The "I Believe" speech from Neil Gaiman's American Gods

"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 who 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 of 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 too. 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."

So, it's been a while since my last update.

School has started up again. I have changed my schedule more times than I can count and ended up with 2 upper level history courses, 1 lower level history course, one lower level geography course and one upper level social work course (to meet a degree requirement). I'm taking one extra course this semester, two during winterim and 18 credits in the Spring (same as this semester). Changed my major from Political Science to Social Science Contract with Political Science and History as my major options. Basically the same thing but with fewer political science requirements and a few extra history requirements.

I'm taking the LSAT next weekend and a prep course this weekend. I have already received automatic emails from Michigan State University and one from my list of perspective schools, which was pretty neat. They got my email because of my GPA. MSU boasts a lot of scholarships (many full or half-tuition). I highly doubt I will get such a deal, but it's nice that they offer 100 or so a year.

I ordered a new pair of glasses yesterday as backups after my old pair had a nose pad fall off (it was stuck to the glasses with shoe goo) and I had a nifty prescription that I hadn't ordered glasses for yet. The new ones come with these magnetized clip-on sunglass things. Also got some funky cleaner apparatus for my contacts. It uses peroxide rather than saline solution. It makes bubbles for 6 hours and then neutralizes so you can stick the contacts back in your eyes. Makes em feel new again.

Brought the cats to the vet today. One is staying overnight to have his claws removed and the other had his shots updated. The vet managed to stab the needle in and out of his shoulder and squirted rabis vaccine all over the table. It was pretty gross. She managed to get it the second time around.

Magical-Zorse and SevenSeize are diligently working on the sequel to SevenSeize's Adventure and it should prove to be awesometastic!

And it is awesome

Star Date: 06212009

I am embarking on a week long journey to lands unknown. I am journeying to the Bahama Islands, located on planet Earth.

I have heard accounts from scouts that this land offers many humans of the homo sapien breed, lounging happily in bikinis.

This is a good will mission. Should I not return, remember my legacy.

All systems functioning at normal capacity.

END LOG.

Workout equipment is starting to get a bit funny.

Not only do treadmills have hookups for iPods and cable TV, they have USB slots for uploading your previous workouts and these funky looking workout animations for while you are running. But I'm not all that surprised by the treadmills. What I am writing about are these new exercise bikes my school has installed.

This isn't grandpa's road bike bolted to a stand off the ground, this looks nothing like a real bicycle in any sense of the word.

But these stationary bikes have been like that for years, but what got me today was the big old LCD screen on the front of it. When you first start out, it gives you a 3D video game style animation of bicyclists. The cool part is, it's playable sort of. The handlebars of the machine pivot and when you moved them, the bicyclist on the screen turns.

There are different modes on it where you can race against fellow bikers from off-road trails to a road race on the streets of some city.

What really got my attention was a "game" on the machine where you are riding in a medieval contraption and you collected these colored coins and chase down similar colored dragons for a set amount of time. It's sort of an open-map where you can ride up and down grassy hills, over small bridges and down small dirt paths chasing these dragons. When the time is up, your points are tallied up with your heart rate (which is monitored by metal strips on the handle bars throughout the workout) and calories burned to give you a score. I didn't play around long enough to find any high score list....but one day...

The bike in question? The Expresso exercise bike:

My Spring grades are finally up:

Creating a Nation: US 1600-1877: A

I was except from the final because I had already achieved an A for the semester. That was a nice thing to know, since I had to study a bit for my other classes.

Politics and Government: A-

This was with my adviser and the head of the department. He only gave out tests, but he had some weird grade curves on them, so though I got 80s as raw scores, I wound up getting As with the curves.

World Politics: B+

I was worried about this class because she only accepted assignments through the online portal and at a few points it didn't take my assignments and I didn't find this out until the weekend before finals week. I hastily emailed her and explained the situation and gave her my missing assignments. I was mostly worried because she gave me C+ for both of the missing assignments. Luckily the final and midterm were weighted more than all the other assignments and having an A- on the midterm and a B+ on the final probably helped greatly.

