Interview With a Vampire Writer

"To be able to take the tools, the apprenticeship, whatever I learned from being a vampire writer, or whatever I was — to be able to take those tools now and put them in the service of God is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful opportunity ... And I hope I can redeem myself in that way. I hope that the Lord will accept the books I am writing now ... I mean, I've made vampires believable to grown women. Now, if I can do that, I can make our Lord Jesus Christ believable to people who've never believed in him. I hope and pray." — Anne Rice, quoted in an article about her new memoir, Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession

nations hypnotized

"We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight armored tanks with rifles, are not scandalized when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of 'subjects'; and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotized by the arts of the spell binder, we have the impudence to be astonished."

-- Dorothy Sayers in The Lost Tools of Learning

Cross in the Center to Draw Us Toward the Lord

[Pope Benedict XVI] recognized that his suggestion is gaining ground: "to not modify the structures, but simply to put a cross in the center of the altar, such that both the priest and the faithful look toward it, so as to allow themselves to be drawn toward the Lord, to whom we all pray together." (link to Zenit article about Ratzinger-Benedict's 'Complete Works')

Capt Kirk on Mr Sulu's Psychosis

Captain Kirk is hurt and upset that he missed out on Mr Sulu's bagpipe procession. "The whole thing makes me feel badly," Shatner said in the video [posted on his web site]. "Poor man. There is such a sickness there. It's so patently obvious that there is a psychosis there. I don't know what his original thing about me was. I have no idea." (link to AP article)

Real Education

regarding Charles Murray's writing in Real Education: "So what is his thesis here? To confront the accepted "lie" that every child can be anything he/she wants to be with four truths: that ability varies; that half of the children are below average, that too many people go to college; and that the future of the US depends on how we educate the academically gifted." -- from Francis Phillips article at MercatorNet.com

(Alternate) Nobel Prize in Literature

What an idea!  Here's the list of "Actual Winners" and "Alternate Reality Winner" of the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1901 to present.  Sometimes thay match each other, many times they don't.  This year the prize goes to American novelist Don DeLillo.

reading abuse

"To use a good book as a sedative is conspicuous waste."

- Mortimer Adler in How to Read a Book

haiku of satiety

Been eating a lot:
Three meals each day plus some junk.
My pants are too tight.

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