Choo-chew

Woot! Yesterday it was off with my braces! Can't actually tell the difference it apparently made for my teeth, though. Rip-off anyway, but an insured one. I'm sure, as with a lot of things, if I had much more of an incentive I would have cared more.

The cloud filling this particular silver lining is why they were taken off. Ideally the orthodontist would have had me were them a few more months, to get even more money re-correcting the little gaps that had appeared (due to his incompetence in the first place), but due to my relapse of encephalitis (at least that's what they're calling it this time, but in fact they plain old just don't know) I have to go for an MRI scan next month, using really big magnets (not the crappy pseudoscientific ones you get in bracelets that are supposed to get the iron in your blood flowing better "or something" - what an insult to human intelligence) that would rip the sharp metal bits of my braces out of my head, in several (vitally inefficient) directions at once.

Also yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my first proper headache. And I don't mean a bit of dizziness due to watching TV for too long, I mean intracranial hypertension provoked by viral (although quite which virus is unclear) meningitis. Worse than the worst hangover imaginable, even from several Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, and I should know.

In the meantime I've been hanging out with the (mostly) non-complete-tools at www.skepticforum.com which is well worth a visit if you care about human rational thought at all. Recently I've realised that because I spend most of my time with averagely intelligent people, we should all be getting very worried about the bottom of the pile.