22 tongue depressors
Apparently, Balls and Walnuts has descended to the new low of being the chronicle of my declining health. First my teeth get massacred, now I’m dealing with evil TMJ. More accurately, a lot of the muscles of mastication on my right side have been in spasm, resulting in some nasty trismus (inability to fully open one’s mouth). Trismus can be measured with a ruler, the “inter-dental opening” distance, or with the number of stacked tongue depressors you can jam between your incisors. A week ago, I could only fit 12. Now I can fit 22! So it seems that jamming depressors in my mouth is a good thing. At least I can (almost) yawn again.
But really. It was getting ridiculous. Rock bottom was when I couldn’t even open wide enough to eat a banana. Here I am trying to do the right thing by my TMJs and eat soft food, and I can’t even eat soft food. I thought I was going to have to start taking all my meals through a straw. Which wouldn’t be too bad, since it’s hard to get fat on smoothies. (At least it’s hard to get fat on my smoothies.)
Speaking of fat, and still speaking about my body, I can fit my thin pants again. They’re a 32 inch waist. About a week or two ago I could wedge myself into them, suck in my gut and button the button, but that doesn’t count. I am now appropriately sized such that I can comfortably fit the 32s. Time to get some new pants to show off my ass. Do they make Apple Bottoms for guys?
Yeah, somehow I don’t think it’s a guy poured into those jeans.
D.
Showtime goes all 24
This post is one big spoiler, so if you hate hate hate spoilers, don’t read on.
Still here? I’m about to reveal the name of the program I’m spoiling, and what with that title right up there in humongo-font, if you know anything about 24, then you know what I’m gonna say next.
So, yeah. Karen recorded Homeland for me, and I watched it last night. I asked her to record it for me because I’ve loved Mandy Patinkin’s acting ever since Princess Bride, not to mention the short-lived series Dead Like Me. From the trailers, it looked like an updated Manchurian Candidate with al Qaeda as the puppetmaster, but I had hopes. This is Showtime, after all, not Fox. They can be edgy, right? Right?
Well. Um.
Claire Danes plays Carrie Anderson, a CIA operative who risks everything blah blah blah to get a particle of information: that al Qaeda (essentially) has “turned” an American POW. When an American POW is discovered shortly thereafter, Claire’s convinced that he is the sleeper and will stop at nothing *yawn* to prove that he’s eeevil.
Mind you, I wasn’t being a little bitch just yet. As I said, I had hopes. The first episode was well directed, and the al Qaeda mole, Sgt. Nicholas Brody, looks like nothing more than a very damaged man. Which is what you’d expect from a man who has spent 8 years in a hole, has been tortured, etc. Neither the director nor the screenwriter has tipped his hand, and everything is just ambiguous enough that you could see this story going either way.
About forty minutes into it, I said to Karen, “You know what would be great? If he really is just a POW. Nothing more. And Claire Danes’s character absolutely wrecks this guy’s life, this guy who has already given up about all he can give to his country short of dying for it. This guy who everyone is welcoming back as a hero — he really is a hero, and she wrecks his life all in the name of counter-terrorism.”
I think Karen’s response was something like, “Naw, never gonna happen,” but I had these hopes, see?
So Carrie Anderson with her own money bugs the crap out of this guy. I mean she has every room in his house wired for visual and audio, and she has a couple of guys following him around in a van that can pick up his conversations at a distance, et cetera. ALMOST at the very end, she’s discovered by her mentor (Mandy Patinkin’s character) who advises her to get a lawyer. And I didn’t get this, because if it’s all going to go to hell for her, shouldn’t that happen at the end of the series?
She spends her last night of freedom at a bar trying to pick up some dude for a quick lay, when she twigs to this hand-signal code Brody has been using to signal to someone via national TV — oh, whatever. Bottom line, the show resolves itself into just another 24. It’s okay to thoroughly violate someone’s civil rights if it turns out he’s eeevil. The ends justify the means. Give this series a few more episodes, and Carrie’s gonna torture some vital information out of some poor bastard. You just watch.
Or don’t watch. I think I’ll wait until the series is over and then I’ll check it out on Wikipedia.
D.
Chi-rated
From the assigned readings in my son’s Theology class.
The Roman legates could only protest in impotent Latin ejaculations as the proceedings moved majestically to their predictable climax
Someone has a dirty mind. But we all know that’s me, so I guess I should say someone else has a dirty mind.
But seriously, this reads as though the author had farmed out major bits of his essay to his undergrads to write, and they, pissed off over the assignment, got together to think up the most ridiculously loaded phrases they could. What’ll be next?
The barracks emperors’ failure to protect their flank led to numerous rear guard incursions, and the empire’s borders were soon covered in Santorum.
D.
Robocall
A few moments ago . . .
Robocaller: Hello! This is a forty-five second survey. Are you registered to vote in the State of California?
Me: Yes.
Robocaller: Do you believe that public schools in the State of California should teach children about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered lifestyles?
Me: YES, AND IN AS MUCH GRAPHIC DETAIL AS POSSIBLE!
Robocaller: This survey will end if you do not give a simple “yes” or “no” answer.
