It’s no secret that I have no love lost for the medical profession in general: I don’t like psychiatrists, pediatricians, gastroenterologists, opthalmologists.  Or that orthopedic doctor who thought that the best cure for my scoliosis outside of strapping me to a back brace was to lock me up in a painful submission hold that was supposed to be “physical therapy.”  But if there’s any kind of doctor that wouldn’t receive Christmas cards from me this Holiday season, it’s a dentist.

   I suppose my dad wouldn’t give Christmas cards to his proctologist, either, but I spent more than my own fair share of time on a dentist’s chair.  Having had braces for the better part of six years meant that my dentist knew more about the sorry state of my teeth better than anyone else in the world, including me.

   Because I had braces, my teeth required cleaning every appointment for the stuff a toothbrush wouldn’t clean.  “Oral prophylaxis” is a fancy term for the dentist hovering above you picking away at your teeth with something off the toolbox of a serial killer.  The saliva-sucking tube dries up your mouth and leaves you with the sour aftertaste of days-old sinigang.  As you rinse and spit, you literally brace for the Hell that comes with adjusting the wires in your braces, and applying elastic bands that feel like your face is being ripped sideways by Hulk Hogan.  Or that a new asshole is being torn right smack at your nose.

   As much as I express my dislike for my dentist, he doesn’t fall short on expressing his dislike for me either.  I come in late for appointments, and I don’t heed his advice on drinking Coke.  So you can figure out what I felt when they finally took the heathen metal off my teeth: freedom, sweet freedom.

   I’m not talking about the old Nickelodeon show that puts a kid-spin on “American Gladiators.”  I’m talking about my usual audacity for everything ambitious and new: a few weeks back, I submitted a paper to an international conference, with my thesis as the focal point.  I look forward to this event: if anything, it will make or break my career as a social scientist.  And it will make or break my opportunity to see a part of the world I may never get a chance to see.

   On the matter of earning at least P100,000 to cover all the expenses of my possible trip, I’ve been thinking about writing solicitation letters, and perhaps work a few months to some companies I’ve applied for to cover my pocket money.  I’ve scheduled myself for January to process travel documents (and a haircut) for my trip.  But the magnitude of what I’ve done has only set in lately: here was an opportunity and I took it.  How many times did I not do that?

   It hit me: I suppose that with all the work I put into my thesis and to my paper, the possibility of going to America for that conference is not a remote one, ceteris paribus.  I entered that conference because I wanted to prove that I can: in the dog-eat-dog world that is the academe, I’m not planning on being a teacher.  But for all this talk of being a “scholar of the state,” I’m planning to earn my credits on being a scholar.  And for all its faults, I want to see America up close and personal.

   I was doing some calculations a few days ago, and wondered if $300 (roughly P12,000) would be enough to cover a week in America.  Maybe I should cancel out the idea of meeting friends and relatives and think about a week of SPAM lunches and Hormel dinners.  The most expensive factors for me would be plane tickets, registration fees, and my stay at a halfway decent hotel.  I suppose if I worked freelance for three months, I would earn my $300 and see my bit of America.

   That’s all I got left, basically: a dream.

   Part of the “online folklore” of Original TMX were the “typing monkeys.”  There was this old Hanna-Barbera cartoon where monkeys in front of typewriters were writing the greatest novel in the world, and were paid their wages in bananas.  The “typing monkeys” were just like that: I didn’t write my own entries.  Instead, I operated a sweatshop for lesser simians who wrote entries for me.  Thankfully, nobody bought into that idea.

   The idea of “writing about everything” is somewhat ambitious, but I’m on my way on pulling that off after three years of blogging.  I wonder if I’d meet my match in writing about tampons, but if I’m known for anything, I’m capable of it.  “Everything and nothing” has always been my bread-and-butter as a blogger.  The idea behind the “typing monkeys” is that if you put a thousand intelligent monkeys inside a room, you’d basically end up with the meaning of life.

   I don’t really know - or care for - my place in the Philippine blogosphere.  While I’m known to be a social commentator or an online political pundit, I also write about showbiz, sports, and all too often, inane non-topics.  I think that the reason why I lasted so long in the blogosphere is because of my willingness - perhaps even my gullibility - to write about anything and everything that can be committed to a paragraph.

   Why should we limit ourselves?  As long as there are things happening, I’ll keep those monkeys tied to their keyboards and delay their banana wages.  Go ahead, sue me for animal cruelty.