I’m sick of driving a tractor.

What kind of tractor? Like an Allis-Chamblers or one of them big combine deals. I drove a D-8 bulldozer (I believe it was called) in college. That was all kinds of fun. Not as much fun as driving a log truck, but what is.

No matter how you feel, it’s good to see you again, Mr. Mencken. Even when I disagree with you (lots!) I am gratified you are with us.

Wish I could have made your birthday a happier one.

Belated happy b’day, HTML. Sorry it wasn’t actually happier.

If it’s any comfort, my Sooners just lost to the hated CU Buffs, thus spoiling another would-be championship season.

Incidentally, Amanda said something in comments here a while back that I hope she didn’t really believe: something to the effect that we would make fun of her, too, had she an establishment job like McArdle’s.

Actually we all saw what happened when Amanda got an establishment job. About five minutes into it she was ambushed by assholes. And about ten minutes after that she was out of her establishment job and back at Pandagon.

7. Frustrating: I’m trying to come up with ideas for another installment of Wingnuts in Party Hats, but after an initial breakthrough I’m not getting anywhere.

Which style of wingnut are you looking for? A,B, or C listers?

Imagine being a Brewers fan and watching them choke to fall behind the Cubs.

I think the fl’eagles need themselves a size-60-assload of party hats. Bless their hearts.

Birthday wishes. May your next be all that you could wish, and better.

If it’s any consolation, I’m at work (and will be for the next 7 hours or so), and my head feels like someone took a shit in it, thanks to a healthy dose of inexpensive tequila consumed last night.

All I can say is that if you intend to pick on Alan Keyes you’re picking on America.

html, good to have you back in the fold. sorry life’s shit. if it helps i got fired from my job this week! misery loves company!!!

still have to drop a drachma in the paypalbox. i’m a firm believer when things get shitty give something away to someone is the way to go.

“There’s not a radical bone in their bodies.”

Best line of your post, it cuts right to the heart of it. Narcissism is the only motivation these people have or need.

Welcome back, dearie!

Frankly, the making fun of McAddled is the least sexist thing imaginable. She deserves it for being a bland, trivial, frivolous nonentity, and none of the mockery of her that I have seen has been sexualized. It’s a perfect meritocracy of mockery – whatever your race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, if you are a dingbat, you will be mocked.

Hey, HTML. Sounds like it might be a terminal case of life to me.

Just keep putting one LPC in front of the other, and eventually you’ll get to a place with some joy in it.

‘Course, then you’ll pass through that ville and be back in the valley again.

Like I said, it’s terminal.

But while you’re passing through, it’s good to have you around….

mikey

Wisdom Toof: What a stupid name. What, is nagging pain supposed to make one wise?

If they are bothering you have them pulled. You’ll be dining on liquids (I recommend milkshakes to offset the displeasure of the the swelling and pain) and vicodin for three days) but beyond that you’re home free. Oh, and you’ll need to have the stitches taken out. Those suckers have long roots and leave gaping holes.

Maybe instead of wingnuts in stupid hats you could do wingnuts in stupid shirts!
http://www.steynstore.com/product41.html

Wisdom, my ass. I’ve had all of mine firmly and proudly seated in my gum line for lo these many years, doing all the jobs that teeth are supposed to do. But I have to say, Retardo, that I worry about those little bastards. They lurk back there where no toothbrush or other dental implement (self wielded) can properly reach, and every once in a while I feel an ominous twinge that foretells future agony, when all I’ll be able to do is mash the vicodin up into a paste with whiskey and mush it down on the offending tooth.

Impaction and early extraction, it seems to me, would have been the wise way to go.

Lesley, in the U.S., wisdom tooth removal is very expensive if they are impacted and require general anesthesia. Probably over a thousand dollars, if you don’t have dental insurance. I don’t know if Mr. Mencken has dental insurance, but even if he does, his share may be kinda pricey.

