The Illuminated Donkey

Ken resumes blogging, take two! Well, I feel a touch more verbose this afternoon (though those piles of paper haven't gotten any smaller), so I figured I'd take another run at it.

First off, just to ease back into things, I thought I'd spend a few moments clearing up a matter that has apparently been a source of interest and/or confusion: namely, the meaning of "The Illuminated Donkey." I actually wrote about this in one of my first posts about eleventy-million years ago (or six months ago in non-blog time), but since my readership at that time consisted of about two or three close friends on a good day, here's a brief list of what the title doesn't mean:

• It has nothing to do with the Democratic Party, with the “Illuminated” qualifier meaning neither enlightened nor superior.
• While it’s a perfectly understandable guess, the name doesn’t parse as “Wise Ass.”
• Finally, the name is not an underground slang term to attract partners for some bizarre and possibly illegal sexual act, and the posts are certainly not written in some sort of code designed to inform readers of my whereabouts on Tuesday and Thursday evenings! (Wait, you mean nobody out there had actually thought that? Urm…carry on, then.)

To put it simply, the Illuminated Donkey is a hollow, plastic animal from a Christmas creche (see the left sidebar), given to me about seven years ago by my friend Anthony Russo. I brought it with me to Seattle, where it lived in our window, continuously lit, for over two years (until it...um...caught on fire). It guided my roommate Murph and me home from the bars on blurry nights, and therefore seemed like the perfect name for this here little blog.

And now, back to our regular blogging.