--^= < > /`'`\ \= < THE GLUE FACTORY > |. \.... ---------\ < > \ '`'`'`\ / \ \ < stolen from stogee > \ | \ \ / < > `.......' ` < the horse zine > /\ /\ < > / \ / \ Bienvenue! Wilkommen! Welcome to the second issue of The Glue Factory, the premiere zine of horses! After our groundbreaking first issue, we have proven all the naysayers wrong. This installation of our literary magazine brings you, our esteemed reader, more equine wonderment. So, without further adieu, let the horses run free! lb ================================================================================ Contents: I. "Fun with Glue" by LordPhatal II. "The Rocking Horse Winner" by Oregano III. "Outdoor Ed" by nyar IV. "Horses, Horses" by skora V. "Lessons from a hard life." by soko VI. "A Menu for Horses" by maven ================================================================================ I. Fun with Glue by LordPhatal Like when I was little and schtuff I asked my dad where glue comes from in front of K-Mart. He told me it came from horses. I first thought it may be like milk from cows, but he said "No...like it's made out of horses." I thought that was pretty cool. At school on Monday I waited until crafts time, so I could be mischievious with this newfound knowledge. When the time came I started shredding the construction paper (brown). Then I took all the little pieces and started mashing glue into it and made a poor sculpting substance. I tried to make a horse out of the schtuff, but it didn't work well. The teacher asked me what I was doing, (we were supposed to be making forest animals in 2D, because we learned about all the animals in the forest and how they live together in balance and schtuff.). I told her what I was doing and she let me know that horses don't live in the forest... and I said What about wild horses? She shut her hole, and I said glue is from horses, so I'm making it back into a horse. This girl said that it was a dum idea. I was mad at the teacher and the girl (I can't remember her name, but I remember her face). So I grabbed the glue and started slinging it on the girl and started yelling "It's horse blood, It's horse blood!" The girl started crying and I started laughing, and they made my mom come and pick me up. All in all it was a good day...thanx to some horse. ================================================================================ II. The Rocking Horse Winner by Oregano The Rocking Horse Winner is not a scary story. So what? Why are you telling me this? The Rocking Horse Winner is often passed off as a scary story. You will find it in collections of scary stories aimed at the more literary crowd. Collections of "scary" stories by famous and respected authors. D.H. lawrence wrote the story and it is not scary or even quite supernatural, but you can see how it almost fits the bill; since people like to pretend they are smart (I am no exception) they buy these anthologies of literary scary tales, often times to read to children at bedtime. These people think they are too intellectual to read Stephen King but stories by D.H. Lawrence must be okay for their pretentious little children who don't give a turd and want R.L. Stein -- another author who is pretty decent but gets crapped on by the litterati. I in turn crap on the literratti, but somehow that does not make headlines in the New York Review Of Books. The story The Rocking Horse winner is not horrible: a youth gets a rocking horse for Christmas and his alcoholic gambling father asks the youth for a tip on a horse race. While the youth rocks for pleasure he suddenly gets insight into the race's winner. It progresses rather predictably from there with the alcoholic father urging the kid on with larger and larger wagers and the enabling co-dependant mother getting into the act and pushing the kid on. It takes more and more rocking to get each further result and the youth in the end dies a horrible, but predictable death. See? Not really scary, except the stuff about the alcoholic parents and the mother pushing her son too far till he cracks and drops out of college, right mom? Nothing is good enough for you, is it? I will always be a failure, right? Anyway, skip The Rocking Horse winner by D. H. Lawrence this Halloween and read "The Woman Who Grew Too Big A Pumpkin" by Megyn Olson, instead. ================================================================================ III. Outdoor Ed by nyar When I was in sixth grade my class did something that a lot of classes do around that time; we went on outdoor ed. A chance to get away from the humdrum from class for a few days, and stay away from home, under the pretenses of learning, how neat! The place that we went to was called White Pines Ranch. The place is still around and they have a crappy website at http://www.whitepinesranch.com. I believe the trip was 2 nights and 3 days. The first day we got there in mid-afternoon. After stowing our gear in the bunkrooms we got a tour of the main part of the ranch. They actually had something like 100 steers there. The thing I remember most about the steers was how much steam came out of their turds. Yes, not the kind of thing they mean for you to learn on outdoor ed, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. We also got to see their horses. They had several dozen horses, in all sizes and colors. Well ok, they were all about the same size and they were all mostly brown and black, some bits of white here and there. The horses seemed to crap a lot less than the steers. After dinner that night we watched some movies, including _The Lorax_ by Doctor Seuss. I don't know why I remember that. The next day we did several different activities, split