Blog :: Horses and Riding
November 2007
And now a slight break from topicality
I’m so sorry. I tried to resist those lolcats and I just couldn’t.
Source?
Does anyone know the source of the following quote?—
When God created the horse, he said to the magnificent creature: I have made thee as no other. All the treasures of the earth shall lie between thy eyes. Thou shalt cast thy enemies between thy hooves, but thou shalt carry my friends upon they back. Thy saddle shall be the seat of prayers to me. And thou fly without any wings, and conquer without any sword.
Before you say the Koran, I’ve searched several different online versions and can’t find the the passage. Maybe my search skills are still on the fritz, but then again, maybe someone misattributed the quote and the misattribution has spread across the internet as it so often does.
If you know definitively that this comes from the Koran, would you let me know which book? Of if you’ve been rolling your eyes for ages at all the misattributions because you know this really comes from _________, would you let me know what _________ is?
Thanks!
My mad skillz fail me
Usually I’m a googling whiz and can find just about anything I want (and plenty I don’t want, but that’s Google for you).
However, my mad skillz have failed me this time. Tell me: does anyone know sites that have large (high resolution) images of horse-related tapestries? And not the modern ones they’re selling as throw rugs—genuine they-hung-in-a-castle tapestries.
Failing tapestries, what about paintings? Again, I’m more interested in pre-1900 work than anything remotely modern.
If I have to, I’ll default to one of DaVinci’s drawings of horses, but I’d rather find something a little more original than that.
Always Be Prepared, Young Grasshopper
I still have no news on the Houston front, but I tell you what: I’ve come up with a program to prepare myself just in case:
- Visualize the horse population in Houston by driving around the city, which has about as many people as Houston has horses. Mumble to self, “You’re a horse. And you’re a horse. And you. You’re [a donkey]. You’re a horse…”
- Pile thirty six blankets on the bed at night and sleep under them. It’s important to begin acclimating for the heat early.
- Simulate humidity by taking all clothes into the bathroom and taking a hot shower with the fan off. Practice dressing in the fogged-up, steamy bathroom.
- Store a bridle in the bathroom. Figure out how to keep it from growing mold what with all the hot, steam showers going on.
- Set up a lawn chair in the snow on the front yard. Spend time every day laying out on the chair and building
sandsnow castles. - Buy packages of plastic bugs and ask roommate to hide them creatively throughout the house. Periodically find one in an unexpected place. Continue the hiding/finding procedure until the initial bloodcurdling scream becomes a yelp and eventually a whimper. Note to self: adopt a cat who will kill the bugs instead of racing across the room and climbing up the highest piece of furniture to get away form them.
- Approximate the transition from air conditioning to the hot outdoors by standing outside in the snow and then running inside an standing by the fire.
- Spend as much time driving around town during and after a snowfall as possible. It is not possible to prepare for Houston’s traffic, but the general stupidity of even resident northerners during a snowstorm is probably close to the general stupidity of rush hour traffic in a large city.
- If any of the other riders’ horses get hot and sweaty during the lesson, offer to untack and put the horse away for them. Might as well get used to cooling out the horses now…
- Buy a bikini and hang it on the wall, like in that yogurt commercial. Throw darts at it because, really, how useless is a bikini? You can’t do serious swimming in a bikini.
A couple months of this, and I’ll be all set for Houston. Or the loony bin.
The return of the blog carnival
Props to Lynda at Hoofbeats, without whom I’d never know anything that’s going on.
Horse Approved has restarted the blog carnival. The upcoming Thanksgiving carnival has an appropriately Thanksgiving-esque theme.
The announcement says something about being open to Horse Approved members, so I’m not entirely sure whether this is still open to the general horse-blogging community or if it has switched to something exclusive to HA’s community. I guess we’ll find out when my entry gets accepted (or rejected, as the case may be).
Assuming, of course, that I manage to write and submit the thing on time. I’m so bad at that part.
I’ll submit on time if you do.