I had an impacted wisdom tooth a few years back, and got lucky. My dentist was able to pull it in his office. I was in so much pain I was actually in tears. I feel for you, even if you did insult the Cubs, the only baseball team except the Mariners I’ve ever even slightly cared about. (And I don’t care that much. I loathe team sports.) Anyway, I was also lucky in that I worked for Blue Cross at the time and had gold-plated dental insurance. Jeebus I do miss that insurance.

Yeah, we don’t need none of that there socialized medicine here in the States.

Mariners sob.

And HTML, as one well acquainted with the dentist’s chair, I say – find a good one or better, and endodontist, and get those suckers taken out.

Candy, medicare (in Canada) only applies if one’s teeth are extracted in hospital, and this happens rarely these days.

Dental treatment is probably just as expensive for Canadians, even for those who have dental insurance (like me and my plan really sucks).

When I had my wisdom teeth pulled I paid the full cost up front ($500 26 years ago). My insurance company reimbursed me 50%.

I think Megan needs a song written about here. Something to the tune of ‘Rawhide’.

“On the bright side, the Mets have tanked and the Phillies (whose fans have actually earned the right to whine and be jerks, unlike, respectively, Cubs’ and Mets’ fans) have surged.”

Sigh. Not so fast.

Wow, I figured medicare would cover that, since infected wisdom teeth cna cause everything from huge abcesses to heart valve infection. Sheesh. I guess I shouldn’t think of Canada as a perfect paradise, huh?

I think sometimes one’s medical insurance will cover it in the states, now that I reach back in my memory to my Blue Cross days, for just those reasons. Which would mean probably only a copay – if one has insurance, that is.

Well, you know what the Hindus say: “Life is a bitch. And then you die. And then you come back.”

Matt T.:

I think Mencken drives the same sort of tractor that John Bonham drove in The Song Remains The Same. He has to.

You can be a good writer and still be an establishment writer (like Charles Pierce), but there’s only so many positions available, and you only get to headline Slacker Friday.

Does this mean the harvest is in?

I drove an APC once. Really, truly stoned as hell. Makes you want to run over shit. Do tractors do that?

mikey

I guess I shouldn’t think of Canada as a perfect paradise, huh?

Canada’s ruling party is Conservative headed up by a Christian fundamentalist wingnut whose foreign affairs minister believes dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth together. It’s astounding this retard has a cabinet post but the pickings are slim for Harper.

Our beautiful health care system has been deliberately underfunded for the past 15 years (mainly under an increasingly right-leaning Liberal Party) and is on its way to being privatized. Just last week the feds reported the highest budget surplus ever and rather than use the extra cash to fund health care they plan to give Canadians tax breaks.

Stephen Harper is a sleaze bag at least as bad as Bush. If he’d been in charge in 2003 Canada would have backed the Iraq war.

Yay!!

Finally got Limewire to play nice with my firewall.

I’m downloading my ASS off. Just trying to catch up.

I’m taking suggestions…

mikey

Seasons 1 through 4 of The Wire.

and Deadwood if you can get it. Two wonderful shows I could watch forever if they’d only last that long.

I’m downloading my ASS off. Just trying to catch up.

USENET!!! I haven’t fired up P2P for quite a while.

Hey Billy Pilgrim
Yep, the Brewers stunk up the joint but, we’ve still got the Badgers!!!

I’m an idiot. I’ve just been doing music. I’m all over some obscure live missing persons.

But I don’t get the premium channels. I could, like, steal TV shows just as well as music, right?

Dammit. This is cooler than I thought.

Stand by….

mikey

“I’m taking suggestions…”

Curb Your Enthusiasm; Sopranos; Six Feet Under (all HBO series). Someone already mentioned Deadwood – the best of the lot.

My son hooked us up with MythTV – an open source TiVo. Great system if you’re a geek, or the parent of one.

Oh, and I caught some righteous Dramarama.

That dood kicks ass!

mikey

Yeah.
The Wire is the best show since Twin Peaks, w/out question. I am dangerously obsessed with the Wire, but it taught me the word shitbird, so I’m justified in it.
Tho you might be better off using bittorrent for movies n tv n such. Isohunt.com is an all-purpose search site for torrents.

