Anacondas, flip-flops & hellfire

Yesterday I went to the dentist. It had been a loooong time since I'd been (coincidentally a loooong time since I've had dental insurance) though I shall not shame myself by specifying how long exactly.

Things I was thinking in the chair:

How is it ok for her to go at my teeth with sharp metal hooks? Would it be okay if I did that to myself? It just doesn't seem to be something one needs to go to dentistry school for...am not really noticing anything glaringly expert about her technique here. It's not as if I *want* to assault my teeth with metal hooks but it just seems like if I were able to acquire the proper hooks I sure could save me a shitload of cash. Fuck, my nose itches. Fuck, my jaw hurrrrts! Oh, if only I were an anaconda, quite accustomed to unhinging my jaw to ingest antelopes for my lunch...then this wouldn't be such a trial. Snakes might make great dental patients, it's a shame they've no real need for dentistry. I've always felt like I have a rather smallish mouth and a ginormo tongue that's too big and fat for its allocated space. I feel like that's been confirmed here today. My tongue is SO in the way. But I feel sort of validated. Do most other peoples' tongues fit properly inside their mouths?

Yeah, it didn't all make sense, my musings. When I get uncomfortable, I am VERY excessively locquatious, in fact the term "verbal diarrhea" may very well have been invented for me when I'm nervous...well it very well could have been, let's say, as it's totally apropos for my behavior. Except yesterday, with my poor damn aching jaw locked at 180°, chatter was somewhat of a challenge.... so I just had to internalize all that jibbajabba.

But even with my jaw strain, and the metal scrapage, and the rivulets of drool streaming down my cheeks to pool at the base of my neck, even with all that unpleasantness, I'd still say the most horrific part of my visit was my little tête à tête with the dentists' business manager. Oh the suckiness. I am now Czarina of DEBTtopia . Congratulate me!!!

Today I kinda tarted myself up with a black & white polka dot dress (foxy makeup job...red lips, but of course) and these 4" black patent leather peep toe heels. I performed admirably on said heels, even managing a lot of the more physical aspects of my job (wheeling out a dolly to pick up a tower of UPS deliveries, unloading & unpacking those packages, lugging reams of paper around the office and filling up all the printers, etc.) But I have a very finite time frame on how long I can withstand heels --about 3pm, my dogs started reeeeally barkin' ,as they say. But still, I toughed it out for the rest of my workday, which, strictly speaking should have been another 1.5 hours but it was actually another 2 hours ( no stunner, that. Very rarely can I actually manage to get outta work at 4:30 like I'm supposed to . This is why I don't beat myself up about it if I run about 5-10 min late in the morning every now and then...well, honestly, about 3 outta 5 weekday mornings. This arrangement seems to be working out thus far. Of course, it probably helps that my immediate boss has serious punctuality issues of her own) Anyways, I lasted 'til 5 pm on those mega-heels, and as soon as I got to my car I switched over to some flip flops I happened to have in the trunk. So I start the car, and before I put it in gear, remember: Shit, I left a 1/2 a salad in the fridge in there! It was a really good salad, and I had planned to apply the leftovers to one of my weekend meals. So I go into get it, and *of course* I didn't change back into my heels for the trekk back inside.

Now possibly you'll recall the episode last month when I became our agency's first casualty of a more strict dress code policy (a casual casualty. HAA! Wordplay!!) One of the more explicit laws in the dress code is "NO FLIP FLOPS" But shit, this was a 30 second rescue mission and my feet were effin' KILLING me!!

So I'm heading down this li'l hallway to the kitchen and sense someone following me. I soon realize that it's Sheila, whose name I type in italics to infer that if I were speaking this anecdote, I'd say Sheila in a sneering manner saturated with intense disdain. Let it be known, however, that this Sheila is an exception, I only say the name that way in relation to her, as generally I like Sheilas. You've got the Australian slang connotation, which is nifty, and Kara, your mom's name is Sheila (probably you knew that) and best of all there's that terrif Ready For the World song: "OH! Oh Sheeeeila. Lemme love ya 'til the mornin' comes.." (oh, you know you wanna listen to it now...) But back to the awful italicized Sheila.. she is "Director of Quality Improvement" and my managerial informant told me (let us call him...Larry, why don't we? It is his name after all) that she is the driving force behind the Dress Code Crusades. And even if she wasn't the evil mastermind behind that, she still wouldn't be one of my fave peeps. So I'm walking down the hall, flippity floppity, headed for the kitchen, flip flip flop. And I'm thinking, do I address this dress code violation or not? The "or not" course of action probably would have been wiser (in retrospect) but it started to seem to me that it was not just a dress code violation but a BLATANT dress code violation, and Ohmigod I have never tread so loudly in my life how can she not hear this? The flip-flip-flop of my steps was like SUPERNATURALLY AMPLIFIED...just like Poe's Telltale Heart...except, y'know, applying to orange flip flops in this instance, so not quite so macabre.

