Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"The whipping therapy becomes much more efficient when a patient receives the punishment from a person of the opposite sex. The effect is astounding: the patient starts seeing only bright colors in the surrounding world, the heartache disappears, although it will take a certain time for the buttocks to heal, of course." -- Dr. Sergei Speransky, as quoted in the newspaper Izvestia according to an article in Pravda about "whipping therapy" for treatment of addiction and depression. (Um, and possibly also heart attacks?) Dr. Sepransky was also quoted as saying, "People might probably think of me as a masochist. But I can assure you that I am not a classic masochist at all."

(Recommended prescription: "30 sessions of 60 whips on the buttocks in every procedure." Can I bill friends' insurance companies for providing this service, or would I have to have "MD" after my name to get away with that? Also, I'm betting that MOTAS is more significant than MOTOS ... )

There were definite elements of not-my-day-ness, but it was much less not-my-day than some other days recently. Fortunately my blue ren-shirt is in better shape than it has ever been. Unfortunately it is not at my house. Fortunately I set four alarms last night (television, cell phone, PDA, and, strangely enough, an alarm clock). Unfortunately I slept right through three of the four (the one that woke me was my cell phone). So I left the house really late, wearing coat&tie&kilt -- not a bad look, but it puts the guitar in not quite the right place. Traffic for the first part of the trip was both heavy and slow -- blizzard-style driving though it was only rain. For the next part of the trip visibility sucked. The third segment gave me enough room to maneuver and enough visibility to go fast, but more water on the road, so I got not only the uncomfortable sensation of "my tires are no longer on the asphalt and there's a curve ahead", but also a bit later the decidedly odd sensation of "my right tires are touching asphalt but my left tires are touching nothing but water and I don't know what that means for my steering". Once I got off the "river" section of the Interstate, I was back in heavy traffic again, and after that, back roads. So making up time by driving fast wasn't as easy to accomplish as I'd hoped.

But then I watched someone quite important to me get married, changed into a borrowed renaissance-shirt, got sweaty with the rest of The Homespun Ceilidh Band (there's a reason I refer to what we play as "perspirational" music -- at least for a rythym guitarist, this repertoire is a physical workout ... partly because while the hands are making sounds, the sounds are moving the feet), and saw people I don't see often enough. And the drive home was much less stressful despite my being very tired. (And I kept rubber touching pavement all the way home.) As I remarked earlier, too nice a day to be dampened by mere rain.

So despite a rough start, a good day. Now I'm trying to convince myself I have the energy to practice a bit on the double bass or the drums, and seem to be losing that particular argument with myself. I probably need sleep.

Oh, thunder. There wasn't any of that earlier. I wonder whether this is more of the storm that was here last night and this morning, or a different one altogether. (Not quite curious enough to bother sucking time-lapse radar images through my 56K modem. If I'm awake long enough to get the answer on television, fine, and if not, no biggie.)