They walked around, saying YES and NO in the harshest tones, to every little query. A normal life, driven by gears instead of flesh. A fingernail slowly moves across flesh, finding the seam like the blind hand on toilet paper. So split, we move in two directions, each leg freed of the tyranny of the other, and yet as they move, a sense of impending horror dominates. Freedom can be so harsh. A brief flash of light, a photograph, a strange kinship. An insight deep into your soul, and then the scraping of a razor blade along a table, to catch every last part, to divide between what is and what you want. Will it be returned, shared with interest, or will it be deposited for later disposal? But first, can the clockwork be repaired? I feel everything else fade, leaving just the oddly glowing hill, strange colours cloaking everything, tiny fingers or hands that would move over us like ground coffee or tilled soil.

She understands me. She understands me better than anyone else ever has. She can't support my weight right now, and only will allow me to support hers a bit, but this is a precious thing, when someone can intuitively walk my mind, taking different but true paths. If time's sewing hand is rapid enough, and an offer is made, yes, I will go when the time comes. If not, I may go elsewhere anyway. I never thought I might leave, but the wind is loud outside, and the second chamber has laid sandpaper that chafes my feet.

My passport has arrived. There shall be no more barriers for our trip to Europe and later journeys. My passport photo is, as tradition dictates, not particularly good, only kind of resembling me, but it could be a lot worse.

An interesting tidbit from dictionary.com -- the normal english use of the word 'an', is related to the number 'one', in fact is a simplified form of it. I didn't know that. This, na klar, does not apply to the other use of the word 'an', meaning 'if', which is very cool (and as the site notes, archaic).

There was an article in the local Pitt News (UPitt's student paper) on Pittsburgh's continuing efforts to avoid going bankrupt. In summary, to avoid increasing property taxes, they're going to impose an 'occupational privilege tax' increase from $10 to $145. A member of city council sees this as being better than increasing property tax because "no one wants to see that -- not the mayor, council, or anyone else". I don't understand this. Particularly, student workers, as the article notes, would end up paying it just the same as big businesses, and it certainly hits the workers harder -- if they work little enough, they could end up losing money by working. Same thing goes for the poor. They do note that currently the property tax idea would not help with people who commute into the city, who don't pay property tax. This does hit on a problem -- surrounding communities offering little more than a tax dodge for their residents who otherwise would pay Pittsburgh tax. Having the city and the county merge would fix things, or forming special taxes to target those folk would also help. It seems, however, that it's a far lesser evil to stick people like me who make a decent salary and live in the city with the burden of making up for the tax-dodgers than it is to go with a plan that hits part time/student and poor workers so hard.

Apparently, Philly is ready to join the (small) crowd of cities that're thinking of offering internet as a utility, in this case the plan being to provide wireless on lamp posts. I've been hoping to see this happen all over the place and it's good to hear of it moving forward. Hurrah.

It seems that the newer, better (sarcasm) Iraqi government has decided to keep a ban on Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based middle-eastern cousin to CNN.

I don't understand this humour, but it's still funny.