by Kurt Vonnegut (1961)

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I read this story many years ago, and for some reason it’s always stuck with me. I am posting this before even reading it again since that first time so long ago. However, I can still picture the weighted ballerinas and the father’s thoughts being cut off by electrical impulse. This story has remained in the back of my mind since reading it. Posting it here In Remembrance seemed like the right thing to do.

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THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.

On the television screen were ballerinas.

A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.

“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.

“Huh?” said George.

“That dance – it was nice,” said Hazel.

“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good – no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped.

But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.

“Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,” said George.

“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel, a little envious. “All the things they think up.”

“Um,” said George.

“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday – just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.”

“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.

“Well – maybe make ‘em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.”

“Good as anybody else,” said George.

“Who knows better’n I do what normal is?” said Hazel.

“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.

“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?”

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.

“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in canvas bag, which was padlocked around George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a little while,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re not equal to me for a while.”

George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a part of me.

“You been so tired lately – kind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.”

“Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”

“If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,” said Hazel. “I mean – you don’t compete with anybody around here. You just set around.”

“If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people’d get away with it and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”

“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.

“There you are,” said George. “The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?”

If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn’t have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.

“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.

“What would?” said George blankly.

“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said?”

“Who knows?” said George.

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, “Ladies and gentlemen – ”

He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.

“That’s all right –” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.”

“Ladies and gentlemen” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.

And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me – ” she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.

“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under–handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.”

A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen – upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.

The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever worn heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H–G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.

Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.

And to offset his good looks, the H–G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle–tooth random.

“If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do not – I repeat, do not – try to reason with him.”

There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have – for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. “My God –” said George, “that must be Harrison!”

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.

Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

“Even as I stand here –” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”

Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.

Harrison’s scrap–iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.

He flung away his rubber–ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

“I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!”

A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.

She was blindingly beautiful.

“Now” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!” he commanded.

The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes and earls.”

The music began. It was normal at first – cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.

The music began again and was much improved.

Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while – listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.

They shifted their weights to their toes.

Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.

And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.

They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.

They leaped like deer on the moon.

The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.

They kissed it.

And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.

Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George.

But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.

George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying?” he said to Hazel.

“Yup,” she said,

“What about?” he said.

“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”

“What was it?” he said.

“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.

“Forget sad things,” said George.

“I always do,” said Hazel.

“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.

“Gee – I could tell that one was a doozy,” said Hazel.

“You can say that again,” said George.

“Gee –” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.”

“Credit?” said Firritz. “That word implies that your master at some point intends to pay his debt. I run up a tab, more and more, year after year, and see nothing for it. Maybe things have changed enought that that isn’t necessary anymore, eh?”

“Take a deep breath,” Valas said.

The old drow looked at him. They stayed like that for a bit, but finally Firritz breathed in a deep breath then exhaled slowly.

“That’s what you see for it,” Valas finished, “and it’s necessary I get a few supplies.”

Annihilation – War of the Spider Queen book V – Philip Athans – pg 88

“Do you ever dream, my friend?” Jarlaxle asked.

“Everyone dreams,” Entreri replied. “Or so I am told. I expect that I do, though I hardly care to remember them.”

“Not night dreams, the drow explained. “Everyone dreams, indeed, at night. Even the elves in our Reverie find dream states and visions. But there are two types of dreamers, my friend, those who dream at night and those we dream in the day.”

He had Entreri’s attention.

“Those night-dreamers,” Jarlaxle went on, “they do not overly concern me because there is nowhere for them to rise. But those who dream by day . . . those, my friend, are the troublesome ones.”

“Could Jarlaxle not consider himself among that lot?”

“Would I hold any credibility at all if I did not admit my troublesome nature?”

“Not with me.”

“There you have it then,” said the drow.

He paused and looked to the west, and Entreri did to, watching the sun slip lower.

“I know another secret about daydreamers,” Jarlaxle said at length.

“Pay tell,” came the assassin’s less-than-enthusiastic reply.

