Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"To me, superheroes who have no flaws are fiction. Even in books, they're not that interesting. Real heroes are people who would never give themselves that title. Who exemplify traits like courtesy, honor, patience, intelligence, and love. They give me something to look up to, and an example to strive for. I just don't make the mistake of thinking they're perfect." -- wolflady26, 2003-11-18

On the one hand, a day can't be all bad if it starts with the radio playing "In My Life" (Beatles) followed by "Should I Stay Or Should I Go?" (Clash) while I'm cooking breakfast, right?

Other kinds of quirkiness to chronicle while waiting to wake up enough ultimately to do my to-dos today ... In the wee hours I got spam that at least makes it clear exactly whence my email address was mined, for it begins, "Dear Quick Intro to the Oud for Guitarists, [...]" [1] (and goes on to advertise an upcoming music and dance camp).

And in the meantime, I got a message with no salutation, which begins, "I guess you don't believe that Jesus is the Christ do you?" and later includes, "Sorry I might sound like I am mad at you in this text but I am really mad at Satan, [...]", and I don't know whether that's just some random religious spam, or a confused reaction to my web page explaining the abbreviations CE and BCE -- which, of all the pages on my site, is the page which generates the most email (positive and negative), and nearly 100% of the negative messages (which is ironic, since the page exists solely to be a footnote to explain a possibly-unfamiliar abbreviation when I use it on other pages). I say "confused", because if the email does in fact refer to that page, she overlooked my use of the first-person-plural pronoun when I mention Christians. Then again, it might just be spammage. Has anyone else gotten the same letter? If not, I might bother to reply to her.

(Hmm. I'd been meaning to write about religion soon, ever since anniemal asked me some questions about what my religion means to me, how I came to be Born Again, and what that phrase means. It's been sitting in my to-do list for a couple of weeks. As long as I'm in a silly omen-labelling mood, I might as well consider this morning's email and theferrett's recent journal entry to be nudges to try to get to that this week.)

While I'm thinking about web-related email, I guess the page that comes in second for generating mail would be my descriptions of musical instrumentss page, which I've been meaning to add to for quite some time. Most of the mail inspired by that page doesn't mention the page specifically, but includes the question, "Do you have any idea what the instrument in the attached JPG file is?" (or alternatively, "May I send you a photo of an instrument to identify?") Sometimes I even get to give an answer more fun than, "Gee, I don't know, but if you find out please tell me." I was amused when I was asked to identify an instrument based on its description of "resembling a potato". (My guess, which turned out to be correct, was an ocarina, which I had not known were sometimes called potatoes, until the Google search for "Does it look anything like this?" photos of ocarinas to send back to the questioner. I've mostly seen smaller ocarinas, which looked like rocks, and one that was made out of a hand grenade. (A dummy, practice grenade.)) Amusisngly, that page too started out as a collection of footnotes because I mentioned some instruments people might not recognize on other pages, but it has since grown into the humble start of what should eventually be a sort of encyclopaedia of musical instruments if I manage to collect enough of those circular tuit thingies. It also seems that my pages most often linked to by other people are all in that footnotes-and-definitions subdirectory. Go figure. I guess I have a knack for explaining things.

I had another nap-attack last night around the time I was trying to get ready for 3LF rehearsal, but since I had been trying to get out the door about an hour early to run errands on the way, by the time the nap-attack passed and I was fit to drive again, I was only an hour late. So I made it to the second half of rehearsal. But I was feeling more than a little wobbly. Let's see if lying down and trying to take a nap mid-afternoon today, whether I feel like I need one or not, will forestall a similar need for nap this evening when I'm trying to go to HCB rehearsal. Last rehearsal before Darkover.