My mom took me to the County Hospital ER for an impacted wisdom. I was in the waiting room with prisoners chained together at the ankles.

The dentist yanked my tooth in about 20 minutes, gave me a scrip for vicodin, and I was out. My memory is more for the poor prisoners or convicts.

My wisdom teeth were going to come out of the side instead of the bottom of my gums. They doped me up quite well, & the dentist had to use an all-white chisel & mallet (how anti-septic) to break them up. There I was in the chair, w/ a guy literally chiseling out my mouth, & not feeling a thing!! Very odd. Then spent the Fourth of July weekend in bed, barely able to move from whatever medication I was given, listening to the final concerts @ the Fillmore West on KSAN. Ah, nostalgia.

also recommend downloading the PBS series The War. Superb quality 3+ gig per episode downloads are appearing on mininova dot org. they are mkv files, playable on the VLC player.

the ads on mininova are annoying but here’s a script to hide them
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/5978

mininova has pretty much everything – teevee, movies, music, games

uknova has a lot of wonderful british teevee (lots of crap, too). not sure if they’re allowing new registrations right now though.

eztv dot org is a good source for teevee (the quality is dependable)

diffbrad, thanks for the isohunt link. I don’t do a lot of video downloading (since the quality usually sucks and I like my video in hidef on the big screen in the theatah room … projected on a 100 inch screen with the surround sound … even though we’re usually watching Finding Nemo for the 300th time – God help me, I’ve watched Barney’s Shapes and Colors on the big screen … and Elmo too, damn his itchy red hide) but every now and then I’m look for something or other …

Music downloading has significantly expanded my musical awareness, though. I listen to bands I’d never have even heard of if it weren’t for Gnutella.

As for wisdom teeth … when I was a lad I had several dentists tell me They Need To Come Out. I never quite saw the problem since they were just a bit sore but not terribly so. And they grew in and they’re fine. And I’m a relatively old fart now.

My theory is that extracting wisdom teeth is a freakin’ scam … not difficult for the dentist … commands a nice little fee … no one’s going to sue for unnecessary surgery … relatively low risk of complications … it’s a money maker.

I think it would be very unusual to have a dentist not recommend extraction. But we humans have evolved over millions of years and we didn’t all die of wisdom tooth impaction at the age of 20, so, yes, there is room in your mouth for those teeth.

btw, those 3 gig downloads are fast. I’m getting between 120 and 599 kb/s.

uknova shows download in minutes (900+ kb/s)

Another show I highly recommend is Saxondale by Steve Coogan. The man’s a genius. Also, all of his old shows from Coogan’s Run is available on line for downloading – do a search on mininova.

old shows from Coogan’s Run on are available I meant to say.

eztvefnet dot org

(antihistamines are messing me up tonight)

Why are Canadians letting the government weaken their national health care system? I thought that was Canada’s proudest achievement.

Happy birthday H.M.

mikey, if you have Limewire back up, “Heather Brooke” is the shit.

HTML, sorry about your shitty birthday, though you just need to trust me on this one, the odds of shitty birthdays increase proportionately exactly along the line of the number of birthdays you’re celebrating. So enjoy while you can. And remember there are outliers to this rule. You have to have something to live for.

And all of you non-Cub fans can just whine away. One thing about chronic loserdom is the joy of occasional hope. Give us a break!

Baseball at Wrigley is joy in itself. Win or lose. Try it sometime, you’ll like it.

“I feel yer pain”. I had 3 of my wisdom teeth yanked out *Monday* but
I still have some swelling and throbbing, I’m beginning to wonder if the cessation of pain that is supposed to come is nothing more than my body adapting to continuous stimuli.

IB: Are you an Okie as well? Not so much a Sooner (well, football, baseball, etc.) fan, but being away from home it is nice to hear a someone else from home is sane.

What kind of tractor?

JD 4955.

Thanks for all the b-day wishes. I was a good samaritan on me b-day, which made me feel good. Unfortunately, an asshole who was also in on the good samaritan project made the whole experience miserable.

Which style of wingnut are you looking for?

