Greenteeth

GreenteethMM.com:

Jenny Greenteeth: Water spirit and CEO (Chief Ectoplasmic Officer) of the Boggart Blog series and Greenteeth multi media.

My choice of name for a new multi media web project has caused some amusement among American friends. "Why are you building a web site dedicated to the shortcomings of British dentistry," they ask. The first time I noticed this particular vein of American humour was during the run up to the recent Presidential election. A U.K. newspaper and a U>S> media group arranged an e-mail tie up to get some interaction between Brits and Americans on issues of mutual concern; Iraq, Globalisation, the environment etc. While the British expressed dismay at the prospect of another Bush victory the Americans involved, mostly from industrial communities in the mid - west assailed us with advice about how we should stop trying to interfere in American politics and instead concentrate on getting our "lousy teeth" fixed.

The lousy teeth jokes don't work of course; they're not funny and not true. And in case anyone is tempted to attack the lovely Miss Greenteeth (above) we should warn you people who venture too close to her algae encrusted gnashers are seldom ever seen again (you'll have to look up the legend to understand that)

The Kelpi by herbert James Draper, depicting Jenny Greenteeth when she was a pre - Christian Nymph who lured lusty knights to a watery death

The obvious knee - jerk response to "lousy British teeth" is to first as the taunter if they re just angry because they did not qualify for a part in Deliverance, and then retort "we will get our teeth fixed when you guys get your fat arses fixed so you don't have to complain about doors in British Hotels being too narrow".

A slightly more reasoned response would be to point out that Austin Powers is a movie and Homer Simpson is a cartoon character. Name calling and insult hurling is good fun of course and now that such activities have been ousted from domestic politics it is nice to see them flourishing in the international arena. The simple minded do tend to take it literally however and are soon on the slippery slope towards more addictive forms of racism and xenophobia.

So what about British teeth. Well in Europe generally we have not yet succumbed to the ideal of outward physical perfection. If they ain't broke don't fix it is our attitude, especially to noses and in Britain particularly the perfect, even smile is viewed with some suspicion for very good reasons. Thanks to our nation's pioneering the concept of state funded health care the brilliant white, even toothed smile, so essential in the U.S.A for anybody planning to leave the house, here became a sexual turn - off.

The Osmond grin possessed by far more Britons than Americans in the 1950 and 60s was not an indicator of our concern for dental health but the result of obsessive bureaucratic meddling in our lives. At the first sign of a cavity in a fully grown adult dentists would be paid by the state to pull out entire sets of perfectly good gnashers with years of chomping left in them.

Doubting twenty - one year olds who complained through bloody gums "mutt I yiked my deeth" were told by representatives of the nanny state. "It is for the best, you will get a free set of dentures and will have no more trouble for the rest of your life," Those old fashioned removable false teeth gave lots of trouble of course, they were painful and had a terrible habit of slipping out just when the owner was trying to impress somebody. And kissing with tongues was a very high risk adventure.

So here you have the explanation of why us Brits are so attached to our crooked, uneven, slightly off - white smiles. These imperfections show that we have the teeth we were programmed to grow from the moment of conception, which is a great comfort to prospective sexual partners. You see when one has been charmed by a perfect smile and managed to get lucky with the person behind it, there is nothing more horrific than to awake the following morning and see that same smile grinning out from a glass of water at the bedside.

NOTE: Ian wishes it to be known that at age fifty six he still has all his teeth (except for the one he broke biting the cap off a beer bottle years ago) and that they are not the chalky white of soft teeth that will crumble if they are shown sugar, but the waxy white of teeth that will still be around if he lives another fifty six years.

TAKING A BREAK, NOW I HAVE SOME CONTENT ENTERED ITS TIME TO START PROMOTING THIS BLOG. I WILL BE BACK BEFORE THE END OF THE WEEK (I wasn't back for eight years as things worked out).

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Love For Sale (with Air Miles)

Picture source: jounalisticalabria.it

An interesting news item tells us that prostitutes could soon be touting for business in shopping centres in Budapest. Hungary's Interior Ministry is thinking of allowing some malls where prostitutes could strike deals for sex, as long as they move to a place of their own to enact the transaction. A government letter says there is "nothing intrinsically wrong" with an entertainment centre without gratification."