“Daydreamers alone are truly alive,” Jarlaxle explained. He looked back at Entreri, who matched his stare. “For daydreamers alone find perspective in existence and seek ways to rise above the course of simple survival.”

Entreri didn’t blink.

“You do daydream,” Jarlaxle decided. “But only on those rare occasions your dedication to . . . to what, I often wonder? . . . allows you outside your perfect discipline.”

“Perhaps that dedication to perfect discipline is my dream.”

“No,” the drow replied without hesitation “No. Control is not the facilitation of fancy, my friend, it is the fear of fancy.”

“You equate dreaming and fancy then?”

“Of course! Dreams are made in the heart and filtered through the rational mind. Without the heart . . .”

“Control?”

“And only that. A pity, I say.”

“I do not ask for your pity, Jarlaxle.”

“The daydreamers aspire to mastery of all they survey, of course.”

Promise of the Witch King – R. A. Salvatore

*tympani drum roll reverberates*

For 1 year Glaxton has existed on Red vs Blue.
For 1 year he has greeted people
( actually like 8 months but whatever ).
For 1 year you have not know where his name came from.

*cue the overly dramatic music for a not so dramatic situation*

NOW YOU WILL!

Ok, Ok, Ok… it’s not that big a deal…

However, I thought I would share where my name came from.

Close to 4 years ago now, I started playing Dungeons and Dragons. A friend of mine had been telling me about it for a long while and said he had not played for years. I bugged him about it until he bought some 2nd Edition books and started explaining it to me. I read the PHB cover-to-cover like 3 times before we even played.

My first campaign was with a group of guys which included my two friends on here Doug – dougieb5000 and James – SuperMan98. We played every Saturday night, about 8 of us, from 5 or 6 pm until 12, 1, 2 Sunday morning.

That was not enough to sate my appetite. So I requested my friend, and DM, to play in a campaign with me with him playing as DM and a character, and me as a character. I also wanted to use this as an opportunity to try my hand at DMing, which I never did.

I rolled up a human fighter, as my first character Elofindel Ian had been an elven magic user. I don’t know how many of you remember the picture I showed of Elofindel being up on my journal until Todd Lockwood ( the artist whose pictures I used to create him in photoshop ) requested I take it down… That was Elofindel.

Anyway, there was a lot that was special about this fighter. I rolled REALLY well on my starting cash so I had quite a bit of money to burn. I decided before I started playing him that I wanted to deck him out. I’m a bit weird in my D&D play. I concentrate a lot on the aesthetics / looks of the character when most other people only care about the bonus their armor has.

Whatever…

I bought him a Black Charriot, and a pair of Black Stallions. The Charriot, the horses’ blankets, and my armor were all black trimmed in gold and purple. My helm sported a Spartan style plume of gold and purple. My horses also sported Spartan style plumes of gold and purple. My shield was black with gold and purple trim, as was my sword. I even bought dice which were black, purple, and gold. ( maybe I can get a picture sometime soon )

Unfortunately my DM just shook his head at my “foolery” and “obsession” with the aesthetic and never paid any mind to all the work I put into his decor. Tragically we only played these characters once or twice and Glaxton dissapeared
back into my D&D folder after only reaching 2nd level.

Months later, I discovered Halo 1.
My first instinct was to revive forgotten Glaxton.
I created my profile as Glaxton on every xbox I played Halo on.
I use the Phoneix of blue and white ( instead of gold and purple ) for
my avatar always in honor of his rebirth.
I continued him into my Halo 2 days.
And 1 year ago I created this profile on this Halo based
website, and the only name that could fit such a profile for me was…

G – L – A – X – T – O – N

“The curse of intelligence,” Danica muttered ironically. Cadderly regarded her over his shoulder once more. “You cannot believe anything you cannot prove beyond doubt,” she said to him. “Must everything be tangible? Is there no room for faith in a mind that can unravel any of the lesser mysteries?”

Couple this with,

In Sylvan Shadows, Book II of The Cleric Quintet, Collectors Edition, page 253.

