Dental Woes

My few words on dentist appointments; they suck. Yes, they can be awesome sometimes I guess. How can you hate someone that makes your teeth so fresh and so clean-clean, right? Eh, I've probably had the worst problems in terms of dental history. To make a long story short, I've had my teeth grow in the most irregular places, had baby teeth not fall out naturally thus having them pulled out periodically throughout my childhood, and now...gin-gi-vitis..ahhh!



Now you're probably wondering why I'm being so up front with my dental history. Yeah, I don't really care. I'm not even exactly sure that whether it is exactly gingivitis or not. For all I know it could be gum disease, some kind of mouth cancer. Mouth cancer? Yeah I guess that sounds about right.

So why did this come up? I guess I haven't been to the dentist that much at all since college. Finally having some free time due to unemployment, and with only a few months with dental insurance, I decided to go for a not-so-periodic visit to the dentist for a cleaning. It became one excruciating hell of a cleaning. My current dentist isn't the most typical dentist out there. I'm not sure if it's because of the crazy technological boom in the last 15-20 years, but how often do you get to watch Wimbledon on a 15" LCD monitor while getting your teeth cleaned? Hmm. No? didn't think so. Moving on...as my dentist began looking around my mouth checking for cavities or decay, she just nonchalantly says, "oh you have gingivitis...you don't clean behind your retainer that much do you?"

I do my fair share of cleaning behind my retainer...just not the flossing part...yes, shame on me.

I've always been a thorough brusher anyhow, why did this happen in the first place? Ask my orthodontist who cemented a wire retainer on the bottom set of teeth that i have. It's been notoriously difficult to brush let alone floss in between those teeth. Oi. You know sometimes when you come home from a long day of work/doing homework or whatever, you just want to drop in the bed? Yes, sounds bad, but that's probably how it happened. It just ended up becoming a chore, and I just fell off on my flossing. Flossing is too complicated when you have to get individual floss threaders for your teeth. Floss threaders? Yeah...floss threaders. For those who don't know, floss threaders are exactly what you think they're for; threading your floss through. Yes, it sounds simple, but it's oh so complicated. I decided to do some research on ehow/wikihow (hehe such a reputable source no?...at least I'm not looking at Yahoo! Answers) on how to use floss threaders. Yes, quite complicated indeed. 1. Loop the floss through the threader. 2. Slip the threader through your teeth while holding both ends of the floss 3. Blah Blah blah.

It's pretty complicated for me okay? It's the complete opposite of using floss-ups? Theyre like little pieces of plastic with a piece of floss attached. Whoever invented these needs to get an award. Flossing has always been a two-handed pain in the ass. Floss-ups have made flossing a one-handed job, which most importantly let's one-handed people floss by themselves for once. For two-handed people, it frees up the other hand, to do other things like: using a q-tip to clean your ears, blow-drying your hair, putting on clothes, eating a snack, or pleasuring oneself...whatever.

My dentists and orthodontists over the years, as well as common knowledge state that you should make a trip to the dentist for a cleaning every six months. I thought this was full of crap for the longest time. This was some kind of scam by the dentists' associations to make some good money. Then again, if they really wanted the cash to flow in, I guess they would've recommended a dental appointment every three months or some shorter time interval. My logic kind of stems through some convoluted historical view. Cavemen, neanderthals, other old civilizations, and the like have never had the luxury of getting some Colgate Total Plus Gel WITH whitening or some Listerine pocket packs. Did they all lose their teeth by gingivitis or some other gum disease? Then again, these people only lived up to about 30, 35 years old; 40 tops.

By the time most people read this post, my gingivitis will be all gone, so no worries. Damn, now I can't slack off anymore with brushing/flossing my teeth. I guess my teeth have always been rebellious.

Graduation...

It’s the beginning of summertime now. Time to get outside, get some nice sun, shade, skin cancer, what have you. Synonymous with this season is the onslaught of graduation ceremonies. College graduates, high school graduates, elementary graduates, and even preschoolers are getting into the action during these very momentous weeks.

Just recently my kid brother finally made his way through the trials, traumas, and hardships of his young childhood and finally graduated from elementary school. As an older brother who previously went to the same elementary school for only a year, I remembered those awesome, carefree days.

When I had graduated elementary school. I could’ve sworn that the ceremony was so much shorter than it is today. My brother’s graduation started at 9am and nearly ran until 10:30. When only about 70 kids are graduating, how is it that the ceremony is THAT long? Eh, maybe I’m just getting old; or just impatient. It seriously felt like an eternity, or maybe because 20 minutes in I happened to run out of tape for the camcorder (sorry bro, didn’t get a chance to capture the moment). Ah well, at least my mom was able to take a few pics.

