Generally speaking, the icon I choose to use with a given entry says something about the entry itself, just as the subject lines are very rarely arbitrary. I've been sitting here staring at today's icon, wondering what the hell it has to do with what I'm about to say or where I am right now. And I think, perhaps, it's an inverse relationship, and I must have done it unconsciously. Anyway. That's my best guess.

Today, I'll be cleaning up the loose ends on Sirenia Digest #30, and packing. All is packing. We have, for all intents and purposes, four days remaining for packing. This weekend. Monday. And Wednesday. Tuesday, we make the third trip to Birmingham in as many weeks, to retrieve everything I have in storage there. Fortunately, this is the last trip to Birmingham.

I packed until about 9 pm last night, when we stopped and watched the last three episodes of Millennium (as I prefer to imagine Season Three never happened). "The Time is Now" is one of the most remarkable, and certainly one of the most horrifying and beautiful, episodes of any series ever produced for television. I saw it when it first aired, and all these years later, it still caught me off guard, even knowing what was coming. The use of Patti Smith's "Horses" is absolutely exquisite. Laura Means' vision is such a perfect comprehension of inevitability, probability, and man's insignificance in an indifferent universe. And I'm very pleased that, in those last couple of episodes, Frank Black renounces any possibility of his belief in a literal interpretation of the Book of Revelations. I think this pretty much saves the series for me, which occasionally veers a bit too near actually espousing millenarian Xtianity. Those final shots, Frank and Jordan alone in the cabin, the blood on Catherine's pillow...sublime. And yes, I know there's a season after Season Two, but why continue when the perfect ending has been found? To paraphrase Toni Morrison, art is knowing when to stop.

Lots of thoughts on Panthalassa (and Pangaea, and related concepts), on what I'm trying to do with Wicca, but no time just now to write it all down.

Don't forget the Stiff Kitten T-shirt sale:



My thanks to Beq Janus for actually building a working version of the clock from Soldier's dreams (in Daughter of Hounds). It now occupies a table in the Professor's Abney Park Laboratory in New Babbage (Second Life). You can see two screencaps (warning, they're LARGE) behind the cut:









Okay. There's work that must be done, whether or not I want to do it, and I still haven't had coffee. I'll leave you with Keith Olbermann calling Hilary Clinton on her latest act of desperation: