I am currently broiling in my office, as the building clings desperately to the notion that it is still mid-winter. It’s so hot that the chocolate kisses in the candy tray on my desk are melting. The thermostats have been placed on the walls for placebo effect; it isn’t working. I’m done with my burst of productive energy for the day, and the heat does not put me in the mood for knitting (haven’t forgotten you, Faye! Expect an octopus or two to make an appearance soon). Instead I’ll type up a review of a movie I’ve seen recently, a Korean flick called ‘Lady Vengeance’, about a hot-tempered woman (ha, how’s that for a segue? My brain, sadly, is quite baked).

Elijah, the guy I’m seeing (again, for those of you just tuning into bad metaphor, no real names are used on this blog), and I were standing around in the video section of a grocery store when this film caught our attention. Apparently it’s part of a three-part series, including another movie Elijah had seen, called ‘Old Boy.’ He liked that movie, and knew of my fascination with vengeance (revenge tragedies especially!), so he picked it up on Netflix a few days after that.

‘Lady Vengeance’ features stunning cinematography. The opening sequence is like a glamour shot for violence: swirls of blood spilled in water curl into stark rosettes. We find out that Geum-ja, the titular Lady Vengeance, has just been released from prison - she had been sentenced for strangling a young boy to death. The crime shocked and titillated the nation because of the beauty of the offender; Geum-ja develops a following of obsessed individuals who are transfixed by the contrast between her innocent appearance and her latent violent tendencies. All this is a familiar story, of course, but the movie gets more interesting plot wise as Geum-ja begins to enact her 13-year plan for revenge.

Yeah, she may be missing a couple of fingers, but she’s got some bitchin’ red eyeshadow.

I expected the film to be like the opening shot, glorifying violence, which I tend not to enjoy so much on the screen (despite my affection for written revenge dramas). Yet the thing that struck me about this movie was how, despite how beautifully shot and gorgeous many of the scenes are, it managed to portray the final revenge as something rather ugly, awkward, and ultimately unsatisfying.

Spoilers in the next paragraph:

The ultimate revenge is decided by committee, ensconced in bureaucracy. Despite the intense anguish the parents of the murdered children experience (or maybe because of it), the parents have many doubts and second guesses about committing violence against the man who tortured and killed their children. The terrible rage they feel upon watching the videos of the last moments of their children, begins to dissipate when each parent stands in front of him, contemplating the murder. One of the women looks at him and says, “But you look so normal.” Afterwards, wherein they celebrate the deed by eating birthday cake, everyone involved seems listless and broken. What they have done hasn’t brought healing, or really much of anything. The discovery of snowfall jolts the people out of solemnity, back into banal, ordinary life, in which one has to worry about traffic and bedtimes. Like the symbolic tofu, the snow washes away sin, or perhaps buries it.

I’d definitely recommend this movie, and I’m curious to see others in the trilogy. There are many layers of complication that I’m not sure I’ve quite parsed through yet, and I saw it last week. That, in my mind, makes the difference between an excellent movie and a merely good one.

Dentists, possibly second only to clowns, are the all-time most dreaded figures lurking in the shadows of one’s childhood. Worse than the bogeyman, certainly more sinister than any monsters sequestered under the bed - the friendly, neighborhood dentist is armed with an arsenal of sharp metallic drills, hooks, and other mysterious devices that may or may not be legal to use under the Geneva Convention. The little pat on the head and the free tubes of minty toothpaste doled out at the end do little to make up for the preceding torture.

This fear of dentists stuck with me past childhood, after my mom stopped forcing me to go on dental visits on a regular basis. The visits became less and less frequent, and after I went off to live on my own, stopped entirely. I am more than a little embarrassed to admit, to the Internet (and to those of you who I actually have to interact with in person), this little confession: prior to my last dental checkup, I hadn’t been in just over five years.

I decided I’d eventually have to go, one way or the other - I’d been informed of my sporadic nightly bruxism, and knowing that this couldn’t bode well for my dental health, figured that this was something I would need to address before long. Combined with the awesome dental insurance I get as one of the perks of this job, and krissy’s recommendation of a good dentist in town, I finally picked up the phone one day and set myself an appointment.

Besides the whole thing about not going to the dentist, I have taken more or less good care of my teeth: I brush every day, in the morning and at night, for at least two and a half minutes (one hundred and fifty Mississippis); I floss intermittently, which is more than I can say for some of the roommates I’ve had over the years. I’m not much of a sweet tooth, I don’t eat copious amounts of candy, and I don’t drink pop very often. Still, when you haven’t been in for a cleaning for quite some time, the first revisit is bound to be painful, and tends to involve a particular device I call the Sonic Scythe of Satan:

A sonic scaler. Just looking at this thing invokes the sound of a thousand hyper-pitched bees thrumming through my nerves

Believe it or not, my hygienist claimed that some people actually like having this dystopic contraption poking around in their heads, as an alternative to the simpler, though slower, hand scaler. These people must have been born without ears or auditory complexes. The noise still haunts the edge of my nightmares, disturbing my fitful rest and dreams of razor-toothed hooks and rotating blades.

After that lovely incident, I was told I had to come back :cry:. I had, after all these years of not going to the dentist, acquired one cavity (again, embarrassingly enough, in one of my front teeth). Luckily, it was a tiny one. So I went back this morning, had my gums pricked and injected with blissfully numbing agent (which made me think that dentist visits may not be entirely without perks), and sat back as my mouth turned into an industrial work zone. Saws, drills, jackhammers, everything but whistling men, rooted about in my head, carving my teeth into submission.

Two things I have taken from this collective dental experience: first, that putting off going to the dentist only causes things to be far, far worse. I’ll brush my teeth eight times a day and visit the dentist every week, if it means I never have to hear that demon sound again.

Secondly, thank the gods above and below for the existence of topical analgesic. Mmm, sweet nerve-deadening bliss.