They're promoting a new show heavily on Discovery: "The Colony." Apparently it's a semi-reality show, featuring people trying to survive after a (simulated) end-of-civilization scenario (something about a virus and a political coup?).

As interesting as I find the concept of going "back to the land," as intriguing as the idea of trying to live off the grid is to me, I don't think I'll watch. The ads alone give me the fantods. It's set in a gritty, urban warehouse district (my back-to-the-land dreams focus on something like the side of an Alp or a meadow in the middle of a forest). And it's really starting from scratch - electricity is all gone, food is only what you can scrounge.

In my off-the-grid fantasies, I am still at least somewhat employed, money still is useful, there are still things to be bought. I would not be having to barricade myself in my house and defend my last few canned goods and my stash of wool from marauders. (And there wasn't a massive human die-off to get there. That's another idea that creeps me about the show)

And there are other people, other random survivors, in The Colony. And apparently you have to depend on them, however unpleasant they may be. (Satre's definition of Hell, right there).

Again, in my wooly little fantasies of running off to a flowery mountainside to bake my own bread and raise goats, there are other people - but I don't need 'em, except when I have to hike into town to buy more flour, or when someone hires me to do some writing/proofreading/however I make my living for them. I don't have to LIVE with them, especially live with them when soap is a distant memory.

It's funny - I'm surprised how visceral my reaction to the ads is. On one hand, I admit the intriguing quality of trying to see how modern humans would try to survive in a world where there is no support structure (no electricity, no running water...). On the other, the whole imagery of the ads tells me I'd be having giant nightmares after watching one episode of the show.

And maybe it's a horrible thing to say, but if civilization ended - I mean, really and truly ended, not just us going back to a more agrarian way of life (but with t.p. and vaccines and books still a possibility), I really honestly think I'd rather NOT be one of the survivors. Because I know I'd spend the remainder of my days daydreaming of a time when we had air conditioning. And when there was chocolate. And when you didn't have to chase down and kill your food before eating. And how I used to be able to come home from work, take a nice shower with good smelling soap, and then sit down and knit under an electric lamp while water heated on the stove to make tea with.

I like my little comforts too well to want to imagine a world without them. While there are things I'd happily give up (plane travel, for instance), there are other things that, if I had to live without all of them, I'm not sure it would still be able to be called "living," what I was doing...

Flip, flop, and fly.

(Two of those are four-letter words beginning with f, which are perhaps suitable euphemisms for another four letter word...)

I quote that song title because it contains the line, "here comes my baby, flashin'* a new gold tooth"

(*or maybe it's "sportin'," it's been a while since I heard the song.

Dentist appointment today. Turns out one of the fillings in one of the way-back teeth (the second molar, for those of you who are familiar with such things) is splitting and the best course of action is to get a crown put on it.

It will be a gold crown, because it's in the back where it can't be seen.
Sadly, I doubt it will cause me to become slender enough to "mambo in a pay-phone booth." (Should I be alarmed that I have such a high degree of familiarity with the lyrics of a long-gone R&B song?)

But anyway. I have to go through the dang process again, on the other side of my mouth, even FURTHER in the back.

Flip.
Flop.
Frack.

Money isn't the object - thank goodness I have dental insurance; my co-pay isn't that bad. But it's the process...

And the fact that I feel almost like it's a personal failure, somehow. Even though the hygienist always comments on what good care I take of my mouth (and how little crud she has to scrape).

The dentist wanted it done within two months, but the only timeframes for having that done would involve me having to travel with a temporary crown on (the first open appointment that fit with my schedule was shortly before Thanksgiving). And after the agony of the poorly-fitted temporary last time I do not want to be away from my dentist for any length of time during the process. So I pushed the time back to early January, and will just have to hope that the tooth doesn't crack or anything bad happen to it. (The dentist assured me the tooth was sound; it was just that the large old filling - it is one of the old amalgam types - was slowly splitting. Funny, I don't have any pain from it.)

I will finally have to break myself of the habit of chewing ice whenever I get a drink that has ice in it.

The hygienist did tell me to start using that fluoride rinse junk. Apparently my down does not/no longer puts fluoride in the water. And you can hate on fluoridation all you like, call it a Communist plot or claim it used industrial waste; I won't listen to you. Not when my dad the geohydrologist studied fluoridation in its early days and came to the conclusion that it was safe and would most likely prevent some degree of decay.

Remember Homer Simpson's makeup gun?

Well, we're one step closer to realizing it.

Now, a disclaimer: I don't wear eyeshadow (it's too much work first thing in the morning, and I don't really think I NEED it) so maybe my being kind of creeped out by those color combinations is kind of like a person without children complaining about the screaming toddlers in wal-mart, but yeah, they do creep me out. I don't really see that as a good look unless you're talking about Hallowe'en, or maybe some kind of Rocky Horror Picture Show revival and you're going as Magenta or someone.

(I wonder if somewhere, someone, at the Lee Press-On Nails Corporation is bemoaning not having come up with that idea first?)