Religion and Abortion. In A Nutshell.

I Listen To Music

Date A Girl Who Reads

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.




Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.



She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.



Buy her another cup of coffee.



Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.



It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.



She has to give it a shot somehow.



Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.



Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.



Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.



If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.



You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.



You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.



Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.



Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

The Rhythm of Time

The Rhythm of Time
Bobby Sands


There's an inner thing in every man,
Do you know this thing my friend?
It has withstood the blows of a million years,
And will do so to the end.

It was born when time did not exist,
And it grew up out of life,
It cut down evil's strangling vines,
Like a slashing searing knife.

It lit fires when fires were not,
And burnt the mind of man,
Tempering leandened hearts to steel,
From the time that time began.

It wept by the waters of Babylon,
And when all men were a loss,
It screeched in writhing agony,
And it hung bleeding from the Cross.

It died in Rome by lion and sword,
And in defiant cruel array,
When the deathly word was 'Spartacus'
Along with Appian Way.

It marched with Wat the Tyler's poor,
And frightened lord and king,
And it was emblazoned in their deathly stare,
As e'er a living thing.

It smiled in holy innocence,
Before conquistadors of old,
So meek and tame and unaware,
Of the deathly power of gold.

It burst forth through pitiful Paris streets,
And stormed the old Bastille,
And marched upon the serpent's head,
And crushed it 'neath its heel.

It died in blood on Buffalo Plains,
And starved by moons of rain,
Its heart was buried in Wounded Knee,
But it will come to rise again.

It screamed aloud by Kerry lakes,
As it was knelt upon the ground,
And it died in great defiance,
As they coldly shot it down.

It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space
It has risen in red and black and white,
It is there in every race.

It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
It screams in tyrants' eyes,
It has reached the peak of mountains high,
It comes searing 'cross the skies.

It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is 'the undauntable thought', my friend,
That thought that says 'I'm right! '

A Spot of Ireland.

So in case you didn't know, part of my last summer was spent in Ireland. It was such an amazing experience and I wanted to share a little of what happened. Here's part of a letter that I wrote back home while I was there:



SO here we are in Ireland. We have this house in a town called Sneem in the South of Ireland. No joke. Sneem. Go ahead. Say it out loud. You'll laugh. We spent the whole way down saying SNEEEEEEEMMMM in really nasally voices out of our open windows of the car. But to get there we had a three hour drive across England. Then a four hour ferry ride. Then a six hour drive again across Ireland. I really could not feel my butt. All of the houses here are really Eastery colored. Like pink and lime green. That's kind of gross. Our house is on this TINY TINY road that our small British car barely fits through and yet there still is a sign there to remind us "No Passing". Our house is gorgeous. It's made of stone and is set on this rivery lake thing. We each get a room to ourselves. I have one of the less cool rooms cause I was being a gentleman and let the others get the good rooms... I figured I'm only sleeping in there right? Our view is a river/lake which is absolutely breathtaking -- complete with swan (Named Waldo. We spend the whole vacation going "Where's Waldo, guys!?") I took loads of pictures with Joshua (my camera). To top it off, a dog from next door who wasn't allowed inside, is constantly there. He's a Collie named Max and he plays fetch and stuff with us.

 You can walk into town from our house too. I say town, but really it's a village. It has three stores to buy things in so I find myself just coming back into the same ones with an awkward "Hi, again," thrown at the person behind the counter coupled with an embarrassed smile.


On the way to town I pass a few houses on the small road. One of them has two dogs -- this little devil terrier and this really really old Grey hound that had a few tumors on it. The poor grey hound looks as if it were in prime shape about the time the dinosaurs walked the earth. Like a puff of wind would cause it to shatter and disappear. The terrier looked as if it had human expressions -- and the expression was pissed off. So whenever I pass the house, the grey hound looks mournfully at me through sunken eyes and the devil dog barks ferociously lunging for my neck but only making my upper thigh.
I was walking down town the other day by myself and the devil dog came running up to me screaming its head off. Really annoyed, I was about to aim a well earned kick in its direction when this AMAZINGLY ATTRACTIVE guy comes out of the house and is all, "Good morning! I see you've met Fluffy. He seems to like you. He doesn't usually go up to strangers like that" In this gorgeous Irish accent. I like immediately drop to my knees and start petting the dog. I'm like "Oh. Uh, hi. He's a lovely dog." The dog is practically on my knees and slobbering on me but I just kind of pat him on the head while I talk to this guy. It was pretty much really awkward. Everyone seemed to think it was really cool that I was from the states which was weird but nice I guess. Finally I said I had to go so he kind of smiled and was like okay. I got up to go and the fucking terrier bites my fucking shoe and won't let go. I mean C'MON! Trying to be nice, I was like, "Uh. That's my shoe." The dog growled in agreement. I look at the guy expecting him to help but he's just merrily chuckling at my pain. What the hell? I was being eaten alive by his dog!! Basically I dragged the dog down the street a little before the guy stopped laughing enough to call the devil dog off me. Jesus Christ, man.

But really, everyone is super nice. My dad needed batteries one day for the flashlight, but he only needed two. The guy in the store looked everywhere but the smallest pack he had was a four pack. My dad was like, oh it's okay I'll just get that one. But the man has horrified and was like But you only need two! So he cut the package in half and sold him two for half price.
We toured around Ireland a bit. Our code that we didn't like something was either, "Do you hear thunder?" or "This is crap."



Well, that was a little window into my experience in Ireland. Go and visit there sometime. :) It's amazing.