Putting on Our Thinking Caps

I came across a few things that I have been pondering. I read that there were over 250,000 breast enhancement operations performed last year in this country. On the cover of a magazine in the grocery line there was some woman who had undergone plastic surgeries (plural--very plural from the looks of her ‘before’ picture) as part of some TV show. The headline on the cover asked if perhaps TV had gone “too far.” Unless the show is called Frankenstein I would have to say that, yes, they probably went too far. And then I started thinking about all of those fake boobs again.

Consider 250,000 breast enhancements, each adding--on average--four cubic inches to the bust; that is an annual increase of 1,000,000 cubic inches in bust for the nation. I’m not a scientist so I have no idea of the medical results of this staggering figure but as a philosopher I can ponder the moral, ethical, and environmental implications.

If we look at this from a conservation standpoint I think we are on to something here. I propose that instead of using saline implants we use landfill matter to make fake boobs, ditto with collagen lip injections. We could reduce landfill usage by 35% annually. The new breast implants would need to include vents for the methane fumes released by landfill matter but that would be a simple procedure (a vent disguised as a piercing?). Indoor areas with heavy breast implants traffic—an Academy Awards presentation, for example—would need extra air circulation, but the benefits of this proposal far outweigh the adverse results.

Now back to the other matter. Please tell me that there really isn’t a TV show in which people get all kinds of plastic surgery. Please tell me that this is just a practical joke on me, because I can take getting laughed at for being so gullible as to believe that there actually could be a TV show where people get plastic surgery just for the hell of it. I would rather get laughed at for that than know that I live in a culture that is so incredibly bored and fatuous that people watch TV shows about other people getting cut up and rearranged.

If that isn’t a big joke on me then the next question is: Where do we go from here? Let’s all pretend that we are Hollywood entertainment big shots sitting around a conference room discussing the future of television. How do we go even lower than a show in which people are butchered by doctors? How about a game show where contestants pig out at an all-you-can-eat buffet and then see who can take the biggest dump? I know that is disgusting and puerile but I’m thinking that someone has pitched that idea to producers in America’s entertainment capital. Maybe it is already in development.

How about a show where you get to throw your TV off a cliff and it lands on a Hollywood producer or a talk show host? How about a show where you watch people at the library reading books and becoming more interesting instead of morphing into a pile of horse manure right there on their arm chairs in front of the tube? Would you watch a horror movie called Planet of the Women with Natural Breasts and Very Little Make-up?

BONUS BIT I have long felt that our national motto of E Pluribus Unum is obsolete and in need of an overhaul. Today I found its replacement. On the side window of a dirty van someone had written, “Show Us Ur Tits Now!" I think this phrase better defines the America of the early years of the 21rst century. I like the “Now” part as it adds the quality of an implied threat to this command.