is it safe?

Zero hour is rapidly approaching. Tomorrow at noon I have a long-postponed meeting with my dentist, and it’s even money whether a root canal or a very deep filling along the base of the bottom rightmost molar is an order – a real win-win situation.

The prospect of either has cast a dark pall over what should have been a pretty groovy long weekend, and I couldn’t even maintain my enthusiasm for a viewing of the modern cinematic masterpiece known as Convoy, Sam Peckinpah’s most personal and heartfelt directorial effort, on one of the Encore niche channels. The prospect of seeing an oily, shirtless Kris Kristofferson use C.B. lingo to taunt Ernest Borgnine while romancing a pan-fried and equally oily Ali MacGraw did nothing to dispel the dark clouds of dread hanging over me, which just shows how bleak my frame of mind is at the moment.

The sad thing is that all this could have been prevented if I hadn’t cancelled my previous appointment sixteen months ago. The tooth would have been filled before it reached the critical stage, and right now I’d be singing along with the dulcet tones of C.W. McCall without a care in the world.

There were relatively valid reasons at the time for my procrastination. I was sick of the hassle involved in getting to the dentist’s office due to the MBTA’s the poorly implemented switch from tokens to an electronic method payment. (The station where I got on the subway used the former and the one for the dentist used the latter, and none of the T personnel on either end had a clue about how to deal with cross-generational fare transactions.) There was also the fact that having had two to three fillings done per month during the year previous, my body had started to develop a resistance to Novocaine. (Edit: Fuck you, MS Word spellchecker.) It would take four shots of the stuff, minimum, to numb my mouth into a state where the drilling was only slightly bearable. (Hopefully that’s no longer the case.)

Hindsight can be so cruel. Whither be the oil of cloves that can soothe the taunts of mocking memory?

Specimen – Sharp Teeth, Pretty Teeth (from a 1985 single; collected on Wet Warm Cling-Film Red Velvet Crush, 1997) – ASF, Danse Society, March Violets, and now Specimen…I seem to have subconsciously fallen into goth mode these past weeks. I used to have a Specimen sticker on the back of my punk jacket until it cracked and peeled off and I replaced it with a Sex Pistols one.

C.W. McCall – Convoy (from a 1975 single; collected on Spy Magazine Presents: White Men Can’t Wrap, 1994) – Populism via Peterbuilt – only in the 1970’s.