So you know what I did, right? Or you have an idea...

I stopped, did an about-face, and gesturing to my feet, said "These are just for coming back inside to get something--for the record." I was looking for Sheila to give me a grin or some facial sign of acquiescence (as I knew it would have been "above &beyond" for her to deign to speak to me) but I got from her a TOTALLY BLANK STARE. And so I promptly banged a quick right into the kitchen and she continued to amble down the hallway.

I don't know how to interpret that blank stare exactly. One possibility is that she did not catch my footward gesture and was just perplexed as to WTF I was on about. I hope that was it. The other , very possible possibility is that I was perhaps less than guarded vis a vis my tone and inadvertantly gave a glimpse of my feelings about Sheila and/or her sartorial decrees. The unspoken end to that sentence was "...so don't you fuckin' DEMERIT me or whatever, a'ight?" But maybe I implied that just a smidge even if I never exactly said it.

And lastly, I discovered Arthur Brown today. Daaaamn is this post disjointed and rambly. I totally owe y'all some half way decent segues. Next post, I promise. But yeah, anyways, Arthur Brown...

I was trying to get some work done on this FSS spreadsheet (and ultimately I didn't get a damn thing accomplished on that, and of course it's due on Monday. GGggrrr) and when I'm trying to mentally get in the spreadsheet zone, I always plug some ear buds into the computer & listen to some tunes...it seriously does help, believe it or not. So I was tuned to the "Decades" channel of Accuradio, and suddenly someone shouts into my noggin, via my earbuds: I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE!! I thought it was some kind of between-songs sound clippy like they do on the radio sometimes, but no, this was the start of Brown's song "Fire". It's sorta bizarro. I was definitely transfixed by it, but I don't know if it was in a good I-must-procure-this-from-iTunes sorta way or a bad this-is-gonna-give-me-recurring-nightmares sorta way. I emailed Paul and asked him if he'd heard any Arthur Brown and he responded that yes, he had, which didn't surprise me because that friggin' Paul KNOWS EVERYTHING. It can be vexing sometimes. And--oh yeah--he wrote (and, in the interest of justice I am going to log in to work webmail, so's I can copy & paste this) "Oh yeah- been familiar with him since High School, if not possibly late grade-school." A simple YES woulda sufficed...I mean, is it just me or is there something a tad smug about putting it that way? Still, I am glad I work with Paul...he may be a smug know-it-all and **massive** dork (remind me to tell you sometime about this oddball steampunk stuff he blathers about) but he gets my jokes and it's always good to have someone in your office who is intellectually stimulating. After the email exchange, Paul is telling me how I should really check out video footage of Brown if I can track it down, because the guy really put on a good show and when he performed "Fire" he was apt to wear a flaming helmet. And said helmet, because it was a sort of rough, homemade,creation was not insulated and the fire up on top of the helmet would heat up bolts on the inside of the helmet making the thing damned uncomfortable to wear. But to wear it anyways--such showmanship.

So for you, my lovelies, I have tracked down a clip from 1968 Top of the Pops showing this whack song and the fiery helmet. And you know, the video is, overall, so bizarro that I barely even noticed the flaming helmet. Arthur Brown has very uhhh...distinctive choreography. I might dance like that if I really was on FIRE, I imagine. But I recommend you watch the whole thing (even if you git scared!!) Because he breaks out the phattest moves later on in the song after stripping off his helmet & caftan. A sort of pop & lock- running man hybrid there at about 2:21-- I dig that. Anyways, check it out for yourself. (If you DARE..MMMWAAAA HAAA HAA HAAA!)