Any. It’s the picture that counts. I’ve got ConYank on the list now, too.

Welcome back, dearie!

I’m glad you’re here. Clif, too. The new blood is great.

Frankly, the making fun of McAddled is the least sexist thing imaginable.

Nah, it wasn’t about that. Amanda was just saying, I think, that we’d make fun more because of the insider/outsider, pro/amateur reasons. Which isn’t right. Someone mentioned Charles Pierce as an example of a worthy establishment writer. I agree; he’s excellent. But then he’s not a part of the snot-nosed clique, which I mean to suggest is no coincidence.

I can and will have the tooth pulled. I’ve already had one pulled — the upper on the same side as the one giving me fits now. All have come in, this last one has just come in at an angle, the back of it completely through, the front wedged against the tooth in front of it. Thank god they can be pulled; I haven’t the money to get them cut out.

Sorry, digamma, if I jinxed your Phillies.

Sorry about your job, Robert.

Narcissism is the only motivation these people have or need.

Yes.

Does this mean the harvest is in?

No. Alas.

“…we didn’t all die of wisdom tooth impaction at the age of 20”

Well, sort of, but it wasn’t so long ago that the average person’s life expectancy was less than 30 years, the leading cause of death in women was the process of giving birth, and enough teeth had fallen out of your average person’s head to leave plenty of room for those wisdom teeth to come up not too long before the person died.

Now we keep our teeth much longer, so there’s less room for those late arrivals way in the back; and very few dentists routinely recommend extracting teeth except as a last resort, based on the same logic that Michael Medved applies to the matter of slavery – a live slave (or an intact tooth) is worth more money than a dead slave (or a tooth that is no longer there).

I haven’t checked recently, but dentists have had the highest suicide rates among all health professionals for the past few decades.

It’s complicated Notorious PAT. The feds control the transfer payments that fund health care and the provinces administer the health care using those transfer payments. The provinces claim they have insufficient funds to pay for the care that’s needed so they’re gradually stripping away services and not paying for certain treatments. They are closing hospitals, shutting down wards, contracting out non medical health services, forcing rural people to travel greater distances for care, ripping up union contracts, etc. The shittier the public care gets the more the rich and upper middle class people (and vested interest groups like physicians) argue for “the right” of citizens to pay for private care.

Lower income rednecks who vote Conservative echo these opinions and I’m not sure why since they certainly can’t afford the private care fees. One clinic charges a flat annual fee of $2500 just to become their patient (whether you use the clinic or not). You’re either rich or stupid to go along with that.

My own physician is now asking her patients to pay her a $265 a year flat “joining fee” to cover services no longer covered by the government. I refuse to pay it and only see her for covered services. Things not covered include full physicals more than once a year and nutritional counselling. At most I see my physician once a year. I’ve gone years not seeing her at all so why would I pay her a yearly fee? And yet this is increasingly common.

We’re already seeing the downside of contracting out in hospitals and long term care facilities. Security is poor, the people who do the cleaning aren’t being properly trained (and what’s more the turnover is much higher because the jobs that were once unionized now pay minimum wage), hospitals are not as clean as they used to be, hospital-stay infections are on the rise, the quality of the food is poor (some patients are being delivered meals that aren’t appropriate). We’re gradually heading for a two-tier health care system. The best doctors will be attracted to the private system for the money and the public system will largely be staffed by interns and residents (and if we’re lucky, some dedicated socially minded physcians). The rich will get the best care in the private system and the poor will get shitty care in an inadequately funded public health system.

Last year I visited an emergency ward because of an ear infection. After waiting three hours I was seen by a nurse who didn’t seem to know what she was doing. I insisted on seeing a doctor so she found one. The bed she asked me to sit on was stained with some icky looking goo from the inside of a previous patient. I told her I’d sit on the bed if the linens were changed. She rolled her eyes. Yeah, well sorry but I don’t want to sit on someone’s pus if that’s alright with you.

