tommy's sister beth posts on the trials and tribulations of her retainer and subsequent visits to her orthodontist, which makes me want to ask gross retainer advice of the internet. who doesn't have that feeling from time to time?

anyway, my orthdontist owned my soul for nearly six years - yes, i had braces from fifth to nearly tenth grade, and there was fun stuff before and after that - teeth pullings, TMJ issues, all the basic hilarity. apparently i have an incredibly small mouth, so all my teeth were majorly effed up. i still have nightmares about rubber bands and metal palette expanders that my mother had insert a key into every day to, you know, expand my mouth. when i was let loose from his shiny metal grip, i was given a set of retainers that was plastic and served me well for a couple of years. i took care of them; they took care of me. my tiny teeth in my tiny mouth stayed beautifully straight.

of course, then came college, and boyfriends, and drinking. the combination of all three proved deadly for my teeth - i sure as hell wasn't going to stick in my retainer when i a) was drunk off my head b) was staying the night at my new boyfriend's that i was eager to impress and i certainly wasn't going to whip out my geeky retainer. and so, the retainer, it languished in its sad little bright pink case. where...it got kind of gross. i don't know what happened to it. i don't think it was mold. it was...something. tooth fairy dust. yes, that's it! or residual plaque and nastiness? maybe more likely.

anyway i still wore my retainer once in a while, but i can no longer ignore the fact that my bottom row of teeth are getting scarily more crooked. soon i will be back to the situation where two of my teeth actcually lived behind the rest of them. so i'm wearing my retainer pretty regularly. but it is the nast. and i am repulsed every time i put it in. as i well should be. does anybody have any suggestions that don't involve me going to a new orthodontist and getting an expensive new retainer made? perhaps voodoo magic? seducing a rogue dentist? anything? because i'm getting concerned my retainer will soon grow legs and walk away.

michael ausiello liveblogged the veronica mars presentation at the press tour. unfortunately, the man does not know how to permalink, so i'll just cut and paste the info behind the cut. if you're one of those absolutely-no-spoilers-ever people, i wouldn't read, but it's mostly some pretty basic info about the next season.

UPDATE: msnbc has some more info here.

You probably won't be surprised to hear me say that the internet has made music better. Admittedly, I sort of think the internet has made everything better. But I think it's particularly true for music.

Filesharing has vastly expanded listeners' ability to sample music, allowing consumption decisions to be based more upon listening and less upon marketing than they were in the past. Major labels have been forced to adapt and produce a superior product — I like to use the example of Fallout Boy versus Good Charlotte. Same gimmick, vastly different levels of quality in terms of songwriting and musicianship (identical overproduction, sadly). I suspect that there's been a Long Tail effect, too, with top earners' share of revenue declining and more acts finding that they can make a living with regional touring and a decent website. And digital technology has made recording and marketing cheaper, letting us shift wealth away from the useless record company middlemen and into some combination of concert tickets, cheaper iTunes downloads, and/or our own pockets (thanks, filesharing).

I still think all of the above is true. But I let my optimism get away from me: I had also sort of started to believe that the recent increase in pop music's quality had led to a reduction in people being colossal dicks about it. Maybe it was just me and my friends getting older, but it seemed like I no longer had to hear as many complaints about bands selling out. When the Flaming Lips or Modest Mouse sold a song to sell a minivan, the reaction seemed to be "good for them!" rather than "Judas!"

It no longer takes as much effort to find and enjoy great music, so everyone was able to. Sure, tastes differed, but the lines between the mainstream "artists" and actual artists began to break down, and with it a lot of the antagonistic elitism surrounding the latter began to wane. I thought everyone was starting to get along.