New Favorite

I think I have come across my new favorite long windedness.  My previous has held the record since I was fifteen.  I thought I would post the both of them. Though maybe I should call them both record holders since they are different mediums, one a play and one a fiction novel.

The Previous Title Holder
Tom from Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie:  
 I'm going to opium dens! Yes, opium dens, dens of vice and criminals' hang-outs, Mother. I've joined the Hogan gang, I'm a hired assassin, I carry a tommy-gun in a violin case! I run a string of cat-houses in the Valley! They call me Killer, Killer Wingfield, I'm leading a double-life, a simple, honest warehouse worker by day, by night, a dynamic czar of the underworld, Mother. I go to gambling casinos, I spin away fortunes on the roulette table! I wear a patch over one eye and a false mustache, sometimes I put on green whiskers. On those occasions they call me--El Diablo! Oh, I could tell you things to make you sleepless! My enemies plan to dynamite this place. They're going to blow us all sky-high some night! I'll be glad, very happy, and so will you! You'll go up, up on a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with seventeen gentlemen callers! You ugly--babbling old--witch. . . .

The Newly Crowned Title Holder
Sam from Neil Gaiman's American Gods
I can believe things that are true and 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 the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, 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 wrinkled 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 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 bumble bee 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 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.”

The Mournes

This was the state of Slieve Donard the day I went up for the first time.

The Mountain literally trails off into the ocean

This is a view of the ocean as I leave the treeline

 

Josh and I.  As a side-note you can see 'snow' on the ground.
Thankfully my only experience with that wretched stuff this winter
has been up on this mountain.

Just a fun shot

Another shot of the view

In this shot you can get some sense of the wind up there.
According to the measurements that day gusts were getting up to 85 mph.
At points were were literally being blown while standing still

 

The Silent Treatment

I had the chance to go spend a couple of days at a monastery after the order of St. Benedictine.  The point of this was for self reflection and growth.  The method they encouraged was silence and introspection.  Well everybody there talked and often but that doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile.  Sometimes reflection and growth happen best when bouncing ideas off of other people and getting feedback from them.  I had several good conversations there which were integral to my academic growth.  Randomly the monastery was built in front of a field which had a faery ring in it.  That was cool to go explore.  Also the town which was about four miles of a walk from the monastery had a monument to the general which burnt DC during the War of 1812.  I pretty much had no reaction but I wondered if I should have had some sort of gut wrenching sort of thing.  But the guy was from a gorgeous little village on the sea.