That’s the verdict. 4-6 weeks of twice-a-week therapy and adjustments, then PT until I’m no longer bent and I can feel again. Yeesh. All this from having Zoolander Syndrome (I can’t turn left, although it’s actually right, so maybe it’s reverse-Zoolander syndrome). Or maybe Mister Spock and I have some unfinished business.

It’s a pinched nerve, and it’s up near the top of my spine, so my neck and back have twisted in knots, and my vertebrae are out of whack. Long story short, it sucks to be me right now, because I’m doing things with bags of frozen peas that ought to be illegal–and not in a good way.

Now what’s aggravating the condition (which I really didn’t know I had until it started to really friggin’ hurt), or at least, not helping it, is my new toy. Our new family toy, ahem. We prowled and waited and checked prices and got a nice Xbox360 over the holiday. The Spawn drooled so much over Halo 3 that the move came partly to preserve the carpets, and Mr. Xandra found it in himself to embrace the 80’s in a way we never did when they were actually here via Rock Band. Yes, it’s like Guitar Hero only it’s more like…Guitar, Bass, Drums, and Vocals Hero all rolled into one. There is nothing more hysterical than watching your friends, one by one or maybe in twos if you’ve got an extra controller do their impersonations of Axl Rose on nerve stimulants…except gathering around the ol’ green ring to engage in arthritic finger contortions, smash on a practice pad of giant, color-coded circles, and screech into a microphone in a manic breed of mutant karaoke

In addition to the freakin’ cool songs you get to unlock on Easy setting (like Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper, which is made of win and more cowbell!), you get to create your own rawk gawd (or gawdess) and customize your pixelated self-insert into the music scene with hair, eye, and skin color (including all the eye-cramping shades found in the Manic Panic line), styles of head-hair and face-hair for the guys, and you can even pick your rocker’s attitude (I’m a little in love with the “goth” ‘tude because it makes your rocker do funny ‘woo-woo’ things with his or her hands). There’s also a stunning array of ink styles by some pretty big names in the tattoo world, and even face paint, if you don’t want the students at your day job knowing the vice principal rawks out on the weekends with groupies.

So besides the fact that I could get lost in picking out clothes, shoes, hair, and makeup for my rocker (I have a chick with white and blue anime buns for my primary rocker–she’s a cutie), standing hipshot with a guitar controller slung over one shoulder and hunching over it while twisting my fingers into knots is not helping my posture any.

But that’s what the groupies are there for.