Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Several years ago, [digital rights management was] all everyone in the adult industry was asking about. Then, they pretty much decided universally that the frustration on the consumer end and the loss of sales did not make it worth the amount of lost product sales (to theft)." -- John Halcyon Styn (halcyonpink), quoted in "Smut set still teaching retail crowd" by Ashlee Vance in The Register, 2007-03-15.

Vance follows the Styn quote with the observation, "Here's us guessing the music and film industry would prefer to make life tougher on consumers and lose sales."

I just woke up from a dream about getting a speeding ticket in Maine for doing 22 MPH in a 20 MPH zone (on a looooong, straight, downhill stretch, one lane each way with a median, after I had made two U-turns to get out of the way of faster cars behind me ... who turned out to be unmarked police cars). In the dream, my mother was following me, and we both got tickets. We had to follow the police to ... I'm not sure whether it was a police station or a courthouse ... and fill out very confusing paperwork (which I was asking a question about when I woke up). It wasn't until after I woke up that I realized the friendly but absolutely firm senior officer had a rural Virginia accent, despite conversational clues that she'd lived in Maine all her life.

I need to find a way to grow two more arms. And maybe another lobe of brain, I'm not sure.[1]

So far, the only objection I've heard to my playing the double bass in the Homespun Ceilidh Band is that I'm needed too much on guitar. So if I had four arms, suitably arranged for playing both instruments at once ...

And on those occasions when I'm playing only the double bass, having two more arms would solve the stabilization problem I have when trying to play it behind my head the way I do with the guitar.

Now I just have to figure out how to arrange for extra limbs. I don't have the financial resources to follow in Otto Octavius' footsteps -- who else has non-congenital extra limbs, and how did they get them?

I bet Sgt. Schlock could play guitar and double bass at the same time.

In more immediate and less fanciful planning, there's a recorder workshop today that I'm actually awake in time for, and doing well enough pain-wise to seriously consider attending[3] ... but it's all the way up in Towson, and though I think I can figure out how to get there without going faster than 30 MPH (I think I can just wend my way up to around North & Charles, and continue out Charles to Towson, though I'm not sure how long it'll take), it's far enough to make me nervous about driving my wounded car even at not-highway speeds.

I'd like to go to this workshop. I'm still trying to decide whether it's a good idea. Maybe I should start de-icing my car while making up my mind.

The one next month is a bigger deal, but this one does sound useful (and fun).

[1] On the one hand[2], trying to play the sorts of bass lines I come up with at the same time as the aggressive rhythm guitar parts I play would require more mental coordination than the fairly simple drum parts I played with my feet while playing bass guitar in Wild Oats. On the other hand, it's a similar degree of "split the brain" as playing different patterns with the left and right hands on a piano, which, although it has eluded me so far, is a skill common to normal-brained pianists. So I don't know whether I'd need extra brain to control the extra arms or not. Is there a neurologist in the house?

[2] Sorry. I didn't notice the inherent pun until I started typing "on the other hand", honest. Well, okay, I'm not actually sorry, but it really was inadvertent.

[3] I'm not actually doing well pain-wise, so the decision is kinda borderline on that score as well, but I figure I can sit in the back and try to be unobtrusive if the pain and fatigue get to the point where I can no longer concentrate or have difficulty playing. Something that involved a lot of walking would be out of the question today. "Walking down stairs or lifting the teakettle hurts enough that I feel like I'm going to cry" is lower on the pain scale than "bad enough to make cancelling plans an easy decision". And I've only taken tramadol (Ultram) so far today, so I've still got another degree of medication to use if I decide to go.