Sunday, March 29, 2009

DUNE COMES TO TAMPA

In Frank Herbert’s Dune novels, the Bene Gesserit are an exclusive and secretive sisterhood, the members of which possess the ability to control their physiology so precisely that they can control conception, determine the sex of resulting embryos, retard aging, and detoxify the most deadly poisons... simply by the power of thought.

In real life, such people cannot possibly exist... or can they?

To catch their 8:00 a.m. flight to Atlanta Saturday morning, Eli (hizzownself) and Toni had to get up at what the Mistress refers to as the “Butt-Crack of Dawn.” They planned to awaken at 4:15 a.m., early enough to allow them to freshen up and jump in the car for the 90-minute drive to the airport in Tampa.

They got up at 4:18, all of three minutes late. Not bad, considering that they did not use an alarm clock.

Holy crap. In similar circumstances, I’ve managed to sleep through the insistent buzzing of a clock alarm, necessitating a high-velocity drive from the northern marches of Belgium to the Brussels airport. The idea of entrusting the wake-up duties to nothing more than my own internal Body-Clock fills me with dread and awe. I could never do it... but Eli and Toni could.

Maybe this Bene Gesserit thing is more than just wind in sails, eh?

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