Political Parties, Elections & Interest Groups: B+

This was an interesting class. The professor didn't believe in tests, so she assigned us 4 essays throughout the semester to hand in as a packet at the end of the semester. She was very easily sidetracked and we barely had lectures if at all most weeks.

Semester GPA: 3.58
overall GPA: 3.52

And to think, in highschool I had a GPA of 2.014. My GPA went up from last semester when it was a 3.47.

I withdrew from one course, Model UN because it was basically a class to go along with a trip to The Netherlands, which I couldn't afford and the teacher was the same one as the World Politics who is not a very effective instructor.

I am handing in a few essays and doing a timed essay next Monday for a credit-by-exam for English Composition so that I can take Advanced Composition in the Fall, which is required for my minor. I'm also hurting for credits ATM since they didn't take all of my credits from community college.

I spoke to a pre-law adviser who didn't help me at all in figuring out the whole deal about getting into law school, but I have a list of 10 or so colleges I where I fall comfortably into their entering-GPA and will begin studying for the LSATs, and take them at the end of the summer. I am hoping for a 160 on them, though most schools I am looking at have median scores in the 150s.

don't Europeans and Canadians call it University?

Whatever.

I am finishing up the semester and am pretty excited about how it is going. I am already exempt from one final (An American History course) because I have received and A for the semester.

I got into an honor society this year and am having the induction ceremony on Saturday. My dad is coming out to visit so we cleaned the house today. Even shampooed the carpets. Then I made a mess in the guest bedroom because I felt like cleaning out the closet in there...he can deal. At first he was going to come out with my aunt, but she had to cancel. Then he said my sister was going to visit, but I asked her about it today and she knew nothing of it (she's in Maine right now going to school).

Last week I finished a small battle with the school. I had taken two AP English exams back in high school and received a score of 3 on each. For most AP exams my school will take a score of 3 on an exam as a 3 credits, but for some strange reason the English department only accepted scores of 4 or 5 on the exam. I requested to have an exception since I badly need the credits. They denied my request on the grounds of "the English department sets the standards". I apparently took that the wrong way and when I asked the head of the English department, she agreed with my reasoning of allowing two exams with a score of 3 each could count for at least one English requirement on my transcript. She notarized a new request for me and I did a run around and got into an advanced English course required for my pre-law minor. I was a bit surprised when I got a letter back saying they denied my request again, but this time there was no note as to why it was denied. So I set up a meeting with the guy who denied it. After he gave me the run around of the same answers he gave last time and me getting upset at him not explaining himself at all beyond what I already knew, he kicked me out of his office.

I went to his boss, the Provost. So the Provost, the head of the english department and this guy all got together and talked about me. They decided on a plan. Not overly diabolical but you can keep your image of a dark and smoky room. So, I'm getting this first-year English course tagged onto this semester, but I'm not actually part of the class. I am going to write a bunch of essays they will assign to me this summer and when I do that,t hey will give me my english credits I want. Since they are tagging it onto this semester I wont have to pay any fees for it, which was my main concern with not having any english credits because otherwise I would have to take a course during the summer/winter for $900 per credit hour or pay $600 per credit for going over 17 credits in the Fall or Spring of my senior year.

I have also decided that I will be attending law school after I graduate. I am getting in contact with the pre-law advisor at my school (apparently there is one here, but I was never assigned to one when I declared my minor) and I will probably take the LSAT this fall and next December if I have a chance. And it is slowly dawning on me that I am signing myself up for at least 3 more years of schooling. To think I hated highschool...

I own a motorcycle. It's something I like to brag about a lot this time of year because with the warmer days and nicer weather, it's all I can think about.

I find that I don't associate myself as a "biker" because it is not simply that I am an enthusiast for the sport of motorcycling, it's that I use my motorcycle as a primary form of transportation during the warmer months.

And I don't even ride that fancy of a bike. I ride on a puny 2003 Suzuki GZ250. With a 250cc engine, it's the smallest you can find for road bikes. But, it gets the job done and does it well. My little putter gets 70 miles to the gallon, which is sweet when gas prices push $4.00/g, and puts even my hippie of a wife's 07 Camry Hybrid to shame (it gets a measly 40mpg).

