Dubious Quality

I find the dentist increasingly strange as I get older. It never used to bother me, but it does now. A filling is even stranger, with all the whirring and shrieking of the drill. 

Ever since I watched "Brazil," that drill sound gets to me. 

I was in the chair, mouth numb, and the dentist was drilling away, and of course there's that smell. I've never known exactly what it is, but it's foul, so I asked the dentist what it was. "Oh, that's just the smell of a burning tooth," he said cheerily, because every dentist is unrelentingly cheery. 

Well, except my first dentist. You never forget your first. 

We lived in a small town, population 7,302, and there was one dentist, just a small town, country guy. For all I know, he was an auto mechanic, but he was able to do exams and fillings with no problem. Back then, dentists weren't brands. They weren't cheery and they didn't have logos, just a sign with their name out front. No advertising, because everyone knew who the dentist was. 

I miss that, sometime. Marketing has become so pervasive and insincere that I find it exhausting. It's all noise and no signal. I know, that's an odd pivot to nowhere, but somehow it's all connected. 

[Update; here's the connection. Society used to be about providing service, but now it's about presenting an image.]