Comic Updated October 3, 2008

Last night, around 1 AM, I was outside taking Augie "Ben" Doggy for a walk; I looked up into the chilly autumn sky, and saw, on the horizon*, the distinct three-stars-in-a-straight-line pattern of the belt of Orion the Hunter, better known as Orion the Only Constellation that Actually Looks Like Anything.

Orion is a winter constellation in the northern hemisphere, and his reappearance filled me with a withering comprehension of the unrelenting, glacial passage of time. There are few words to properly describe the effect of seeing an image of Man in the void of space, an image of Man that was old before Man left the swamps. I stared silently into the infinite.

And then Augie twisted her leash around my legs and tripped me.

Orion, of course, is pointing his bow at the constellation of Taurus, the bull, who is charging him. This is the universe's oldest recorded Mexican Standoff.

*I live in hilly country, so my horizon should be adjusted up about a hundred feet from ordinary, plains-state horizons.

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