"There has never been a spell on me before," the unicorn said. She shivered long and deep. "There has never been a world in which I was not known."
"I know exactly how you feel," Schmendrick said eagerly. The unicorn looked at him out of dark, endless eyes, and he smiled nervously and looked at his hands. "It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is," he said. "There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard it sung, that unicorns when time was young, could tell the difference 'twixt the two - the false shining and the true, the lips' laugh and the heart's rue." His quiet voice lifted as the sky grew lighter, and for a moment the unicorn could not hear the bars whining, or the soft ringing of the harpy's wings.
"I think you are my friend," she said. "Will you help me?"
"If not you, no one," the magician answered. "You are my last chance."
Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Is this me? Am I here? Wow I'm creating a weblog. Can't quite belive what I am doing but let's give it a go.

They say that computer programming can be more of an art than a science, and that might well be true. In fact, dealing with computers sometimes seems like an art - a black art to be precise. There are times when they appear not to follow any kind of logic whatsoever, just the opposite you'd expect from computers.

Take, for example, yesterday and my computer display not working. I check the connections. Everything's plugged in okay, but nope, it's definitely not working. Logic dictates that it is probably either a problem with the monitor, or the video card.

Okay. So I call the IT people, who stand around my desk, fiddling with wires, pushing the wires at the back of the computer and shaking their heads as to why it is not working. (Why does it always take 3 IT people to fix a computer is beyond me!) They depart saying they'd be back in 10 minutes. An hour later they reappear lugging along another monitor, and another video card. They plug the replacement monitor in, and presto, it works. Okay. So it must be the monitor that's faulty, right? so they shut down the computer, and ponder where they can find another monitor to replace mine. They think they know of a spare one in another department and just before they go, they plug the old monitor in again. I'm not sure why. And I'm also not sure why they turn on the computer again but it boots up perfectly, display 'n' all, amazing us all. .

Weird. Black art, I'm telling you.