Hair, dentistry and raging over rage.

I must apologise to any regular readers (if there is such a thing of this blog, I LOVE YOU!) about my silence for the last fortnight – I wanted to write an op-ed piece about the removal of Julia Gillard and hopefully get it published by either The Guardian or The Independent or other such publications outside Australia, after being questioned about it all by overseas friends on Facebook. Instead, it proved a lot harder than I’d thought to write, no doubt based on my own my own grieving and disgust. It will be added here soon but for now here’s a few thoughts on things that have happened for me in the last few days – yes, I’ve had a few drinks to get back in the writing mood so any errors will be rectified tomorrow when I’m sober.

GIVE ME A HEAD WITH HAIR

I’ve never understood how hair can be so controversial. I understand that hair can be a “sexual characteristic” and even cultural, but the trend for obliterating all traces of hair beneath the head has me scratching mine (head, that is – nowhere else). Why do so many people depilate and annihilate any trace of hair beneath the chin? I hate beards (I believe they’re a sign of laziness and moustaches are half-arsed and the facial-hair equivalent of bow ties – i.e. batshit crazy) but love long, flowing locks of hair based from the scalp. When I was 19 I tried to pull the look of long hair off – it was basically a “phase”, instead all I got were accusations of being gay (as Jerry Seinfeld would protest, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” – but having my sexuality defined by my hair? Rack off) and an embarrassing learner’s permit photo.

The other night, after walking out in the rain (much like Grace Jones, the thinking person’s Lady Gaga), I came home and while taking off the wool and acrylic-blended jumper I’d been wearing revealed part of my stomach whilst pulling the item of clothing off. My lovely honarary second mother’s (whom I’m currently living with) youngest (aged 17) said to me, and I quote: “You hairy motherfucker” (I may if persuaded put up a shot of my belly a la Amanda Palmer, but what good would it achieve?).

Yes, I do have hair on my stomach and chest (but thankfully not anywhere from my upper to lower back, which in Kath & Kim parlance would clarily as a “welcome mat”, or “unsightly patch of hair just there”) and I’m perfectly fine with it – that is, I’ve never been concerned about it despite the proliferation of dull young things (especially males) who remove any patch of hair.

Don’t know what I mean? Consider the number of men today who don’t have any hair on their torsos – or even on their bodies below their head. I don’t know why hipsters fetishise having a beard or at least a goatee or even a “flavour saver” yet will happily shave their pubic hair. Why? Wouldn’t the regrowth be a bitch, as evidenced by the number of people (not just men) who are constantly scratching and rubbing away at their groins? And with women it’s even worse – there is (unfortunately) a cateogory of porn labelled “hairy” – a cursory glance at this reveals that the slightest amount of pubes intact is labelled as “hairy”; correct me if I’m wrong – I dare you – but isn’t the word “hairy” (HAIR-y) descriptive of having more hair than usual; which of course is true, as the usual in even “amateur” porn is hairless hedonists getting horny – but within normal (and natch) abundance of pubic hair by those who are not vain or virulent at waxing (ouch): why should a normal amount be described as more than necessary to horny fools? I personally would describe the word “hairy” as having more “hair” than necessary – as in a forest or like a Greek (yeah, the PC brigade will be on me after that), but I still can’t fathom how a normal amount of pubes is considered more than necessary?

Just look at a pic of anyone nude who has removed their pubes and they end up looking like an anthropomorphic slug (at least to me – how else to describe a hairless pale blob?) – and to all those who say that a pic of someone who has removed their pubes enables pedophiles and claims that “it says more about the accuser than us” well, I don’t believe you look like a child without pubic hair – I think you just look silly, strange, vain and a slave to society’s bizarre rationale that you should have no hair beneath your (most likely ugly) heads. As much as I agree with Julie Burchill’s proclamation that any guy with more body hair than sense is an “ape” (I don’t have a FOREST of hair) and looking like something out of the Fortean Times (the most intellectual magazine at Rockhampton South Library), anyone who completely removes the pubes in an act of hair genocide is a fool, and should be pointed and laughed at more often.

It is us who don’t feel the need to conform to a bunch of (usually American) losers who hack and shave at anything that adds actual age and maturity to bodies, instead of the truly ugly and overdone idyll and ideal of having a hair-free bag of bones to show off to any horny loser who wants to get their rocks off and throws their stones at everyone regardless.

THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT THE TOOTH

On Friday I had a tooth removed for the first time – yes, I probably need at least three gone due to both genetics and lifestyle choices – I remember as a kid whilst waiting at the dentist my mum said to me, “I’m so sorry about your teeth. It’s my fault.” The most broken tooth got it’s breakage back in early 2011 and I’ve had it since then, after a week the pain went and so of course I put off going to get it seen to. There’s another one that only occasionally gets food stuck in it but has never caused me any pain so why take action now?
Actually, the Saturday before the tooth I had extracted started playing up (despite being unbroken and securely snug as the second to the back of my lower left set; “3-6” in dental terms) and got worse – for some reason drinking water stopped the pain for a minute at most so I enacted my own form of civilized water torture on my mouth (cue being too hydrated, feeling sick and hearing water slosh and churn throughout my stomach at night) to keep the pain away, however briefly.

As I’m currently unemployed, on Tuesday morning after two days of suffering chronic pain (no doubt my fault) I made my way up to the dental clinic at Gympie Hospital only to discover that adults aren’t treated there, only children and the elderly and was given a “voucher” to the value of $260 to see a private dentist in town. The first I went to couldn’t fit me in until the 30th, the next was the following Tuesday and the lucky last got me in that afternoon after actually listening to my protests of pain (Anglophile that I am, I doubt the NHS would’ve made me wait that long; though I’d probably get MRSA as part of the treatment).
So after finally getting into the dentist’s chair on Tuesday afternoon and having my gob inspected (by Dr. Gary Wells of Gympie Family Dental – if you ever need dentistry in Gympie, Gary’s your man – calm, friendly and gently explains the process beforehand for those with a phobia of anything more pressing than a filling), I went home with a course of antibiotics and paracetamol and codeine (which, despite having previously taken Oxycontin and Tramadol recreationally, gave me a nice little buzz that left me curiously content – grinning inanely like Beavis or Butthead) until I returned on Friday to get the tooth pulled (ha ha – I can’t pull my teeth have been).

So, Friday as Judgment Day (in Dr. Well’s words, “We’ll get it out on Friday so you can have a nice, quiet weekend.”) and I arrived early for my 3.30 appointment (I’m always unfashionably punctual) and received at least six injections of anaesthetic to my jaw (I lost count) before the extraction got under way. As with all modern dentists, they provide a TV screen above the chair for the patient to focus on as the surgery takes place – normally I ask to view ABC’s News 24 (it doesn’t make me happy but I do focus intently on it to the detriment of my surrounds), however I wasn’t asked and a Jethro Tull reunion DVD was on so I numbly settled down to the sounds of flute solos while somebody rooted round amongst my roots for the next half hour – actually, the fluto solo reached a crescendo and my inner monologue responded with “Now! Get out ya bastard!”, directed at the tooth. Come on, once the soundtrack reaches the crescendo, isn’t that the moment for the resolution?

So there I was, plonked in a dentists’ chair with my mouth numbed and having my head held in place by the assistant as the dentist moved and wiggled my teeth with an instrument called “cowhorns” to pull the rotting tooth out. The only pain I had was when the dentist put his hand on my lower mouth to get a better grip and my two front teeth at the bottom bit into my lip and the feeling like my left eye was going to burst out of it’s socket and I’d be able to get a Lab or Golden Retriever out of it. Either that or a Vivienne Westwood eyepatch from the “Pirates” collection (I know my fashion – sad but true).

Despite being only a bit nervous about the procedure and having my fears calmed by the dentist saying, “It may take 10 minutes, it may take 15 minutes or a bit longer – but it’s alright, we’ll get it out”, halfway through I felt all hot (in body temperature, not looks – I’ve no delusions) and was wishing I’d had this done during summer for the air-conditioning. Turns out I’d actually produced buckets of sweat and had left the vinyl chair with a sheen of moisture (sorry), and having my brow wiped down by the assistant, who luckily said I had the “usual” reaction all males have, apparently the females she’s seen have the same extraction usually burst into tears (sadly). – turns out despite not consciously being scared of having a tooth pulled I’d ended up in shock anyway and even after the offending tooth was removed my vision was replaced with stars as if I was about to pass out (like on Anzac Day 2011 when I actually collapsed from a panic attack for the first time and had a fun ambulance ride, hospital admission and was scared to admit I was anxious and depressed lest the cops come round and confiscate my bootlaces – seriously, I actually thought that) and took up a “dying swan” position in the chair for 10 minutes post-op, furtively sucking on a few jellybeans to recover. Oh well, at least the infection was gone too.