“Your perceptions of the world will change often as you grow,” Pertelope said quietly, so that the others would not hear. “And while the words in the book remain the same, your reading of them will not.”

Let me share a little story with all reading this journal.

I have shared several times, albeit cryptically and indirectly, that I have been facing an internal struggle over myself. Several years ago, less than 4, a friend of mine and I were talking and he asked me if I had ever read The Dark Elf Trilogy about Drizzt Do’Urden based in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting of D&D. I, rather detached and uninterested, answered no. I had always preferred self-created campaign settings for my D&D play, haughtily and stupidly, viewing people who played in pre-created and sold campaign settings lesser and weaker D&D players with less-than-ample imaginations for my then favorite game. Some years later, around 2 or 3, my desire to read something fantasy based gnawed at my mind. I had quit playing D&D out of frustration. My imagination has an insatiable appetite and D&D was doing little to sate said appetite, creating more agitation than pleasure. Thus, I called this friend and requested the books he mentioned to me. Within 30 days I had read 3,000 pages about Drizzt. These included: The Dark Elf Trilogy, The Icewind Dale Trilogy, The Legacy of the Drow (4 books), and Paths of Darkness (4 books).

Those 30 days fell within a larger span of 8 months that my girl friend and I had been broken up, while I was also dealing ( and still am ) with some powerful spiritual and moral questioning of myself. These books rang out to me with a power surpassing any scripture I have ever read. I could not believe it! I have several pages of notes from reading a fictional book!

More importantly, as the second quote above talks about, these books existed long before I began my trials and quest for answers inside myself. Their texts had not changed. As I read through them though I was touched every step of the way.

It seemed I possessed an internal time-table which dictated when I should read what books. I flowed through them as fast as I could, sometimes reading from early in the evening until as early as 4 or 5 in the morning. Yet, each story touched me as I needed it, when I needed it.

Take for example the story of Wulfgar’s struggle with himself later in the Drizzt books. For those of you who’ve read the books, you know what I’m talking about. I came upon those pages just as I needed to. I identified with his struggle at the time as it were my own.

Although I identify with Drizzt the most, and still do, every character, every story, every twist held something that I needed to hear to keep me going.

I just read the Hunter’s Blades Trilogy a few days ago (1,000 pages in 3 days) and now I’ve started The Cleric Quintet. As you can see I’m already on the 500th page and beyond, yet I’ve only been reading it since Sunday…

And these quotes struck me as powerfully as Wulfgar’s Aegis Fang could have. I sat there as I read the first quote and it stopped me dead in my tracks. I had not seen that coming. I had no idea Danica was about to spit out words which would affect me so powerfully. But, she did. And here I sit.

I couldn’t read any farther into the book until I wrote my thoughts down. I asked myself… NO… I told myself that these words, although unexpected, would hold something for me in the future. I asked myself what the significance might hold for me. Yet I could not, nor would I want to, answer that question, now…

Will I again pick up the scriptures and study them again, as I have not for nearly 2 years?
Would I be able to kneel again, and speak to God?
I have maintained my vigil and front of a Christian. My morals are unwavering and my principles iron clad. Those will never change or falter. Not even under the threat of death, were it to come to that. However, I did not believe many of the tennants of Christianity, rather, I was questioning them. Had Christ really walked the Earth? Was Christian history any where NEAR accurate?

I told myself at the time that it did not matter. And, at the time, it didn’t.
I chose to continue following Christianity.
I made the decision and prepared myself to continue on that path.
I realized the world would be the better for me doing so, rather than me choosing a path of agnosticism, which I could never accept.

I have seen many powers of God revealed before me.
Of course I question those experiences after their occurrence, but I cannot deny them.
I think, perhaps, that we underestimate our own power, inside us, and our own wills.

I have often hypothesized about us being the power source and religion being the catalyst to bring about such “miracles” and “religious experiences” in modern day.

But…

I cannot deny the power I’ve felt in my own life.
I cannot deny the ways that have opened to me, when they needed to open to me, and not a moment to soon or to late.
I cannot deny a sense of purpose above myself and beyond anything I understand.

