I wrote another polite email last night and re-submitted the best 1400 words I’ve ever written to a newspaper who I thought might print that sort of thing. On reflection, I guess it was a pretty craven thing to do but I thought I might have got the email address wrong when I’d previously submitted it high on caffeine and hope on Sunday. I’ve still not heard anything this morning. I now realise that I probably did have the right address but London folk don’t respond to these things immediately, even if they respond to these things at all and I seriously doubt if they do.
The way I’m treated by people often seems something of a paradox. It became apparent when ‘Twisted Root’ mentioned in the comments to my previous article about the bogus email from the tax people that ‘the 'Best Regards' sign off is a bit of a giveaway’. I snorted a laugh when I read the comment but, given a little reflection, I realise that tax people are usually this polite. Having dealt with them on the phone, they were helpful, witty, and surprisingly human. It reminded me again that whilst stereotypes are fun things to play with, you really shouldn’t expect reality to conform to their straight edges. Some of the funniest people I’ve known worked in accounts departments and some of the dullest people I’ve ever met were students of literature.
The paradox of good manners is that the people who tend to be rude are the people you find yourself working for and usually working for nothing. In the past two weeks, I've sent out 'commissioned'* work to three people and I never received a reply from any of the three. The things that usually grate with me are the instances when I go out of my way to do something for a person and that person treats it with negligible interest. I can never figure out why given the lengths I'll go to be polite to a person. Elberry recently pointed me in the direction of this unused clip from the film ‘Magnolia’ in which Tom Cruise’s love guru advises men to be rude to women who will then be in a submissive position and accept any bad treatment as though they deserve it. I wonder if I’m in a similar position, writing and drawing things for people who know they can take me for granted.
It’s a larger truth of life, I guess. Critics sneer but rarely create and the same is true with any kind of commissioning editor. In the same way that critics will never run out of targets, perhaps editors simply have a large enough world view which leads them to realise that there are always people willing to work for little or nothing.
It’s a sobering thought. Whenever you submit articles to newspapers, you’re lucky if you get anything more than the automated response of their email system warning you that they get so many submissions you’d be lucky to get a personal reply. Well, I guess that’s fair enough but this time I haven’t even had an automated response. The best 1400 words I’ve ever written treated as though it were no more significant than some bogus tax email. Though, on reflection, the bogus tax email has at least produced a real work response: I’ve now written two blog posts about it and I’ve had four comments and one juicy pingback.
So I wait and hope but in the meantime, I’m heading for the door. I’m due in the dentist’s chair in half an hour. And here’s another of those examples of manners being a paradox: my dentist is a really decent polite guy.
* Unpaid.
Showing posts with label dentists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dentists. Show all posts
Wednesday, 29 January 2014
Tuesday, 19 November 2013
A Blog Post That Makes Me Feel Queasy Just By Posting It
I’ve never tried my hand at lion taming but common sense tells me that it’s like visiting a dentist in that you should never breathe that final sigh of relief until you step out of their cage.
‘Just a couple of small fillings and we’ll get them done today so you don’t need to come back.’
‘Hurrah!’ I thought, punching the metaphorical air from behind my yellow protective sunglasses which made me look like some 1970s disco crooner, a flesh and blood Disco Stu straight from The Simpsons’ waiting room.
‘Okay, I’ll just numb you and then we’ll do some x-rays to make sure that everything is okay.’
I nod with enthusiasm. I was only going to be in The Chair for half an hour and then I’d be skipping down the street looking for the first shop selling sherbet and boiled sweets.
The numbing happened painlessly and then there was a bit of drilling with wasn’t exactly pain free, despite so much of my face being numb that I couldn’t even feel my boots. I always mean to ask why hitting a nerve gets through the numbing agent but by the time I want to ask these things, I’m incapable of speech.
But questions are for another day. I’ve only got another twenty minutes and then I’ll be able to escape…
As the drill spun down, my dentist sat back and tapped my shoulder reassuringly.
‘Okay, that’s the drilling done. Let me just check the xrays…’
Off he goes. I’m sitting there, a couple of cavities in my dead mouth, anticipating getting out and getting back to work. The dentist takes his time looking over the x-rays before he comes back to me.
‘Okay, I think I’ll have to send you to the hospital,’ he says.
Holy shit! What is this?
‘You have some crud above a tooth that might require a minor surgical procedure to clean out…’
Double holy shit and triple what is this?
