Doctor, My Eyes

A pair of vaguely related random randomnesses.

Image by DesignDraw DesignDrawArtes from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." -the Borg

Dear Gentlereaders,

My last column, in blatant violation of company policy, was published Sunday, 5/18. As my millions of regular gentlereaders are aware, my column is supposed to be officially published every other Saturday. It's usually unofficially released into the wild on Friday evenings, but that's a secret, so don't tell anyone. 

The reason for this was explained in the truncated column released on Sunday, and a commitment was made to post something with a bit more meat on the bones in short order. This is that column.

{There goes the vegetarian vote.} 

Balance has been restored to the Force and my next column will be officially released on Saturday, 5/31/25, Lor' willin' an' th' crick don' rise. Tell your friends. 

{Lor' willin' an' th' crick don' rise?}

 

Here's a link for any other etymologically inclined nerds in the audience. Appropos of not much, greater Pittsburgh area natives, where cricks abound, are aware that I'm not talking about a crick in my neck.  

I have a lazy eye, lazy eyes actually. My big brother claims it's because of the time he "accidentally" tipped over my baby buggy, and I landed on my head. 

While there's a kernel of truth buried in this apocryphal tale -- i.e., I really did fall out of my baby buggy while he was pushing me back and forth at the time, perhaps with a bit too much enthusiasm to shut me up while Mum made dinner -- but I don't think I hit the floor hard enough to permanently knock my eyeballs out of whack. 

When my brother tells this story he likes to opine that as a result of the tragedy I can see around corners, so all's well that ends well. 

My lazy eyes, although sometimes a problem when I'm attempting to talk to someone whom I've never met before, because they think I'm looking at something or someone sneaking up behind them, have not left me permanently psychologically scarred. 

Also, early on, I perfected a method wherein I stand at a bit of an angle to someone when I speak to them so that they're only required to deal with the eyeball that's pointed at them. 

Unfortunately, this doesn't always work. Some people notice what I'm doing and wonder why this dude is standing at an angle. Is he preparing to execute some sort of martial arts move that will result in them waking up later with their wallet and car keys missing?     

That said...

{Hold up there, Sparky. Did you say lazy eyes? Plural?}

I did, Dana, yes. I can look at a person with either eye, but the other one will move to the far end of its respective socket, like it's trying to escape, or see around the corner. While I can't see around corners, it occurs to me that if I could, I might've had a much more exciting life as a spy.

{Or a mugger.}

I saw (see what I did there) some sort of specialist when I was very young. He said that the only way to fix the problem was with surgery, and that the problem could eventually return anyway. That was all me and Mum needed to hear; she didn't want someone sticking a knife in my eye any more than I did. We were outta there.

Dad, not exactly well known for being a supportive, hands-on parent, got mad. His position was that I should do some sort of eye exercises and somehow will my eyes into behaving, like a real man would. A sort of visual version of walk it off, son. He subtly but effectively made it clear he found my problem embarrassing to him.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), it never occurred to me to spend my life trying to get his approval by becoming a RBFD in some form or fashion while accumulating a hooge pile of dough.

{That's why you squeak by on a fixed income. You should write a book claiming that, between your eyeball problems and a father who was more like a benign but disinterested grandfather than a Dad, yours has been a life of constant struggle. Good money in being a professional victim nowadays. Say, have you ever done time or been addicted to drugs?}

No, but I am addicted to pizza. I also...

{Have you ever thought about wearing an eye patch to make it easier to communicate when you're out and about? It would be perfect for when you're promoting your book, and/or becoming a social media influencer.}

I have indeed considered wearing an eye patch from time to time, but I always talked myself out of it figuring it would generate more unwanted attention than my wandering eyes. 

Hold on a sec, I'll be right back...

Hey, Amazon offers a large selection of eye patches in various materials, colors, and patterns. You can even get one that features a skull and a pair of crossed swords. I'll bet the chicks would dig it, maybe I'll get one yet. 

Aargh!

Now, despite the trauma of having lived a life with two lazy eyes and the fact that I've been chronically a day late and two (adjusted for inflation) dollars short, I was never tempted to become the CEO of a ginormous healthcare firm to resolve my physical, psychological, or financial issues.

United Healthcare (UHC) which has been much in the news of late due to the assassination of its CEO by Chuck Mangione's grandson, a falling stock price, and most importantly which provides my Medicare Advantage Plan, is now under investigation for fraud... related to its Medicare Advantage Plan, leaving me to wonder if I'm going to have to switch companies and/or be left holding a bag of poop when I'm least expecting it.

They haven't ripped me off in any way as far as I can tell, in fact, just the opposite. However, I hate them anyway for several reasons, the main one being that it's virtually impossible to resolve any problem over the phone, even if you can manage to reach a human being with all-American names like Steve or Sally. I have reason to believe they may not use their real names.  

