Dawning

The sun is rising noticeably later. The clouds which clung to the mountains yesterday afternoon have spread, and a bank of them in the east intercepted the early sunlight so that it fell on the street with an eerie shade, like the faint memory of vanished golden mornings. But blue now appears, decorated with spots of white cirrus, one of them like the giant skeleton of an eaten fish. Pine tops bathed with normal daylight, the world has lost that tinge of melancholy it briefly wore. There is even a bit of cool breeze carrying the songs of morning birds. I almost regret that I must sleep and will not be able to watch the day progress.

Still no word on the dental appointment. It must be arranged soon.

Long Live the Tooth

I finally got into the dentist's office. That stupid bicuspid thinks it's royalty. It insists on having a crown. I'd have it assassinated, but then the surrounding teeth would collapse, so I have to humor the buggery thing. At least my dentist has comparatively reasonable prices, so it's going to cost less than eight hundred bucks. This is one of those times when I wish I had kids. I could sell one of them to pay for the tooth, and maybe even have enough cash left over to buy a new toy of some sort, as a reward for going through three dental appointments (there wasn't time to do an impression for the crown today, so I have to go back next Wednesday for that, and then two weeks later go back again to have the crown seated.) Not long after that, I'll be due for a semi-annual cleaning, so it's dentistry for the rest of the summer. Feh. For now, I've got one of those weird, flat-topped little temporary teeth that will pop out if I chew anything the least bit sticky.

At the moment, I'm downloading Cartman telling a dirty joke. (Edit: Don't watch unless you like unmitigated filth.) It's part of that movie, The Aristocrats", which consists entirely of a bunch of comics (and Cartman) telling their own versions of the same joke. The download (Apple Quick Time file, so I don't even know how to save the thing) is taking longer than I expected. I'm coming up on 8MB after 35 minutes, and that's only about a third of it. Dial-up. All I can say is, it better be a damned good dirty joke! Maybe I have time to take a shower before it finishes downloading. I'd feel less temporally extravagant if I did that.

I found the link to the Cartman joke at Comedy Central's brand-new weblog. It's loaded with links to videos (which I won't be downloading any time soon) of bits from several of their shows. Ah, for a high-speed connection! The cost of that crown would get me about two years of Comcast broadband, at their cable subscriber discount price. That tooth has a lot to answer for.

Shower now. Cartman should be ready by the time I'm done.

Update: oh my god.

Excuse me, I have to go and re-shower now. (I wish I had some lye soap.)