If this is correct then the former communist state could be leading the way to a new area of commercial activity that our traditional Western capitalists have failed to appreciate the potential of. Free Enterprise in Britain and America has in my opinion always been to ready to acquiesce to the moral strictures of extreme religion. How can any red - blooded capitalist be against commercial sex. OK I know it degrades women, it is exploitative, can lead to abuse and some insist it subverts the values of Christian society (I don't recall Jesus ever condemning a hooker though.) Let's stop being mealy mouthed, hell, we are talking about capitalists here, the people who are happy to profit from making bombs, land - mines and napalm and selling them to third world tyrants, people who are prepared to manipulate the financial markets and consign millions of honest, average citizens to an impoverished old age in order to line their own pockets. We are talking about the morality of the rat - pack.

If we lived in an honest world, Wal-Mart would be into the brothel business like a ferret into a rabbit hole. British mega - retailer Tesco would not be far behind and both would face stiff competition from German cut - price chain Aldi offering shoddy but heavily discounted goods from Eastern Europe. And that is just the low end of the market (I was going to say "bottom end" but that would be open to misunderstanding.) What about demand from the high class shopper. Posh people's chain Harvey Nicholls would do well offering refined young ladies from "old money" families, a thousand pounds up front and then you fund her drug habit for six months. Nieman Marcus on the other hand could specialise in the exotic, a Russian Princess maybe (only a few left in the world), a critically acclaimed writer whose dreary feminist tomes do not sell, a fashion model who grew breasts while in rehab. Retiring to private place to "enact the transaction" would not be a problem either. Most malls could install travel - lodge style accommodation on a mezzanine floor without inconveniencing shoppers who merely wanted a few essential food items.

It could all be very discreet and properly organised just like buying any other goods or services. Without the fear of being arrested in a police sting or mugged by the accomplice of a woman posing as a respectable working girl the customer experience would be enhanced.

And of course the embarrassment of paying a lady of negotiable affection for her services would be lessened if you knew she was going to say "thank you sir, and do you have a loyalty card?"

Ian Thorpe, May 6, 2005.

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A Good Place to Die?

The hospital block, Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire - things are in a bad way with the UK National Heath Service right now

The world is already close to overflowing with Bean Counters and is getting fuller by the minute. Armies of serious wee people equipped with clipboards swarm around us asking stupid questions, observing, counting and documenting every area of human activity. Did you know the average person farts thirteen times each day? Yes somebody has counted. QED.

Once the information gathering is done, the data is passed to managers whose task is to collate and present the information. Now these people revel in job titles that include the word "manager" but collating and presenting information is the traditional skill of the clerk. And a clerk by any other name etc.

Nowhere are the Bean Counters more apparent than in hospitals where although there are several fewer processes to count than in a commercial operation they need more people to count that which is countable.

Perhaps this is just a warped perception because one does not expect to encounter Bean Counter in hospitals. In a commercial enterprise where profit is the goal, counting things many times is an essential act, as is (or was before the advent of computers) the copying of numbers from one piece of paper to another. Nobody ever looked at any of these pieces of paper of course, a thing cannot be of the slightest importance if somebody has time to write it down on a piece of paper. But the fact that there were lots of pieces of paper with numbers on made investors feel safe and comfortable. After all without pieces of paper to keep them in line the R & D geeks would spend all the revenue on gadgets, pizza and acne treatments.

Hospitals have a different culture however (or lots of different cultures if you look in the laboratory.) Bacteria do not follow any business process, road accidents have no regard for budgetary constraints.

A serious wee person with a clipboard saying "and where is the cost benefit in treating this patient" should not be part of our experience of an organisation whose function is to preserve life and alleviate suffering; when we are ill we need to be surrounded by angels in white uniforms applying unguents to suppurating sores, mopping fevered brows, stitching gaping gashes and administering tea and sympathy (no British person would ever under estimate the therapeutic properties of a nice cup of tea.) The last thing you want to see is a bunch of suits holding a meeting to assess the feasibility of reattaching your severed arm and ensuring your "clinical incident" does not consume more than its fair share of resources.

Hospitals now are goal driven profit centres, thus the goals are short term, do a quick fix and give out some happy pills, document that the patients condition has improved and send them home before they can relapse or worse still die. "For God's sake never let anyone die, it will impact on our targets," scream the Bean Counters.

Call me old fashioned if you like but I cannot see what is wrong with dying in hospital. I am prepared to take it on trust that the doctors and nurses do their very best and genuine cases of malpractice where somebody goes in with a broken toe and ends up missing a healthy kidney are rare. That said, it is a hospitals job to take in sick people. And sick people have a very inconvenient tendency to die. Everybody dies sometime.