Michael Moore’s portrayal of Canada’s health care system in Sicko is inaccurate. Sure, there are heart-warming stories and the care is still spectacular compared to what people get in the US, but no wait times? Please. That is bullshit. Gravely ill people wait for days in emergency wards. They’re stuffed in closets and hallways on stretchers because there are no rooms, no beds. People are dying waiting for care. Physicians and nurses are being worked to death because of facilities are understaffed. Wait times for elective surgeries are increasing.

On a brighter note, my mother got outstanding care in Ontario when she had cancer. Near the end, when she was in a palliative care hospital, she received round the clock care. Medicare covered all of it. She had four doctors assigned to her (palliative and pain specialists) and several highly trained nurses. (Palliative care is a specialization.) Within minutes of her arrival they had her pain under control and monitored her every five minutes. The staff not only cared for her but the family. We were assigned a social worker, a psychologist, and a pastor, and the nurses were always there for us. Whenever I left the hospital to run an errand the doctors and nurses would call to check up on me or to let me know how my mother was doing. I was blown away by this place. I’ve put the centre in my will.

Doy. Belated happy, HTML.
Btw, you’d be surprised how well Yankee Championships correlate with Democratic presidencies.

Oh, and zsa, if your projector is like mine, you can plug your computer into it.
And the key is to wait for things to be ripped off a dvd. Those stolen vids from in theater are such a waste of time.
And my screen is 108 inches, so hah.

Another little story that shows the loveliness of the Élisabeth Bruyère Health Centre where my mom stayed.A woman named Marge who had lung cancer had a stash of airline-sized bottles of rum in her bedside drawer. The nurses knew about it and turned a blind eye. I used to bring her orange juice and ice and sit with her while she sipped her favourite drink every evening.

Pets were also also permitted. Marge’s cat visited frequently and a friend of my mother’s dog slept on my mother’s hospital bed.

I tells ya, when it’s my time to go I want to be in a humane government run place like this, not some understaffed filthy shithole run by the equivalent of Halliburton.

“my mother got outstanding care in Ontario when she had cancer. Near the end, when she was in a palliative care hospital, she received round the clock care.”

Sorry to hear about your mom, Lesley, but glad to hear that she got good care.

Palliative care practitioners are special people – among the best I’ve worked with. I’m looking forward to attending this workshop in a few weeks.

I think, in the U.S. anyway, the confluence of aging/dying baby boomers, an increased interest in quality of life vs. artificial prolongation, and (most importantly) cost will lead to a much greater emphasis on palliative care.

Palliative care isn’t strictly end of life care. Its focus is on treating symptoms when the underlying disease can’t be cured. It often leads to end of life care when the underlying disease is fatal.

Hemodialysis is one example of palliative care. It doesn’t cure kidney disease, it just treats the symptoms in an attempt to help the patient achieve a better quality of life.

IB: Are you an Okie as well? Not so much a Sooner (well, football, baseball, etc.) fan, but being away from home it is nice to hear a someone else from home is sane.

I’m an Okie by circumstance rather than birth or choice. But I’m making it work thanks largely to the small, but active, group of the Okie-and-sane. I’m actually out of state myself this year, which eases the pain of Sooner losses, since I’m the only one in my current neck of the woods who give a shit.

Canada has been subjected to an UNRELENTING DECADES LONG-CAMPAIGN against the public health care system so much so that I am surprised it has lasted this long. It’s a testament to the resilience of the Canadian people that they have managed to resist the siren’s song as long as they have.

html, sorry about the bummers. happy birthday, though! and it’s nice to have you back. in tractor-related news, have you heard the song “she thinks my tractor’s sexy”? it always makes me smile. i also think about it every time i think about a tractor.

HTMl, if you’re still reading –

on a practical note, have you tried clove oil? If you can stand the taste, it’s a very effective painkiller and topical anaesthetic for tooth pain and you should be able to get it over the counter at a health or natural foods store. It’s one of the few ‘natural’, drippy hippy remedies that actually work.

RubDMC, I take you’re a nurse or a doctor? That Harvard workshop sounds wonderful.

