Ch-Ch-Ch-angezzz

      For those of you still bother to check this page occasionally, the Not-So-Good Doctor has shorn his beard and most of his hair. He has, in other words, reclaimed the wildwood, and now looks more like some retarded page-boy than the Green Knight or some brown-haired King Lear. The swarthy Celtic look has now been jettisoned, or, rather, it is on its way there. (There is a perverse pleasure to it: those of us that can change our appearances so drastically can feel, however falsely, like we're regaining years.) I now, apparently, look like I'm in my mid-twenties again, which I find hilarious for reasons that should be obvious. Unfortunately, the lack of fur exposes my ugly-- or, as the kids say these days, "fugly"-- mug more than it used to be beneath my (not apparently but measured, by a curious waitress-friend) 9" bangs. I'll miss the concealment. So, I'm sure, will those that have to look at me on any sort of regular basis. Zelda-Zozo, the real one and not the imposter, will no doubt giggle hysterically at the thought of Doc J looking like a page-boy. This is rather like making Richard Harris resemble Haley Joel Osment. (And people wonder why I hate my face.)

      In other news: a curiosity regarding the matter led me to weigh the cats yesterday, with Trouble clocking in at 17lbs, -3 lbs from his usual of the past Gawd-knows-how-many-years. The weighing itself was the result of this: I knew he felt lighter than he had, and Jenny's tendency to eat like a fluffer at a gangbang had compelled it. Jenny, a month and change ago seeming so slight, has now peared-out to 15lbs, which is typical for any females that enter my sphere of influence and so proceed to eat without chewing. But, Gawd love her, poor Jenny, my hair now so much reduced, has taken to trying to clean my ears, my eyelids, my forehead and my neck now that she has so much less hair to "clean." Given the scratchiness of a cat's tongue, you can probably surmise how difficult this is to tolerate without lapsing into prostrated giggles. She still barely leaves my side, and she's obviously most content when the Doc is asleep or seated, so she can be assured of his presence, if not attention, without interruption. Oddly enough, Trouble used to be like this, but no longer is-- or seldom is unless he can be assured of absolute privacy. He's a proud cat. He STILL thinks he's John Wayne, after all.

      As for the felines, I should mention this: she-- easily-- eats 2 to 3 times what he does in a day, and she'll pry, or try to, into avenues (the green box, loose juice containers, empty plates) that Trouble would never go near. SHE IS A PIGLET, Gawd lub her. She's incorrigable, but she's adorable, even if she has made it perfectly clear that, as much as she warms to others, she is My Cat. Would any woman I've ever known had even a sliver of her sense of devotion-- or loyalty.... Even that sliver might keep me from being as cynical as I am. (In the end, it hardly matters. The Doc loves his girls. He can't help it. Call it a curse. He does. Regularly, and with much profanity.)

      But now, he says returning to a previous point, I wonder how much authority I'd command in a classroom of adults now looking like Doogie Howser's fugly cousin. It matters little. I'm screwed any which way I go. The old man in a young man's shape, or the young man in an older man's form, I'm always-already contradictory. Smarter minds know how to reconcile these things; to lesser ones, the problem can seem Everest-like. Maybe scale is everything. And I was always-already too ***** for myself. Go figger. Ironist that I am, I should have been born into a less-ironic age. Or at least a less-Alanis-kinda-ironic age. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Not only do I think I missed my calling, I missed my time period by decades. Grumble, gru.... Well, you know the rest.