dental hygienists

Today I went to the dental hygienist. Show me a dental hygienist and I will show you a sadist. Look at the lady in that picture up there. Behold the pure evil in her grinning visage. Sure she's smiling, but her eyes say, "Obey me, or I'll blast your nuts with a million rads from this X-ray gun you little shit."

I have never been to visit a dominatrix, but I imagine the experience is similar. You are strapped in a chair, helpless and confused, while an angry woman wounds you with nasty-looking implements of torture. After sawing and poking and stabbing at your flesh for 20 minutes, she flosses your teeth with 50-pound test fishing line and then starts scolding you because your gums are bleeding:

"You know, worm, if you flossed your teeth regularly they wouldn't bleed so much. You are making mistress Sharon very angry."
"Oh, sorry. I floss about 5-days a week, but I didn't know I was supposed to use barbed wire."
"What's that, slime?"
"Ow Ow Owwww! Sorry sorry sorry, I promise to floss every day!"
"Much better, maggot. See you in 6 months. Kiss my boot on the way out."

Also, they always find some bullshit thing wrong that you have to come back to get fixed. Last time it was wisdom teeth that weren't bothering me. This time it was old fillings that aren't bothering me. Hey shitheads, I live on $1700/month. How many fillings and wisdom tooth extractions do you think I can afford? Shove it up your Gingivae, you leeches.

Finally, I am running salty in poker and am in a bad mood. I therefore decided to cash out and take a break. Poker is for losers and degenerates and I am an upstanding gentleman with many important and busy-type things to do, like write in my blog.

Now bugger off.

My Motto

My motto is: "operor non tractare faecis vos operor non volo ut tractare"

Today I was stressing out about this course I'm taking. There is a problem set every week and they take a long time. It wouldn't be so bad, except that I have other work that has to get done, and it was hard to see when I would have the time to do it all. Then I realized I was ignoring my own motto and decided to just audit the course instead of taking it for credit. You see, I don't have to take it....I just wanted to take it because I thought it might help me with my research. But auditing the course gives me a decent overview of the material, and if anything looks particularly pertinent or interesting I can easily investigate it further on my own. Why put myself through hell (via problem sets) if I don't have to? There is no good reason, and like I always say......"operor non tractare faecis vos operor non volo ut tractare" (don't do shit you don't want to do).

Now, if you are the type of person who is so lazy and unmotivated that you would go without showering for a month or let your children live in squalor because you didn't feel like doing the basic day-to-day maintenance activities expected of most breathing adults, then my motto is probably not for you. You are probably a worthless hippie and find it challenging enough walking from point A to point B without wandering into traffic....I would therefore suggest constantly raising the bar rather than trying to do less. With work you may be able to keep yourself washed, clothed, and fed on a semi-consistent basis. But for the rest of you:

Friends want you to go out to a boring dinner or crappy bar when you're tired?
operor non tractare faecis vos operor non volo ut tractare!

Boss want you to take on extra work as a favour?
operor non tractare faecis vos operor non volo ut tractare!

Kids want you to buy them expensive cellphones or trendy electronics?
operor non tractare faecis vos operor non volo ut tractare!

Significant other pressuring you to propose?
operor non tractare faecis vos operor non volo ut tractare! (times 10)

People bugging you to bone up on your latin grammar?
operor non tractare faecis vos operor non volo ut tractare!

Every day Mr. Apple is teaching you.......

Tore my RCL....

Found another track from the upcoming Band of Horses CD floating around my internet. Once again I overdid it and tore my RCL (rocking cruciate ligament) listening to it too much. Download at your peril:

For Wicked Gil

2nd Greatest Tattoo Ever

Feast your eyes on this:
I once almost let a girl convince me to get a tattoo. If this was the tattoo she'd suggested, I would be inked right now. This leads to the obvious follow-up question: what is the greatest tattoo ever? Well if it was Axl on that dude's arm you'd have your answer.

The Olympics are stupid

Hello everyone! How are things? That's just great. Anyway I just wanted to pop in for a second to let you know that the winter olympics are a stupid waste of time. Have you noticed that a lot of the sports have zero tradition, and that the rest are completely lame? I sure have. Let's be honest, the only sports anyone gives a rat's ass about are hockey and figure skating....and figure skating is not even a sport.

Now before you email me shaking your proverbial e-fist all red-faced with high blood pressure and trembling with righteous indignation, let me say I have nothing against figure skating. It requires tremendous athletic ability and skill, I just can't call it a sport since it involves both subjective judging and "artistic interpretation"..... ergo it is unspeakably lame. But figure skating is not even close to the most ridiculous event at the olympics. What are the most ridiculous events? I'm glad you asked:

1. Short-track speed skating. There is a perfectly legitimate event in the olympics with years of tradition, called speed-skating, where athletes race around an oval to determine who is the fastest skater. Then there is short track speed skating. It is new, it is lame, and the winner of a race seems to be determined completely randomly. This is how short track speed skating works: a bunch of dudes skate around a little circle and bump and jostle each other until 3 of them have fallen down and then the 4th guy wins. It is roller-derby on skates. I'm sure I could win at least 1 out of every 5 races I entered by just waiting for the other 3 guys to bail and then skating in a leisurely manner around the track waving to my millions of fans. Also, apparently this bad-ass is the big star of the sport:I think the photo speaks for itself.