‘We might be able to save the tooth but you’ll need a new crown which will cost you everything you’ve earned in the last two months but if that doesn’t hold you’ll lose the tooth and need a bridge which will cost you everything you’ve earned in the last year and when we’re waiting to fit your bridge you might want to wear a palate so you don’t have a huge gap in the front of your smile which makes you look like an alligator farmer straight out of a Louisiana swamp… Oh, the palate will cost you everything you’ll be lucky to earn next year…’
This was explained more professionally than that but the meaning was the same.
The mild panic attack I then had in the dentist’s chair was only relieved by my dentist’s calm manner and a quick glimpse I had in a mirror that indeed confirmed that I looked damn cool in yellow sunglasses. Yet I think my eventual calm was mainly down to my dentist’s kindness. He has a gentility that’s unbelievable. It’s why I always go to him and why I trust him. It’s probably the reason why I’m not sobbing in a corner right now. He explained things. He makes the minor surgical procedure sound like a minor surgical procedure even to me, a man who can turn a pimple into an advanced case of gigantism with a side dose of botulism.
It has not always been the case. In the past, my dentists have been butchers. My first was even nicknamed ‘the butcher’ and as a child I remember visiting his surgery which was in the front room of an ordinary house taken straight from a Edward Gorey print. Every tool he used looked pre-War and seemed to have been licked clean by the dogs that sometimes came in from the living room. One of my earliest memories is having teeth removed under gas. I still recall the smell of the rubber cup they held over my nose. A day later, my tongue turned green and I was a pariah in school because I had the most unholy halitosis. I was like something from the Exorcist and like exorcisms, my green tongue was never explained.
Over the years, the surgery has changed immeasurably. It’s the same house but after numerous renovations it’s unrecognisable and contains a very modern dental surgery with an ultra-high tech computer system on which you can Tweet your x-rays only minutes after they’re taken. The staff have changed too. They’re now more professional yet also more personable and seem genuinely interested in making the whole thing less painful.
Long since gone are the two dentists who made such a mess of the tooth that will now force me to make a hospital visit. I’m hoping that this dentist might finally fix the problem either by giving me a crown that doesn’t fall out every five minutes or pull the tooth so I can be rid of the nuisance, even if that means wearing a bridge, though I’m not entirely sure what that means.
I still can’t get over the disappointment that my thirty minutes has probably turned into six months or more of work or how much of what little earnings I’m scraping together will go to pay for all of this. It’s now a few weeks before my next appointment, when I’ll get an appointment at a hospital, perhaps treatment at the hospital. Only after all that will treatment on the tooth begin.
I’m freaked out, of course. I hope the crud drains away, as the dentist thinks it might, but if the experts think I need the crud removing from above the tooth, then everything becomes a little more real. I recall phrases like ‘peel back the gum’, ‘incision’ and ‘bone’ but I’m telling myself that surely it can’t be as painful as drilling into a tooth, which is the bit that always makes me fret. It’s not the one that sounds like a high pitched drill that strikes fear but the one that sounds like a slow low grind that always gives me pain. That was enough for one day. I’d hoped it would be enough for the next six months but I see I’m going to be Dentistry’s plaything for a little while longer.
‘Just a couple of small fillings and we’ll get them done today so you don’t need to come back.’
‘Hurrah!’ I thought, punching the metaphorical air from behind my yellow protective sunglasses which made me look like some 1970s disco crooner, a flesh and blood Disco Stu straight from The Simpsons’ waiting room.
‘Okay, I’ll just numb you and then we’ll do some x-rays to make sure that everything is okay.’
I nod with enthusiasm. I was only going to be in The Chair for half an hour and then I’d be skipping down the street looking for the first shop selling sherbet and boiled sweets.
The numbing happened painlessly and then there was a bit of drilling with wasn’t exactly pain free, despite so much of my face being numb that I couldn’t even feel my boots. I always mean to ask why hitting a nerve gets through the numbing agent but by the time I want to ask these things, I’m incapable of speech.
But questions are for another day. I’ve only got another twenty minutes and then I’ll be able to escape…
As the drill spun down, my dentist sat back and tapped my shoulder reassuringly.
‘Okay, that’s the drilling done. Let me just check the xrays…’
Off he goes. I’m sitting there, a couple of cavities in my dead mouth, anticipating getting out and getting back to work. The dentist takes his time looking over the x-rays before he comes back to me.
‘Okay, I think I’ll have to send you to the hospital,’ he says.
Holy shit! What is this?
‘You have some crud above a tooth that might require a minor surgical procedure to clean out…’
Double holy shit and triple what is this?
‘We might be able to save the tooth but you’ll need a new crown which will cost you everything you’ve earned in the last two months but if that doesn’t hold you’ll lose the tooth and need a bridge which will cost you everything you’ve earned in the last year and when we’re waiting to fit your bridge you might want to wear a palate so you don’t have a huge gap in the front of your smile which makes you look like an alligator farmer straight out of a Louisiana swamp… Oh, the palate will cost you everything you’ll be lucky to earn next year…’
This was explained more professionally than that but the meaning was the same.
The mild panic attack I then had in the dentist’s chair was only relieved by my dentist’s calm manner and a quick glimpse I had in a mirror that indeed confirmed that I looked damn cool in yellow sunglasses. Yet I think my eventual calm was mainly down to my dentist’s kindness. He has a gentility that’s unbelievable. It’s why I always go to him and why I trust him. It’s probably the reason why I’m not sobbing in a corner right now. He explained things. He makes the minor surgical procedure sound like a minor surgical procedure even to me, a man who can turn a pimple into an advanced case of gigantism with a side dose of botulism.
It has not always been the case. In the past, my dentists have been butchers. My first was even nicknamed ‘the butcher’ and as a child I remember visiting his surgery which was in the front room of an ordinary house taken straight from a Edward Gorey print. Every tool he used looked pre-War and seemed to have been licked clean by the dogs that sometimes came in from the living room. One of my earliest memories is having teeth removed under gas. I still recall the smell of the rubber cup they held over my nose. A day later, my tongue turned green and I was a pariah in school because I had the most unholy halitosis. I was like something from the Exorcist and like exorcisms, my green tongue was never explained.
Over the years, the surgery has changed immeasurably. It’s the same house but after numerous renovations it’s unrecognisable and contains a very modern dental surgery with an ultra-high tech computer system on which you can Tweet your x-rays only minutes after they’re taken. The staff have changed too. They’re now more professional yet also more personable and seem genuinely interested in making the whole thing less painful.
Long since gone are the two dentists who made such a mess of the tooth that will now force me to make a hospital visit. I’m hoping that this dentist might finally fix the problem either by giving me a crown that doesn’t fall out every five minutes or pull the tooth so I can be rid of the nuisance, even if that means wearing a bridge, though I’m not entirely sure what that means.
I still can’t get over the disappointment that my thirty minutes has probably turned into six months or more of work or how much of what little earnings I’m scraping together will go to pay for all of this. It’s now a few weeks before my next appointment, when I’ll get an appointment at a hospital, perhaps treatment at the hospital. Only after all that will treatment on the tooth begin.
I’m freaked out, of course. I hope the crud drains away, as the dentist thinks it might, but if the experts think I need the crud removing from above the tooth, then everything becomes a little more real. I recall phrases like ‘peel back the gum’, ‘incision’ and ‘bone’ but I’m telling myself that surely it can’t be as painful as drilling into a tooth, which is the bit that always makes me fret. It’s not the one that sounds like a high pitched drill that strikes fear but the one that sounds like a slow low grind that always gives me pain. That was enough for one day. I’d hoped it would be enough for the next six months but I see I’m going to be Dentistry’s plaything for a little while longer.
Sunday, 6 October 2013
A Body Building Cartoon
You find me hot and sweary. I’ve lost my bloody S-Pen again and I now see that I have to do something about this habit before it becomes a regular part of my working week. I’ve had the Note for six days and I’ve already lost the pen twice, which means that I’ve now used up all the time I usually give myself to tidy my office each year. This can’t go on. At this rate, I’ll have the tidiest workspace in the country but I won’t be getting any work done.
It’s already Sunday and I have work backing up and what is sure to be a horrible week ahead. Tuesday I’m going to the dentist for a much delayed check-up, although that’s not strictly true. ‘Check-up’ makes it sound like I might need no work but who chooses to spend £50 on a check-up and inevitable polish if they don’t need to? A bit of a back tooth came away last week and I know it will mean work. Probably lots of work. My tongue tells me it’s a cavity the size of a small bungalow. I imagine crowns, extractions, months of appointments stretching ahead into the New Year. By the time it’s all done, in six-months, it’ll be time to start getting phone calls from the dentists asking me to make an appointment for a check-up. If they didn’t pester me so much, I’d probably go more often.
Once I’m beyond the horror of Tuesday morning, I need to get working. I have real work to get on with, two cartoon strips need to be finished for a football fanzine, plus I need to settle on which of my unpublished cartoons I’m entering into a competition. Since I don’t think I’ve got one good enough to send, that also means more drawing. In the meantime, I’d throwing today’s cartoon out there in the realisation that nobody would want this kind of thing. My problem is that the cartoons I like aren’t cartoons that other people like, or, specifically, cartoons they’d be willing to pay for.
But I could moan on about that for another 1000 words but it’s not getting my S-Pen found. And I have to find it before I also lose my spare…
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)