Stink Tooth

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This is a story that I heard on “This American Life.” It amused me no end.

By Jeanne Darst

Stink Tooth was born with a baby tooth with no adult tooth underneath it, and the baby tooth had never fallen out. It was rotting and dead, and her five sisters began calling her Stink Tooth. Soon her mother and father called her that, and then everyone in their town did, as well. No one ever talked about seeing a dentist and pulling it. You carry on. Even though something is decaying right under your nose, you carry on.
At 44, she did the only thing she’d ever done, bus tables at Rouge a Levres sur un Couchon– lipstick on a pig– the French bistro in town in Superior, Wisconsin. She’d never gotten a raise. She’d seen other bus people promoted to waiter, but she definitely did not want to be a waiter. The waiters were all French, not a single one here legally. If you were legal, you didn’t stick around Superior.
She didn’t have enough to live on. She ate off plates when she got them into the kitchen. Sure, everyone did that, all the young illegal bus boys. But she also didn’t have enough booze and cigarettes. And often, when she ran out of cigarettes, she would just shut off the lights and go to sleep. She needed a raise.
She got to the restaurant and found Blouson, the owner. “Sir, I need a raise,” she said. Blouson ignored this.
“Why don’t you learn French, Stink Tooth? You’ve worked here so long.”
“I don’t like to learn new things. It makes you vulnerable in my opinion.”
“Well, that in itself is very French. You’re lazy. You love to nap, no? Your skill set is general, hazy, like a smoky room, not sure what is what, who is where. You do speak French, very well, just not the language. C’est sa. You understand what we French call the gout de maleur, the taste for misery. You love to suffer.”
“Perhaps, sir, but I’d still like a raise.”
Suddenly, shouting and cackles were heard out on the street, and a crew of 11 pirates from 17th century Hispaniola broke down the door of Rouge a Levres sur un Couchon, brandishing swords, breaking tables, and smashing windows. Stink Tooth took note of the marauders’ filthy faces and hands, their period-perfect, tattered, billowy shirts, as they burned chairs and flung centerpieces everywhere. “I’m never getting out of here tonight.”
They yelled that they were looking for the famous treasure of Leopold the Sullen of Spain. Stink Tooth ignored them, walking back and forth to the kitchen to get a broom to clean up the broken windows, and then back again because she forgot her dustpan. They demanded to know who was in charge of the restaurant. Blouson yelled, “I am in charge. This is my restaurant.” The pirates ignored him, surveying the place and surmising that Stink Tooth was clearly in charge, as she was the most manly, masculine creature in the joint.
They held up and pointed to their crinkly yellowed map, which said the Sullen treasure was buried under the restaurant. They told Stink Tooth that, as the leader of the restaurant, he– they called her he– needed to get all the customers out, so that they could burn the place to the ground to dig for the treasure. “Burn this place to the ground?” Stink Tooth said, “I’ve wanted to burn this place to the ground for most of my adult life. Matches are in the hostess podium.”
They began lighting torches when their leader, Captain Treadwell, yelled, “Stop! Stop! Why, I ask you all, is he so eager to torch the place? He’s already gotten to the booty. The treasure is clearly somewhere else.” One of the captain’s men grabbed Blouson by the hair and dragged him across the floor to where Stink Tooth was standing. He threatened to cut off Blouson’s head if Stink Tooth didn’t tell them where he had relocated the treasure. Stink Tooth walked through the swinging kitchen doors and came back and handed the pirate a knife. “It’s an Oxo,” she said, “better grip than what you’ve got there.”
Captain Treadwell, feeling that decapitation wasn’t impressing Stink Tooth, glared. “Stink Tooth, you will tell us where that Sullen treasure is, or we will cut off the arms of all your customers,” Treadwell said.
“That sounds like an awful lot of work, if you ask me,” Stink Tooth said.
Treadwell ordered the pirates to begin. “Anywhere in particular you’d like me to start, Stink Tooth?”
“Yeah, actually, table 12 by the front door. Real plate cleaner, that one. Has never so much left a few frites for me to take home in all the years I’ve worked here. Why don’t you start with him? His name’s Ted Turk.” One of the pirates dragged Ted Turk over to Stink Tooth and put a large blade at his arm.
“Hey there, Ted.”
“Hey, Stink Tooth.”
“Crazy day.”
“Oh god, yeah,” said Ted.
“They’re going to cut off your arms, Ted.”
“That’s what they’re saying, isn’t it?”
Captain Treadwell screamed for both of them to put a lid on it. He considered a new plan, since maiming and killing others wasn’t working with her.
“People are always wanting to do things,” Stink Tooth said to Ted. “Do, do, do. This is glamorous? Doing things? This is any way to live? Striving, sweating, searching? Treadwell, you think anyone’s going to remember you for all this effort? OK, yes, slaughtering, maiming, pillaging, all real calorie burners, I’ll give you that. But come on. It’s also just pointless. This is silly, boys, really. All this exertion’s a bit embarrassing. It’s so obvious and empty. At the end of the work day, you’re drunk and alone and hating the world, just like me. The same results can be had with no effort at all.”
The pirates look at each other, wipe the sweat from their eyes, and rub their lower backs, finally lowering their swords. They head out the front door, one battered pirate releasing his parrot into the night sky over Lake Superior.
Captain Treadwell called back to her from the door. “I can pull that tooth for you, lassie.”
“Sorry, Captain,” she said, “this tooth is who I am.”
The customers emerge from under tables and the bathroom. One by one they pat her on the back and shake her hand, thanking her for saving them, no one getting too close to her. These people have known her her whole life. They know not to get too close. Stink Tooth looks at Blouson.
“I’m sorry, Stink Tooth. No raise. Non.”

