Exist in plural

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, but we are also just stuff. Neither truth, when seen alone, is our solution, for our reality exists in plural."
-Jonah Lehrer

Within reach

“Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom."
-Mignon McLaughlin

dedication

Dedication page of Thomas Sayers Ellis' Skin, Inc.

stupendous

"Why was I given a toy train if not / to stage stupendous wrecks?"
-Dean Young

Discovery

Eureka

"Science is basically a lot of fighting."
-my physiological psychology professor last Thursday

Marshmallow

"We can’t control the world, but we can control how we think about it.”
-Walter Mischel, creator of the marshmallow test

Kangaroos

"Kangaroos can't hop backwards.  It wasn't funny, but you learned something."
-Daniel Tosh

Today I discovered

I can actually fit very little of my notebook in my mouth.

can you say "oral fixation?"

...And I wonder why I get sick all the time.

I also wonder which of these blog posts I won't be embarrassed by five years from now... or a week from now. 

The reason I want to be a writer

Why have I decided to hope for (and fight for) this ludicrous, irrational, economically-viable-as-turdmobiles career?  I figured it was (slightly) more reasonable than my childhood (and current) aspirations to be an astronaut, a pirate, a tiger, or Batman.

Not sure anyone but me will think this is funny

...but I thought it was hilarious. Facebook conversation with one of my best friends:

M:

I am just finishing Dune. I need a break from SF

Me:

YES

dune

so good

read american psycho

M:

Nope. That's Gaiman right?

Reach for the sky

"The text is simply the hand with which the artist-child reaches for the moon and so learns to clutch a useful, but nearer, object."
-Declan Kiberd, "Ulysses, Newspapers, and Modernism," Irish Classics

The part of my brain now atrophied

If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the part of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness.

-- Charles Darwin, from his autobiography

Versifying

"As to an occasional copy of verses, there are few men who have leisure to read, and are possessed of any music in their souls, who are not capable of versifying on some ten or twelve occasions during their natural lives: at a proper conjunction of the stars.  There is no harm in taking advantage of such occasions."

-Edward Fitzgerald, in a letter to Bernard Barton

So far, my new notebook contains...

a list of types of underwear that lasts for three pages, a page of words I associate with mermaids, two mentions of maraschino cherries, a rap in Spanish, a few ideas for dogs' names, and a list of things contained in my notebook.

New notebook

Last page of old notebook