Wolfgang von Skeptik

THINKING BEHIND AN ABSCESSED TOOTH

A SUDDENLY ABSCESSED TOOTH, that all-time horror of dental emergencies, has laid me low since last night, with the result I am unable to concentrate on anything much more than living from one minute to the next until I am able to get the problem tooth extracted. I don't know when this will be: I hope today, but I doubt it. My pre-move dentist is in Olympia (a two-hour drive from where I live now), so assuming I can secure an immediate appointment, I am still facing the nightmare of having to spend four hours dealing with some of the most infuriatingly congested traffic in America while in the midst of severe dental pain -- the most debilitating agony I know. And I won't be able to take even a single pain-killer until I am safely back home, which means I am looking forward to as horrible a day as any I have ever experienced. Forget the promised essay. At this point I hardly care if I never write another word.

If the long-promised high-speed rail system were up and running, my problem would be solved: I'd phone my dentist, get a painkiller prescription, gobble a handful of blessed-relief pills and take the train. But thanks to repeated sabotage by "we-don-wanna-be-like-Jew-York" xenophobes, the rail system is six years behind schedule. So I've gotta deal with all the frustrations of local motoring, especially the archetypical Pacific Northwest morons who get in the 65-mile-per-hour fast-lane and then defiantly obstruct traffic for miles by chugging along at 40 miles per hour. Such is life here in Pugetopolis, which claims to be the most environmentally enlightened metropolitan area in America -- but which demonstrates its utter hypocrisy by the infinitely damning fact it has the worst, most abysmally useless, most outrageously nonfunctional urban public transport system in the entire United States. Sure I can ride the bus to my dentist's office -- but though it is only about 40 miles, it is nearly a five-hour trip each way.