ratsonjulia

"'i can believe things that are true & I can believe things that aren't true & I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus & the Easter Bunny & Marilyn Monroe & the Beatles & Elvis & Mister Ed. Listen--I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels & is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs & bad ones who mutilate cattle & want our water & our women. I believe that the future sucks & I believe the future rocks & I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back & kick everyone's ass.I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating & that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks & 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 & aligators & toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt & 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 the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell & Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, & that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian Shaman. I believe that mankinds 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 & a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive & 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), & 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 & worries about me & oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion & went to go hang with her girlfriends & doesn't even know I'm alive. I believe in an empty & godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, & sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is over-rated 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 & 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, & that no one but a moron woiuld ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, & that life is what happens when you're alive & that you might as well lay back & enjoy it.' She stopped, out of breath.

"Shadow almost took his hands of the wheel to applaud. Instead he said, 'Okay. So if I tell you what I've learned you won't think I'm a nut?'

"'Maybe,' she said, 'Try me.'".....


--Sam, "American Gods", Neil Gaiman pp. 394-5


I'll second that. all of that.

(for all I know, everybody & their dog has been quoting the above ad infitum--don't care. I likes it.)