Bookworm

State of the Blog

I haven't been posting on this blog for a while, as I've become completely obsessed with paper crafting as a hobby.  My blog Lens is the most active right now, with pictures of cards I've made and the occasional photo.  I occasionally post on Twitter. 

• The best book I've read so far this year is Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, about a woman who made a lot of great fossil discoveries in England in the early 1800's, but didn't receive a lot of recognition because she was female and from a working class family.
• I'm current reading The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris.  It is engaging, yet difficult to read.  You can't help but put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist or his wife and feel the stress of their situation. 
• I thoroughly enjoyed the Vancouver Olympics.  I felt like I got to see almost everything I was interested in and that the coverage by NBC was better.  There was a lot less emphasis on medals, and gold medals in particular (which we all understand is the goal and motivation for the athletes, needless to say) and the winners from other countries were recognized and interviewed.  It seemed like there were fewer biographical pieces and the ones they had were generally shorter. 
• The TV show Lost is in its final season and it boggles the mind to imagine that any of it will make sense in just few months. 
• I enjoy American Idol, but I honestly can't imagine the show without Simon.  The other judges' comments are a lot more relevant this season, but he's the most straight-forward. 

Be Perfect, or Else

EW article is spot on, with regard to the impossible standards expected of actresses:

". . . the rules actresses must obey. Among them: Have a ''positive body image,'' but also a killer body. Stay within the two-pound weight range that will not reveal you as either anorexic or a pig. Age gracefully, but never get older. Don't have wrinkles, but don't use Botox. Be modest, but when you win an award, weep as if a gold statuette is a personalized gift from heaven. If you get pregnant, be prepared to let a dozen news outlets act as your ob-gyn. Express concern about your carbon footprint, but don't be ''political.'' Talk about how living a normal life is important to you, but smile while every aspect of it is scrutinized. Criticize no one. Never speak off the cuff. Smile for the cameras. Don't cross those women on The View. And above all, maintain a stance of deep gratitude for everything while expressing opinions about nothing. My God, do we really want our stars to be that boring? Are we that boring?"  [Entertainment Weekly]

Yes, another post about Idol

"Sometimes the snow comes down in June. Sometimes the sun goes 'round the moon. And sometimes -- every once in a while -- the people who vote for "American Idol" get it right.   On Wednesday night, they got it right. They anointed the smartest, most intriguing, most authoritative performer this program has seen in many a season, and in the same stroke, they made a case for "American Idol's" relevance, at a time when it was seriously in doubt." [Salon]

"It took 4 months, 42 episodes, 24 semifinalists, 3 intermittently infuriating judges, a small army of Swaybots, a handful of botched lyrics, 97.5 million votes, and one particularly soul-crushing bit of promotion on behalf of Mike Myers' latest (alleged) comedy, but American Idol's seventh season has finally come to an end. . . [I]f I'm being completely honest, shortly after dabbing the tears from my eyes over David Cook's undeniably touching victory — and after fielding a phone call from my happily married sister, who is nonetheless planning her wedding (!) to the season 7 champ — I grabbed the calendar off my wall and did some deeply dorky calculations. Yes, fellow Idoloonies, only 237 days (by my best calculations) till the start of season 8! . . [O]n nights like tonight, when Idol gets it mostly right, it's a beautiful distraction from the mundane concerns of our workaday lives, from our laundry lists of tasks not yet finished (or perhaps not even started), from the relentless weight of our current news headlines." [EW]

Patrick Stewart - Macbeth

"In a recent interview Mr. Stewart spoke happily, even sentimentally, about his Enterprise-commanding days, which left him with a castful of close friends and an unexpected appreciation for the importance of “Star Trek” in American culture. He found the 1999 film “Galaxy Quest,’’ a satire that gently mocks the actors and fans of a “Star Trek”-like series, hilarious, but also moving, he said, in its recognition that “there was something profoundly serious and good” about the series.

But he came back to Britain and to full-time (for now) Shakespeare, he said, because he was homesick and fretting about lost time and missed opportunities. “Roles were passing me by, and I wanted to do more,” he said."  [New York Times]

Oprah's favorite guy? In politics, anyway

Can the powerful voice of Oprah Winfrey, whose book recommendation sent Anna Karenina shooting to the top of the bestseller lists, wield similar influence by campaigning for Barack Obama? This fast-reading article uses poll numbers and conventional wisdom to attempt to answer that question. It was announced yesterday that Winfrey will "barnstorm" early primary states with Obama. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson concludes that there might not be a huge effect, noting that she will not be using her show or magazine as a platform, but says, "if I were running for president, I'd rather have her with me than against me." [Quotes from Washington Post column]

Lenten Reading 2

. . . whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." [Link: BibleGateway.com - Passage�Lookup: John 4:10-14;.]

"We tend to think that the more people know and talk about something, the more important it must be.  That's understandable, considering the fact that great notoriety often means big money, and big money often means a large degree of power, and power easily creates the illusion of importance. . . It strikes me again and again that, in our publicity-seeking world, a lot of discussions about God take it as their starting point that even God has to justify himself. . . People often talk as thought God has as great a need for recognition as we do. . . God reveals himself in secrecy. . ." (Henri J.M. Nouwen, pg. 83-84, paperback edition)

That's so true. . . whatever has a big "buzz" does have the illusion of being important.  This passage made me think -- what if people really thought that the top ten searches in 2005 using Google, for example, were truly the top ten most important things?  Here there are:
1. Janet Jackson
2. Hurricane Katrina
3. tsunami
4. xbox 360
5. Brad Pitt
6. Michael Jackson
7. American Idol
8. Britney Spears
9. Angelina Jolie
10. Harry Potter

And, I also thought, wouldn't it be cool if one year "God" or "Jesus" was the top search term?

Star Trek Star James Doohan Has Died

Rest in peace, Scotty. Sniff.  [AP/Yahoo!]

Happy Birthday, Pac-man!

"This month, the bright yellow bloke -- forever wary of ghosts Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde, forever stuck in that maze -- is a quarter-century old. . . He was born in June 1980 in Japan, then introduced to the United States. Toru Iwatani, creator of the classic arcade game Galaxian, thought of it while staring at a pizza with one missing slice. . .The only person in the world who is known to have played a perfect game of Pac-Man. . . is one Billy Mitchell, a 39-year-old hot sauce manufacturer from Hollywood, Fla. In July 1999. . . Mitchell cleared all 256 levels, eating every single bonus prize and every possible ghost, and racked up 3,333,360 points."  [Washington Post]

The Persistence of Memory

No, I'm not referring to the Dali painting.  I'm referring to the oddness of my brain's decision not to retain useful things like, I don't know, almost everything I ever learned about the Spanish language, but rather to retain this list of the layers of a Big Mac: All-beef patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onion on a sesame seed bun.  Anyone else remember this advertising campaign?