0.81818181

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9/11.

That was stark reality, as close as any of us dare to come to the truth. A step one way or the other, taking one flight vs. the next, getting to work at 8 am or 8:30, a missed train, that’s all it took to determine whether you lived or died.

Each set of odds incalculable; worse the odds of survival were set long before the victims or suvivors were aware of them.

Terrifying. Not in the way Osama and his crew of assholes meant, but terrifying nonetheless.

I wish I could remember the scene, but it was a TV show or a radio show I can recall when an interviewer was talking to God, in this case a small Borscht Belt comedian. The line I can remember is God, who was laughing at everything, saying, “One second you’re alive, the next you’re dead. Sphptt! Funniest thing I ever saw!”

Maybe it was a dream.

So ten years later, we have a memorial to look at rather than the cold hard ground that was exposed when the towers we built were taken away. We have “context” to discuss and argue over. Soon we’ll have “historical perspective” to keep our mind off of our precarious divide by zero existence.

But all equations get resolved, and when you least expect it. Terrifying.

May 1, 2011

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Today The earth is revolving around the sun at about 107,278 km/h.
The mass of the earth is 5.98 × 1024 kg.
Some light from Eta Carinae, after traveling for 8,000 years will land on the earth. Some might even be seen or recorded.
The Sun will burn 345,000 Million Tons of hydrogen in this day. It will run out of hydrogen, and expand as a red giant, torching everything on Earth in about 7.59 Billion years.

Osama bin Laden was killed today. It was history – Capital H “History,” the kind that happens too often in my life.

The killing of bin Laden is one of those events where people will ask in future years where you were when you heard the news. I was watching TV with Alex, and at first the news didn’t quite sink in. The words were plain enough, just difficult to process, as it usually is when the event is one of those ‘before’ and ‘after’ events.

The reactions to this event are of course numerous and varied, but not unpredictable.

Those who like to thank God thanked God.
Those who want to see justice done saw justice done.
Those who like to join a crowd and chant “USA! USA!” joined a crowds and chanted “USA! USA!”
Those who like to be better than the chanting masses were better than the chanting masses.
Those who like to say events prove their point said this event proved their point.
Those that wanted to cry cried.
Those who hope for peace hoped for peace.

Tomorrow The earth will revolve around the sun at about 107,278 km/h.
The mass of the earth will be 5.98 × 1024 kg.
Some light from Eta Carinae, after traveling for 8,000 years will just miss the Earth and continue into the universe.
Tomorrow the Sun will burn 345,000 Million Tons of hydrogen. It will run out of hydrogen, and expand as a red giant, torching everything on Earth in about 7.59 Billion years, less one day.

Another DotO dispatch

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obvious

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/02/26/travel.promotion.act/index.html

The U.S. Government, in what’s seriously described as an “historic victory,” has decided to slap a $10 visitor fee on people who visit the United States. The destination of this $10 is to partially fund a new non-profit advocacy group chartered to – yes, persuade people to visit the United States.

Welcome, Foreigners!

Not only will you be photographed, fingerprinted and harassed by the TSA, you’ll have to cough up $10 worth of that neon toilet paper you call money to get in (offer not valid if your name is Mohammad, Ahmed, Ali, Akbar or any combination thereof).

Please smile while forking over your cash or else Bubba will break out the rubber glove.

The line forms on your right(s).