Bookworm

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?