• Bad taste and butchery

    I get a little uncomfortable when people start talking about “trimming” trees. My reasons break down like this: any jackass with insurance and a chainsaw can get a licence to trim trees in Florida, and Floridians in general don’t seem to like trees. That’s what I gather from the results anyway.

    I’m not against all forms or reasons for tree trimming. There are times when a tree needs to be trimmed for saftey’s sake, or for the tree’s health. But that’s not what’s happening here.

    I work(ed) in a large office complex on the water (Tampa Bay) with a lot of trees. The shaded, peaceful walkways felt more like a park than a place of business. Between the waterfront and the quiet atmosphere, I thought the setting was darn near perfect.

    That was before someone decided things needed to be “opened up.”

    Now my office feels like it ought to be a crime scene. There are dozens of formerly magestic oaks giving little or no shade, resembling palm trees more than the full hardwoods they once were. Now they look like pieces of modern art. Tall trunks stripped of all their limbs with any reach, with narrow, broccoli spear tops dot my view. Shaded court yards are now reduced to air traps – solar collectors for Florida’s already hot sun. Now we can go out and cook… or more likely, the once vibrant centers of congregation and conversation will be abandoned.

    People around me are oooing, and ahhhing over the new, open feeling. I feel like I’m the only one who sees the incredibly poor taste, or recognizes the crime taking place above our eyes.

  • Why do I hate thee, DST? How about I tell you

    • What was good for 1918 isn’t necessarily so great 90 years later.
    • Contrary to common wisdom, some studies show it causes an increase in energy consumption (especially for us poor folk down south) – partly because of a little thing called air conditioning.
    • How often does common wisdom lead us astray?
    • Shifting high noon to lower noon is just asking for trouble.
    • We have nothing to fear but time itself.
    • My microwave shows the wrong time half the year.
    • You ever try riding your bike to work in the black of night?
    • Do we really need another hour to play frisbee?
    • Do you know how freaking hot it is here when the sun is up? My time feels more leasurely in the relative cool of dusk.
    • As someone who rarely, if ever, strays from the good ‘ole EST zone, that hour really fracks me up.
    • EDST doesn’t have the same ring to it.
    • Loosing sleep, even if it’s once a year, and made up later, is a crime against humanity.

  • Digging for pain and finding a vein

    Whining about your dentist is a blogging stapple. Lucky for you, I’m pro-staple.

    “Are you ok?”

    This is the great rhetorical dental question of our time. I love it.

    No offense to any women dentists out there, but this is the point in the post where I pretend to be something I’m not, and slip into the vernacular of the “real man.”

    I love it because I think it takes some real stones to ask it. Sure, you’re lying prone with sharp – and often powered equipment in your mouth – but they don’t know you from the criminally insane. That question, under the wrong circumstances, could be a real problem.

    Alas, I am not criminally insane, though I am reminded of something Salvador Dali said: “The only difference between a madman and myself is I AM NOT MAD!”

    Back to my dental encounter…

    “Oh yeah. The veins in my neck bulge out like this all the time. My lips and jaw quiver like they have a life of their own sometimes. I have no idea why.”

    Of course, that’s not what came out of my mouth. I was counting on it. I’m non-confrontational by nature. Instead, a series of grunts and seemingly random noises on the low end of the register came out of my mouth (along with a slurry of drool, chemical run-off, and blood). Folks in the biz call it “chair-speak.”

    Although I wonder, have dentists and their minions (aka hygenists) evolved the ability to understand chair-speak? Is it like the way parents learn to understand their children’s early attempts at communication, long before others can? Or is it a more innate ability of the species – like a mother’s ability to interpret a baby’s cry and instantly know what’s wrong.

    Either way, I was obviously not relaxed, and I owed it to the latest quiver in my dentist’s arsenal.

    I don’t know what it’s called. I think of it as “Satan’s Pickax.” Think of a combination tool of discomfort, a Swiss Army Knife of dental torture if you will: a razor-sharp pick, high-pressure washer, and a carpenter’s router. Plus, it also comes with mood music… it wails like a banshee who stole your coach’s wistle from high school phys-ed.

    Good stuff.

    To their credit, they did try swathing my gums with a numbing gel. To their discredit, they used a little extra elbow grease. It reminded me of folks who eat food with “half the calories,” but eat four times as much of the stuff.

    Step right up folks! We’re offering one half the sensitivity while achieving two times the pain!

    Otherwise, it was a routine visit. I don’t need major surgery. In fact I was congratulated on my superior brushing technique – which almost masks the fact I don’t floss enough.

    I’m a big fan of the backhanded compliment, so I can appretiate it when someone works at their craft.