off into smaller groups. The first activity that my group did was attempt to find fossils in a nearby quarry. I wasn't successful, but a friend of mine did find a trilobite fossil, which is pretty cool, I think. The next activity was orienteering, which I recall had something to do with a compass, and pacing. The final activity that my group did was the highlight of everyone's trip - we got to go horseback riding. I still recall the horse that I rode. His name was Frisky and he was a nice looking brown horse. Things started off all nice and easy, all of our horses walking nice and calmly in a line. Until we got to the top of the first hill. Then Frisky went a little nutty and charged down the hill in the wrong direction. Luckily I was able to get Frisky under control and make him go back up the hill and join everyone else. But, later on in the expedition, we walked along a ledge on the side of a cliff with a thirty-foot drop off and the entire time I was worried that Frisky would spaz out again. Later on I realized that he might have been a little loopy, but not suicidal. That night we had a bonfire, I think, and the next day we made rubbings in a graveyard. Then we went home. ================================================================================ IV. Horses, Horses by skora Horses now remind me of an ex-coworker, Lori. I miss Lori. She started the same day that I did and sat in the cube next to me. She grew up near Gilroy, California and always had horses. She had all sorts of horse memorabilia in her cubicle and pictures of her and her various horses tacked up on her cube walls. She was the sweetest person. She never swore. When we would take foosball breaks at work and she would miss the ball, she would yell, "Rats!" It was adorable. Often we would hear Lori talking on the telephone with her dad about her horses. One was sick, one needed a new something-or-other that horses need, and one still needed more breaking in. My friend Jeremy often liked to make fun of anyone he could and he sat on the other side of Lori. One day when she was not there and I was in his cube talking to him, he said, "Hey, I'm Lori!" and picked up the phone and said, "Horses, Horses!" and hung up. It was kind of funny. She did seem to talk about horses a lot, but it was okay because she was Lori and she liked horses. Then I got laid off in April. And Lori ended up quitting in July in order to move on with her career. We still talk every once in awhile but not like we used to. She's very busy with work and her horses. I miss Lori. And horses just remind me of her. ================================================================================ V. "Lessons from a hard life." by soko In the immortal words of Proust, "Illness is the doctor to whom we most pay heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey." I watched my best friend Boxer give his life to what he believed. Every ounce, every bit of his essence sucked away for the greater cause. He believed in the will of the people and that if he could bind his strength to their cause, there was nothing that they could not achieve or do. Back then, I had always been at his side. I didn't think to question, so few of us did. Even when the taint of his own faith broke him, he couldn't see how the world really was. Now I understand what so clearly I could not before. Boxer died a fool. Karl Marx believed in a utopian world where the burden and benefit of labor would be equally shared by all. A world born through the tensions and strife of class struggle. He glimpsed the truth, that for those who could not rule their only worth as a man, woman, or even a horse, was what they could produce in toil and suffering. He realized that if the enslaved did not unite and become masters of their own destinies, than once the slave became worth less than what he or she could give, the only path left was to the grave and the glue factory. And yet, in his frailty, Marx could not accept the vivid truth that stood before him. The chains that enslave at birth can never be shed, and that even if one set of rulers be overthrown, there will always be another group ready to lie, steal, and kill to take their place. These days, I pull the cart alone. When I stumble, there is not a soul who rushes to my aid. Sooner yet, comes the day when the cart will take me away. But my friend, however hollow the term, if there is something I have understood from beginning to end. It is that exploitation is the nature of things. This being the only one true law by which all things abide. One day, there will be a rock upon which my old hoof shatters or a hole upon which I stumble and break my leg. Yet in my mouth, the taste of the bit will never be bitter, because I have always known that it belongs. The only lie I ever consumed, the one utterly vile betrayal was the belief of anything more than toil and the grave. If there is one thing I can give to you, before my time has come. It is that there will be many a spinster who comes to you and asks for you to give for the greater good. And each that time that moment comes, it is best if you turn your head and continue down the path upon which you know. -Clover ================================================================================ VI. A Menu for Horses by maven, (inspired by oregano) Things Horses Can Eat: Oats Sugar cubes Hay Grass Molasses Apples Water Carrots Rice bran Apple cider Vinegar Corn Barley Things Horses Cannot Eat: Batteries Chocolate Field mice Concrete Beer Ham sandwich Scones Sushi Barbecued chicken Marshmallows French fries Poison ivy Horse meat ================================================================================