Doctors have given the bloody minded a stick with which to beat them of course by chirruping self - righteously "our job is to save lives." As soon as a patient dies some opportunistic relative is bound to say "you failed to do your job. I'm going to sue!"

But all reasonable people understand that preserving life is not always possible so over the entrance to any hospital there should be a health warning "entering hospitals may well result in death." Hey presto, they are covered.

Instead, a few years ago some managers decided to eliminate death and start talking instead of negative patient outcome. Well I want to make it clear, I will never willingly be a negative patient outcome. There is nothing negative about dying in fact it is our very last positive act before we shuffle off this mortal coil.
To the clipboard wielding bureaucrats of course, the ultra - conformist enforcers of conformity death ought to be the great vindication, proof that in the end even the most committed anarchist must in the end conform and do as everybody else does. This is a double edged sword maybe, because to the existentialist anarchist death is the final pointless act and proves the pointlessness of life. Bureaucrats never see the big picture though.

In the final analysis I have to say I would rather begin my journey to the "unexplored land from whose bourne no traveller returns" from a hospital bed and surrounded by caring people standing by, ready to administer pain killers, a word of comfort and a final cup of tea than wait alone in some shabby senior-citizens-dwelling-unit for a cowled figure with a scythe over its shoulder to approach and say far too cheerily, "time to go matey - boy but cheer up, look at it this way; at least you have helped some junior bean counter deliver his targets.

The Race for Power

Election time in Britain and we are being subjected to the usual daily menu of name calling, blame shifting, outrageous promises and lame excuses, just as our friends in America were not long ago. There is an old drinking song that goes "it’s the same the whole world over / it’s the poor what gets the blame it's the rich what gets the pleasure/ is it not a crying shame?
Apparently not according to the main political parties everywhere. The all seem to be keen on private finance initiatives in public service, cutting welfare rights and giving employers more scope to exploit the lowest paid workers. This kind of campaigning appeals to the mysterious constituency of Middle. That can be Middle, America; Middle, England; or middle anywhere else. The constituency of Middle appears on no maps and is never visited by real people, only by politicians around election time.
I am glad I do not live in Middle, England and hope my friends across the water never find themselves in Middle, America because everything I read and hear tell me that Middlers live in fear. People in Middle fear everything, they fear unemployment, they fear tax rises, they fear economic depression, they fear homosexuals, liberals, loony lefties, reformers, reds under the beds, greedy capitalists who will export their jobs to low cost labour countries and egalitarian socialists who will stop their tax breaks, they fear all things that may have a detrimental affect on property prices and they fear Johnny Foreigner; but their greatest fear is the fear that dare not speak its name. They are scared to death of THE DARK SKINNED PEOPLE. The Yellow Peril, Dirty Dagos, Bogus Asylum Seekers, illegal immigrants, bearded ragheads with weapons of mass destruction, call them what you will, none of them are as white as they should be are they? (actually I must confess here to being touched with the tarbrush myself, not much but enough that when I meet people from Middle, England at election time they will always say "you're not local are you?" or "there's something not quite English about you." Well yes, just like there is something not English about The Queen or something not American about people whose forefathers were laying the nation's economic foundation in the plantations of the south when the ancestors of most Americans were revolting (if they were French) or working in the fields of Europe.
So the conservatives in Britain are not really conservatives but socially reactionary economic liberals (just as the Liberals are social democrats and the Labour Party have a tendency to mess up the economy and put millions out of work - we Brits love irony)
Well let's be honest, what is more likely to have a detrimental effect on property prices?
In the current round of electioneering the fear that dare not speak its name has been exploited in a Conservative poster campaign. Under the banner "are you thinking what we're thinking?" they ask questions like "is it time for tighter immigration controls," or "shouldn't we clamp down on asylum seekers." The real question of course is "are you afraid of THE DARK SKINNED PEOPLE. This is reinforced by other questions such as " we need more police on the streets (to protect the people of Middle, England from THE DARK SKINNED PEOPLE? ) and then strangely "how hard is it to keep a hospital clean?" Strange because the answer is "not as hard as it would be if you sent home all the Indian, Pakistani and Caribbean auxiliary carers, domestics and porters."
(OH WELL THEY CAN STAY IF THEY MUST BUT DON'T LET THEM MOVE INTO OUR STREET)
Yes, what the conservatives are thinking is pretty much what Tony Blair's Labour Party are thinking but whereas the Blairites are using the Bearded Ragheads with Weapons of Mass Destruction to promote fear, the Conservatives are relying on THE DARK SKINNED PEOPLE.
Years ago, long before Margaret Thatcher declared Britain a fun - free zone our politicians liked to lecture us on the importance of being more like our hard working, fun loving European neighbours. Those of us who made up the lunatic fringe (Mrs. Thatcher's words, not mine) pointed out that not only was the British climate against this but that Europe's more relaxed attitude to booze meant that they got bigger measures at lower prices and the bars were open longer hours.
The question was asked "if you want us to be more like Europe why not start there.?"
"Oh no," said Mrs Thatcher's Conservatives, "if people start having fun they might get used to it, we meant work harder and save more money for your old age," which did not sound very European at all. After all, once people find that life can be fun they forget to be afraid of Reds Under The Beds and all the rest.
I liked the idea of people losing their irrational fears so much that I formed my own political party, the Liberal Libations Party. Affiliating with Screaming Lord Sutch's Monster Raving Loony Party we campaigned on a "Bigger Drinks For Everyone" ticket. My campaign came very close to disaster, I almost won.
It is appropriate to tell this story because I am thinking of reviving my Liberal Libations Party with the slogan "are you drinking what we're drinking?" we could offer Better Public Services, improved education, free Middle from irrational fears and give equal opportunities to all, even THE DARK SKINNED PEOPLE., free I-pods for everyone, make carrying a clipboard in the street a capital offence and relieve third world debt, kill capitalists.
Then to give us a final push for power in the last few days we could turn up the heat with a new set of even more radical policies and another slogan.
"Stop War."
"Feed Africa"
"Give Free Condoms to Catholic Priests (well we don't want them breeding.)
"Ban Religion"
"Support Guerrilla Gardening"
"Make the Hurdy Gurdy Mushroom Man President of The World….."
"ARE YOU SMOKING WHAT WE ARE SMOKING?
END
Copyright © 2005, Ian Thorpe.
http://www.authorsden.com/ianthorpe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Fear and Panic #1

