Seriously, though, this week can just die already.

I haven't posted much this week. It's not because it's been a particularly uneventful week, but that it's been a little too full, to be honest. For the first half, I've been recovering from the oral surgery, which means it's mostly stories about writhing in pain, or feeling really, really good about these pills I'm taking, you guys.

 And for the second half, it's been preparing for two presentations, one on the database I've been tweaking for my research assistant project, and one on videogames and paratexts that covers the material I go over in the first full chapter of my dissertation. The database one was stressful because it was a presentation, and a database isn't really the most visually appealing type of structure. The value of a database comes out when you have to apply it to something, when it turns out that bit of information that you desperately need. And it's hard to demonstrate that to a room full of people in ten minutes. I think I found something that works, though.  The paratext discussion was stressful because it's part of a lecture series which has really been the only thing that gets members of our faculty and student body out together this term, and talking about game studies to people not in game studies can be immensely difficult, especially if they don't play games at all. It'd be like trying to discuss film with someone who's never watched a movie in their life, but vaguely understands--or think they understand--what one is. Again, though, I think I pulled out a few strands that would allow all audiences to understand what's at stake.

That doesn't matter though, thanks to the third thing that was bad about this week: the weather. Starting Sunday, we've basically had continual rain all week. Problem is, it also got colder every day this week. So by Thursday, we had a full on ice rain. This was particularly problematic for me, because I had been on campus preparing for my dual presentations until 2 am; walking home in freezing rain at that time, knowing you've got to be up at 7 for your presentations is not a great feeling. Also not a great feeling is getting to campus the next day and learning that both of your presentations have been cancelled due to--wait for it--bad weather conditions. It was extremely frustrating, to say the least. I had worked very hard to bring both presentations to a level I was satisfied with presenting and to have them both stripped away by weather I had braved was a fairly un-satisfying conclusion. Both presentations will presumably happen at some point, but they've been postponed indefinitely for now.

And it's *still* raining.

Later Days.

Of Teeth and Transport

Three of the most boring things in the world to hear people talk about are their dreams, their ailments, and their children. (YMMV--and for some those last two are the same thing. Hiyo!) Thanks to the more or less unanimous opinion of every person I've dated, you've been spared the third today, so I'll just have to double down on the first two. Me and my wisdom teeth, after the break.

I Swear to God, I Spent Five Straight Minutes Thinking of a Title, and the Best was "And That's the Tooth."

Terry Pratchett occasionally employs a joke where the punchline is "fish don't have a word for water." And in that vein, my life lexicon lacks a word for "rut"; I have, instead,rut-shaped universe. I think all of us do, to one extent or another, as we all grow accustomed to things in our everyday experience. And that's why ruts are comforting. We move out of them, and we are constantly bombarded with the need to pay greater attention to the world around us. If we didn't have ruts, I imagine, we would never get anything done; we'd be too busy watching plastic bags soaring in the wind, or cheering on the growth of bacteria cultures. It would get old fairly quickly. (Or, as might be the more nightmare scenario, it would never grow old at all.)

All of which is to say that after two years of putting it off, last week I went to the dentist, for the first time since I moved to Ontario. And this morning, I went back again, to get two fillings. It marked the first time I've switched dentists. My brothers and I had been going to the same guy our entire lives, because... well, that's the guy you go to. Never mind that it was a half an hour drive from Wherever, and an hour drive from Someplace Else (which had many, many times more dentists of its own). He was the guy to go to, and that was that.

Going to a new dentist, then, brought up all sorts of new techniques. The place was brand-spanking new, which meant a) I got see the top of the line in reasonably affordable dentistry equipment, and b) the magazines were only three months old. (Yeah. A "waiting room magazine" joke. Edgy, I know.) Even without the new gadgets, the difference in procedure is revelatory. "Wait, you mean you don't have to install that tent-like thingy to do a filling?" and "What, no sticker at the end? Did I do something wrong?"

But at the risk of sounding like an after-school special, what makes the biggest difference in a new experience is your own perspective. In this case, this marked the first time I was in a dentist's office since I'd read Foucault. For those not immersed in the academic system, Michel Foucault was a Frenchman who spent his academic career studying power relationships, in discourse, in literature, and in institutions. One of his conclusions is that, some time after the medieval phase, we moved away from a model of society where a king holds all the power to a model where power is defused throughout the system, and the individual subject is reshaped to fit the system. This process comes out most clearly in the institution. Think of the education system--a student is marked essentially by a list of grades. And in medicine, a patient is a series of symptoms. And in the dentist's chair, you're subjected to one of the greater subjectal synecdotes of modern healthcare: you become your teeth.

Or, at least, your mouth. The rest of your body is ignored, by everyone involved. It's understood that you keep it as motionless as possible. Agency, too, is severely diminished. Like in a relationship with your doctor, you are firmly in a subordinate position, but in this case, you can't even speak--the dentistry procedure literally takes control of your voice from you. Granted, the doctor and assistants can alleviate the problem to some extent by talking to you as if you're person rather than set of molars, but that conversation is extremely one-sided. You're limited to whatever you can express by mild grunts or blinking. And granted, you can put a lot of meaning into a well-timed wink, but very little that's really appropriate for the context. So basically, unless everyone involved is well-versed in the art of Morse Code blinking, there's not a lot to be done.

(Seinfeld, BTW, has Jerry going to the dentist a few times, always with an emphasis on the power relation between the patient and dentist--it's concern that he's either abusing his power to dispense anesthetics, or challenging his power because he's not a "real" doctor.)

So I came out of the office today with two fillings and deep philosophical ponderings. But I would have preferred the stickers.

Later Days.