Karen has been spending quite a bit of time at the dentist’s, lately. Lounging, most likely, in the dentist chair. Rocking out to some dope beats. Or receiving dental treatment. She will be getting a crown. Maybe even a gold crown.

And this pimptastic dental imagery has me thinking back to my first visit to a dentist in London.

Shortly after I arrived in London, I was still having my dental work done in Canada. I had a good dentist there, and British dental work has a … reputation.

So when I broke a tooth while eating eggs (yes. eggs. I don’t understand, either.) I had no dentist to call upon. Also, it was a Saturday. Also, most dentists aren’t open weekends.

I needed a dentist. I needed them on short notice. And I needed them on the weekend.

Luckily, in a city the size of London, all things are possible. And this particular need had a place where it could be met. A place on Baker Street.

And so I found myself at 11 pm on a Saturday night in a full waiting room on the second floor of a building in Baker Street, surrounded by the saddest group of people that I have ever seen in a waiting room, before or since. I was nervous. It may take a distressing situation to get a person to a dentist’s office on a Saturday night, but these people were uniformly depressed. What was going on?

Eventually, it was my turn. The receptionist led me to a room with the usual dentist set-up within. I sat down. I waited.

About five minutes later, the dentist burst into the room. It was an entrance.

He was wearing a fur coat. He had designer stubble – the kind that looks like he set the electric razor to “rustic”. And he had two dental assistants, both of whom were female, blonde, over six feet tall, and looked like they should be on the runway in some weird dental-fantasy fashion show.

This man (with help from the two ladies) was about to fix my teeth. I became even more nervous. Never before, or since, have I received dental treatment from somebody who came across like a pimp.

The story would end best if I came out with a mouth full of gold teeth. But happily, this is not the case — the fur-clad gentleman turned out to be a competent dentist. But I am happy to report to have never had to go back to that strange world again.

Image found at dentist.tumblr.com. Origin uncertain.

Ever since Maggie’s first teeth came through, we have had the same routine. After breakfast, and before bedtime, we brush our teeth.

Maggie is given a toothbrush, with some toothpaste, and expected to brush her own teeth. If she does a good job of brushing all her teeth (with an evolving view of what a “good job” entails), we rinse and are done. If she does not, I move in and do a thorough job, with all the screaming, kicking, and crying that entails.

All seemed well with this approach. A routine is being developed, and Maggie is a little person who brushes her teeth regularly. And then I had the misfortune of reading the following passage in What to Expect – The Toddler Years:

Give your toddler his own brush to do some preliminary brushing … Then do it yourself.

Moreover, the entire passage on toothbrushing implies that allowing a child to brush her own teeth the majority of the time is a strategy that will doom her to a childhood of tooth decay. Which makes me the Parent of Doom.

Where before I was a parent happy that his daughter was developing good habits that would lead to healthy adult teeth, in the full knowledge that her temporary milk teeth might get an otherwise “unnecessary” cavity or two, I am now a parent full of self-doubt, wondering if I have made a big mistake.

Going back now will be a difficult course. One does not easily wrest control back from a two-year-old, once it has been given away. And we are due to visit the dentist soon, and gain some invaluable professional advice.

In the meantime, Internet, I turn to you:

What approach would you take with these teeth?

Back in April, the website ThinkGeek created an April Fool’s Day joke — the sale of canned unicorn meat. You have probably seen this if you have the internet. And you probably have the internet.

Now ThinkGeek has been served with a Cease and Desist Order from the National Pork Board, asking them to stop selling unicorn meat using their registered trademark THE OTHER WHITE MEAT.

(by Alejandra Bartoliche)

In the world of bizarre internet turf wars, after astronomer Stuart Robbins showed that astrologer Terry Nazon’s claims about Mayans were inaccurate (with the help of an archaeologist), Ms. Nazon started to impersonate Mr. Robbins on various websites. While posting under the guise of Mr. Robbins, Ms. Nazon posted complaints about others being “anonymous cowards” and “phonies”.

Mashable is reporting some interesting stats regarding the use of Facebook statuses to deal with partners. While the stats are almost certainly incredibly inaccurate (they come from an online survey which exists on a Facebook page for those trying to hook up with strangers through Facebook), it does raise an interesting question: How often (and for what reasons) do people create fraudulent (in which we mean untrue, rather than illegal) updates via social media?