Believe

“I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
-Samantha Black Crow, American Gods

Bouncing around on-line, I somehow got to a page on American Gods. American Gods, in case you weren’t aware, is one of my favorite novels. Written by the oh-so-talented Neil Gaiman, the book is an interesting blend of mythology, religion, fantasy and Americana. Dark and sad and magical and clever and funny. The book succeeds on almost every level. I never get tired of reading it.

Seriously? This Is The Game You Want To Play?

This button was available at the Texas State Republican Convention. And I thought this guy was racist.

As Warren Ellis once said:

“America is a great spectator sport… Just as long as there’s that great ocean between us.”

Can’t Stop The Signal

“Shepard, isn’t the Bible kind of specific about killing?”
“Very specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzy around the area of kneecaps.”
-Zoe and Book, War Stories

After The Fire

“What do you think of the view?”

“I’m used to it.”

“Meaning you see only the faults.  That’s a shame.  Like becoming bored with the gorgeous woman who shares your bed… you’re forgotten how spectacular it is.”

Found On The Internet

“Listening to Evanescence isn’t a gateway drug to an erosion of moral values. If anything, all it is is a gateway to the erosion of any kind of actual musical taste.”

Night On Earth

“That’s what you hold on to.  That’s what you can do for other people.  You can give them safety.  You can show them they’re not alone.  That’s how you make the world make sense.  And if you can do that– you can stop the world from making more people like us.  And no one will have to be scared anymore.”

Watchmaker

“The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking… The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.  If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
-Albert Einstein

Welcome To Our Thanksgiving Day Salute!

“Thanksgiving: when everyone in Britain gives thanks for our ancestors having sent all the religious freaks to America.”
–Warren Ellis

Think He Knows The Definition Of Irony?

“I want to be a peace president.”
-George W. Bush (July 2004)

“I’m a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.”
-George W. Bush (February 2004)