'Bred Crumbs
02.08.03
Itchy & Scratchy too tame for you? Then you're ready for Happy Tree Friends.
02.07.03
I think that generally speaking (of course), liberals -- and I count myself here -- tend to be very concerned about their own consciences. About not staining their self-perception with questionable deeds. I think the common progressive slogan "Not In My Name" reflects this mentality perfectly. ... But when both leaving Hussein in power or removing him = dead civilians, we have to flail around in the muck along with everyone else.
From Alex's insightful assessment of the liberal dilemma presented by Iraq.
02.06.03
02.05.03
I should have known it would strike me eventually as it does us all, as inevitably as death, taxes, and pretty 30-year-old teenagers on the WB.
[To abandon this essay on dentistry and the entropic human body and instead read more about pretty people on the WB, click here.]
And just when I was doing so much better with the whole dental experience – talked myself gradually down from my gag reflex, avoided cavities, began to manage the dreaded yearly "bitewing" X-rays without having to be wrestled down by the hygienists. (Not nearly as sexy as it might sound.) Now, this. And while I'm appreciative of my dental crew for catching this infection before it started causing me any pain, the kicker is, this new torment seems to be caused primarily by previous dentistry.
It seems a giant mercury filling installed when I was in my lower teens encroached on a tooth nerve enough to kill it, thus cloaking the internal rot that followed. Sure, my general lack of dentistry and tooth-care laziness the first dozen years of my life probably encouraged the cavities that needed filling, but in hindsight it seems like a clearly bad idea to put big lumps of mercury into my teeth. By then, they had already been turned a dim, unattractive beige by the tetracycline I was apparently fed constantly my first five years to "treat" my constant coughing, which happened to disappear when my tonsils were yanked out at age six – while I dozed under the influence of oh-so-(in)flammable ether.
So I don't cough much now, which is good, since that makes it easier to hide my poisonous-metal-filled chompers, too permanently non-shiny for even the strongest whitening gel or strip.
[To abandon this essay on dentistry and the entropic human body and instead read more about the hotly competitive tooth-whitening industry, click here.]
The real problem is that our medical and scientific advances, however barbarous they might eventually appear, have got us all living far longer than our caveman-grown bodies were made for. Given that, it makes more and more sense that human evolution should be a scientific/technological quest to utterly overcome our dependence on these fragile shells, to ensure that our consciousness gets an offload or a network connection so we can escape our bodies for a while, or replace them entirely, just like in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (which I'm reading, fittingly enough, on my Palm instead of on dead tree).
But since we're not there yet, I've been subjected instead to mouth-discoloring drugs and nerve-killing mercury bullion. Which is exactly why no laser is touching my nearsighted eyes anytime soon. I can just see it, twenty years from now: "Yes, unfortunately, if you had just held out until myopia could be treated by harmless microblasts of air, we wouldn't have this problem," the doctor would say, shaking his head. "Lasers," he would tsk as he applied another coat of steaming, sulfurous corneasphalt to heal my painfully rotted eyeball.
Meanwhile, back in the not-too-distant present, the amoxicillin they sent home with me announces that it Renders birth control ineffective. So look out, ladies! My seed is unstoppable!
[To skip notes on the hotly competitive tooth-whitening industry and pretty people on the WB and instead read another dental anecdote, click here.]
· · ·
I didn't even realize that dueling tooth-whitening methods were on the market, and already they're at each others' promotional throats. The tooth-paint-makers' commercials say the whitening strips take too much time; the ads for the strips claim that the paint rubs off. Where will this madness lead? Next the paint people will say the strips are transmitting your whereabouts to the government, and the strip producers will say the paint escapes into your throat and causes "acid reflux disease." Or whatever fictional horror the pharmaceutical marketers invent next.
· · ·
Since the time of Ulysses, men have known of the dangerous lure of the pretty, and thus I find myself having developed the disturbing habit of semi-regularly watching the WB's Everwood. Never mind the dull pre- (and no doubt post-) Veritas father-son main storyline. It's all about Coma Boy.
My original siren here was Chris Pratt, he of the gorgeous blond curls who plays the thoughtless jock with the beautifully ludicrous first name of Bright. But lately, I'm even more taken with the character of Bright's best friend Colin, who just emerged from a coma and barely remembers that he was The Most Popular Boy In School before. He is played by Mike Erwin, who has trained his big, wet, blue eyes to stare into the distance with adorable sadness and vacuousness. No really, I mean that in the best way.
You know, a few years ago when I was watching the ultralight comedy Broken Hearts Club at the Castro, I could not have guessed that its writer-director would later crank out a quirky-cute family drama and that one of its cast would become the heart of a smart sitcom – at 8:30 on Thursdays, of all things. TV networks, turn to gay cinema, and behold your glorious future.
· · ·
My visits to the dentist back in Lexington sometimes got a little surreal. In the first place, my hygienist had lived in the very same apartment I was living in. Then came the day she told me my mouth was built wrong.
The occasion was, of course, the dreaded bitewing X-rays. As usual, I was having a hard time holding them in place without my body assuming it was being choked to death. Even if I managed to suppress my primeval panic, the X-ray dealeys kept shifting out of position. Again and again, Meredith would put the torture devices into place and tell me to bite down. I would, but everything would come out wrong. Finally, she watched as I closed my mouth around them. Then she took them out. She told me to bite down again. I did. A puzzled look. Again. I did.
She stepped back.
"Your back teeth don't go together." She tilted her head in astonishment. "How do you chew?"
Apparently, I've been cheating nature by eating all these years.
Man, I would have been so killed if I'd been born in ancient Sparta.
02.04.03
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