Me: Yes.
Robocaller: Thank you. This has been a forty-five second blah blah blah
*click*
D.
Weekend pix
Dessert photos, decent pic of my son, fat pic of yours truly below the fold.
Those Jesii
I promised you two Jesuses, remember? So I’m wondering whether you’ll see what I see in these images. My son doesn’t see it. My friend the ex-seminarian sees it, though.
First, here’s Happy Jesus.
Lemme have one of them Fosters, mate.
And here’s Happy Jesus 2000 years later.
I'm still waiting for that beer, ya bloody wanker.
Need a closer look? Happy, Hopeful Jesus.
Fed up Jesus.
Am I imagining things, or are these two very different conceptions?
D.
FOOOOOD
To celebrate my fiftieth, we’ve been having an eating vacation down here in Pasadena. Friday night we had dinner at a frou-frou restaurant in Pasadena called Maison Akira. Karen and I both had a miso-flavored sea bass dish which was fairly good, although neither of us cared for the bed of quinoa on which it was served. To me, quinoa has a musty, “off” flavor that detracts from whatever it accompanies. Maison Akira is a French-Japanese fusion restaurant, which means I was able to eat escargot and sashimi in the same dinner. And I did. The escargot were sufficiently garlicky and buttery, and were a good deal more fleshy than I’m used to, although I’m pretty sure they were not African giant snails. But perhaps a dwarf cousin of the giant snail. Definitely bigger than what I’m used to.
I don’t know . . . a place like that, everything ought to be die and go to heaven. It really wasn’t. The soft shell crab was plainly of the frozen-and-thawed variety, and it showed. Karen and Jake had decent desserts — Karen, a Baked Alaska with green tea ice cream at its core, and Jake, this odd confection crowned with a caramelized sugar globe. I took pictures, but I have to figure out how to upload them to the blog. Perhaps I can upload them to Facebook and then link it? Hmm. Let’s try that. Nope, nothing yet.
Anyway, I had a figs-sauteed-in-Port-wine thing that was just okay. Would have been better were it not for the shredded mint littering the dish. Hey, not everyone likes mint. If I wanted a mojito I would have ordered a mojito.
Yesterday, we went to Duck House in Monterey Park for lunch, which is one of the few places left, I’m guessing, where you can get Peking Duck without ordering it a day in advance. For their signature dish, I’d have to say they deserve only a B-. The skin was crispy and perfect, and yes that’s the most important thing, but the meat was tasteless. But what’s a boy to do — Quan Jude has disappeared from the San Gabriel Valley, and that had always been our place for Peking Duck. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, “You, sir, are no Quan Jude.” We also had a stir-fried lamb dish, tasty but not lamby. I like my lamb a little lamby, otherwise I worry that they’re feeding me beef. We had some excellent crab there, some greasy noodles, and a hot red bean paste dessert that was probably the best thing we had.
But the true star of this eating vacation was Azeen’s Afghanistan restaurant in Pasadena. What a find! We had the sambosa appetizer (like an Indian samosa, but lighter . . . and indeed, much of Afghani food, if this restaurant is representative, is a lighter, more delicate version than its equivalent in Indian cuisine). For main courses we had the mixed kebabs, the eggplant with onions and tomatoes, the spinach-onion-and-garlic stew, and an amazing butternut squash dish. Mark of a superb restaurant: I think we each had a different favorite dish. This is a restaurant that gets everything right, and I’m sure we’ll be coming back.
Not sure what’s on the menu for today. Breakfast, for starters. All this rich food has been doing a dance on my innards, so once I’m back in Bako, I’ll probably subsist on smoothies for the rest of the week. Smoothies, the perfect diet food (you just have to make them yourself to control the ingredients).
D.
The wreckage of my mouth
So here’s the death toll thus far. I’ve had five fillings and one root canal/crown. I still need another crown but we’re leaving that to 2012 because I’ve exceeded my benefits for the year. And no telling what he wants to do to my left lower quadrant; perhaps that’s a project for 2013.
After I finish doing my teeth, the cool tatt is absolutely next.
Of all the various discomforts of dental work, the least of it is the needle. Yeah, I know some people hate the local injection, but I’m a surgeon. The local injection is our friend. And I need plenty of him, heaven knows; I’m one of these people who gets numb only after the third injection.
Next in line of things I hate the most would be the pain of the drilling. Honestly, it’s more the anticipation of pain than the pain itself that bugs me. If I could be certain that the low level pain I experience is the limit of it, I would gladly forgo that third injection. But I’m not a trusting sort, and I keep expecting the nerve to wrap itself around the drill and send my brain into the stratosphere.
Worse than the injection and the pain of the drilling is that awful itchy feeling I experience when the lidocaine starts to wear off. I have to show enormous restraint to avoid tearing the flesh off my face.
And worst of all is the TMJ because, unlike everything else, it lingers for days.
All that’s left for 2011 is the placement of the permanent crown. And he’s not even charging me for it. Because he already has.
Do you suppose he has to numb me to remove the temporary crown and place the permanent? I hope not.
D.