Crest Pro-Health Advanced Extra-Whitening Mouthwash (something something...so many words): Review

This is the stuff I am reviewing: FFS don't buy it at Walmart because Walmart is evil.
Image given courtesy of BzzAgent for me to use in my review. 

Note: I received this Crest^® Pro-Health Advanced Mouthwash + Extra Whitening (BLAH BLAH BLAH)  for free via BzzAgent in exchange for an honest review. 

I drink too much coffee. This is a fact. Also I have a lot of fillings in my head as a result of late nights as an undergraduate spent sucking down Mountain Dew big gulps from the 7-11 while I wrote papers on the symbolism of erotic Greek and Roman art, or comparing the faux travelogues of Marco Polo in both the original text and Italo Calvino's brilliant rewrite Invisible Cities. I would tokka-tokka deep into the night on my Brother word processor (I am old so STFU) and pass out sometime after 4 am into a pile of drool-besmirched photocopies of microfiche from the MLA database (like I said, I am old). So naturally...cavities. So many cavities. I brushed my teefs in the morning when I woke, but by then the damage was done. So, coffee plus mouth full of fillings of all-sorts, plus red wine and diet soda...my teeth are not movie star white. And the truth is I don't especially care.  I mean they don't look like a mouthful of gravel, or untoothy so...but sometimes I'm all, "I WANT A MOUTHFUL OF TEETH THAT BLIND MOTHERBZZRS! I  WANT THEM TO BURN SOMEONE'S RETINAS!!!" Mostly  just because I think that would be funny.  I have a good smile though. 

My guess would be that I am somewhere in the middle left of the dental shade chart below. 

"VITA shade guide" by Matthew Ferguson 57 

At least I don't have butterteeth? See exhibit "Lion with Butterteeth" below. 

Dayum, Lion! Those are pretty buttery! 

Nor do I have goblin teeth. Or shark teeth. Or goblin shark teeth. Although I would forgo teeth whitening (and probably brushing) all together if I could have those...I like sharks. And they have little teeth cleaner fish...so that's cool. 

Goblin Sharks are AWESOME!!

They're pretty straight despite the fact that I never had braces. All in all I am pretty lucky. So, apathy established I tried this free stuff anyhoos.

I don't know that the  Crest^® Pro-Health Advanced Mouthwash + Extra Whitening (BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH...how much copy is on this bottle) did much, but it didn't hurt. My teeth don't feel weird, or sensitive, or fragile. In the past when I tried teeth whitening strips my teeth felt a little weird for a few days afterwards.  That doesn't happen here. It does, however,  taste the same gross taste as the teeth whitening strips. Bleh. It's a vaguely hydrogen peroxide taste, like the stuff they make you swish all the time when you get your tongue pierced. (I can't find a photo of myself with a tongue piercing right now, so you get none.) There is literally no mintiness, or any of that lovely Listerine pain (oh, it hurts so good...make it hurt). It's really mild, which makes me suspicious of what it is actually doing. Maybe nothing? Maybe something? Maybe I need to keep at it? 

All in all, did it whiten my teeth? I dunno. They didn't get any worse though. So, after talking to a pal who really likes the teeth whitener, and has had it done professionally, we  theorized that this stuff would be GREAT for maintanence. I don't especially feel like my teeth have gotten whiter, but maybe they're helping to stave off further coffee-mainlining discoloration? It might be great for keeping your chompers sparkly. Personally, I'm just hoping the fluoride will give my poor, sad teeth some protection against future damage...that's where my concern lies, not in shiny-shiny blindingness. 

Conclusion: S'alright. Unoffensive, but I have no idea if it is working. And if someone wants something zingy or breath-freshening, then I would think they'd have to use two mouthwashes. The taste is tolerable, but I don't have any way to factor that it's doing what it says it's doing. I do trust the brand a bit I suppose...I pretty much always buy Crest toothpaste, so I'll see. 

Bonus Babble about Veneers (totally related): Sometimes movie stars get veneers that are too big for their mouths and it makes their faces weird. Sometimes they get veneers that are the right size for their mouth but they look like chiclets. Sometimes they don't look like oversized chiclets, but they do look super fake. Sometimes they don't look like super-fake, oversized, chiclets...probably. The truth is I hate veneers in many ways. I understand that some people really do need reconstructive things done to their teeth. Everyone should feel confident in their smile and sometimes those veneers are the key. I am all for that, but I think that a lot of famous folk take it too far. It's also okay to be imperfect, to have the little flaws that make us unique and lovely. When we see the same smile, the same nose, the same "cosmetic enhancements" over and over again as part of some definition of "beauty" then it sends a bad message about what beauty is. It has many forms. We need to resist a single, narrow definition of beauty, or we'll forget what it is.

Works Cited (all my pics are fair use and public domain...AND cited correctly in MLA #nerd): 

Ferguson 57. ""VITA shade guide." Photograph. Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Sept. 2015. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

BrokenInaglory. "Female Lion." Photograph. Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Jan. 2006. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

Hussakof L. "A new goblin shark, Scapanorhynchus jordani, from Japan." Bulletin of the AMNH 26, 257-262. Etching. January 1909. Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Foundation, 13 August 2010. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

Taxidermied Animals while you Eat

For some reason Blogger does not want me replying to comments today, so instead of getting frustrated again, and again, and again and flailing my arms every time I write some perfect clever response to something only to have it devoured by the cold and heartless bytes of some cloud, I am posting a quasi-review of John W's comment on my first post (which is also a quasi-review of Bobby's Bar-B-Que just up the road from me).

