A walk into the stable... and a horror-filled glance... gleaming, smooth metal where skin and fur was.. a horrific sight.. and an implied threat. The horse turns, and stares.. "Helloooo", he says, the voice sounding almost as it did. A step backwards... "Why are you scared?" .. and all that the eyes normally chase, the shine of distorted light from the shed, out of place here. Skin bristles, remembers ancient history, stabbing with spears, crushing beneath tanks, and now, in the most modern, disturbing form.. could destroy without leaving a stain.. nausea, a dizzy fear, and a primal run from the barn, all is a blur, which mercifully ends quickly.

Ahh.. yes, actually the original idea from that comes from my carrying of my umbrella on the way to work today, and how it was like a lance, the bike my metal horse... Creativity is interesting recombinations and processings of ideas and the like we're exposed to. We forget the sources easily, due either to vanity or the lack of an intuitive tie between the subjects.

A stroll down the road, the sky pure, the air still, the field with the fence soothing to the mind. The sun beginning to think about its descent, around 15:00.. the scent of earth... and then a "ding!" .. a pillar slowly rises to the ground near us, its features slowly shift from earth to a terminal... a note.. we found the backup, we're now restoring... and a smile... the broken spider webs, at only a slight cost of modernity, will be repaired, the spindle will be restrung, this mistaken route will be undone and forgotten. A few minutes wait, and things begin to shift, the blood debt of these times defaulted. We have that string back again, to weave something new. So much string.. enough to make some massive mistakes, or build something beautiful.

I just got an email that the Council for Secular Humanism is very proud to have Ronald Reagan Jr. among their number, who recently announced his atheism. This is kind of disappointing -- not that we have another atheist, which is always a good thing in my book, but that they're playing up blood ties. Hey, people convert, and the memetic ties are not always strong between generations of a single family. For example, Madalyn Murray O'Hare has a son who is a devout Christian and recieves similar fanfare because of his blood ties to a leader of our movement. What good does it do? Why is it interesting to us? I don't think it should be. It suggests hero worship, and celebrates events that, while necessary for struggle, are unfortunate in that they can break a family. Yesterday in the Moore film, we saw disgusting gung-ho-ness of American soldiers in their killing tasks, and their delight in the death disturbed me. It would be different if they identified with one of the ideologies at stake, speaking less ill of their soul (even though I condemn the invasion, and, again, I use soul metaphorically here). Similarly, delight in the struggle against the shackles of religion is very different from delight in the pain that said struggle causes.