Mental Hygiene the best thing you've done for your brain all day

the separation of church and state, at least in this country, is a myth.

granted, it’s a great goal to work toward – the complete non-reliance of the governing, legislating bodies on any single religious, moral code.

governing shouldn’t be about morality or any kind of philosophical pandering anyhow, it should be about protecting the state from harm – whether that harm comes from within or without. to that end, legislation should protect people from one another, and protect the rights of individuals from being infringed upon, and no more.

individuals must be able to make up their own minds as to what is right and wrong for themselves. only if a person’s action infringe upon the freedoms of another, or causes harm to someone else, then those acts should be punished in a manner befitting the crime.

my macchiavellian babbling aside, the most apt example of how religion and the state are still inexorably linked is in the institute of marriage.

marriage is no longer about love. if it were, then two people could make vows to one another to be forever faithful and caring of one another, and leave it at that.

and it’s not about procreation anymore either. the idea that, to have children, one must first be married, is not only out of date, it’s out of touch with reality.

so, what is marriage about? it’s about money. taxes, particularly.

if you ask the u.s. government, anyway, that’s all that matters. marriage is the institution where two people come together and pool their assets, talents, and dependencies, and file a joint tax return. there are other benefits, too – insurance, health care, etc. but mostly, marriage means two people can be treated as one. simplify. simplify, simplify.

so, why are marriages still held at churches? why are they usually overseen by ordained clergy of one faith or another? because the church has this crazy idea that marriage is an institute created by God, ordained in the bible.

of course, marriage has been around in many forms since well before the bible was written, and in cultures who have never even heard the Word. men have coupled with women, typically one to one, typically until one of them dies, and typically in order to be sure that the one is the father of the other’s children. the judeo-christian corporate conglomerate that thinks they rule the western world also thinks they have some kind of stake in marriage.

and that’s why it’s still not recognized by law when two men decide to love one another forever, monogamously. or two women. or any combination of threes and fours. because the church think that marriage is still about the coupling of one man and one woman in order to ensure identity in reproduction

and what of married couples who are unable or unwilling to reproduce? should they not get married? should they not be allowed? what if they indeed love one another, but won’t sign a piece of paper to attest to the fact?

the disparity is obvious. if marriage is only the joining of two bank accounts and tax returns, the only way it can really be recognized by the government, then any two people should be allowed to marry. much like any group of people can now become incorporated, and treat themselves as an individual – a corporation. but if marriage is a solemn, moral vow of fidelity between two people for the single purpose of having children, then the government should have no dominion, or legislation, over marriage.

but then, what would become of all the paperwork?

why is it that, the week before you are scheduled to go to the dentist, your teeth start hurting. you have those weird nightmares where your molars crack like chalky pepto bismol tablets in your mouth, and your gums start to bleed.

knowing somehow that you’ll have a bad checkup, your mind starts to play tricks. what yesterday was simply an unexplored ripple in your bicuspid is now a gaping cavity – or so it feels as you run your tongue over the spot. and wasn’t that twinge as you sipped your coffee this morning some kind of warning that there may be root canals in your future?

a little extra anxiety drives you to floss for the first time in five months – the last time was a few weeks after your last appointment, with the honest and sincere intention of flossing every day, dammit. suddenly the toothbrush you stopped bringing to work is back in your briefcase, and brushing after lunch makes so much more sense.

so, bleeding gums and all, you sit down in the reclining, surprisingly comfortable, torturous dentist’s chair. though latex clad fingers and cold metal instruments make it difficult to meditate on the holes in the ceiling tiles in a zen-like state of semiconsciousness, nonetheless you try to avoid the thoughts of decay and bacterial infestation that loom in your primitive brain – the part that thinks in grunts and pain and fight or flight responses. after what feels like hours of prodding and poking with sharp metal hooks and scraping by tiny rasping files – no wonder your gums bleed – the real cleaning begins.

these days it’s either a scaled down industrial sandblaster, filled with salt and baking soda – and what’s that about anyway? did someone stumble onto that perfect dental cleansing recipe when baking a cake? – or else it’s a tiny rubber squeegee, rotating at a few hundred rpm, coated with an abrasive paste.

the paste can be either cinnamon, mint, cherry, or just plain crap flavor. they all taste the same after they’ve been scorched by the heat of friction on tooth enamel.

and when the dentist finally arrives, sweeping in and kicking out the obsequios hygienist lackey, he sits down to a pristine mouth. if i were to be a dentist, and be forced to reach into the gaping pieholes of strangers day after day, picking out the bits that need to be drilled out, spackled in, and polished, i think i’d like to be the guy whose name is on the door. if you’re that guy, you never see a nasty mouth – they’re all purged of plaque and tartar and heavy-on-the-garlic pizza with everything leftovers by the time you see them.

and it’s this purging that makes all the difference. you could go six months without so much as thinking about your teeth, doing the cursory brush every morning, and when you feel like it before bed. then, the week before your next appointment, the day that postcard arrives with a happy tooth on the front, or a dancing brush, or some other insipid cartoon, saying you’d that, ‘to tell the tooth, it’s time for your next cleaning!’

so for a week, your mind races, wondering what if you haven’t flossed enough – or at all – wondering if the sticky sweet candies, at least a handful every day, haven’t pulled every filling loose, rotted new holes in the pitted landscape of your mouth, wondering if maybe, just maybe, brushing five or six times just before going to the dentist will make up for the weeks of neglect, and forcing a waxed piece of string between your teeth for the first time in months, cutting deep into already swollen and abused gums, will maybe save you the scornful glare of the hygienist between stories about her terminally cute children.

and maybe it does.

maybe the week of preemptive guilt, of anticipating the worst, makes some kind of difference. your checkup typically goes well, with no new cavities, maybe a harsh word about the gums, but in general, a good day of dentistry. one week every six months of fretting over those things you’ve neglected serves to remind you that, in the cosmic sense, you really don’t need to give a damn about some things. a little attention once in a while, to be sure that the universe is still working the way it always did, is sometimes plenty.

after all, you’ve got better things to worry about.

site is slowly coming together.

adding in a few new things about every day, graphics, comics for the banner, looking into advertisers, sponsors.

finally put in a link to my email address – so anyone who stumbles onto the site at this point can mail me – suggestions only at this point, content will come later.

specs on the server, bandwidth, etc, will go on an ‘about us’ page

who ‘us’ is is anyone’s guess :)

–option8
webmaster & chief mental hygienist

whee!

now netcloak’s playing nice with lasso, and everything’s starting to come together.

you’ll notice the comic strip above today’s article is different each time you load the page. spiff. that will eventually be banner ads

also, you’ll notice the apple plug at the bottom of this page. i like to give my support to the people that make the macs that this site is served from, created on, and edited with. there are some things you can’t beat a mac for.

as for other things, you can beat it with a big stick, a 486, and linux.

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