I like to build furniture. Only not “build” it so much as assemble it. I really like kit furniture. You get this big box of parts and hardware and stuff and then you turn it into a functional and attractive (I won’t buy an ugly kit) piece of furniture. Negative entropy. Saying to the Universe “Ha! I take your parts and with a simple screwdriver and hammer and occasionally an Allen or “hex” wrench make a pleasing whole!”. The Universe never responds though. I think it has other things on it’s mind.
Which might be just as well.
Huh. That was shorter than I expected.
Sayings to live by (or not):
Measure once, cut twice.
Hate the sinner, not the sin.
Uh… maybe I should have thought this one through a little more. I don’t think two saying are enough to live by. Too many situations not covered. Oh well. Moving right along…
Did you know in the town where I was born there lived a man who sailed to sea? He told us of his life in the land of submarines. So like impressionable and slightly dim kids we sailed up to the sun till we found the sea of green. Which, when you think about it isn’t the first way you’d think to find a sea. Sailing up to the sun. You’d think this would be a good way to get a sunburn. But as it turned out, we found a sea, and it was green. There we lived beneath the waves in our yellow submarine. So it has a happy ending since we had a submarine. Just think how tragic it would have been if we just drove. Unless we drove a WV Beetle. The old kind. The kind they don’t make anymore, even in Mexico. That would have been OK since they float. At least they float until they rust through. Then you’d be screwed if you were counting on a floating car. But we had a submarine, like I said, so it all worked out pretty well.
Hmm… still a little short. Not that I get paid by the word or anything. Still I’ve found that people have expectations for a good Monday Morning Post. Short just doesn’t cut it. Or it might, I really haven’t experimented with a short post. Maybe I should sometime. But not today!
“Mithras’ bull!” he cried. “They’re catching up!”
He could hear the horses’ hooves pounding down the path after him, so he clung tighter to his horse’s neck and urged the old mare faster. It was a mark of his desperation that he was on the back of a horse to start with and then happy of that circumstance. He usually had no use for a horse outside of the stewpot. Unfortunately he picked an old mare, and a slow one even considering her advance decrepitude. He couldn’t stay out in the open, on the main road. He’d have to turn into the forest. With a tug on the leather things in his mount’s mouth and several quickly aimed kicks and a curse or two thrown in for good measure, he hauled his headlong flight from the clear, straight path of the road to the overgrown, twisting path headed deep into the darkening wood.
It was a shame he had no mother to teach him proper behavior and no father to protect him when, as most children will, he crosses certain societal norms. But he was quick this time and the horse was untended in front of the inn. With a little more luck, he should escape to see another day. Luck that did not include the torches on the path behind him and the cry “There he is!” echoing through the trees. Today Lady Luck turned her back on him.
Urging his tiring mount a little faster, as fast as he could possibly push her, we weaved and dodged between the trees and the hanging vines. He almost didn’t see the turn in the path at the edge of the stream. He didn’t have time to make the turn, but he was able to rein in his horse before they both went spilling into the waters below. Or nearly in time, since in the skidding stop the horse caught a hoof on a tree root and stumbled just enough to throw him from her back. He could just thank what luck he had that a half ton of farmhorse didn’t land on top of him.
Although maybe that would have been kinder since he did not know how to swim.
Flailing and sputtering he pulled himself up to the far shore and the pursuit riders caught up to his erstwhile steed. Backing in under the reeds and weeds of the far shore, he saw them scanning the path and the stream for him. Or simply his dead body if that’s the way things played out. With his attention fixed on the scene before him, he did not notice the gleaming eyes or the grasping claws behind him. When at last he was aware of his plight it was too late. The fangs had already sunk into the flesh of his shoulder, injecting him with the deadly poisons.
“I should have put the toilet seat down…” were his last mortal thoughts.
-Rue.
I never help when Parallax puts it together either. My job is to heckle. I say things like “gee, it doesn’t look like that on the front of the box” and “are you done yet??” Sometimes I line up all the screws and cams and things and count them so when Parallax goes looking for them they are all in a row. Although lately I have a new job - fending off the munchkin. Thiis is vitally important because she will run away with all of your tools and screws and cams and anything else she can grab if you don’t watch her like a hawk!