been singing, I might have momentarily stopped and made the incident more obvious thereby, but I wasn’t. Dave was displaying his musical wizardry while I did my usual convulsive dance. When the dislocation occurred, it probably didn’t seem too incongruent with what I was doing at the time. Things were back to normality by the arrival of the next verse anyway.

During this rehearsal, I wasn’t so lucky. I dislocated my shoulder right in the middle of a stanza, and my line was cut short by a curt shriek. Now, I won’t deny that I have been known on occasion to punctuate my songs with screams of various types, but these utterances never interrupt my words, and I’d hardly call them curt.

The incident wasn’t too bad. I left the room momentarily to sort myself out, and I was back in fine form before the drummer even arrived.

I actually just remembered that the drummer wasn’t present when this happened. I think that the rest of us were just warming up while we waited for him to arrive. I’d probably be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that his tardiness was caused by circumstances outside of his control. He’s not some “Spinal Tap” caricature. He’s a decent guy who was simply beset by transit trouble. In full honesty, I’m almost definitely the worst person in the band in matters of punctuality. I also started my musical life as a drummer, but that had nothing to do with my tendency to arrive late. It had everything to do with the fact that nobody wanted to hear me sing.

Anyway, when I got back from my brief rest, jokes were made about the potential for this kind of thing to happen during an actual performance. It seemed like a fairly hilarious prospect in the middle of a rock-and-roll show. But the whole thing got me to think about something else for a moment.

If anything of this sort happened in the middle of a Bruno Mars concert, everyone would probably be quite understanding. Festivities would stop, he’d be rushed offstage, and the headlines would be sympathetic. If the exact same thing happened to Mick Jagger, David Lee Roth, or anyone else who’s too old to be Bruno’s sibling, the accident would be a target of laughter and derision. The fact that episodes of infirmity are much commoner in older people than they are in those who share a generation with Bruno and me doesn’t really seem to make it easier for those older people to get a pass when such things actually happen to them. It’s like that phenomenon whereby fat babies are hilarious to everyone despite the fact that most babies are rather plump anyway.

I will say this, though. The feeling I get when I pop things back into place after a dislocation almost makes the whole ordeal worth it. That’s some powerful pleasure. Have you ever had a sneeze that completely removed the cold that caused it? Does that happen? I don’t know. I just know that it’s an incredible sensation. If everyone could do that on command, genitals would come to teeter on the edge of obsolescence. At this point of the night, I don’t fully feel irresponsible enough to recommend the experience, but I would advise you to enjoy this part if you happen to find yourself in it.

Update on Monday, October 28, 2013 at 03:48AM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Best Mars? Mars Ultor.