Hint for fellow sufferers: Find a way to make the problem something your doctor's clerks need to deal with. Otherwise, don't waste your time or call a lawyer.  

Another tip, you know that promised free transportation to medical appointments? The subcontractor they farm this out to farms it out to another subcontractor in your area. 

You may learn the hard way, as I did, that you should've made other arrangements. Walking would've been better than risking my life with that crazy chick with crazy long glow-in-the-dark fingernails who drove with one hand while continuously texting with the other while executing the occasional panic stop and blowing through traffic signals.

{You made that up!} 

No, I didn't. 

{Did you complain?} 

To ModivCare? The firm that works for UHC? Fill out the form, human, we'll get back to you, promise, by email. We have more important things to do than talk to "end users," but we're developing an AI system to handle annoyances like you. 

Bend over and grin. Resistance is futile; you've been assimilated.

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2025-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

 

 

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Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

                     ABOUT                                              GLOSSARY 

"An obsession with untold stories is a source of energy." -Greil Marcus

Dear Gentlereaders,

Normally, I have a spare column or two stashed in the lower right-hand drawer of my hooge, custom-made roll top desk for situations like this.

I've been wrestling with my muse over a subject that...well, I've finally given up on. The main problem was trying to distill it down. Too many words and too broad a hypothesis. Too broad a subject to fit into a mere column or two?  

Might just be me. I am a garrulous geezer after all, but I really wanted to "get it out there." I became slightly obsessed. 

{What's the difference between obsessed and slightly obsessed?}

Usually, if I abandon a notion for a week or two, the problem resolves itself. I return to it with fresh eyes (a refreshed psyche?), and the solution reveals itself. Sometimes the solution is to click the delete button, but that's okay. The sense of relief, irregardless, is almost physical in nature. 

I'm told this is normal among certain "creative" types, no matter the art form, but since I find such people to be highly annoying, I refuse to acknowledge that (even if only occasionally) I might be one. Let us never speak of this again. 

Big BUT, in my defense...

I became slightly obsessed with trying to finish the project because I kept getting this close. In the interim, I published the backup columns that were in the now empty drawer, convinced I would resolve the problems of the column from hell by last Saturday and publish the damn thing. No Joy. 

The good news is that I tossed it in the burn barrel, and I've been accepted into a highly regarded rehabilitation program. Also, while rooting through the aforementioned desk in search of a lost receipt that I need desperately because... never mind, I found a couple of partially finished, vaguely related, random randomnesses that will be published/posted as a single (shortish) column in a day or two. Wednesday, 5/20/25 at the latest.

I've already begun working on the next column after that at the suggestion of Dr. Freidrich Puffendorfer, director of the Puffendorfer Center for (mildly) Obsessed Writers and Other Mostly Unsuccessful Artistic Types, a.k.a. P.C.(m)O.W.O.M.U.A.T.

MEM 

Scroll down to comment, share my work, or scroll through previous columns. I post links to my columns on my Facebook page so you can love me, hate me, or call for my execution via social media. Cranky don't tweet (Xclaim?).

Copyright 2025-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

The Male Gaze

Image by Pitsch from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

                     ABOUT                                              GLOSSARY 

"If you can't look, you might as well be dead." -Reda Mehlmauer (my Mum)

Please Note: No doubt, at least some of you were expecting to encounter Confessions of a Popsicle Pusher, Part 3, and are wondering what's up. It's complicated...but part three may yet appear at a future date. In the meantime, I hope you find that what follows gives you your money's worth. 

Dear Gentlereaders,

Generally speaking, male H. sapiens (a.k.a. men) of all stripes are effectively dogs who remain "in heat" most of the time. 

{You have a keen eye for the obvious, sir. Doesn't everyone already know this?}

One would think so, but what was once considered simply a fact, basic biology, is now considered yet another outrage perpetrated by the patriarchy in certain circles.

I taught my daughter that all men are pigs in heat, including me, so she should live life accordingly. A woman I know, who accepts that this is true but likes men (in general) anyway, told me that for various and sundry reasons, she thinks dog is a better word choice, and I've come to agree. 

I prefer to think of myself as a dog because I'm a bit of a clean freak, and I think of dogs as being much cleaner than pigs.

{You should think of yourself as a cat then.} 

No, Dana, definitely not, please stop stepping on my metaphor. Anyway, we don't choose to be this way; we are this way. We also all share another, related fundamental characteristic: we are visually oriented creatures. We are visually oriented creatures with our dials turned all the way up.

{Once again, your keen eye for the obvious is on display! See, what I did there? Cool, right?}

Recently, the term male gaze wandered into my personal awareness zone but got away before I could capture and interrogate it.