Dentist: That didn’t take as long as I thought it would.

Me: (with left side of mouth numb and a wodge of gauze in place) Is the tooth out?

Dentist: Oh, yeah. Sorry! I got it out. You’re fine.

So I left being advised to abstain from physical activity (I’d walked to the surgery and walked back home after), sport (easily done), hot beverages (no cuppa for me) and smoking for the next 24 hours. Thankfully after signing a form and talking to the receptionist after my oral op I didn’t have to use the letter ‘S’ (which of course I lisped with the gauze in my mouth – no saying “666 sailors are seasick” or “spotty socks” for moi) until I stupidly stopped at the newsagent on the way home and asked “How much is your EFTPOSSHHH minimum?” Oh well – I finally got the balls (or the ovaries, as my lovely old-school feminist friends would say) to go to the dentist and get something more than an easy filling done. I only share this with you as an example of the fact I’m finally more “adult” (i.e. “grown” and acting my age) by going to the dentist and getting the proper treatment I know I should have (and need) instead of the usual cowing to the pain disappearing and leaving it. A small step towards getting over my usual tag of “Angry Young Man”, as I was given when I was 19.

RAGING OVER RAGE

Last Saturday the ABC’s rage (of which I’ve been a fan since the age of seven) had a NAIDOC Week-themed playlist, compiled by Wayne Blair, actor and director of The Sapphires and Redfern Now. Lefty that I am, I’m all for coverage of and expounding Indigenous culture and watched for an hour or two in the hope of seeing Warrumpi Band’s “Blackfella Whitefella” (“Blackfella/whitefella/it doesn’t matter, what ya colour/as long as you, are true fella/as long as you are, real fella”), one of the most criminally underrated songs EVER! Please listen to it – and if you don’t play it on repeat after hearing it, I will punch you in the throat, such is my love. I’m not patronising the plight of the Indigenous tribes of this country – I’m all for apologising (thank you Kevin Rudd and fuck you, Sophie Mirabella), who have been displaced, exterminated (hello, Tasmania!) and left to wallow in poverty and patronising and well-meaning bother by successive governments – but why did an episode of rage celebrating NAIDOC Week have to include African-American artists who are black with a capital-B? Thankfully, there were the obligatory videos of Midnight Oil’s “Beds are Burning” and Archie Roach. Please! Before you write to me, I’m not racist – I’m actually doing a reverse of Andrew Bolt here. Why do people of a skin tone less than milky white have to act like they’re 50 Cent or Snoop Dogg?

Back in 2007, I was going to TAFE for a measly Cert III in Visual Arts & Contemporary Crafts and on the train-ride to the campus the train would stop at Coorparoo where a group of students I’d see every day of African descent would go to school and try and intimidate other passengers by standing over them and speaking in French (were they from C’ote D’Ivoire?). Wrongly they’d chosen to pick me (of very slowly self-taught basic French) and stand over me whilst proclaiming like a Francaise gangsta, “Parles vous Francais?” There was me, sitting on my own and listening to the sounds of (back then) either Morrissey, Kirsty MacColl or post-Culture Club Boy George. Of course I eventually told them to “va te faire foutre” or something like that, and thus was left alone. Really, I’m all for acknowledgement of racial and cultural backgrounds (as I’ve said before, I am a Lefty), especially the Indigenous – but why should people act as a stereotype? Before you know it the Irish will be fully-paid up members of Vatican I or II, oh, hang on …

— LINKS TO BE ADDED WITHIN 48 HOURS

From A to B to E (picking and mixing religion)

Not too shabby looking …

I’m not religious, so it wasn’t a big surprise that after doing an online quiz (no, not the “What type of porn star am I?” or “Which sexual position is best for me?” type) on which religion is “best” for me. I got 100% compatibility with Unitarian Universalism, which makes sense I guess – I’ve never believed in a god, much less the usual Christian one or any other type, and especially not Jesus (he’s always seemed a bit of a pansy) and the poster-child for hypocrites and the small-minded. Why have so many of my peers joined MySpace or Facebook and ticked the box that they’re a Christian when they’re anything but? My “religion” on social media has gone from Atheist to Buddhist/Judaism and is currently Humanist Judaism, which I’ve cheekily subtitled as “From Goy to Oy”, Philosemite that I am. And with all these people saying they’re a Christian despite living like a “heretic” if not the hedonist they are, it’s due to them being christened isn’t it? I was, in the Uniting Church (clearly the best form of Christianity around, with their progressiveness and acceptance of women and gay people) and it’s the only time I’ve been in a church. Same goes for them I reckon.