For a long time I did not understand, and I tried to deny much around me.

No more…

I’ve got life ahead of me, and I’ve got a lot more to figure out, but all in due time.

I needed to write this as the background music is still playing,
and my mind is still whirring.

I’m sure many of my readers remember my How I Feel journal from just 3 months ago.

Here I go again.

To give you folks an insight into my life:
I’m incredibly moved by films.
When I watch a movie, or read a book, it is not just entertainment for me.
It’s nearly real…

Watching this movie I thought more and more about the honor within myself.
I have a problem with legalistic Christians because of this.
I have an all inclusive, pervading sense of honor within me.
I have morals that surpass that of almost anyone I know, and nothing
in this world or the next could ever cause me to waver my stance.

Watching this movie I saw this in the Samurai.
Honor.
Morals.
Dedication.
Discipline.

A quote in the movie by Tom Cruise was:
“From the moment they wake, they devote themselves to the perfection of whatever they pursue. I have never seen such discipline.”

I think about discipline, and dedication.
This is often what drives me toward the love of the military.

I see my flaby body and see the lact of discipline and dedication.
Nearly every time I watch a movie such as this, and am reminded of my
paunch encircling my mid section, I am troubled.

I have often dreamt about leaving society and burying myself deep in
Yellow Stone National Park, or a forrest somewhere.
A place uninhabited by any of my own species, and devoid
of the creature comforts of society.

We, people, are weak.
I am here, at a Hot Air Balloon race this whole week, and people
are complaining about the heat.

I prefer to wear no shoes, and people scoff at how much it hurts their feet.

WEAK!

Mind you. I am not strong. I am not tough.

Moreover, I am not warrior.

Ladies and Gentlement.

Tom Cruise, the Last Samurai, found his destiny, his calling, his duty, his life.

However, to quote me, “There is no fade to black in real life.

At the end of the movie, you see Tom Cruise’s character approaching the woman
of his dreams to, supposedly, live out his life in the peace he found.

The peace which so many are looking for, and so few find.

I will not fade to black when I marry Jenni.
It will be a constant struggle.
I will not “fulfill my destiny” and then fade to black.

I must live the rest of my life.
I cannot watch the credits roll by, and the emotions flood in.

The only fade to black, is death.

Some days I’ve longed for death.
Others I’ve feared it beyond all else.

I’ve looked upon people, and wished for the destruction of all.
Other times, I’ve seen the beauty of life.
A child at play, a work of art, of the unaltered beauty and power of this planet.

“Life in every breath.” said Katsumoto

Life in every breath.

*breath*

Life…

The heat has always reminded me of life.
Fire. Heat. Blood pumping.

Cold has always reminded me of death.

Maybe that is one reason I enjoy the heat so much.

Here I am.
Spilling my life to you folks.
Some responses will be good.
Many of the comments I read from my How I Feel journal previously
gave me great inspiration, while others I deleted because of the sheer
stupidity and inmaturity.

LOL. I was going back through the comments of said journal, and came across this little gem:
Ejynx1 – “Did you know that 2000 years ago the greatest warriors in the world at the time, the samurais were all poets, flower pickers, painters, etc.”

Interesting, huh?

I am realizing I need not be overly concerned about my future.
But I do know that I must make of it what I wish.

I loved the simplicity of the Japanese lifestyle as it was portrayed in the movie.

No chairs, few tables, and almost NO decorations.

I adore this simplicity.

I have always said, my ideal office, or room, would be a very large room with wall to wall, floor to ceiling, windows
filled with nothing more than a large, glass and metal desk, dead center of the room.

I see this simplistic, yet effective, architecture in the Japanese.

Also, their interior gardens.
A sanctum.
A connection to life outside our own.

To plant something.
To care for it, and raise it, shows you an extension of life.
Something alive that you helped create and coax to live.

This is a similar experience to having your first child, just not quite as powerful.

Ladies and Gentlement, I’m signing off.

