I'm back! Well, probably not as frequently as times past, but I'll try to post one a week at least. Sorry to those of you who emailed void2.z.fracture. It's a disposable address and had timed out, so it ate your email. I've enabled it, so you can use it again if you want. When I re-enabled it I started getting spam. I've changed it instead. My new email address is at the very bottom of this page. Spamgourmet rules.

What brought me back? A little incident on the bus yesterday afternoon. I'm on one of the busiest bus routes, so we get our collection of, uh, "interesting" individuals. Yesterday took the cake.

I'm sitting near the front. On climbs a lady struggling with one of those "twins" strollers. As is usual in such a case, she flipped up the front seat of the bus and slid the stroller to the side so it wasn't blocking the isle. So the stroller is now sitting directly in front of me, but it has a knitted blanket completely over it since it was a little cold. I, and most of the folks around me, are trying to get a discrete peak at the twins inside. The lady picks up on this and flips the blanket off and then starts messing with a bottle of formula.

Inside sit two absolutely beautiful little babies. One is awake, and one is asleep. The awake one has the most incredible eyes and is staring right at me.

Something isn't quite right, though. It has been staring for an awfully long time without blinking.

Then it hits me. Oh my fucking god. They're dolls. Incredibly realistic dolls. Way too freaking realistic.

The realization hits those around me at about the same time as it hit me. There are uncomfortable glances and barely audible gasps. I look at this doll staring at me, and it's stopped being beautiful and has taken on the truly distressing aura of a recently demised baby corpse.

The lady pushing these dolls around appears to be in a little world all her own. She obviously thinks they're real in her mind.

I got off the bus two stops early. I think half-a-dozen other folks did too. I'm surrounded by shuddering groans usually reserved for Fear-Factor-reindeer-anus-eating scenes.