That’s what I’m thinking about at the moment:  nothing but the tooth. Or teeth, actually:  two big juicy ones in the back on the bottom that have the whole of my head throbbing.

Today started as most others do:  filled with optimism. Places to go, things to do. Progress to be made! Then I checked in on my day’s schedule and saw “2 PM. Dentist.” And I knew what that meant. The first in the latest series of procedures, excavations, exhumations, and consternations. My body stayed in motion toward the door, but my heart slunk upstairs back under the covers. It’s especially dispiriting when everything feels jim-dandy in your mouth, but you know that in a few short hours nothing will feel good.

For the record:  I brush regularly. I floss regularly. I don’t eat candy or drink soda. But I’m sure I serve as an unsung case study in dental schools across the nation. At age 14 I had three front teeth capped — three! At age 14! I didn’t break them; they just… fell apart. This runs in my family. Before the air force put my  brother in active duty, they set about fixing all his teeth. By his 20’s, my father had already lost most of his teeth before opting for full extraction and dentures. I’ve had crowns, root canals, extractions, and so many metal fillings I’m surprised I can pass airport security. In our family we haven’t seen a lot of overweight, heart disease, strokes, cancer, or other ailments, but we have definitely felt the bite of genetics in this other way.

When I go to the dentist, I feel like the first steer walked into the abattoir. Without going into the full horrors of today’s experience, let me note the strange sensation of opening your eyes to see your own blood sprayed across two other people’s faces. I always ask for a mirror so I can see the various stages of what’s being done (imagery that will inform my eventual dental horror drama, I’m sure), and the way it feels and tastes rarely matches up with the miserable little image of some blood, odd stalagmites of bone or metal, and sometimes yawning pits of pulsating nerve. Today was no different. “That’s it?” I asked, looking at a reflected diorama very much at odds with all the drilling, sawing, hammering, and epoxying that had just taken place. Once it was all done, it didn’t seem that bad.

Until an hour later. When the novocaine wore off. And now, like that steer, I felt a hammer coming down on my head. Again and again. It’s now five hours later. It still feels like that. So I’m going to fix a big nasty drink — a drink-drink — and go sleep it off.

I go back in two weeks.

Yes, it’s time for the manufacturer to once again update the legendary board game Solarquest (which, along with Risk and Cosmic Encounter, was a preferred board game for my college gang).

First, Pluto was deplanetized, which threw gamers and believers in astrology into a spin.

Now Saturn has a new moon. Which is sure to drive up real-estate values on the entire system.

Some op-ed images the New York Times refused to print, and why.

It’s worth noting again how poor a job the Fourth Estate has done of informing and protecting us, especially in the last decade. Now imagine the next few years when all those newspapers are out of business and nothing better has yet come along.

Here’s a good interview on Flavorwire with T.C. Boyle.

I’m nearing the end of “A Friend of the Earth” and noting again Boyle’s existential humor. Half the novel is set 20 years from now, when the result of ecological ruin is raining down upon us; but the other half is set in the late 1980’s and shows the eco-warriors as naifs and fools. So I guess either way (do something about it or don’t do something about it), we’re fucked. Which I’m sure is great fun to write, but probably not the best call to action.

The reviews of the film adaptation are coming in and so far agree in two ways: They don’t like it, and they give away almost every plot detail, right up to the end.

Cases in point:

Anthony Lane in The New Yorker

 The Hollywood Reporter

Variety

So if you haven’t read the comic and plan to see the movie, don’t read the reviews. If you plan to see the movie and risk enjoying it, don’t read the reviews.

If the medium is the message, this is self-explanatory.

“Will there be any killing?”

“I Hear they Smoke the Barbecue,” from Pere Ubu’s 1991 release “Worlds in Collision.” (And yes, that’s Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band member Eric Drew Feldman on keyboards.) Just like every other Pere Ubu album, “Worlds in Collision” is great, and so is this song. (If you don’t agree, you’ll have to find some other blog. Go on.) This is from their major-label dalliance period, when some producers and labels with connections really thought, like me, that Pere Ubu surely had a hit single in them somewhere. This album got wall-to-wall great reviews, and it might be the album that sold all of 6000 copies (but that might be all of them). As wonderful as they are, these guys couldn’t get arrested if they drove a truck through the police station. But some of us will always be in awe.

In England, a warehouse supplier to Amazon.com went belly up without clearing out the books. Pandemonium ensued. The English love their books, especially when they’re free.

I can’t figure out why anyone would pay George W. Bush to come give a speech. Ignoring the fact that in the eight years of the Bush Disintegration he displayed zero facility for giving speeches, one might wonder why business interests such as a Canadian Chamber of Commerce would pay him to discourse on his “eight momentous years.” They may have noticed a little something going on with the economy — something not good for them or, evidently, anyone else anywhere — and followed that trail of breadcrumbs all the places it leads, including back to what was at the time Bush’s doorstep. I’d expect not an invitation, but vituperation. Maybe they’re planning a Wicker Man ceremony and need a guest.

It’ll be interesting to see if welcome mats everywhere are yanked inside for Bush. Let’s not forget that just last year while he was still the quote-unquote-president, he wasn’t welcome to his own party’s convention, and wasn’t mentioned by name once on the televised proceedings. Previous presidents have been able to use their connections to their personal advantage, most notably Ford and Clinton. What will be the cachet of giving cash to Bush? He’s widely loathed, and so powerless now that he can’t even get a newspaper delivered to his home. I guess we’ll see.