春节快乐 To All Russians

Every family has their little genetic/behavioral advantages and disadvantages. In our family, a popular setback is bad teeth. Gene and Ellen share the gold and silver medals for most unopenable mouths, with me arriving at the finish line in a few more years if everything goes as planned. But now it seems like Michelle is in the running for bronze, with the latest trip to the dentist shortening the distance between us by a factor of 5 or 10.

After I took Michelle to the dentist a couple of days ago, we spent many an hour in a state of open-mouthed shock (disgusting, I know). Our limited savings were quickly headed to Michelle's all-consuming black hole of a dental plan. But something or other thrives in times of adversity, and we (Gene) got to researching preventative measures. Here are some findings:

Finding #1: Genes aren't everything. Cavities mostly occur because of continued presence of sugar in the mouth. No sugar in your mouth, less cavities.
Obvious solution #1: eat and drink through an IV.
Obvious solution #2: get false teeth.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #1: don't eat sweets. Ha! Talk about unrealistic.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #2: brush after every sugar-binge, and by binge I mean anything bigger than a single speck of confectioners' sugar powder.

Finding #2: Xylitol. Yes, this sounds like something you're already giving your kids in pill form, but it isn't. Instead, it's a little miracle. Xylitol inhibits the growth of Streptococcus Mutans bacteria - the biggest threat to our great nation's teeth - the main bacteria associated with cavity formation. It's also magically delicious. And as an added bonus, chewing Xylitol gum when you're pregnant with child prevents transmission of the Streptococcus Mutans bacteria to the infant. Also chew it when you're breastfeeding anyone; xylitol is beneficial out of any orifice.
Obvious solution #1: buy some Xylitol gum and chew it till you're either all better, or it rips out all of your fillings, as gum sometimes does.
Obvious solution #2: avoid being the child of a non-Xylitol-gum-chewing mother, and/or get breastfed by a Xylitol user once you're out of the womb and making demands.
Obvious solution #3: eat only Xylitol-rich food. WARNING: this lifestyle correlates heavily with starvation. Fortunately, as we all know, correlation does not imply causality.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #1: actually research Xylitol and find out if it works. And then when you find out that Xylitol is just a Placebo, laugh at those people for whom it works perfectly, and then go drop $10,000 into your dentist's pocket. Ah, last laughs.

A new song was written today/yesterday, coincidentally by me, called Pei's Chun Jie (Pei's Chinese New Year). Pei agreed (speaking retrospectively from the future) to let people listen to it here. It's an instrumental, so you don't have to be afraid of hearing me or Mario sing.

Hmm, Blogger is being a dick and not letting me upload the MIDI that I specially converted to MP3 and then to video to make it Blogger-edible. No worries, Lablz.com to the rescue! Pei's Chun Jie

One Hour of My Dream Life

This morning, three hours after the morning I went to sleep on/in the comfortable chair at the Hatten hacienda, Mario shook me awake with a laser-guided stream of words: "Mark, wake up!" Since the phrase contained my favorite syllable in any language, I shot up like a bolt, only to hear "Do you want to go back home to sleep?"

Being a pushover, a genuinely nice person, and not wanting to walk the twenty miles back, I acquiesced to his request. So Mario drove us home, and I crashed immediately upon entry. I wasn't in any condition to do push-ups or pull-ups after the Thanksgiving feast, so I took advantage of the well-placed floor in the louge. For the next hour, I went through dreams at an unprecedented pace.

The first dream was a series, with a two-out-of-three victory for happy endings:

I dreamed I bit something, and suddenly felt a tooth go to pieces. A tiny metal ball came out, as well as another metal part, leaving me a useless crater/thimble. I would need to add toothpicks to my already overlong brush-floss-mouthwash-pray-to-God-of-Teeth routine. But then I realized with great the joy of waking that this was just a dream, and fell back asleep full of gratitude to this practical joke for being just that. This time I dreamed that I bit something and my tooth pretty much vaporized, if such a term is applicable to teeth. It is definitely applicable to dream teeth. I once again fell into misery and self-pity, and woke myself up with my funeral dirges dedicated to my tooth. I may have woken the neighbors as well. Anyway, happy again, I rushed to tell Mario about the experience. I told him about both dreams, and then, just before he could reward my story with a quote worthy of posting here, I woke up again.

