Gooseletter 9

How to improve the dentist experience

Look, I’m kind of a bad boy when it comes to dental hygiene. What I lack in enamel I make up for in cavities. And to be honest I’m not enamored with the dentist experience in actuality. I want to pitch some ideas for how to make a dentist appointment more enjoyable.

Walk out song for the dentist

I’m talkin the whole 9 yards. Lights go out, a hype video showing highlights of previous appointments, flames, fog machine, spotlights, Let it Rock by Lil Wayne and Kevin Rudolph bumps on the speakers as a drippy dentist rips off a tearaway suit to reveal a crisp white lab coat. Dental assistants high five the dentist and execute flawless elaborate handshakes. That would be jaw dropping to witness, which is exactly what the dentist needs to get started.

More liberal usage of laughing gas

Sounds like there are plenty of doctors slinging much more dangerous and addictive narcotics. Why do dentists have to have a moral compass in the medical community? Let’s recruit greedy, money hungry dentists that’ll look the other way for a minute while you take a hit or five.

Revealing uniforms

Hot dental assistants wearing the absolute minimum permissible by the FDA. It may seem like a health code violation but if strip clubs let you eat food while naked girls dance around you, I don’t see why a dentist can’t remove food from your teeth in a similar setting.

High, hyped and horny. That’s what I want in a dentist visit.

New slang:

Gooseletter OG’s will remember the first couple of slang terms I invented: Gnautical(TM) and Grocho(TM) . They didn’t necessarily catch on and I’m stuck in the application process for Merriam Webster. If anyone is tight with Merriam and could put in a good word (like I’m trying to do for her dictionary), that would be grocho.

Good news is I have two more slang terms you can start dropping:

1) Kittyfish verb

The term ‘catfishing’ creeped in to our vernacular a few years ago as online dating started to become more common and malicious people started to do their thing. A catfish is someone who claims to be a completely different person to exploit a victim they’re interacting with online. 

Most people have become cautious of this and the amount of catfish cases have sunk. But in reality, a more subtle version of catfishing persists, and we’re calling it kittyfishing.

Kittyfishing is the same premise, but instead of pretending to be a completely different individual, it’s people that present a better version of themselves. The most common example is on dating apps where the photos mask flaws and emphasize the flex. it doesn’t have to be just about looks, answering dating app prompts in a way that appeals to the masses but lacks authenticity also counts. 

This whole catfishing thing is a spectrum. We all kittyfish, some weirdos catfish, and whatever happened to poor Manti Teo we’ll call lionfishing.

E.g. “I ended up sleeping with him, but my Hinge date totally kittyfished me by soft smiling in all his profile pictures. Turns out he had terrible dental hygiene.”

2) Hand-me-ups noun

We’re all familiar with hand-me-downs, where younger siblings adopt the clothing of their older siblings once they grow out of clothes. It’s the staple practice of familial wardrobe efficiency. However, older doesn’t mean larger. There are plenty of cases where the younger sibling outgrows the older fairly quickly. In that case, the younger sibling passes their clothes to the older sibling, in an exchange I’m coining a hand-me-up, where the vertical direction refers to age rather than size. 

E.g. “Alex, just take the hand-me-ups from your brother and stop complaining, they’ll be an improvement to your style. Trust me.”

Food Influencer rant

Most of what I get served up across social media platforms is cooking videos. I’m pretty much hungry all the time so my algorithm keeps feeding me videos of these influencers (of which there are many) cooking everything under the sun. Maybe it’s me being hangry, but I’ve got some serious beef with these people I need to express:

Culinary prowess that lacks maturity

For whatever reason, their videos are filled with sex puns and innuendos or intimate kissing/spanking of ingredients. It's not a huge deal, I thought some of them were funny at first. It just boggles my mind that this is the norm for such an esteemed profession. Maybe that’s why they’re making videos at home rather than working at a Michelin star restaurant; they’ve been booted from the HR equivalent of a restaurant.

Without fail, they fail to pronounce Worcestershire

Every single one of them purposely fumbles over or mispronounces Worcestershire sauce. I know that’s picky of me to flag, but if I wanted to hear the same lame joke over and over again I would hang out with more dads.

Not even a teaspoon of humility

I understand how people have pride in their hobbies. I would too if mine involved doing something impressive or remotely beneficial to society. But in no other community or profession do people brag about how amazing their finished product is like these people do. It’s a community full of Patrick Beverly’s and I can’t think of something more toxic than that.

The money shot that needs to be blocked

Similarly, the end of these videos includes a clip of the person enjoying a (usually way too big) bite of what they just cooked. It’s them chewing audibly and trying to express how delicious it is with exaggerated body language. Literally eyes rolling to the back of their head like (how I imagine) someone experiencing a life-altering orgasm would look like. It’s legit repulsive, which sucks because the food looks really good most of the time, but I’m left queasy after these hairy, tattooed, out of shape people chew some fried bar snack with way too much cheese at me seductively.

That was harsh, I’m sorry. I realize I just called these talented people weird, gross, unfunny and pretentious. I do consume all the content that comes across my feed so I guess whatever they’re doing works. It also gives me resolve that they have to do an unreal amount of dishes at the end of the videos since they use a million bowls and plates to make the video more aesthetic. Let me end on a positive note. I hereby endorse the following food influencers:

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