2. Anything involving a snowboard. No tradition. Lame, lame, lame. The announcers use words like "bitchin", "rad", and "stoked". The winner is determined based on who could pull off the gnarliest tricks. Who decides what's gnarly? A bunch of bleached-blonde stoners, no doubt. If there's anything worse than a grown man on a skateboard then it is a grown man on a snowboard. Case in point: this drug-addicted X-games refugee, nicknamed "the flying tomato", won the snowboarding gold medal today:Holy shit. "Higher, faster, stronger" indeed......but apparently with a distinct emphasis on the "higher" part.

3. Curling. This one hurts, since I am Canadian and it is one of the two sports we are good at. Unfortunately, curling is basically lawn bowling for pasty-white seniors living north of the 49th parallel. It is the only sport where you can win the gold medal and be 58 years old, 240 lbs, drunk, and wheezing from the effort involved in climbing the podium.

4. Freestyle moguls and aerials (skiing). Whoah dude! Did you see the 360 daffy triple loop with a tuck that dude just pulled?!? That was tight, dude. It's hard to say whose stuff was more radical and gnarly, but I think Norwegian dude was slightly gnarlier than Finnish dude. Aw shit, gold medals all around! Pass the bong dude. (See snowboards above)

5. Skeleton. This sport is both stupid and strictly for maniacs. Push a sled. Jump on. Go down a track headfirst at 130km/h. Fastest to the bottom wins. I'm sure there's skill involved, but when the average person can't appreciate it by watching, what's the point? This sport is so obscure it's just ridiculous that it's in the olympics. Are there recreational skeleton leagues somewhere I haven't heard about? Why do I get the feeling that if I loaded a 400 lb old woman onto a sled and then pushed her across the starting line, she would probably win the bronze?

Let's face it. The only thing that matters in the olympics is who wins the gold medal in hockey. Add in a bit of window dressing (a few downhill and cross-country skiing events, some speed skating, and a bit of figure skating to keep the old ladies happy) and we would have all the winter olympics we need. The summer olympics are much worse and should be eliminated completely.

Wayne Gretzky

Is Wayne Gretzky forming public policy? Is he a powerful politician or a judge or a bishop? Has Wayne Gretzky ever preached at you? Did he sneer at you for drinking too much or buying dirty magazines? Has he often bossed you around and told you how to conduct your private affairs? If the answer to all these questions is no, then may I suggest that you leave him the hell alone?

Wayne Gretzky played hockey, and now he is a coach and a television commercial actor. His co-worker got caught running a gambling ring, and now the worms in the media are piling on with insinuations that Wayner may have known about it or, heaven forbid, actually have placed bets. Why should we care if he wants to bet his money on a football game? Can anybody say with a straight face that it is morally wrong to gamble with your own money? If so, then I hope that said person never bought a lotto ticket, played bingo, or invested money in the stock market. 75% of reporters are worthless hypocrites with skeletons in their closets waaay seedier than Gretzky's. 98% of sports reporters are worthless hypocrites and degenerates who bet on sports every single day.

Pierre Bourque is the biggest hypocrite in the entire world.

THEME

It takes a long time between a paper getting accepted and finally getting published. Behold my first ever paper as first author:

Click here!

Progress Report

You may recall that some time ago I published a list of tasks that I resolved to accomplish during the month of January. Please find below an update on my progress:

1. cut my hair

This was accomplished, although only technically. I made a poker-related bet with a certain young lady here at school. If I finished more than 6 places ahead of her in a tournament I would cut my hair, otherwise she would dye hers. She beat me straight up. So a few days later I go to the barber and get my hair cut, but I layed on the charm and gave him my sob story and he took pity on me and basically barely touched my hair. Jen (the young lady in question) probably felt a little ripped off but she learned an important lesson: when it comes to contracts, get everything in writing......especially with unscrupulous characters like me.

2. write a review

done last week.

3. win "top overall player" in the MIT series of poker

Unfortunately I fell short here. I finished 2nd in the standings, but that's not too bad and the guy who won (beating me handily in heads-up action at the final tournament) has had an unfortunate accident with both kneecaps and all 10 fingers being broken under rather mysterious circumstances. Get well soon Scott! I'll keep your champion's seat warm for you while you're in physical therapy......

4. wink at 3 old ladies

Oh man! Done like 7 times over! I love old ladies and they love me.

5. come up with a thesis proposal

Why's everybody riding me so hard about this? Leave me alone, damn it. It'll get done as soon as I finish this hand of online poker.

6. watch more Matlock

No station shows Matlock on MIT cable. So instead I just read the scripts online.

Judge Raymond Price: Are you looking for trouble?
Ben Matlock: Trouble is a two-way street.
Judge Raymond Price: Are you threatening me?
Ben Matlock: I'm trying to do my job!

So am I Ben......so am I......