I’m not sure what to think, but I’m going to keep thinking.

p.s. As I re-read this journal I realized how random it is. I promise I will go back, re-read this again, and elucidate more on each topic I touched on. That will be the best way for me to flesh out my thoughts, instead of trying to do it in one huge journal.

Thank you for the comments I’m sure you’ll leave.

For those of you that have nothing better to say than, “Cool.”
Save it for the 1,000,000th journal highlighting Halo 3 spoilers…

ERB SIX

I’m the sixth male on my dad’s side of the family with the initials of ERB.

Starting with my great-grandfather, down to my
cousin’s son, who is ERB SEVEN.

Edward Reinard ( great grandfather )
Elmer Roland ( grandfather )
Earl Richard ( uncle )
Eldon Ray ( father )
Eric Ryan ( uncle’s son = 1st cousin )
Ellis Raymond ( ME! )
Elija Reese ( uncle’s grandson, uncle’s son’s son, 2nd cousin )

Ellis Benus – “Dreams, it seems, don’t pay the bills.”

Ellis Benus – “Good things don’t happen to those who wait! Good things happen to those who make them happen!”

Ellis Benus – “There is no fade to black in real life.”

Ellis Benus – “In-Laws are like salt. A little bit is good, but too much can ruin ANYTHING.”

Ellis Benus - ”It’s always easiest to make others laugh, when you’re asking them to laugh at you.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery – “A goal without a plan is just a wish. “

Fortune Cookie – “Seek out the significance of your problem at this time. Try to understand.”

Amy Wallace – “Looking back over human history, rationality has been the anomaly.”

Kurt Cobain – “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.”

Ken Robinson – “If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.”

Benjamin Disraeli – “The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.”

J. J. Abrams – “The point is, we should never underestimate process. The experience of the doing really is everything. The ending should be the end of that experience, not the experience itself.”

Lucius Seneca – “There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.”

Jay London – “I saw a stationery store move.”

Jeph Jacques – “You can either hold yourself up to the unrealistic standards of others, or ignore them and concentrate on being happy with yourself as you are.”

Robert Anthony – “When you blame others, you give up your power to change.”

Bill Vaughan – “Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.”

Sir William Drummond – “He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.”

Stu Phillips of Ridgelift Ventures – “Economic slowdowns tend to coincide with bright people leaving big companies to do their own thing.”

Evan Esar – “Hope is tomorrow’s veneer over today’s disappointment.”

James Thurber – “Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?”

Eldest pg 361 – “Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn’t exist, and never shall. There is only now.”

Eldest pg 544 – “The problem he struggled with, though, was that if the elves were right, it meant that nearly all the humans and dwarves were deluded, something Eragon found difficult to accept. That many people cannot be mistaken, he insisted to himself.”

Eldest pg 620 – “It takes courage to admint you were wrong. Only if you are afraid of looking foolish, and i would have looked farm more foolish if I persisted with an erroneous belief.”

Eldest – Eragon on Religion – “For a long time, Eragon stared out the window, turning Oromis’s words over in his mind. “You don’t believe in an afterlife, then.”

“From what Glaedr said, you already knew that.”

“And you don’t put stock in gods.”

“We give credence only to that which we can prove exists. Since we cannot find evidence that gods, miracles, and other supernatural things are real, we do not trouble ourselves about them. If that were to change, if Helzvog were to reveal himself to us, then we would accept the new information and revise our position.”

“It seems a cold world without something . . . more.”

“On the contrary,” said Oromis, “it is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our own actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment. I won’t tell you what to believe, Eragon. It is far better to be taught to think critically and then be allowed to make your own decisions than to have someone else’s notions thrust upon you. You ask after our religion, and I have answered of you true. Make of it what you will.”

Henry Ford – “It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.”

Ambrose Bierce – “Future: That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.”

Henry Miller – “Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.”

Sir Francis Bacon – “A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”

Woody Allen – “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work… I want to achieve it through not dying.”

Aristotle – “To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing.”