It is a blast to ride too! You'd think that to have any fun on a motorcycle you would HAVE to buy the fastest crotch rocket supersport bike with a name like Ninja or Katana [discontinued] or own a Harley or Victory...but you really don't. Any kid who's used a friend's dirt bike can tell you how much fun even going a few miles per hour around a dirt pile can be. Any bike will give you a feeling of freedom and exhilaration, no matter the name or the size or the speed you're going. In fact, with my small bike, you get all the fun of whipping down the highway at 90mph when you're putzing around at 60mph because there is no windshield or fairings to protect you from the wind.

That being said, I still want a new motorcycle. My little bike has served me well, but now that my wife has a full year of riding under her belt (taught her how last summer and she got her license too) she is itching for something that can get up highway speeds without going downhill with a tailwind.

I've been looking at sport/cruiser corssover bikes like the Suzuki GS500F, and the Suzuki GSX650F and even looking at some traditional cruisers like the Suzuki Boulevard M50 or the Yamaha Star V-star Custom. They all have a lot of great things, but at the moment, if I were to buy a bike tomorrow I am leaning toward the V-start Custom or the GS500F. Both are real solid bikes, and I like how both are not overkill for my needs (like the boulevard m50 and gsx650f).

I have also gladly put tons of money into safety and safety equipment. When I first got my motorcycle at 17, it was because my mom wanted to get a motorcycle. She had signed herself and I up for a motorcycle safety course that summer. We took the course through the Motorcycle Safety Foundation and they managed to teach me, someone who had never even driven a standard car, all of the basics of riding a motorcycle. They had their own bikes they taught us on, and at the end of the weekend-long course they had us take their own version of a road test. When I passed their tests, I was given a waiver and didn't even need to take my road test to get my license! It was so cool. Afterward my mom bought a bike just like the ones we learned on, the gz250. Unfortunately, she always felt the bike was too heavy (she had used dirt bikes as a teenager and was never comfortable on a road bike) so she gave me this brand new motorcycle she had gotten!

And now, after it has served its purpose and has taken all of the bumpd and scrapes of 3 new-to-sport riders, it is ready to move on to someplace better. Still runs like a dream, but yeah, I've been thinking about a new bike for a couple of years. I may get $1000 trade-in for it, and that can go toward the bike i really want.

Also, check out my first youtube video (sorry the sound is messed up lol) of my cat trying to figure out why he can't jump over our railing onto the neighbor's deck.

I've always wanted to live in British Columbia for a while. I visited there for a week a few years ago and I loved it. Vancouver is a really cool city, and so close to the Canadian Rockies.

I would also like to live in Northern California, I hear it's beautiful. All of my friends move to Colorado...but they never stay long, and from what I hear it's either urban sprawl or nothingness.

I liked living in the Adirondack Park in New York...but there's way too much elitist locals and over-protectionist seasonal residents and since it's a state park it's got jurisdictions of building codes and realty at an excessive level.

I like living in New Hampshire right now. I'm right at the souther tip of the White Mountains National Forest, in the dead middle of the state. I am 2 hours away from Boston and 4 hours away from my family. 2 hours from the coast. It's a great place. Although, to tell the truth, I'm unsure about the job market here. I can find winter employment easy, but the cost of living here is pretty high. Rents around here are expensive, and although I got a deal on a nice place, the utility bills are still expensive and our rent is still higher than before. And of course the simple stuff is more expensive because NH doesnt have an income tax or a sales tax...which in reality is a big savings, but when I want to register my car or get a new license..it's damned expensive, like a few hundred dollars a year for the vehicle registrations. Which I don't mind paying.

The job market, as I said, I'm unsure of. I couldn't find a job when we first moved mostly because I was about to start school so nobody was willing to hire me for less than a month anyway and I was hoping to get a work-study, which I did..but this spring I'm going to be without the work study and my current job, obviously. There is a wal-mart and a hannaford, but I'm going to have to check up with my school's internship office and see if I can land a paid internship at a law office or a political science type thing...something close to what I'm studying.

I don't think my area is being hit by the recession though, which is hopeful, but we'll see. I see a few businesses opening up here and there, but i haven't been around long enough to see if there have been any closings either.