First, the review of the comment.

In a word:  AWESOME! In three words: Awesome and troubling. (I am counting the conjunction as a word.) I am honored to be compared to The Bloggess, whom I have long admired for her ability to be equal parts intelligent, debatably-evil, and hilarious. So, that is the awesome bit. What I find troubling is the fact that there are literally only TWO taxidermied animals in my photo, and yet Ward has not "seen this many taxidermied animals" since he last read The Bloggess? TWO? What the bzz? I am troubled.

What has become immediately clear to me is that my pal Ward has not seen my (woefully neglected) Twitter profile, which features a cross-eyed taxidermied cat tiled across its background. So many cross-eyed taxidermied pussies! SO MANY! I feel saddened. My heart is heavy with sorrow.

It is also clear that Ward and I do not frequent the same types of hangouts in the actual world. I live up the street from Bobby's Bar-B-Que ( found here http://www.bobbysbbq.com/). This historic eating establishment on the (why do I live here?) Jefferson Davis (I bzz you not) Highway (kill me) features a pantsless porcine logo in a bib, a BBQ buffet, and more taxidermy than a Cabela's showroom.  The last (one) time I was  there I purposefully sat below a stuffed boar while I shoveled BBQ into my maw. I could have sat below any number of glassy-eyed carcasses. It was the second best part of my visit to this  haven of pig and  known hangout for old conservative white dudes (they had a Romney banquet there  during the 2012 elections...I don't know).

Now, that said, I am not a huge fan of BBQ. I'm all...this is nice and whatever, but meh. This makes me somehow unAmerican, I am sure. I do occasionally like BBQ (in fact we went to Maurice's in Columbia last weekend and it was delicious...I highly recommend it), but it  isn't one of my favorite things. I tend to like the sides though (oh, collard greens and mac n' cheese)! I digressed.

The BBQ is okay. The clientele is very white and churchy. The taxidermy is a thing to behold. As are the hairdos of the ladies as they file in after evening prayer group at whatever Baptist church they attend. I wish I had this review blog back then--I would have reviewed hairdos as they entered. One surprisingly young woman's bouffant was so astonishing that it made me suspicious. It literally defied gravity. And made me wonder if she had some sort of skull deformity. More than likely she was an alien with some sort of extended cranium to house her mighty alien think-brain. But, then I thought that seemed silly. Any alien with a mighty alien think-brain big enough to extend  their cranium, thus necessitating a gravity defying bouffant, wouldn't go to Bobby's. What alien would travel hundreds of light years across the galaxy only to stop short of better BBQ (famously good) places in Columbia and New Ellenton? Why not go the extra 20-40 miles and get something truly worthy of their time and intergalactic space-taste-buds? She was just a lady with a bad hairdo. A bad, bad, old-lady bouffant hairdo.

I give Ward's comment a solid five space ships out of a possible eight stuffed gentleman squirrels in monocles, and lament his lack of exposure to taxidermied critters.

Expect Rambling

Hello Friends and Lovers,

Long have product review sites been the domain of bored homebodies who  want nothing more than a sample pack of Tide or some free tampons. Their eager fingers twitching as they autofill the shipping information on some valPak of coupons most of us ignore; they await the mailcarrier with heightened Christmas-esque (or drunken-eBay-esque...if I am being honest), antici...

pation. And after the samples have been sampled they pour over their keyboards or smartphones lauding the praise of conditioners and salted caramel ice cream and whatever gizmo gadget whatnot they have been sent by the gods of commerce. And I am no different than them...I could be them...I should be them. 

Here's the deal. I am extraordinarily busy. I don't have time to do yet another bloggy thing. I need another bloggy thing like I need another hole in my head (please do not send me a DIY home-trepanation kit)So, what is a bzzy girl to do? I do another bloggy thing. What the bzz is wrong with me? One thing: I am cheap as...well a free thing that someone sent to me in exchange for a review. 

What's in the box? Can I review that for you? 

What do I have going for me that is different than the million other reviewers? Allow me to make a list, because I love a list:

1. I love to write and think most reviews are boring as bzz. I read a lot of reviews, and most just provide one person's limited (and usually uncritical) view of whatever they're reviewing. Most don't even give me enough info to tell if I want the thing they're reviewing, or if I should avoid it  like a plague-ridden prairie dog. 

Not prairie dogs. These raccoon construction workers approve of my reviews.
Also they like tacos. Everyone likes tacos.

So, I want to at least make my reviews interesting and informative. I think I can do that. 

2. I cuss a lot, but promise to replace those dang ol'cussy werds with bzz. I am my own bzzr, motherbzzer! 

3. I will review bad things and be honest about why they bzzing suck. I will review good things and be honest about why they bzzing rule. If a product lands somewhere in the middle, I will fully describe that middle with a bzzing story that goes off topic at some point, but still allows you, my lovely readers, to get the idea. 

4. I think reviews can be a means to some interesting non-fiction writing. Whynot? And why can't they be fun, or funny, or irreverent, or some other words?

So, there you go.