Eric Sink – “The way to get burned is to spend all your time daydreaming about how wonderful things will be after the deal is done. The way to win is to carefully figure out how tolerable things will be after the deal falls through.”

Mark Twain – “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Paul Valery – “What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.”

Mo Udall – “If you can find something everyone agrees on, it’s wrong.”

Martin Luther King – “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”

George Santayana – “There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”

King Edward VIII – “The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children.”

Kevin Costner – “Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win out in the end because they’ve stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments.”

Mark Twain – “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

Voltaire – “A witty saying proves nothing.”

Henry Ford – “If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.”

HE Martz – “He who builds a better mousetrap these days runs into material shortages, patent-infringement suits, work stoppages, collusive bidding, discount discrimination–and taxes.”

John Steinbeck – “I know three things will never be believed – the true, the probable, and the logical.”

Albert Einstein – “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

Albert Einstein – “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Napoleon Bonaparte – “Imagination governs the world.”

Aristotle – “No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.”

Mark Twain- “Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”

A. G. Buckham – “Monotony is the awful reward of the careful.”

Shakespeare: Julius Caesar – “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste death but once.”

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO – “Attempting to provide too much order dries out the creativity.”

Evan Esar – “America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.”

Niccolo Machiavelli – “Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”

Bob Edwards – “A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.”

Tony Robbins – “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”

Thomas Jefferson – “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”

Thomas A. Edison – “Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.”

Jack London – “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

Robert Anton Wilson – “Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt… Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.”

Eric Hoffer – “We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.”

Adlai E. Stevenson – “He who slings mud generally loses ground.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero – “Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.”

Victor Hugo – “One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.”

Victor Hugo – “Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.”

Abu Bakr – “Knowledge is the life of the mind.”

Samuel Johnson – “A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”

Naguib Mahfouz – “God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.”

Mark Twain – “The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.”

Unknown – “You cannot have manslaughter without laughter.”

Benjamin Disraeli – “Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.”

P. J. O’Rourke – “There’s one more terrifying fact about old people: I’m going to be one soon.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower – “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

Benjamin Disraeli – “Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.”

Orison Swett Marden – “All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.”

Bill Cosby – “A word to the wise ain’t necessary – it’s the stupid ones that need the advice.”

Francis Bacon – “Knowledge is power.”

Aristotle – “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

Albert Einstein – “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

Thomas Jefferson – “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”

Saint Augustine – “Patience is the companion of wisdom.”

John Glenn – “There is still no cure for the common birthday.”

Michael J. Fox – “Pain is temporary, film is forever.”

Michael J. Fox – “I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.”

Michael J. Fox – “People always ask me if I say to myself ‘Why Me?’ and I tell them, ‘Why not me?”‘- On being diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease

Fred Allen – “Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.”

B. F. Skinner – “The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”

Drizzt Do’Urden – “Profound pain is often the unavoidable reality of conscious existence. How less tolerable that loss will be if we compound it internally with a sense of guilt.”

Lou Holtz – “Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.”

Bill Watterson – “There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do.”

Arnold H. Glasow – “Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.”

Bodhi (Point Break) – “It was about us against the system. That system that kills the human spirit. We stand for something. To those dead souls inching along the freeways in their metal coffins, we show them that the human spirit is still alive.”

William Feather – “No man is a failure who is enjoying life.”

Herbert Hoover – “About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.”

Epictetus – “Only the educated are free.”

Charles Kettering – “Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.”

Anais Nin – “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

Unknown – “Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?”

Bernard Baruch – “Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.”

Anatole France – “It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.”

Bill Watterson – “There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do.”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton – “Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.”

“I’ve noticed that very few people are scary, once you’ve poked them in the eye.”
- Dr. Temperance ‘Bones’ Brennan of Bones

Ralph Waldo Emerson – “A man is what he thinks about all day long.”

William Shakespeare – “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”

James A. Baldwin – “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”

Unknown – “Profanity is the act of a feeble mind searching for a way to express itself.”

“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte – NOT Napoleon Dynamite!