{Huh?}

I had clicked on a link, male gaze, via the open in new tab option that had turned up in something I was reading online, intending to get to it later, but it escaped before I had a chance to do so. This is the price you pay for being a would-be polymath. One link leads to another, that link leads to...etc...and then someone tells you dinner is ready, and before ya know it...

{You're seventy-something and regularly subject to getting lost in the links?}

I'm fascinated with (and by) the power of this phenomenon, but it turns out that the male gaze can also be just male gaze (without the the) and doesn't refer to exactly what I thought it did. I know this now because I've since done a bit o'-googlin' on the subject; please stay tuned. In the meantime... 

  

I've been a biologically male H. sapien (a.k.a. man) for almost 72 years now. I've had a lot of straight, gay, and confused friends and acquaintances over the years who are also men. 

I've never known a hormonally captured biological male who didn't automatically react to visual cues that coincided with their personal sexuality. Coach Skynyrd confirmed this in high school health class. He also told us that while we can't help but look, a gentleman should attempt to be discreet and not be a pig about it.  

Granted, this was a long time ago. Society was still suffering under the illusion that male and female H. sapiens are radically different creatures separated by more than mere plumbing. This was so long ago that boys and girls in my high school attended same sex health classes, even though my school was coed.

{Seriously?}

Now, most (alright, many) men aren't as dumb as women think we are and are quite aware of the fact that many women don't think twice about exploiting our visual obsession for fun or profit, both benignly and malignantly.

Of course, this is unlikely to be true of most of my female gentlereaders; I'm certain the majority of them are above that sort of thing. For example, they would never wear that dress/outfit to a job interview just because they knew they were going to be interviewed by a man.

I'll wager that most of the happily married/"partnered" ones wouldn't be caught dead dressing a certain way for "girls' night out" just to see how much attention they might get, and/or how many men might hit on them. 

More importantly, I'm sure none of them are the irrational sorts who claim that women, and even girls, have the right to dress as provocatively as they please and then call men who get caught looking, pigs dogs.  

However, being a more or less responsible columnist with millions of gentlereaders, I went a-googlin' to see what the worldwide web of contradictory knowledge might have to say about this sort of thing. I thought I might sniff around and discover what female H. sapiens (a.k.a. women) might be saying about this matter to enlighten myself and my male gentlereaders.

Hoo-Boy... I fell down THE RABBIT HOLE TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH! Earth, Earth, Earth... 

{What are you...}

I figured out how to write an echo. Cool, right?

It turns out the male gaze is a RBFD, and I had it all wrong. It's such a big deal that when I googled the term, the male gaze, the first hit returned was a lengthy Wikipedia article, Male gaze.

"In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer."

Right... So if you're a straight dude and you depict women and the world, in art and literature, from your masculine perspective, it's not just because that's how you see the world, it's because you deliberately sex everything up for your, and other straight dude's, personal enjoyment? 

Since my interpretation might be wrong, I read on. No joy. But I only have 39 documented college-level credits, so the fact that I found the article poorly written as it wanders all over the place...

{Wanders all over...are you calling the kettle black, your garrulousness?}

The Wikipedia entry credits one Laura Mulvey, "British feminist film theorist and filmmaker" (you've no doubt seen one of the handful of avant-garde movies she made back in the '70s and '80s), with this concept, which she explored in her famous (in certain circles at least) 1975 essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". 

So I clicked on that link, as should you, as you will discover a lengthy treatise, not Ms. Mulvey's essay, but a Wikipedia article that reads like one, that explains all...in great detail...and then some. 

The anonymous author of the Wikipedia article informs us, among many many other things, that according to Ms. Mulvey, "...the paradox of the image of ‘woman’ is that although they stand for attraction and seduction, they also stand for the lack of the phallus, which results in castration anxiety."

Ouch. 

More confused than ever, I thought I should cut out the middleperson and read the essay in question myself. It's not easy to find in an easily readable format. There are lots of badly executed PDF files out there if you want to read it for yourself. But as a service to my gentlereaders, here is the opening paragraph, which I suspect will tell most of you all you need, or want, to know.

"This paper intends to use psychoanalysis to discover where and how the fascination of film is reinforced by pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work within the individual subject and the social formations that have moulded him. It takes as its starting-point the way film reflects, reveals and even plays on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference which controls images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle. It is helpful to understand what the cinema has been, how its magic has worked in the past, while attempting a theory and a practice which will challenge this cinema of the past. Psychoanalytic theory is thus appropriated here as a political weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form."

[The writer smacks his forehead] 

Oh, now I get it!

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

Scroll down to comment, share my work, or scroll through previous columns. I post links to my columns on my Facebook page so you can love me, hate me, or call for my execution via social media. Cranky don't tweet (Xclaim?).

Copyright 2025-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved