Dec 6, 2009

Teeth prove the non-existence of God

I've just got back from the dentist. I didn't have to have any fillings — yay — but had to sit for half an hour while the nurse "cleaned" my teeth which basically involves scouring them with steel needles until my head rang like a bell and my mouth ran with blood. And that was just a check-up. That's my teeth on their best behaviour. Imagine if something went wrong with them. My dad was a dentist so maybe I'm inclined towards pessimism on the subject but seriously: what other body part fucks up with such regularity? Say they told you that your heart would only work if you cleaned it with a pipecleaner every day, after every meal, and that if you didn't it would simply pack up. Shrivel up. Fall out. Or say your legs only worked if you flossed your toes twice day, once in the morning and once in the evening, and if you didn't they just wasted away until you needed replacements. And yet teeth get away with this rubbish, all the time. They're not even that important, at least not compared to legs or a heart. They just help us masticate our food. And yet we clean and floss and cap and repair and replace on an almost constant basis from the moment we are born to the moment we die. No God could come up with teeth and pronounce himself happy with his powers of invention. They are a huge evolutionary fuck up, a bodge job, a trial run, a bad experiment.

3 comments:

  1. I absolutely adore every second of "Digital Love." In fact, I bought the cd single just because it had an instrumental mix and ended up listening to that almost as much as the album version. One of these days i'm going to mix them together and it'll be extended "Digital Love" bliss. (This is Smith, by the way.)

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  2. I would like to hear that sometime, as much as I love the bad-translation faux-naivety of the lyrics.

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  3. Anyone confused by this: it should be attached to the comments for the post about best songs of the decade

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