“I have got half a mind to find your old man and kick him in the nuts
so hard he can never foul the earth witha nother little s**t like you.”
- Billy Bob Thornton – Bad News Bears

“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”
- Henry David Thoreau
p.s. Do you think he only had 1 friend?!

“Unlike Abrahamic religions, Buddhism is not in conflict with science, because it isn’t stuck in belief. It is more like what science aspires to be.”
- Sat Tara S. Khalsa – Wired Magazine Issue 14.04 Rants and Raves

“My life is my message.”
- Mohandas Gandhi

“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
- Albert Einstein

“When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong– or absolutely right.”
- Albert Guinon

“We are spiritual beings having a physical experience.”
- Random Bumper Sticker

“Youth is wasted on the young.”
- George Bernard Shaw

“Inigo Montoya: You seem a decent fellow, I hate to kill you.
Westley: You seem a decent fellow, I hate to die..”
- The Princess Bride

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
- Andy Dufresne
- The Shawshank Redemption

“I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it. “
- Voltaire

“You can’t have Manslaughter without Laughter!”
- NinjaPanda

“It’s all about finding what is good about your present situation and embracing that.”
- Flea_girl

The single best advice for any D&D roleplayer ever!
“Forget about the numbers, and focus on the characters, situations and environment!”
- ErokDragun

“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
- H. L. Mencken

“Nothing happens unless first we dream.”
- Carl Sandburg

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
- Winston Churchill

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
- Mark Twain

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
- William James

“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”
- Katharine Hepburn

“There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.”
- Plato

“I like children – fried.”
- W. C. Fields

“The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.”
- Henry Ward Beecher

“[It is] much easier to conceive than to carry through, to abandon than to complete.”
- Carolyn G. Heilbrun from Writing a Woman’s Life

“It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.”
- Thomas H. Huxley

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
- Arthur C. Clarke

“We are what we believe we are.”
- C. S. Lewis

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

“You learn when you’re young. You understand when you are old.”
- Unknown

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”
- James Dean

“Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.”
- George Bernard Shaw
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
Key Chain Philosophy:
“Everything cometh to he who waiteth, so long as he worketh like HELL while he waiteth!”
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Is this not our world?
“They live with the belief that anything is acceptable if you can get away with it, that self-gratification is the most important aspect of existence, and that power comes only to she or he who is strong enough and cunning enough to snatch it from the failing hands of those who no longer deserve it. Compassion has no place in Menzoberranzan Earth, and yet it is compassion, not fear, that brings harmony to most races. It is harmony, working toward shared goals, that precedes greatness.
- R. A. Salvatore Homeland

I do not disagree with the claims, and would not openly attack the premise of their encounters. I am glad for those who have found enrichment amidst the chaos; I am glad whenever another person finds the contentment of spiritual guidance.

But what of faith?

What of fidelity and loyalty? Complete trust? Faith is not granted by tangible proof. It comes from the heart and the soul. If a person needs proof of a god’s existence, then the very notion of spirituality is diminished into a sensuality and we have reduced what is holy into what is logical.

I have touched the unicorn, so rare and so precious, the symbol of the goddess Mielikki, who holds my heart and soul. This was before the onset of the Time of Troubles, yet were I of a like mind to those who make the claims of viewing avatars, I could say the same. I could say that I have touched Mielikki, that she came to me in a magical glade in the mountains near Dead Orc Pass.

The unicorn was not Mielikki, and yet it was, as is the sunrise and the seasons, as are the birds and the squirrels and the strength of a tree that has lived through the dawn and death of centuries. As are the leaves, blowing on autumn winds and the snow piling deep in cold mountain vales. As are the smell of a crisp night, the twinkle of the starry canopy, and the howl of a distant wolf.

No, I’ll not argue openly against one who has claimed to have seen an avatar, because that person will not understand that the mere presence of such a being undermines the very purpose of, and value of, faith. Because if the true gods were so tangible and so accessible, then we would no longer be independent creatures set on a journey to find the truth, but merely a herd of sheep needing the guidance of a shepherd and his dogs, unthinking and without the essence of faith.

