A Sad Tale of Dentists and Dontists

Gone are the days when I non-chalantly went to the dentist a couple of times a year for a cleaning and the occasional cavity. Nowadays instead of a dentist, I have three dontists--perio,endo,and prostho. The first is a gum specialist. The endo-dontist does nothing but root canals and that last guy specializes in what is known in the trade as " dental prosthetics" or to you and me, crowns, bridges and false teeth. Dontists cost a lot more money than dentists and on top of that coordinating appointments between all three of them is quite the juggling act. Paying for them requires a bit of juggling too, I might add. Thank God for Visa.

The fact that I patronize a prosthodontist should tell you a lot about the state of my teeth. Actually, it probably tells you more than you want to know. Suffice it to say that for the price of all the crowns and bridges that now adorn my lower jaw, I could have bought a new Lexis ( or at least a late model used one).

The pace is accelerating which is a bit alarming. Two years ago it was major bridgework. Last year it was one crown. This year I needed two. God only knows what next year will bring. Now I know that there are many worse problems in the world, and I am actually quite fortunate. But still, I long for the good old days when my teeth were strong enough for me to take them for granted. It seems like only yesterday that I was proud when I lost a tooth and would put it under my pillow at bedtime for the tooth fairy. How things change with the passage of time!

I used to think that the worst thing that could ever happen to me was to have teeth that came out at night and reposed in a glass of water beside my bed. Now I'm not so sure. Sometimes I think I'd rather have a new Lexis


photo source: http://www.obscurehorror.com/dentist.html

Chicken Fried Bacon

Just in case you're in the mood for something really over the top in the bacon department, I want all you baconistas out there to know that down in Snook,Texas ( population 568) there is a truck stop ready to serve you up a death defying platter of your favorite food, dipped in milk, dredged in flour, and deep fried in hot lard. And for that added extra little something, they serve it up with a big bowl of thick cream gravy to dip it in. The locals call it a heart attack on a plate. I call it about 5000 calories per serving and God only knows how much saturated fat. Don't mess with Texas.

Now, don't think I am anti-bacon. I follow the internet bacon cult religiously. I read bacon blogs. I've checked out the bacon forums and bacon haikus. I've even toyed with buying a bacon iphone case. I'm a dedicated bacon lover and a regular bacon eater. But chicken fried bacon is more than even I can stomach( to coin a phrase). Keep that stuff in Snook. Long live the BLT.

Watch the video and pass the Alka Seltzer, please.




bacon photo courtesy of yi on Flickr

Bristol Palin and Birth Control

My hat is off to Bristol Palin. She's more than just a pretty face and definitely not a chip off the old block when it comes to her views on birth control and premarital sex. In an interview yesterday on Fox News, Bristol, an unmarried eighteen year old mother, who gave birth to son, Tripp, on December 27th, announced that she thought "abstinence only sex education was unrealistic" Yay Bristol. Way to go.

Bristol is right, of course. In modern day America expecting teenagers to navigate a sexually explicit culture, fight raging hormones, and wait till marriage for sex is indeed unrealistic. Some will choose to do so, but many will not. With Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears as role models today's twelve year olds are bombarded with sexual images but short on specific information. To think that telling them how their bodies work and how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease will make them promiscuous is puritanical craziness. It doesn't make sense.

The expression " shotgun wedding" disappeared from the American vocabulary at least fifty years ago, along with " old maid" and " illegitimate child." The iron-clad sexual straight jacket of the 1950's is gone, thank God. It did more harm than good. I should know. I grew up with it. In any case, you can't unring a bell. In this day and age it is madness not to educate kids about the realities of HIV/AIDS and STD's and to explain the specifics of birth control. Morality is a personal and family matter. Physiology and real life based sex education is a matter of public health.

I give Bristol Palin credit for getting through her mother's recent political campaign with her head held high even as her belly bulged. It took a lot of guts. It took even more guts to share her experience and air her views in a TV interview, in spite of what may well be some substantial family consequences. She loves the baby, is happy now that he is here, but if she had it to do over, she would wait ten years before becoming a mother, she says.

Bristol learned the hard way that while ideals may be black and white, real life usually arrives in shades of grey. She's got the message and she's passing it on. I, for one, respect her honesty.

Jobs in January

Where have all the jobs gone? January unemployment figures are just out and it is not a pretty picture. Here in the United States, 580,000 jobs disappeared during January, bringing the official unemployment rate up to 7.6%. As always, the official rate is far below the actual rate and things are much worse for minorities.

Things aren't any better in Canada where 129,000 layoffs in January marked the nation's worst ever monthly decline and brought the official unemployment rate to 7.2%. The UK , the EuroZone and Japan are faring no better. Iceland is off the charts and let's not even talk about the developing world. These monthly figures are much more than numbers. Each statistic tells a human story. Every percentage point represents a family sleeping in their car, a child without shoes or a winter coat, or an old person dumpster diving for dinner.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill American lawmakers are carrying on like it's business as usual, jockeying for political position and arguing over projects and points of view as they try to hammer out a stimulus package for the American economy which may or may not work. We don't have time for this nonsense anymore. Didn't the French Revolution teach the world anything? Why are we still saying "let them eat cake"?

It is time for the alpha dogs of the world to work together instead of challenging one another. Stop bickering and find those lost jobs or civil unrest will be the next chapter. There are already pockets of it here and there. Nothing stops a riot like a paycheck and nothing ensures cooperation like mutual interests. We are all in this together so let's find those lost jobs or June is going to make January look like a walk in the park.