Things I hate about America

.

Dentists

While there may be excellent ones out there, every dentist I visit is a barbarian, and I apologise to the barbarians for unfairly comparing them to dentists.

When I call my current dentist the Butcher of Bombay and find him infinately better than my last one, something is obviously wrong. My first dentist here gave me a crown. Before fitting the final porcelain cover, a temporary cap was put in place. I spent a week in intense pain. Finally I took a look in my mouth and found a white pus like substance. Oh no, an infection I thought! As I attempted to clean that muck out, I found it was in fact a piece of my skin from my cheek that had been scraped down when the cap was fitted. This piece of skin was still attached to my cheek, and was also stuck under the cap. How very lovely. No wonder it hurt. I managed to remove the skin from under the cap, and then proceeded to pull the skin off my cheek, only to watch this hunk of my flesh quickly decompose in my hand, UNBELIEVEABLE. Unsurprisingly, the pain quickly started to die down. I had spent a week in that condition.
When I returned to the dentist and relayed my sorry experience it was met with a simple shrug of the shoulders.

Hairdressers

After living here in 1999-2000, I returned to Australia and my regular hairdresser there spent A YEAR repairing it. Now I fear there is no return from the damage being wrought by a bunch of clowns that profess to be hairdressers when a trained chimp could do a better job, blindfolded. I won't go into detail here as my previous post explicitly outlined the atrocities being done to my hair. I will say this, I am not happy at all about the fact that everytime I look in the mirror, big bird is staring back at me. I love gold, but as an adornment, not a hair colour. I would be quite happy to have a canary diamond ring, a canary handbag or even a blooming canary sitting on a perch making sweet canary music, but atop my head? NO WAY.

.

Self portrait.

Television

I have never in my life seen such a complete and utter lack of quality programming on the TV. We have cable with hundreds of stations and it seems that all of them screen absolute rubbish. When I eagerly look forward to Seinfeld each day, even though I have seen every episode multiple times, one knows something is lacking. When the highlight of my viewing week is the most degenerate, degrading, intellectually comatose reality program, Rock of love 1, Rock of Love 2 and Rock of love Bus, then really the situation has reached critical mass. If watching a washed up old has been pop star (Bret Michaels) who wears more make up than most drag queens, attempting to find a love interest among a bevy of skanky strippers and porn stars, is the only thing entertaining on telly, then things have reached an all time low. What I wouldn't give for a night's viewing of the ABC or SBS. No one here knows what Inspector Rex is, much less cares.

Will I ever find a decent dentist who does not cause more pain then necessary, who does not create more problems every time a procedure is done? I should add that the teeth where the crown was fitted hurt frequently, as opposed to pre-dental work when they did not hurt, AT ALL. Additionally, cavities worked on by the Butcher of Bombay have also been the source of much grievance when previously they were the source of NONE.

I have made the rule never to use expletives in my blog, it was with great restraint, and some backspacing that I have managed to carry it off in this post. The words in capitals however do denote shouting.

MY FAMILY IS NOT HERE and I miss them terribly.

What I like about America.

No one here knows who Kevin Rudd is.

Home shopping channels.

.

NOT HAPPY.......JAN

Big Birds Revenge

.Blackadder, 1st series.

My hair woes continue. Why oh why is it impossible to find a decent hairdresser in Tampa?

I finally gave up on my guy at Saks 5th Ave. I had not been happy with him for a long time but he used Loreal colour, very rare here, and he managed to keep my hair from being yellow. My natural colour is fairly mousey but it throws out so much gold, having my hair bleached and turning a buttery yellow is my worst hair problem.

He did however manage to bleach the living daylights out of my hair, to the point where it was breaking off and leaving me with a couple of centimetre long fringe, as well as centimetre long sides. The resulting haircut is what I called Blackadders revenge.

.

A haircut Blackadder would be proud of.

To make things worse, I went in and asked him to colour my hair a little darker so as to avoid more damage. His inexplicable solution was to use a non bleach lift on the roots. What the??? This resulted in a very bright coppery brown line around my head. No attempt was made to blend the new colour in with the old, there was a bright copper band surrounded by very white hair. UGLY.

I decided I had suffered enough and found a new hairdresser who also uses Loreal. I have just come home and my hair is yellow. Canary yellow. My new colour is called Big Bird's Revenge, it's neon. I cannot believe my bad luck with hairdressers since moving here. I am not sure if the yellow is the result of trying to bleach that copper band or not. I understand if the copper band is making things difficult, but if the roots are yellow too then I am in trouble. I may even have to go back to the guy at Saks because at least I was able to get a decent colour, most of the time anyway.

Not so Mellow Yellow.

I was really happy with my hair colour in Australia, since I have been here my hair has done nothing but make me miserable. Oh America......why.....why....