Kenny's favorite Skeuomorph - besides the Monkey tendency towards Metaphor anyway - comes from Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1398 - c. February 3, 1468) who is generally credited with the invention of the Printing Press in the West as well as the thing which made the Press possible: Moveable Type. In the same way that the Automobile retained features of the "Horse Carriage," the type which Gutenberg cast in his shop also retained features of its "Original," that is, of the tool which made the letters in Manuscript Printing - the Quill and its shaped Nibs. Look at the Gothic A to the right and you can see the necessary tracks of the Quill/Nib system: the squared terminals, the uneven "weights" of the lines themselves, the tendency towards sweeping curls. All of these are inevitable features of Calligraphy and its Manuscript Tool System. Because you cut a Quill that way, you get a letter that looks that way. Gutenberg "designed in" the Quill/Nib look for his Metal Cast Type. These features were no longer necessary or functional but their decorative quality worked because the print looked familiar.

That's Saint Thomas Aquinas furthest to the right all done up in Vitraux, and sparkling. It's hard to see crisp details in Stained Glass so portraits have to be stylized and features reduced to icons. Ditto with Gutenberg's first Cast Type - it's difficult to read Gothic Script. It was hard enough when the letters were big in Manuscripts but as printed books shrunk so did their typefaces and Gothic Script with all its decorative Quill shadows became impossible to read. It took another century for the Italians to reinvent type faces expressly for the press.

"Neither entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of heaven." Pooler Jones says that Abbot Suger was a lot more fun when he was stoned than when he and Pooler would go on a wine binge. Either way, you have to hand it to him. He saw something new and exhalting in the Gothic technology of Stained Glass. He saw a new medium to get his god's message across. And quite naturally he could not then see how the ghostly attributes of the previous and original truths were still guiding and shaping his novelty. None of us can. Well maybe Skippy can ...

That's Toby underneath the warm roses - he lives with IwoJima on Monastery Ridge. Dogs were Original as Wolves. Man has shaped them into Decorations. Man has shaped most of Nature into Skeuomorphs. It is the design of Metaphor to do exactly that. It is our curse not to know the difference anymore.

In the Work of Alchemy, the Athanor is the Sacred Vessel wherein the Opposites fuck, fart, and die. In the passionate heat of the Forge the elements of the world meet, merge, and then dissolve - giving form to the ancient Alchemical motto: "No Generation without previous Corruption."