I used to call myself an atheist but it seemed too militant (i.e. stubborn – just look at Richard Dawkins) and so dabbled with calling myself a Humanist, but Humanism doesn’t believe in an “afterlife” – I believe in ghosts because I’ve seen one twice – if they don’t exist, then why so much of them in popular culture? Same for aliens, too – but I don’t extend the same courtesy to the current cultural undead phenomena of vampires and werewolves. That’s ridic. I dabble in astrology too, due to my mum being a teacher of it so I’ve picked up bits and pieces over the years and found most parts to be true – I’m a Leo with a Virgo moon and an Aries ascendant, and if you’re up with the zodiac then you would’ve known by now.

I’ve always felt a bit iffy towards most believers of Christianity since in my Year 5 R.E. class, when the class clown asked the voluntary scripture teacher if he was a paedophile and the guy became more flustered and “Ummed” and “Ahhed” than Hugh Grant in a rom-com, declaring “I don’t know what one of them is.” Yeah, a likely story. My other big beefs with “God-botherers”, however serious they may be, have been the remarks that when somebody dies it was “God wanted them” (hardly an invite to an A-list party) and “God sends these things to test us” – well then, get the guy a stress ball! If you’ve got stress, then take some time out, have a drink, pop a pill or change your own circumstances – don’t shift the blame to a supposedly omnipresent, phony “eye-in-the-sky” – there we go, God: the original voyeur!

And as for Catholicism, it was bad enough my ancestors were Huguenots (kicked out of France for refusing to tow the line and kow-tow to the Catholic God – what champs!) only for my great-grandparents to return to the fold and subject my family to never-ending requiem masses when they snuffed it. This point is best shown by my Mum’s favourite funereal memory, when my great-grandfather from the other side of the family had the big Catholic burial and as his coffin was lowered into the grave, one of the handlers nearly fell in with it. Imagine! Having to be bored out of your mind by Latin and other rituals, and then trying not to laugh for an hour or more. Funnily enough, my Mum – the new ager with hippie ideals that she is – rebelled as a teenager by going to a bible study group. Just goes to show the limited appeal of Christianity. And it’s always a source of mirth and dismay of the hypocrisy that her best friend from that time is still believing she’s Jesus’ own sunbeam and won’t let her kids read Harry Potter but will let them watch Star Trek.

In the census before last, I put my religion down as ‘Buddhist’, mainly to boost the numbers and I do agree with some parts of it (and as the quiz shows, I do have some “compatibility” with the Theravada and Mahayana strains of Buddhism): the eight-fold path – better than a garden path – and that the Buddha himself was pretty much a top bloke, however I don’t look good in orange and nor would I look good in Orange.

Which brings me down the list to Reform Judaism (YAY!).

Since my philosemitism blossomed at the age of 16, I’ve always been trying to learn more about Judaism as a whole, and I often think of converting, mainly for the purely selfish reason that I could then call myself Jewish, selfish because of how holistically attractive I think any Jewish person is. But if I was Jewish, would all my out and proud pro-Jew and pro-Israel sentiments then make a “God-botherer” out of me? Perhaps it’s best to leave it alone and go on being the astrology and ghost-believing atheist-lite philosemite that I am. I already bandy about words and would love to do rituals that come from Judaism and to convert to even the Reform branch of Judaism requires a few years study, and even with something I like (and parts I believe) so strongly I would inevitably indulge my indolent streak and let it slide – much like my half-arsed attempt at getting a degree, three years and counting of on-again, off-again time-wasting.

And would Jews have me anyway? For all my chest-thumping and obsessing over Judaism, I’m saddened to say that I’ve never knowingly met a Jew and worry that I appear patronising in my love, respect and defence for Jewish people. Come on, it’s all very presumptuous on my part isn’t it? There’s no Jewish congregation or even a place to go and learn about it here in Gympie where I currently live – it would be like going to learn about veganism at a butcher’s. For all the good that books do, they’re not a patch on learning in person sometimes.

As much as I believe in the separation of church and state, and that having a religion is not a be-all and end-all, the number of times I’m asked what my religion is, from Facebook to the census and general questionnaires, perhaps it’s best to just leave well alone and go on as the no-name philosophy I’ve chosen – equal parts new age larks and bits and pieces of this and that, from Buddhism to Judaism and certainly no Catholicism.