The Internet is Not a Truck. It's a Series of Tubes. (And Some Stuff About My Ass.)

My ass is deeply bruised and aching.

No, I didn't get a spanking because I was a bad, bad girl. Sorry. I know that first line was so promising. But you sex-crazed folk will need to check out Sugasm to find some spanking erotica today. The reason my ass hurts is because I had a massage yesterday, and it turned out I had all kinds of knots there that I didn't know about, and the masseuse attacked the problem with gusto. It was painful, but in a good way.

(Okay, maybe the sex-crazed among you can get a good mental image out of that, come to think of it.)

But now my muscles are complaining. In a big way.

Anyway, while the masseuse was working me over, she started talking to me about some mind-body-healing theory called "somatics" or "body psychology." It's all about how pain in certain areas of the body refer to certain kinds of emotional/mental struggles. So she tells me the buttock region usually relates to dealing with intense frustration, and disappointment, especially with relationships (of all kinds--including family and friends). Check. And the abdomen (front and back), where I had most of my other tension, generally related to repressed anger and creative/emotional block--to have had one's voice silenced, or been blocked from being oneself or expressing oneself as one needs to, leading to self-esteem issues. Check.

I should also mention that this masseuse had never met me before, so these "diagnoses" were based on nothing, and yet were incredibly accurate. It's all very interesting. I came home and tried to do some light research on the topic, hoping to find a simple corollary chart (your ear hurts, you're struggling with abandonment issues), but alas, no go. Anyone else ever heard of this school of thought?

Anyway, I should have asked which needed to be fixed for the other to go away. If the masseuse works all the kinks out of my ass, do my relationship frustrations go away? Or is my ass doomed to continue to hurt until I work out my emotional issues related to relationships?

My guess is it's the latter, but wouldn't it be great if we could just pay someone to work on our body and it would suddenly open up our bodily "flow" and make us see things in a new light, so that all our problems go away? One can only dream.

And now for something completely different...

Did you ever try to get your grandfather or father or some post-aged-sixty person to understand some new piece of technology? Remember how well that went? (Ahem.)

It's always heartening to once again have it brought to your attention that these older dads and grandpas are also running our US government. And they're trying to regulate new technology. The result? This. Be very, very afraid.

And listen to the audio, it's even worse than the transcript, if you can believe that. AND the audio gets cut off, which means there was more, which is also very frightening. AND it seems to me like he's basing his opinion on the whole matter based on his frustration with having not received an email (a.k.a. "an internet") on time (apparently because Netflicks and the iTunes streaming media store is fucking up the whole "tube system").

Thanks to the always lusciously snarky Bitch PhD for pointing the way.

(Oh, and yes, the Bad Ass Cafe is for real, and you can eat in it when you go to Dublin. Pretty good pizza--for Ireland.)