David Foster Wallace spoke on the merits of shitty pop culture

don't worry about candy

people who don't like sweets love to talk about their tastes as if this fact alone made them a good person. "a little sweet for MY taste," they chuckle whenever possible. well i like maple syrup and sour candy. i'd eat cake or waffles every meal if it wouldn't make me fat.

Robocop PSA

lines from incarnations of "a thousand kisses deep" - leonard cohen

"my mirror twin,

my next of kin,

i'd know you in my sleep.

and who but you would take me in

a thousand kisses deep?

our perfect porn aristocrat,

so elegant and cheap.

i'm old but i'm still into that,

a thousand kisses deep.

i'm good at love,

i'm good at hate,

it's in between i freeze.

been working out but it's too late,

it's been too late for years.

there's no forsaking what you love -

no existential leap -

as witnessed here in time and blood,

a thousand kisses deep.

but you look good

(you really do),

they love you on the street.

if you were here

i'd kneel for you,

a thousand kisses deep"

on last night's soliloquies launch

i wrote this last night:

not crazy about

students who write poetry

just because they're sad

doctor buck likes to ____

i arrive to the empty waiting room early and listen to the hum of general dentistry going on in a back room. two men's voices are pleasantly discussing something - probably teeth. A woman peaks out from there & disappears again when i smile at her. i bide my time. she peaks again and then bustles forward to hand me some forms. No i am not pregnant, no i do not have liver disease or kidney stones, etc. i look at the newspaper clippings on a dried-out cork board and see one of them decrying the harm-done to enamel by lip rings. this is a point against me, although i'm not wearing the ring right now and maybe dr. buck wont notice.

one of the men appears from the back room and goes behind the receptionist's desk. he will be right with me. the other man appears holding his jaw & lamenting: "I really thought I'd keep all my teeth," through cotton-packed gums.

something in the color of the room made it feel unsanitary, maybe the blood-red carpet.

"the smoking doesn't help," responds the dentist. this is another point against me. "That's $300 for today. who's your insurance with?"

"i'm between insurances at the moment," man two responds. "put it on my VISA."

"and would you like to make an appointment to have the sutures out in one week?" as if he has a choice.

"sure, sure."

"next friday at 10?"

"oh... i forgot, i'm going to be away in one week."

"thursday, then? ten o'clock?"

"10:30"

"ten-thirty then, it will only be 5 minutes."

"fine."

"is this the only receipt i get? can i have an itemized bill?" something about his wife keeping the books. can he wait for it? no he better get it now.

he gets his itemized receipt and sits down to pour over it. the dentist says goodbye and disappears into the back room again. man two glances over at me: "i really wanted to keep my teeth."

"smoking," says i (this is an old trick of mine).

the dentist pokes his head out from the back room and waves me in. man 2 still lingering in the blood coloured waiting room, i take my bag and jacket with me. the woman is there with him, and we three get comfortable together, talking about my toothache. metal prodding commences. the ache is found to be resultant of a receding gum line. do i wear a lip ring? they want to know. and what can i say? that's one for dr. buck.

x-rays commence. cleaning commences. he scrapes between my teeth with his metal pick so hard my head moves up and down with it. i try to look comfortable for some reason. now and then he hits a nerve and i try to look pathetic so he'll stop. the woman has got a suction tube in my mouth and flecks of spit are flying all over my face, getting in my eyes. now and then i remember my hands and unclench them. we three grind on together, my makeup running down my cheeks. my head bobbing up and down.

the phone rings and the woman answers it with her free hand. "just a second, i'll ask dr. buck," she tells it. putting it on hold she asks dr. buck,

"where is the third tooth?"

i know immediately this is man 2. he can't be far from the building yet.

"what do you mean 'where's the third tooth?' i put them all right there," he stabs at a counter behind my head with his free hand, all the while both of them cleaning my teeth.

"no, there were only two there..."

"and he's only got two?"

she nods.

"well, tell him we don't have it."

"i'm sorry, we haven't got your tooth." she tells the man. they hang up. my head bobbles. cleaning continues. the phone rings again.

the man's voice is raised this time, i can hear him, kind of: "... really need... religious... mine."

the woman tells him to hang on; "he says he needs the tooth for religious reasons."

(I'll admit i had been wondering why he wanted the teeth at all, his being a middle-aged man and seemingly suicidal. for a second i was satisfied to hear that he wanted the tooth for religious reasons, but soon i started to question which religion it was that requires you to keep your dead, extracted teeth - did he have his baby teeth stowed away as well? my instincts tell me he spent the duration between calls inventing this response, planning to say "it's none of your business" and cry prejudice if they questioned his religious practices. truly he just wanted to show the suckers off, root & all. dr. buck didn't take the bait. i wonder how often man 2 uses this trick.)

now the cleaning, reluctantly, stops. the dentist sighs and asks the woman again what she's done with the tooth. i begin to wonder, from my reclining vinyl chair, whether the woman herself has kept it to show to people. she works with teeth, afterall, and must like them. but then again, what could be so interesting to her about a tooth after all these years? she doesn't respond to dr. buck.

"well it must be in the garbage," he says. "tell him to come for it later."

she does, and he gets up and addresses me for the first time in a while. "Joanne is going to polish your teeth now. Joanne, which one did you put it in?"

Joanne motions towards the adjacent room and sets in to polishing my teeth. it requires both her hands. one of her breasts rests on my forehead as she works, and i silently forgive her for losing or taking the tooth. i hear dr. buck rummaging through the trash in the next room above the noise of the polisher. joanne finishes and sends me to rinse and spit in a sink in the corner. i use a small paper cup and a brown napkin to wipe my mouth and notice there's no trash in the room to throw them in. i go to the next room and use its trashcan, imagining the poor little tooth lying at the bottom of it.

i sit back in the recliner and dr. buck tells me i need a gum graft. i hear the guy with the cotton wads come in and thank joanne for his tooth.

i thank dr. buck for seeing me and pay him $170, promising to call later to schedule my next appointment. i leave, smoke a cigarette, and put my lip ring back in.

sorry dr. buck. i recognize and wholly respect your 2-nothing victory.

a thought experiment: philosophy's neat!

In The Ethics of Killing Jeff McMahan wonders: 

[You are] a member of a set of identical triplets, all of whom are involved in an accident. While [your] brainstem and various vital organs are irreparably damaged, [your] cerebral hemispheres[, the seat of your consciousness,] are unharmed. In the case of both other triplets, however, their brainstems and bodies are undamaged but their cerebrums are destroyed. Surgeons are able to extract [your] cerebrum intact but, instead of transplanting it whole, they divide it and transplant each hemisphere into the body of one of the two remaining triplets. [Assuming your] hemispheres were symmetrically developed, the two people who are brought to consciousness after the operations are both fully psychologically continuous with [your]self as [you were] before the operations. Both believe themselves to be [you] and both have bodies almost indistinguishable from [your] own (p. 23).

... where does your soul end up?