Whinge

Ow. I have one of my friendly neighborhood headaches. They're these cute little caffeine-related things that clamp onto the back of my neck and refuse to let go until I've had a full night's sleep. Tension, tension, throb, throb, shooting pain, throb. Painkillers have no effect. This one's been around since about 7PM, which means I've been good for nothing all night. I've got the lights turned down to an amber glow, but Ow.

All right, I'm not totally useless tonight. I made myself a new icon, using this Flash gizmo. I'm much prettier as a cartoon. Possibly because cartoon-me doesn't need to deal with my nose. Or any nose at all.

Anyway, I'm going to go stick my head in a bucket of ice. Or make some cocoa. One or the other.

Ow.

Less Pinky, more Tuscadero

I need to strengthen the pinky of my left hand. It's nearly useless for fretting; when I play a chord that requires a fourth finger, most commonly Bm or C7, it's a stab in the dark as to whether or not my pinky will find the string. I can usually get it there, assuming I'm sufficiently warmed up, but it's definitely the most awkward of my fingers. I plan to tie down my ring finger for a portion of my practice time and force my pinky to handle all of the third-finger duties; sounds reasonable, right?

Then again, Django Reinhardt managed with only two functional fingers on his left hand, so perhaps I should let it wither away into vestigiality.

I got to work today and checked email to find four fake virus warnings from such august entities as (the nonexistant) "administration@umich.edu". "We've had complaints from users about the spam originating from your account," they said. "Run the attached .exe file to clean your system." It's a brand new virus, W32/Bagle.j@MM, and it's slowing the UMich email servers to a c r a w l . Good Samaritan that I am, I sent email to the various sublists of the Classics Department, but clearly it's already spread across campus. It still amazes me that some people are perfectly willing to open random attachments they receive from strangers.

What else? Practiced guitar for an hour and a half this afternoon; ego-scanned SWAPA, which arrived with the afternoon mail (hooray!); changed the marquee here at work, so now the news is spreading far and wide that we'll be showing The Goonies on March 13th.

As expected, my headache vanished with the dawn. I tempted fate by watching The Eyes Beyond the Stars before I went to bed last night, but despite being stunningly bad it did not in fact inspire any new headaches. It's evangelical UFO-believer stuff, filmed in Italy and featuring an early version of the Men in Black--still dressed in black suits and driving black limos, but here called the Silencers, who "belong to an international organization called...the Group of Silencers." That's inspired, but the best line, referring to a radio, is: "The batteries are dead. That's why it's making all that noise."

I heard yesterday on NPR from an Iraqi man who has benefited financially from the "liberation" of Iraq. What's he going to do with his money? "Buy another wife." Good job upholding that sanctity of marriage, George.