Short Stories Online, Day 21

... so we're halfway through Lent, eh? How's the giving-up going?

Today's story follows this week's As Yet Unguessed Theme:

'I, Cthulhu', by Neil Gaiman (subtitled 'What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47 ° 9’ S, Longitude 126 ° 43’ W)?')

Having just reread Zelazny's Lovecraftian A Night in the Lonesome October, I am more appreciative of Gaiman's referential (and reverential) style than I suspect I was when first I encountered this eldritch, miasmatic, tentacular, lipophagic delight.

Ichor and slime and ooze, oh my.

Little Furry Corpses

I've been thinking about little furry corpses* today.

(The cats are fine. Or warm and purry and stretchy, anyway.)

Spring's in the air, the daffodils and primroses are blooming, and the local beasties are coming out of their lairs and taking a deep breath of fresh air: after which (observation suggests) some suicidal urge drives them to frolic on the tarmac, where they quickly become roadkill.

Over the last few days I've seen badgers and rabbits and foxes and squirrels, in various states of death from 'having a rest in the middle of the road' to 'red and bloody ruin'. This is my first encounter, as a driver, with vernal carnage on the roads, and I find it quite distressing. The thought of an animal surviving the autumn and winter and then being killed on the road -- sheer waste, since it's unlikely that the corpse will become dinner for something else! -- is a sad one.

I'm sure there are drivers who don't care if they hit something. Equally, I've encountered some of the most ridiculously cocksure and macho squirrels ever along the Newdigate Road. I swear they're playing chicken. They make schoolchildren look sedate and sensible.

So, today I was driving along, "hello clouds hello sky hello daffodils" etc, and suddenly, going around a blind bend, I had to brake sharply because there was an animal in the road.

In fact there were several.

And they had people on their backs.

People swigging sherry and pints of bitter: people laughing and chatting and, grudgingly, walking their horses back into the pub carpark so that they could graciously permit me to drive along the public highway.

Heaven help any fox that -- unlike the disintegrating corpse on the hardshoulder of the A264 -- has survived the winter, the traffic, the lack of food, the snow. Survival! Spring! And the opportunity to get chased for miles and torn to pieces by a baying pack.

Roadkill's probably a kinder fate, really. And it leaves a prettier corpse.

*This phrase, used by Garry Kilworth in a novel I read recently, has the power to bring tears to my eyes.

DITA help (no, not 'von Teese' flavour)

Anyone know how to fiddle around with ANT / DITA / PDF output? Our previous consultant has thrown it all in to raise chickens, or something, and the suggested replacement wants to do Roadmaps and weeks'-worth of werk.