Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I've spent the last few days at anniemal's, mostly not feeling very well. I feel better today than I did yesterday or the day before, which is a good sign. Today's curious (and migraine-suggesting) symptom is hearing echoes -- more "reverb" than "delay" -- where I'm pretty sure there aren't any. At least I don't think the acoustics of this house have changed radically in the last eighteen hours. Jamie shaking his head and jingling his collar makes a distinctly uncomfortable sound. Speech at what would be a reasonable converstational volume is a smidgen too loud. I imagine the traffic and car-stereos at home would have my teeth on edge. But I'm doing a lot better at being vertical (practicing the double bass was a lot easier this afternoon than yesterday, for that reason), and the dizziness only gets really intense if I nod or shake my head (trying to remember not to do that). The aches are ... well they just hurt a lot, which I'm used to. Not incapacitating. But I've got a lot of ibuprofen in me. (Haven't needed to resort to codeine for a few days.) Now if I could just remove the invisible hose-clamp (oil filter wrench?) from around my skull ...

I concentrate on writing for a spell, start feeling dizzy and more brain-squeezed, lie back, feel a little better, feel bored of not focussing on anything and antsy about the things I Want To Get Done, concentrate for a spell ... lather, rinse, repeat. I do need to head home soon -- I've got most of a week worth of mail lying inside my front door and the VCRs need to be reset, I've got some things on my to-do list that I need to do up there, and I've got a gig in/near Baltimore on Monday (that I'm still awaiting time/location/garb details on) that I should head to from Baltimore instead of from Arlington. Plus I've got the toys madbodger brought me that I want to play with. Of course, I'll be heading home just as the warm spell has ended. Urk. Timing. (Which actually relates to a couple of the Baltimore items on my to-do list.)

Perrine is still here in Arlington. I want to take her home, and I miss her terribly when I'm at home without her, but so far my pattern seems to be that I get here and then don't feel well enough to go home again for several days, or I go home and then don't feel well enough to come back here for a week, and if she's going to be left somewhere that I can't get to for more than a couple of days, it makes sense to be where there are folks to feed her and other critters to entertain her. I'll be happy when I get back to my previous level of energy/health so I can get where I want to go more of the time. I'm more than a little concerned that this bad spell has continued for so long -- a few months now. I'm pretty damned tired of being sick and tired.

And I've got folks to go see, here and in Baltimore and in places in between or sideways. I haven't dropped in on my mother lately (I did see her at Thanksgiving, but that doesn't count the same). I hope to get out to Bowie this weekend or next week. And I've got stops to make in Rockville. But enough of that. On to fun stuff.

Recently there have been reminders of something I did some time ago in different places. One friend posted a link to the Tuning Fork Dildo (just what it sounds like) and another pointed to the Audi-Oh (a "bullet" vibrator that takes an audio signal as input). So in both cases I was moved to recount some of my own relevant experiments/experiences/techniques.

There was the two-inch speaker I hooked to a guitar amplifier and used as an external vibrator. First on myself to experiment because I wondered what all the fuss was about regarding vibrators, then on myself because the experiment was a success, then on other people because I like to do things like that. It was basically a vibrator where I had complete control over the speed and intensity, and some control over the waveform (by varying the amount of distortion, changing the tone control, switching between neck pickup and bridge pickup, etc.), all on the fly. For solo use it had the disadvantage that I had to split my attention between the sensations and playing the guitar, but as a former housemate discovered to her annoyance, I can handle an awful lot of, ah, distraction without getting thrown off on the guitar. Fingers know what to do. (The most difficult part was not laughing hard enough to screw up when she used my penis as a microphone and sang into it. The rest I just Very Much Enjoyed while continuing to play. But I digress.) With a partner it worked pretty well except for wishing I had four hands.

I'd always planned to make a safely insertable version, but never got around to it. Now I could just plug into the Audi-Oh.

The other thing I was reminded of, more tangentially but still music-related, was tuning my bass guitar to an open chord, plugging it in, and spanking someone with it. (I did that to two or three people, at different times.) No special tactile sensations added by that, just sound effects: Thwack!wooooooom Thwack!shwoooooom. Otherwise it was just a very broad, very heavy paddle. ... And the psychological effect of knowing that the top spanking them was just that silly. (Yeah, a teaser for folks who were thinking about skipping over the cut. :-P )

And there's a third thing floating around my friends list: a Yahoo copy of a Reuters story about a study showing that "professional artists and poets have about twice as many [sexual] partners as other people." To which my reaction was, "What, you ignored musicians? Or was that just too easy to bother with?" The article suggests that artistic success leads to having more partners, not the other way 'round or linking both to some third cause, but it's hard to tell whether the researchers had looked into causality yet or not. (I'm not the only one who wishes mainstream news articles that report on "a study" or "a report" would provide a link to the study or report in question, right?) The gist:

"Although creative people have long been associated with active sex lives, the researchers believe their study is the first to back it up with research. They found that professional artists and poets had between 4 and 10 sexual partners, while less creative people had an average of three. 'We found it in both the men and women which was quite a surprise to us,' said Nettle, who reported the finding in the journal 'The Proceedings of the Royal Society (B).'"

And the talk of vibrators, coupled with yet another link ganked from my friendspage, reminds me of a vibrator I used to own ...

I used to drive a big ol' 1978 Pontiac Catalina (think: Bonneville with less chrome -- and note that for its day it was considered a mid-size, even though many of my friends insisted it was "huge" -- Pbbbbt!), and I used to give friends rides quite a lot of the time. And the car had a largeish trunk, so a lot of things that I hadn't gotten around to finding proper places to store, lived in the trunk for various lengths of time (including the big green canvas tent I use at Pennsic, which stayed in the car for about three years, I think). So one summer folks noticed that there was an ominous *Thump!* from the trunk sometimes when I went around corners, and would ask, "What was that?"

"Oh, that's my vibrator," I would reply. Which led to any of several variations on the "No, really, what is it?" theme. "Really, it's a vibrator. A big vibrator."

"That thump sounded awfully big. How big a vibrator is it?"

"A quarter horsepower," I would reply, honestly and with a straight face. Which usually resulted in some combination of shock, horror, and conviction that I was yanking their chain. "Really, it's a one-fourth horsepower vibrator."

"How ... big ... is that?"

"About three feet."

"I don't believe you."

"Want to see it? I'll pull over and open the trunk and you can have a look."

In all but two or three cases, the response to that was "No, thanks!". But what was the most fun was when one of the people brave enough to have looked on a previous trip (reaction: "Yup, that's a vibrator. Yup, that's about three feet long. You weren't kidding.") was in the car to interject, "It really is. I've seen it." This usually made the curious passenger extremely worried, for some reason.

I'm not sure how many actually believed me, but it really was a three-foot, quarter horsepower vibrator in the trunk of my car, making those thumping sounds as it shifted when I went around corners. Alas, my little brother decided to take it apart one day and was unable to put it back together. I'd had plans for that puppy.

Anyhow, this link reminded me of that. (Favourite line: "[...] now's your chance to freak out your local sex shop by asking them to recommend the best dildo for cognitive neuroscience experiments.") Actually, the first paragraph of the LJ entry where I saw the link was what reminded me, which will make the whole tale of the vibrator in the trunk make a lot more sense.

Of course, there were also the 30mm and 70mm shells that occasionally rolled out from under the front seat, and a practice hand grenade, to make passengers ask questions they weren't certain they wanted to hear the answers to, but that's another story. So is the frightened passenger saying, "No, really, I mean it. They're glowing!"