As each kid had their name called off, their names were displayed on a Powerpoint presentation along with their future ambition. For example, some girl, let’s say her name is “Sarah Kowalski”...”Future...Veterinarian” or “Future...Dentist” or “Future Astronaut”. I realized these kids are pretty damned lucky. They don’t have to worry about their ambitions for awhile. They can flip-flop their interests for another 6...8...10 years? No pressure...yet. What’d my brother want to be?...”Future Computer Engineer”. Yeah that’s right. I hope he makes his way through the gauntlet of crap which is called life and get to what he wants to do. I guess it’s important for these kids to keep dreaming, and keep dreaming big, because the world is turning into a nice shit sandwich. Why is it a shit sandwich you say? Well I think it’s pretty obvious...it’s the E-word. (pause for dramatic effect)..ECONOMY.

We’ve gotten to a point where we don’t even have to mention that it’s bad. It would be just safe to assume it’s bad anyway. Even during my own graduation ceremony, the commencement speakers would always mention the “economy”. yeah, it’s bad...we know. Just don’t rub it in our faces. They kept on droning about being “creative” during this time. Does this mean that we should get jump off a cliff? Hell. I’d be on board with that. Eh, I guess they want us to basically ignore our degrees and pursue something else, whether it be a small business opportunity or something else that would involve a large sum of startup income. Umm...suuure. Give me $100,000 and I’ll certainly do something with that, but aren’t we all in debt because we spent at least 4 years paying for a nice piece of paper that basically says, “yeah you gave us ‘x’ amount of dollars”, you know nothing. Have a nice day!

Give me the statistics about how graduates this year are essentially fucked. Eighty percent of college graduates are unemployed? Hell yeah, all-time high baby. If we’re gonna have unemployment in America, we’re gonna go big with it--all time record highs.

Whatever, aside from the crap that our country is in, I’m glad to see my kid bro get out of elementary school. He’s finally growing and growing taller than me =(

Going to the Library...Post Graduating

Finally a college graduate of the University of Michigan, I went to my local public library with my mom today. Big deal...right? I never was a person who liked to read; not that I don't read at all. Books just aren't entertaining as say video games or movies. I'll pick up a book every now and then, but it's going to have to be a damned good book for me to read it.

"Well, why don't you go read the classics then? They're classic for a reason..."

Yeah I technically did for awhile in high school. I took an upper level English course that required you to do at least three book reports from a given list of classic novels. I have to admit, some of them were okay. I guess it's good to read because it gets you thinking about stuff, but I was never really a person that was inclined to think. A few things I learned through the years in those classes: Existentialism is pretty neat outlook on life, Jane Austen books have definitely not stood the test of time, Shakespeare is still in love..and ballin', and sparknotes and Cliff Notes are your best friends.

Perhaps these English classes finally got me to hate reading after all. On a consistent basis our class was pushed to read a novel within a week, have a fair idea of the book to discuss within class, and to write some impromptu essay relevant to the respective piece. I can say that I probably developed my notorious procrastinating skills from those days. I would read a whole novel and write some half-ass 6-8 page critical analysis paper about that novel in one night. Eh, I managed to finish them all on time, so why not keep that procrastination train rolling?

Anyhow, as a currently unemployed college graduate, I went to the library with my mom to check out some books. Living in the suburbs of metro-Detroit, there's not much of anything to do anywhere. I kind of went in with the goal of getting some kind of book to help me out with my "career options". I sought out an HTML book and did some fairly light reading while my mom went to look for her usual cooking/haircutting books.

As I was in the library skimming through my book, I finally realized how much I didn't like books. If I didn't have a practical reason to be at the library, (e.g homework, group projects, research papers, etc.) I would so not be there. Luckily, my mom had some books to return, so I just tagged along for the ride.

It completely surprises the hell out of me why I was able to work at a library for 8 months, let alone 1 week. I guess we're in those times where it really is a case of where "beggars can't be choosers". Shelving books, shifting them around, making sure books are in order; I can't believe I was able to tolerate that much boredom. I guess I was lucky I was able to find some interesting old reads about how drinking more water on a daily basis will extend life expectancy (eh worked in a med lib. with some really..I mean really old books).

So what's the entire point of this random tangent? Umm, well...

1. I don't love books nor do I hate them--it's "Complicated"
2. I won't step foot in a library unless it has CDs and DVDs to check out and...
3. Picture books still rock. (I'm gonna go find a copy of Dr Seuss's Hop on Pop)