Thou shalt not have fun.
Some of you may have noticed the brief appearance of thumbnails down the right edge of the blog. I've taken them down because they've become unreliable and have started slowing down the loading of the page. There are things I like about Deviant Art, but they have been plagued by performance problems from the start. I suppose that's what happens when a good idea has to be implemented on a shoe string budget. I'm sure they didn't expect to be as popular as they have become. Hopefully one of these days they'll get on top of it. Yes, I know. The rest of the world uses Flickr. Mabye one of these days, I'll have time to look into it.
Michael does some very fine work. I am absolutely jealous of the amazing skies that are in 95% of his photos. That's what I get for living in a desert, I guess. I hope he appreciates them.
This one struck me today. I don't think you'd ever see these two symbols juxtaposed like this in America. Church is not supposed to be fun. Maybe it's just Mormons, with whom I've had the most experience, but I think Americans in general seem obsessed with defining a hard line between spiritual and the secular and resist the notion that there may actually be quite a bit of overlap. Maybe it's our Puritan heritage. Fun and laughter were (are?) something which required penitence and contrition. God is irritable grump and you have to step lightly or you'll piss Him off. Life was not meant to be enjoyed.
Two hundred years later and we're still uptight.