The Gaming Den

Okay, the other day I came across a picture of the old children's game, Crocodile Dentist, and it got me thinking. What a load of bullshit.

So everyone plays the role of a dentist. A really fucking incompetent one, who apparently uses no tools other than a pair of pliers, and makes random guesses as to which teeth to extract (and it's always an extraction. Without anaesthetic).

The goal here is to remove the right teeth from the crocodile. I think all but one are acceptable to remove, but it might have been 50/50 or something. Kind of like Russian Roulette, every time you get a safe one, it increases the chances of the next person dying: pull the wrong tooth and the crocodile races forward and bites you.

Now, what kind of crocodile goes to the fucking dentist? I mean seriously, come on, you can't expect me to believe that. And I've never known of a crocodile needing so many teeth removed, either - they have birds to get bits of meat out from between their teeth to prevent decay, they are widely spaced, they tend to not get into fist-fights that result in teeth getting chipped... in fact, they've probably weeded out the "crappy teeth" gene, given they're the evolutionary kings.

So seriously. We're supposed to believe that:
A) A crocodile has teeth that bad, that so many need removing
B) The crocodile elects to go to the dentist, and
C) The dentists all take turns poking in its mouth haphazardly without consulting charts or the patient.

Discuss.

My satire sense is tingling.

Looking up the image, it's worse than that.




That's not even a crocodile.

To wit, note the rounded snout and how none of the teeth overlap the jaw.

Wisegeek site wrote: In terms of physical differences the easiest way to tell the difference between the two is that a crocodile has a very long, narrow, V-shaped snout, while the alligator's snout is wider and U-shaped. Because of the wide snout of the alligator it packs more crushing power to eat prey like turtles that constitute part of its diet. The narrow crocodile snout, although still very powerful, is not really suited for prey like turtles but is very versatile for fish and mammals.

Another physical difference between the crocodile and the alligator is that the crocodile's upper and lower jaws are nearly the same width, so the teeth are exposed all along the jaw line in an interlocking pattern, even when the mouth is closed. They also have an enormous 4th tooth on the lower jaw that is accommodated by depressions in the upper jaw just behind the nostrils.

An alligator, on the other hand, has a wider upper jaw, so when its mouth is closed the teeth in the lower jaw fit into sockets of the upper jaw, hidden from view. Only the teeth of the upper jaw are exposed along the lower jaw line. Even the enormous 4th tooth on the bottom jaw, which is exposed in a crocodile, is hidden in the alligator.

When you're a kid, you seriously believed in Santa Clause. There's no such thing as verisimilitude for children.

I think the conceit is that the dentist(s) is performing a service to potential future crocodile victims by removing its teeth.

Also, not all of us accepted Santa uncritically. Some of us had an obsessive need for verification.

I was told that Santa would not come unless/until I was asleep. They thought this would head off attempts to verify. They were wrong.

My plan was to take a glass of icewater tobe, then remove the icecubes and keep myself awake by freezing my skin with them. One the parents were asleep, I would sneak downstairs and set-up the camcorder before going back to my room. Since th camera wasn't alive I figured Santa couldn't detect it.

The only flaws in the plan were that I didn't know how to work the camcorder, and for osme reason my parents stayed up unreasonably late on Christmas Eve...