This makes my day. People rant and rave about the dangers of MDMA (also known as Ecstasy or X), a drug taken with some regularity by millions of people who proceed to hold down jobs and live their lives without consequent mental deficiency. The government and the press love to blame the occasional death on Ecstasy, conveniently ignoring the fact that the deaths aren't from the drug itself, but from dehydration (stupid kids who get high and dance for 12 hours straight without drinking water, and club promoters who don't make water available), contaminated drugs (stupid kids who buy drugs from bad dealers and just take whatever they're given), or combinations (it's politically convenient for the War on Drugs to not bother mentioning that the stupid kid who died with Ecstasy in his system was also on cocaine and had a blood alcohol of .15).

The primary scientific backing for this hysteria was a Johns Hopkins study indicating that MDMA caused early-onset Parkinson's and other bad things in rats. Well, it turns out that the rats were given methamphetamine, not MDMA. Methamphetamine (speed) does damage your mind, as you'll quickly figure out if you ever talk to a speed freak. I love that Science is publishing a retraction. Good for them.

I heard about this story while I was out by Buffalo: a Florida millionaie led a double life with two families for decades, and the whole thing came out when his first wife, of 51 years, died, and two weeks later he married the other woman, who he'd been with for about 20 years and had some kids. So far everyone's just shocked, but I wonder if maybe it wasn't a polyamory arrangement with the wives--it seems unlikely they could have not known each about the other, especially the surviving one who didn't get to marry him. Wacky.

I had my first chiropractic adjustment on Wednesday. I can't say the adjustment itself is the most pleasant experience, although far from the worst; but I noticed immediately that my neck didn't hurt any more, and the muscles felt less twisted. Also, the spot in my mid-back where I periodically get a starkly localized pain like someone sticking in a needle? There's a single vertebra out of alignment. Muscles started feeling sore immediately, though, and that intensified as the day went on and I could feel each adjusted area crunching and twisting its way back to its accustomed misalignment. I was on the fence about committing to the treatment sequence--it adds up to a chunk of change and I can't change insurance plans or start a pretax flexible-spending account until next year--but after a couple days I realized I'd just be much, much happier getting this all done sooner rather than later. So this week I start on the 3-adjustments-per-week phase, which I expect will, um, leave me really sore.

I've been getting back to aikido. I meant to get back in slowly and ended up training four times this week. Oops.

I've been Super Grade-A Pissy this week. It's nice to not apologize for it, although I can't promise it's made anyone's life easier. I guess it's good to just be me, whatever that is. Me gets annoyed at the universe a lot. Eventually me will give up and relax and see the forest for the trees.