That wasn't the end for me though. This was an hour long nap after all - three twenty-minute Uberman REM cycles. As soon as my head hit the floor, I was hanging out with Natasha in NY. Now, Natasha is a pretty impulsive person, even in reality, but don't worry, this was a PG dream. If you are imagining otherwise, that is your poetic reading license, and good for you (and write to me about it). My version was unequivocally clean.

So Natasha decides she needs to pee, and I don't question her. She gets on her back, tucks her legs in and assumes the Dreamed Natasha Peeing Position (to be featured in the next six Stephen Chow movies). Being a gentleman of outstanding wisdom, I say "I'll cover you," and sit on her knees with my back to her.

A second later, I feel warm jet washing my back. "Not cool," I think, followed by "where is your sense of professionalism?" But my thoughts do nothing to ward away the warm jet. It continues to polish the already smooth surface of my latissimus dorsi. I get up, because I have no wish to be more than the already 89% soaked with urine. I start running around like a boy playing pterodactyl, but with more practical reasons. To my astonishment, the warm jet pursues me. Knowing for a fact, or at least a damn good theory, that Natasha is not a guy and can't possibly possess such proficiency in the sniping arts, AND being too much a gentleman of outstanding wisdom to look her way and find out, I suddenly find a light bulb in my head and turn it on. And I realize that it's the two open water bottles I have in my jacket, upside down, left over from a previous dream. I dare anyone to say now that dreams are useless to remember! If I had remembered those water bottles, I would have kept Natasha safe from the everpresent NY spectators, instead of sacrificing her privacy to my undying love for dinosaurs.

Believe it or not, there were another two dreams during that hour. The first:

I dreamed that I was at Barnes and Noble's, but in some faraway land called dreamland. Some guy walks up to me and asks me if I'm the author of The Time Traveler's Wife. Stupidly, I say "haha no," though I undoubtedly had praise coming had I said "why yes, I'm Audrey Niffenegger." I don't remember the details of the rest of this encounter, just the vague feeling of being insulted with one of the more strange American children's-section-unprintables (CSU's).

And the second, otherwise known as the last dream, is unfortunately a CSU to its very dreamsoul. Or at the very least, the intent to commit a CSU. It never got past intent because Mario stepped in at that right/wrong moment, shook me awake with a cattle prod from the year 2312, and demanded whether I wanted a pillow. Are we sensing a trend? Count on Mario to ruin something that can only happen in a dream. And that leaves nothing to tell that wouldn't end on a cliffhanger, so I will spare you the unresolvable suspense.

To Australians

Ran out of health/dental insurance starting yesterday. Normally this wouldn't phase me, but for the last 22 years of my life I've suffered from a little-known condition called spontaneous rapid dental decay. In English this means that in a couple of months, possible as early as late August, one of the remaining 12 living teeth in my mouth will mutiny. Not having too many ways to wage war, it will commence operation suicide. With dental insurance, I usually catch the little bastards somewhere in the second trimester, and go to Russian dentist #1 or Russian dentist #2, who give the culprits a lobotomy. Now I suppose I shall have to learn to love pain and suffering.

I have an appointment at Barnes and Noble's today at 8 - an unlikely coincidence with today's 8 o'clock yoga lesson chez moi. I'm thinking two servings of Battle Cry of Freedom, a grande hot chocolate, and then a serving of aimless browsing.

...

Back from appointment, and one less national bestseller left to read. I dipped my toes into The Lovely Bones, and didn't feel a damn thing.

Watched an Australian comedy - The Rage in Placid Lake. Not really sure what happened because my tolerance for good movies has gotten so low from lack of experience, the film threw me into an epileptic fit. Nonetheless, there's a good if unorthodox aftertaste.

The film is about a human teenager raised by hippies. His name is Placid Lake. He has a girlfriend - Gemma - who is the brain of a Helga in the body of an Amber. Placid, also a genius, but cursed with the body of a rhesus monkey, is constantly tormented by bully classmates who experience acute withdrawal if they're not molding his face into a new shape. Instead of buying a gun and shooting everyone in school like we do in America, Placid waves a big red figurative flag right in their Aussie faces, and then refuses to move when they charge. After another incident where Placid barely escapes with his life, he decides to make a change - as Gemma puts it - "from fearless to spineless." Apres-metamorphosis, Placid enjoys his newfound job, friends, and lack of principles, while Gemma tries to cope with his slithering, while trying to decide whether to be the next Neils Bohr, Isaac Newton, or Euler (does he have a first name? or is he like Sting?). The rest you must find out for yourself.