Midweek Aches and Pains and Music

 So, in these dark times, what has Beans done to himself lately is the most un-asked question ever.  So, well, here it goes.

Saturday just about died choking on air.  Inhaled, started choking, choking, chooooking.  Finally hacked up absolutely nothing after turning blue in the face.  Very weird, but this happens occasionally.  Just nothing to choke on except air.

Sunday saw me trip over my own feet as one of my little toes decided to firmly affix itself to the carpet causing me to fall while turning and fortunately the granite windowsill caught my hip and kept me from catapulting through the window.  Fortunately nothing was in my hands at the times, still hurt like the Dickens.

Sunday also saw the other little toe stretch out and snag... nothing and fold backwards yet again.  Quick grab, pull straight out away from foot, pop back into place, eh, same same.  One of these days I just need to cut those suckers off of me.  (No, not seriously, but they've been warped, broken, spindled, folded and ripped up so much that the end is now at a 90 degrees rotation from normal position, so I'm walking on the outside of the toe, basically.  Doc says it can be fixed but only once it becomes bad enough that it affects walking, like not being able to walk.

Sunday also saw my foot react violently to having a sandal-shoe put on it.  Weird. 

Monday was the day I tried to fork myself to death.  With a fork.  Spastic hand tried to shove a fork into my eye.  Weird.  

Today (Tuesday) saw me do nothing other than try to hide from the world.  Except we had to go to one of Mrs. Andrew's doctors.  Oh, look, there's a handicapped parking spot in front of the building (rather than having to drop her off and go park ten rows away like normal.)  Park, whip out Lurch the wonder-chair and go to extract Mrs. Andrew from the Van and lo and behold the HANDICAPPED PARKING SPOT is on such a tilt that the chair, which has a tilt-meter that shuts it off if it's tilted too much, shut off because the tilt was too much.  Get that, San Fransisco style street tilt in a handicapped parking spot.  Whodathunk?  Would it have killed someone to use a couple truckloads of fill and maybe spend $10,000 on a retaining wall to hold said fill so that the handicapped parking spot isn't at such a tilt?

Or, you know, put in more handicapped spots so that the doctor's office, which deals with almost 50% of mobility handicapped patients, has some room to park where the cars aren't shoved together?

Is it a physical impossibility for people who design or specify parking lots to actually use their friggin brains?

Like last year, when Mrs. Andrew was going to some rehab place so the person could talk to me and ignore her because people in wheelchairs are obviously deaf and mentally deficient.  Handicapped parking was in the lowest spot in the parking lot.  The handicapped ramp from the sidewalk leading into the building to the parking lot was at a legal angle to the parking lot.  The parking lot itself?  Tilted at a far more severe angle, so bad that when the van was parked parallel to the sidewalk I thought the van was going to fall over.  And, to make matters worse, remember parking at lowest spot in parking lot?  Well, during worse rainfall in years (2" in an hour) the said retention pond next to the handicapped parking filled and overflowed into the handicapped parking lot and if the van wasn't tall enough, we'd have had water in the van.

Seriously, planning parking lots.  How difficult can it be?  Why does it seem that the more degrees are required to design and regulate something, the actual usefulness and value of said something plummets?

Enough grumblings and physical mutilations.

On to Music.

I am a real fan of progressive rock (that is, rock that tends to be lyrical and musically complex, using orchestral concepts and such.  Thus, ELO, Moody Blues, Kansas, Styx, etc.

So there's this one song that earworms constantly. And it's a good one.  Mixture of really classical sounds, lyrical singing, obscure lyrics and all the other wonderful features of progressive rock (though this is more, according to Wiki, that it's a synthesis of psychedelic rock, proto-prog rock, blues and, who knows, west Mongolian throat singing or something. (last part added by me.)) That would be Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale."

A Whiter Shade of Pale - Procol Harum

50th Anniversary Stereo Edition

Lyrics

We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
And the waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, "There is no reason
And the truth is plain to see. "
But I wandered through my playing cards
And they would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast
And although my eyes were open wide
They might have just as well been closed

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, "I'm here on a shore leave,"
Though we were miles at sea.
I pointed out this detail
And forced her to agree,
Saying, "You must be the mermaid
Who took King Neptune for a ride. "
And she smiled at me so sweetly
That my anger straightway died.

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

If music be the food of love
Then laughter is it's queen
And likewise if behind is in front
Then dirt in truth is clean
My mouth by then like cardboard
Seemed to slip straight through my head
So we crash-dived straightway quickly
And attacked the ocean bed

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

Then, over on Borepatch's site, on Sunday, he presented the theme to the movie "The Seven Samurai."  Which, if you follow the comments, led to me commenting on the music for the movie "The Magnificent Seven" (the real one, not the remake.) Borepatch: Fumio Hayasaka - Themes to The Seven Samurai

Which the music is really good, especially the theme music. Which is yet another really good earworm.

Theme from The Magnificent Seven - Elmer Bernstein

This is the type of unforgettable music that, well, is unforgettable.  Like I hadn't seen TMS for maybe 25 years and saw it pop up on the TV and immediately started doing the 'duh, duh-duh-duh-duh,' to it right off.  Really good.

Onward to a week of no personal injuries!!!!  WHOOO!!! CHARGE!!! (Trips, fumbles, stumbles, curses, crawls away to a dark corner to hide from the world...)