Palliative care isn’t strictly end of life care. Its focus is on treating symptoms when the underlying disease can’t be cured. It often leads to end of life care when the underlying disease is fatal.

If my mother had entered palliative care sooner she probably would have lived longer. She resisted because she equated palliative care with death. In denial that she was terminal and determined to stay home, mom hid her pain from her friends, her medical team and her family (we kids were thousands of miles from her when her cancer specialist declared she was palliative). It wasn’t until I arrived that I discovered that her pain was completely out of control. Her upstairs neighbours told me they could hear her screaming at night but she wouldn’t let them in. When her medical team asked her about pain she lied and told them she was fine. I was surprised they took her word for it and wouldn’t listen to me. Later I discovered they had an agenda to keep patients at home as long as possible. It took me a few hours – after one night of extreme hell we endured together – to convince her the pain would kill her before the cancer did.

Though I promised her that if the hospital could get her pain under control I’d bring her home, I also knew the likelihood was nil; she weighed 90 lbs, could barely walk, and was eating through a stomach tube. Still, I meant what I said. I wanted to honour her wishes. I was shocked to find her home care team largely unsupportive of her entering palliative. I had to badger them to persuade her. They kept telling me there were patients worse off staying home and they insinuated I was being selfish. “You’re just tired,” one nurse told me. “That’s why you’re upset.” This same nurse told me mom might come to her senses on her own if I left her alone for a few hours. “Maybe if she falls flat on her face she’ll realize she needs to go in.” I nicknamed that one Nurse Ratchet.

When we finally arrived in the palliative care hospital – the ambulance took 11 hours to come get us – the doctor in charge said my mother should have been admitted two months prior, that she was very close to death and worse than most of the patients they had. She was horrified that mom’s physcian had allowed mom to deteriorate. She told me that if I hadn’t gotten my mother in she would have died in agony. (So much for the home care propaganda governments are pushing on people!)

I guess I’m rambling here.

Yes, palliative care is a wonderful thing and will do my part to fight tooth and nail to preserve it and support the people who provide it.

One book that really helped me to help my mother was
The Needs of the Dying: A Guide for Bringing Hope, Comfort, and Love to Life’s Final Chapter. It emphasizes the rights of the dying and helps caregivers understand and take care of their own emotions through the process. It taught me to view dying not as an illness but a natural process, a transition. It also helped me to discuss death with my mother.

Another useful resource if you can get your hands on it is the magnificent documentary Dying at Grace by Allan King.

PS. the link above for Dying at Grace is a good one – great interview with the filmmaker and participants there.

Here’s Allan King’s web site. It has the trailer and the option to buy.

on a practical note, have you tried clove oil?

IS IT SAFE?

Btw, you’d be surprised how well Yankee Championships correlate with Democratic presidencies.

The last time the Yankees won the World Series during a Repub administration was 1958. Even though there have been more seasons with a Repub in office since then, the Yanks have twice as many pennants in that time in Dem years (10) as Repub years (5).

Wow. Right about the time you posted this I was knocking back a few drinks with some Atriots wondering where you’d got off to.

I’m sorry about your birthday, but I am glad you are back.

Frankly, the making fun of McAddled is the least sexist thing imaginable.

Nah, it wasn’t about that. Amanda was just saying, I think, that we’d make fun more because of the insider/outsider, pro/amateur reasons. Which isn’t right.

Jillian can obviously speak for herself, but I read her comment as referring more to a general category of criticism leveled at Sadly, No!’s mocking McArdle, and less to the specific comparison of two female bloggers. What Marcotte said in comments can be found in this discussion, for those who are interested.

Bitterness: I had a really shitty birthday and I’m still pissed about it.

Fuck birthdays. I’m 483 years old, so I’ve have to endure plenty of them, and I’ve detested them since my youth. They induce smarm like hot weather induces sweat. Annoying, annoying custom.

The Godawful Clique

I’m too far removed from journalism to understand why it’s collapsing. Cliqueism may well be part of it, though it doesn’t seem like an adequate explanation by itself. To me, the abject and ongoing failure of the American press is one of the most baffling aspects of or current political nightmare.

also recommend downloading the PBS series The War

I have to say that that The War disappointed me – too sentimental for my tastes. If you want an want an extended WWII fix I’d recommend the grand old British documentary series, The World at War.

