I was on my third (fifth? Definitely a prime number, I wasn't that far gone) Scotch of the evening; Cheryl was still nursing her first.

"Magic is like painting, anyone can do it."

She half-glared at me. "Right."

"No, really, what's so difficult about it? Apply paint to brush, apply brush to canvas. Voila, you're painting."

"There's more to it than that." Did I mention that Cheryl paints? Good enough for some of the local galleries, so naturally, she's assuming I'm taking the piss at her expense. I turned to look at her.

"Yes there is, and no there isn't, Cheryl." I grinned a bit. "Anyone can paint. It takes practice, skill and skill to paint well. It takes imagination to be good at it."

"Take that painting you showed me the other day. The one with the ravens... Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's not normally your thing, is it?"

She frowned, "No, it's not. I'm not really sure why I painted that. I just did. I'd been planning on doing something in that crap commercial style that sells well in the 5th street gallery. But I found myself painting that instead."

"See? Imagination. It doesn't always come from our conscious mind. Hell, I could barely paint a straight line, and even if I had the skill, I don't think I could have produced what you did." I had to be careful here. The painting was hanging a room away, and you never know who's listening, but I had to get to the bottom of this before...

Let's just say before something bad happened. Before Cheryl painted what comes after the ravens.
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Author's note: Nope, no fucking clue where this came from. And I don't think I want to know what comes after the ravens.

Alabama has passed a medical marijuana bill.

I would have bet money that they'd be one of the last states to do so.

Assuming nothing changes between now and then, by late Thursday afternoon, I will have a car.

Utah Republican thinks we could go with twice as much CO2 in the air as we have now.

I'm torn on this one. It's either because he's the walking dead (seriously, look at that picture of him), or because the increased CO2 is what is required by his alien species (no, seriously, look at that picture of him.)

We had an earthquake. Little baby one, only a 4.4

I have to say, I didn't know it was an earthquake at first... I thought it was just the asshole upstairs moving more shit around in the middle of the damn night.