Placeholder for post about belief and religion...

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

Some Things I Did Today

I bought four juggling bean-bags. They're smaller than my old ones. but satisfyingly tacky. I haven't juggled much for more than 20 years, and I don't know why. I spotted my juggling clubs at the cottage this weekend, but I have a wee bit to go before I try them again. I'm going to try to make 5 minutes a day for juggling. It sharpens my co-ordination and my reflexes, and I like doing it. 

I spent a full day in an office, wearing a tie, for the first time in more than a year. And it was my first day in an office, period, for about six weeks. 

I wrote two personal emails which upset me a lot to write. One was to my son, who I haven't heard from in more than six months. 

I went to the gym, as a way of taking my mind of those emails. It did work, at least until now, and it also burnt 410 calories. On Saturday I went to the gym, yesterday I cycled 20 miles, today I went to the gym. I might try to go tomorrow morning before work. 

I bought a new headset, probably my 10th or 12th. This has to stop. In my marginal defence, I have no idea where the other 9 or 11 went. 

That will do for a post, I think.