Sigh

Reached into my back pocket and found a slightly laundered ticket stub from going to see The Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin. I'm ready to go back at any moment.

In that vein, been broadening my horizons beyond Boston, as in across the Atlantic beyond. Turns out Science Communication is a degree offered at a number of schools in Ireland and the UK. Hmmmmmmmm.

New Year's

Well, I really have no "real" New Year's resolutions. True, I did get some prices on local health clubs today, but that was just an extenuation of my lunchtime walks I've been taking over the past several months until the cold snap. Now I figure if I join a club that's on my drive home from work I can go, no excuses about the weather and with the added incentive that I will be wasting money if I don't go. Besides...year long access to a swimming pool? Yeah!

I guess I could make a positive and negative resolution based on my New Year's itself. Like have more of my New Year's activities throughout the year and convince my friend to do less of his New Year's activities throughout the year i.e. go to the hospital (AGAIN) due to too much alcohol. I'm a little worried about him, but it's one of those areas of "What can I do?" It's his life, I can tell him how worried I am, but if I keep getting on his case I'm going to become some sort of annoying nag who he'll avoid. He's talking about seeking help, I hope it is not just talk. In the meantime I will just have to sit back, worry, and cringe everytime I see him getting drunk. Or is there some other option I'm not thinking of?

MMMMMMM....

Just finished a very satisfying book, American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I recommend it to any and all. One of my favorite passages:
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"I would." She sounded angry now. He wondered if bringing wine to the dinner had been a wise idea. Life was certainly not a cabernet right now.

"It's not easy to believe."

"I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe."

"Really?"

"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 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 wrinkley 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 communicting and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from stateto state. I belive 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 greates 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 aerodynamicaly impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, and 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 jut 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 I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual choas, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe htat 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."


I do so like, so very much. Anyway, you should go read it. Now. What are you waiting for?

Impatient

I just bought Cowboy Mouth tickets. Yipee! Oh when oh when oh when will it be January 26th and why can't it be now?