I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake By A Horse Hello. I am a horse. I work very hard at my job of being a horse. When humans say move the heavy thing, I move the heavy thing. When humans sit on top of me and pull on my head, I carry them where they want to go. The main food the humans give me is hay and oats. But I am thinking it would be nice to have a different food. I am thinking I would like to try cake. Yes, yes. Cake. I know all about it. When humans eat cake, it is in glad times. It is the food for a celebration, such as when a woman becomes 47. I have seen cake on the Fourth of July. When humans have a cake, they stand around it and clap hands and smile and say happy birthday at each other. Sometimes there are beautiful markings on a cake, such as balloons or a pink shape. Sometimes the top of a cake is on fire and a boy must blow on the fire with mouth wind. This is the scariest cake. I do not want this kind. But I will eat any other cake. Any cake that is not the fire cake that tries to kill the boy. Please understand: I do not get money for doing work. I do not get to go inside the house. All I am either doing my horse job or standing in my pen or eating food off the floor. I always do these things. But I have never once gotten cake and I would like it very much. I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children. I am more helpful to the farm. Children do not move the heavy things like me or let anyone ride on them. And yet they get cake. Maybe the humans will realize this. Maybe they will say, "You know who deserves cake? That horse. That horse whose back we are always on." Every day I dream about what it will be like if I get to eat cake. Here is what will happen. First, I will walk to the cake and putt my nose at it like hrrfff to make and stomping my hooves to make sure it is not a snake. Then I will trot in a circle to show that I am a horse and I am large. After that, I will nuzzle the cake to …

The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me.

It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."

Man, that finger worm part in the lower left is cool and creepy - bravo!

An image of Robbie Rotten from LazyTown grinning at the camera.

Is that Robbie Rotten?

Piloswine! You can't not be inspired by Piloswine.

Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope: "Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I'll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is — we're here on Earth to fart around And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it's like we're not supposed to dance at all anymore."

Kurt Vonnegut man

Finally added a music page to the website! A fun selection of my stuff to listen to! richarddiss.com/music

Merry Xmas folks! I'm going to spend it in an exhausted trance of whiskey and insomnia. Thank goodness Santa brought a cool day for us in Perth.

I did a writer's workshop today! A small thing run by Night Parrot Press. The prompt for this was 'An unexpected guest takes over a celebration', and I wrote this in 10 minutes. Super happy with how it turned out. 'That Damn Santa!' richarddiss.com/read/that-da...

Bow-A-Bow Wow (Original Music) (Big Band Metal) #AOFEST2023 YouTube video by Durrdiss

Also, I used to do music! Haven't picked up a DAW in a year or so (long story), but there's a rich history of music around for folks to enjoy.
Here's the last thing I officially released on the old channel: youtu.be/XbVhyNPzRJA?...

I wrote something for Writing Battle Autumn 2024. Now that the results are out (didn't win, but did pretty well), I'm releasing my entry for free! richarddiss.com/read/lake-ea...

A screenshot of options in the Cloudflare security page for a domain, where you can block AI and scraper bots.

As part of the website update, I moved all my stuff over to Cloudflare. Super appreciative of the 'F- off AI Bots' switches you can turn on.

Still a few things to do (like add a dark theme, a music page, etc), but it exists and that's good enough for now!

Just so I have something here, hi! I'm Richard, and I write stories, music, and program things. You can check out some free writing on my website, which I built with my own two hands. It's small, but hopefully the start of something greater!