The guidance is there, I know. Not in such a tangible form, but in what we know to be good and just. It is our own reactions to the acts of others that show us the value of our own actions, and if we have fallen so far as to need an avatar, an undeniable manifestation of a god, to show us our way, then we are pitiful creatures indeed.

The Time of Troubles? Yes. And even more so if we are to believe the suggestion of avatars, because truth is singular and cannot, by definition support so many varied, even opposing manifestations.

The unicorn was not Mielikki, and yet it was, for I have touched Mielikki. Not as an avatar, or as a unicorn, but as a way of viewing my place in the world. Mielikki is my heart. I follow her precepts because, were I to write precepts based on my own conscience, they would be the same. I follow Mielikki because she represents what I call truth.

Such is the case for most of the followers of most of the various gods, and if we looked more closely at the pantheon of the Realms, we would realize that the precepts of the “goodly” gods are not so different; it is the worldly interpretations of those precepts that vary from faith to faith.

As for the other gods, the gods of strife and chaos, such as Lloth, the Spider Queen, who possesses the hearts of those priestesses who rule Menzoberranzan…

They are not worth mentioning. There is no truth, only worldly gain, and any religion based on such principles is, in fact, no more than a practice of self-indulgence and in no way a measure of spirituality. In worldly terms, the priestesses of the Spider Queen are quite formidable; in spiritual terms, they are empty. Thus, their lives are without love and without joy.

So tell me not of avatars. Show me not your proof that yours is the true god. I grant you your beliefs without question and without judgement, but if you grant me what is in my heart, then such tangible evidence is irrelevant.

- Drizzt Do’Urden

The wizards cannot tell you of their origin, though they believe that a great wizard, a god of wizards, must have played some role in the first spawning of the beast. The elves, with their long fables explaining the creation of every aspect of the world, have many ancient tales concerning the origin of the dragons, but they admit, privately, that they really have no idea of how the dragons came to be.
My own belief is more simple, and yet, more complicated by far. I believe that dragons appeared in the world immediately after the spawning of the first reasoning race. I do not credit any god of wizards with their creation, but rather, the most basic imagination wrought of unseen fears, of those first reasoning mortals.

We make the dragons as we make the gods, because we need them, because, somewhere deep in our hearts, we recognize that a world without them is a world not worth living in.

There are so many people in the land who want an answer, a definitive answer, for everything in life, and even for everything after life. They study and they test, and because those few find the answers for some simple questions, they assume that there are answers to be had for every question. What was the world like before there were people? Was there nothing but darkness before the sun and the stars? Was there anything at all? What were we, each of us, before we were born? And what, most importantly of all, shall we be after we die?

Out of compassion, I hope that those questioners never find that which they seek.

One self-proclaimed prophet came through Ten-Towns denying the possibility of an afterlife, claiming that those people who had died and where raised by priests, had, in fact, never died, and that their claims of experiences beyond the grave were an elaborate trick played on them by their own hearts, a ruse to ease the path to nothingness. For that is all there was, he said, an emptiness, a nothingness.

Never in my life have I ever heard one begging so desperately for someone to prove him wrong.
This is kind of what I believe right now… although, I do not want to be proved wrong…

For what are we left with if there remains no mystery? What hope might we find if we know all of the answers?

What is it within us, then, that so desperately wants to deny magic and to unravel mystery? Fear, I presume, based on the many uncertainties of life and the greatest uncertainty of death. Put those fears aside, I say, and live free of them, for if we just step back and watch the truth of the world, we will find that there is indeed magic all about us, unexplainable by numbers and formulas. What is the passion evoked by the stirring speech of the commander before the desperate battle, if not magic? What is the peace that an infant might know in its mother’s arms, if not magic? What is love, if not magic?

No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith.

And that, I fear, for any reasoning, conscious being, would be the cruelest trick of all.

-Drizzt Do’Urden (R. A. Salvatore – Icewind Dale Trilogy – Collector’s Edition – p. 381)