Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Bits and Pieces

I've been a bit absent lately. A nine-day trip home, a newly acquired piano, the beginning of another semester of grad school, and a variety of other factors have pushed blogging to the back-burner. But I am back. 

Although the announcement of the contest's winner is later than I had previously planned, there was indeed a contest and there was indeed a winner. Monica Jacobson, a frequent commenter on this blog and a dear friend, is the winner of Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. She will be receiving a copy in the mail shortly. 

And for the rest of my readers, on this Wednesday evening, I hope you glean as much enjoyment, food for thought, and wisdom as I have from the following passage from William Goldman's The Princess Bride.

"And they lived happily ever after,” my father said. . . . The truth was, my father was fibbing. I spent my whole life thinking it ended that way, up until I did this abridgement. 

Then I glanced at the last page. . . . My father was, I guess I realized too late, a romantic, so he ended it another way. . . .

Yes, they got away. And got their strength back and had lots of adventures and more than their share of laughs

But that doesn’t mean I think they had a happy ending, either. 

Because, in my opinion, anyway, they squabbled a lot, and Buttercup lost her looks eventually, and one day Fezzik lost a fight and some hot-shot kid whipped Inigo with a sword and Westley was never able to really sleep sound because of Humperdinck maybe being on the trail. 

I’m not trying to make this a downer, understand. I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, next to cough drops. 

But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all."

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