Well what a year it’s been for me, healthwise. First I get a Diabetes scare, then my ex dies, then a couple of friends die and now my teeth are falling out. Boy am I eager to see the back of this year!
Bizarre thing happened to me yesterday. My dentist rings to say they’ve had a cancellation and do I want to bring forward my appointment due at the end of the month. Well as it happens I say, yes, thanks. Been having bit of jip with one of my teeth.
So my psychic dentist as he shall forever now be known asks me to explain the problem. Well you see the thing is, don’t laugh, but it’s, well, it’s like my bottom teeth are being forced up. And they’re very sensitive, though not exactly hurting oh and I had a gum boil the other day but it went so that’s fine, right? He shakes his head and all but sucks his breath in over his teeth the way builders, plumbers and car mechanics do…
You are going to lose your teeth
And then he tells me my teeth are fine. Haven’t even had any fillings on the front bottom teeth that are giving me the problem no, it’s not them. It’s the gums. I have an infection which has caused an abscess. He does an XRay to check but he knows before we get the results. He puts the resulting film on the lightbox for me to see. There, you see, there. That’s where the bone connecting your teeth to your gums should be…
Only it’s fading fast. Will probably disappear faster than you can say underpinning. With luck, care and antibiotics for the infection that’s caused the abscess I might keep my teeth a bit longer. How long? Couple of years I ask optimistically. Maybe. If you’re lucky. A few months if I’m not I say? Or could be a matter of weeks he replies. Christ it’s like getting a cancer diagnosis. Doctor how long have I got as the normal functioning human being I’ve always liked to imagine I am…
You’re not going to die!
Okay so I shouldn’t joke about cancer but having lost more people to this vile, disgusting, disease than I have fingers on both hands I think I’ve got the right to laugh in the face of cancer. I lost someone to cancer after he went to the dentist with toothache – or what he thought was toothache. Moral? DON’T miss your dental appointments!
Anyway, here I am killing carbs and it’s carbs that do the most harm to your teeth! Don’t you ever wish you could turn the clock back by say, oooh, ten years so you could treat yourself a bit better so not end up with crooked fally outty teeth, a fat stomach that looks like you’ve had three kids but left one in by mistake and an overdraft and credit card debt which means if you do have to have implants you’ve absolutely zero chance of ever affording them anyway?
Twitter is worth same as Pizza Hut
Something else we also discovered yesterday is that Twitter is apparently worth $30billion – the same as Pizza Hut with its worldwide chain of shops making and selling pizzas. Twitter makes nothing. The only way investors can possibly make back the money they’ve splurged on this emperor’s new gold-encrusted cloak is by filling people’s timelines with ads. Which will make them leave in droves or use adblock software so they need never see an ad. When was the last time you saw an ad on Facebook? If you see any ads on Facebook, you’re just not doing it right.
Also as I wrote in the Guardian last year, Twitter tends to be left-wing so how will the capitalist absorption of so-called contra-culture go down with this crowd? And doesn’t capitalism always absorb and turn sub-culture into its own?
It all goes to show that the so-called new media is nothing of the kind. Twitter is just another mainstream media company now but without the bother of having to pay for content – that’s provided by you and me. As a business model it’s seemingly ingenious but we’ll see. I remember when Friends Reunited was said to be a goldmine worth millions. Ditto Myspace, Bebo and others. Where are they now, where? I still don’t get how something that makes nothing, produces nothing and is free for users can possibly be worth a nickle, let alone thirty billion dollars. Surely that’s more money than there is in the whole world? World’s gone mad. Weightless economy and share price bubbles… this is not going to end well. Ask Sloan Sabbith.
Have a good Friday and a great weekend. And keep up the dental hygiene. Don’t end up like me, toothless, fat and pointlessly raging at Twitter for not being fun anymore. I may as well tell the tide to go back in or the rain to stop falling. See you next week; unless the sky or my roof falls in. Kind of year I’ve had so far, I’m wearing a helmet to bed.