FEAR AND PANIC #1
Hiding from Shadows
I heard that last week President Bush took refuge in a bomb-proof bunker under the White House , the U.S. Army was put on red alert, air force helicopters were scrambled and Vice President Dick Cheney was whisked away to an "undisclosed location" (best place for him mutter most of my readers)

Yes, our old friend Fear and Panic had returned to Washington to prove that post 9/11 paranoia is alive and well. The cause of the kerfuffle turned out to be a rather small but very dense raincloud.
Clouds are such very commonplace occurrences that one would hope even Military Intelligence personnel might have sufficient common sense to recognise them as non-threatening weather events. Apparently this is not so. The cloud of potential mass destruction in question was "moving at about the speed of a helicopter and kept appearing and disappearing on radar.

A quick call to my friend who is a software developer at British Aerospace confirmed that far from being sinister, such cloud behaviour was entirely typical.

I am not a weather expert but have flown in commercial aircraft many times and like anyone who is used to flying over Northern Europe I have some experience of clouds. I also live in a notoriously cloud-infested part of Britain an so am well aware of the less pleasant aspects of typical cloud behaviour. In fact you might say I have "looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow..." although I try to avoid looking at them from down because raindrops in the eye can be quite uncomfortable. From above however clouds can be stunningly beautiful in a Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds sort of way.

The real crux of this piece is my experience of flying through clouds. The ease with which large jetliners pass through the seemingly solid mass does not leave on with the impression that any cloud would ever be substantial enough to conceal and support a gang of bearded ragheads with miniature thermo-nuclear devices up the holes in their bottoms.
There is an important lesson to be learned from the cloud of no threat whatsoever. We British learned the same lesson from thirty years of living with the very real and present threat of IRA terrorists in our midst. It is this; the terrorists most potent weapon is Fear and Panic. Mr Bush and his cohorts used Fear and Panic to unite the nation behind his administration then Osama Bin Laden turned the tables by using Bush generated Fear and Panic to disrupt the American economy. And now the President has fallen victim to his own propaganda and is running and hiding from shadows (or clouds in this case).

As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said "you have nothing to fear but fear itself.

END
Copyright © 2005, Ian R. Thorpe
http://www.authorsden.com/ianthorpe