And I’m very glad to see you back, HTML.

diffbrad, did I say “inches”? I meant “feet”. Yeah.

‘I’ve had to’ not ‘I’ve have to’ and ‘of our’ not ‘of or’.

I should never try to post anything when I’m still in my morning coma.

very few dentists routinely recommend extracting teeth

Back in the 80’s (remember the 80’s? Yah, me neither) I had at least 4 different dentists tell me they needed to come out. This lasted until the teeth had all fully grown in, at which point pulling them became kind of an optional thing … if I couldn’t keep them clean they would have to come out.

The dentist I stuck with was the one who told me “if they really hurt, we can pull them, but if they aren’t bothering you, just leave them be”.

Should I pray that the Cubs win it all in the hope that a World Championship would stop the intolerable self-pity of Cubs Nation?

Um, probably not. See how well that worked for red sox nation in 2004?

Wingnuts in Hats? David Horowitz … please.

I had my wisdom teeth out in the early 70s and didn’t have to pay a dime. Crappy job at not much more than minimum wage, but the health plan covered the teeth because there was no hope of their ever coming out on their own. The days are of crappy jobs having decent (or any) insurance are long gone.

My god, I’m blushing. For clarification: I was mostly teasing, in no small part to amuse Auguste, because we tag-team comments here together sometimes.

Happy birthday, by the way. Glad to see you back in the saddle. You’re one of the best out there.

Hey, by the way, when do we get another episode of “Teh Megan, Matt, And Ezra Show”?

Sorry, digamma, if I jinxed your Phillies.

Hahaha, not at all.

Re wisdom teeth:

Right before I got pregnant with my daughter (about 1986) I was told that my wisdom teeth were “impacted” and “definitely would have to come out”. Of course, when they finally heard me the third time I told them I had no insurance, the dental staff informed me that “it wasn’t an emergency—just take care of it over the next ten years or so.”

I never did anything and they never showed up. Maybe they heard all that talk about extracting them and got scared….?

Lesley, thanks very much for the links.

I’m sorry that you had to fight so hard to get people to listen. It shouldn’t be that way, but it seems that you always have to make noise to get what you need, eh?

Maybe your mom’s pain could have been managed at home – but that takes a very concerted effort, as well as the right equipment and a steady supply of powerful drugs.

Yeah, I’m a nurse working in a Harvard teaching hospital. Right now I’m working with neurology/neurosurgery patients, and we have a fair ratio of end of life/organ donation cases. These situations are most often quite sudden and unexpected.

Again, thanks for the links.

If you’re still reading this …

University dental schools used to accept victims patients for their students to torture gain Real World experience. I assume they still do.

All kidding aside, I needed serious dental surgery to get the little buggers out and the cost (20 years ago) for was around $350 versus $1,000+ and I received competent care, in surgery and post-op.

They only thing better than the bunny ears on Bienart is the lampshade on Hic!-tchens.

dude, i just watched that video…matt yglesias is a total weiner.

If you have access to a good dental school it’s the way to go for dental care on the cheap. I had two wisdom teeth pulled in the late 90’s at the University of Iowa for $25 cash on the desk.
Granted they were clear and unimpacted so it was a few shots of painkiller, a good yank on each side, and wadding enough to make me resemble a chipmunk (more so than usual), but still, it would have cost me 10 times that at least at a private dentist.

Be safe on the harvest. With all the corn I saw planted this summer I dread what this year’s butcher’s bill will be.

HTML, human dentition is second only to the human spine as the wellspring of individual suffering in this imperfect universe. And from what little you’ve said about your life, you probably already know about the treachery of vertebrae. I hope your toof has gone to the medical waste bin, and that the resulting hole in your jaw heals swiftly!

But mostly, I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus welcoming your return with glee & thanksgivings. You may be miserable, but you give the rest of us a little something to look forward to…

Very nice site!