Quotations Weblog

This time of year isn’t all stockings and mistletoe for everyone. The Christmas season can be like a magnifying glass focusing itself on your life. It can bring into focus all that is good with your life and make you more grateful for it or it can focus on what is currently making you miserable. You decide. If this is the time of year that brings all that is lacking in your life into a crystal clarity that is hard to escape, give yourself an hour for an exercise that just might change it’s focus.

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I agree that books are an excellent present to give on Christmas. This year, I was lucky to read many agreeable books. Here are a couple that were entertaining:

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld: Young Adult Science Fiction
Read my review here: Pick Me! » Uglies
Read my collection of quotations here: Quotations Weblog » Archive » Uglies

Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow: Adult Fantasy/Science Fiction
Read my review here:Pick Me! » Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town
Read my collection of quotations here: Quotations Weblog » Archive » Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town

Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart: Adult Fantasy
Read my review here: Pick Me! » Perfect Circle
Read my collection of quotations here: Quotations Weblog » Archive » Perfect Circle

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld: Young Adult Fantasy
Read my review here: Pick Me! » Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
Read my collection of quotations here: Quotations Weblog » Archive » Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling: Young Adult Fantasy
Read my collection of quotations here: Quotations Weblog » Archive » Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. and Howard Rheingold: Adult Non-Fiction
An introduction to lucid dreaming by the man who was the first to prove that we can be conscious during sleep, Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D.

This is merely the collection of books that I have read this year. There are thousands more at your disposal. When you’re trying to decide whether to send the smoked salmon or chocolate cherries, maybe it’s time for something entirely different.

Yesterday a earthquake measuring approximately 6.8 on the Richter Scale hit the lake between The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. It toppled homes and the hospitals are filled with injured children. This is an area that is also struggling with war and volcanic activity.

• CNN.com – East Africa quake buries children – Dec 5, 2005

Considering how much Nature has done this year in her war against humanity, it seems silly that we are fighting with ourselves. At any moment, the world can turn upside down on us. Shouldn’t we be preparing for the next natural disaster instead of trying to beat each other into submission?

I’ve been catching up on the first few episodes of the new CBS drama, Criminal Minds. This show follows a team of criminal profilers at the FBI. It’s not my favorite show—the violence is overdone sometimes, and some of the plots require a bit more suspension of disbelief than I posess. But it does have well-written dialogue and good acting, in particular Mandy Patinkin and Dharma and Greg‘s Thomas Gibson.

Oh, and it also has quotations. In an apparent effort to make Patinkin’s character, Jason Gideon, seem even smarter, he narrates an occasional appropriate quotation during the transition between scenes. Of course, being a quotation fanatic, I have to pause the video and verify each one. Surprisingly, almost every one has been correctly quoted, and there were even some good ones I hadn’t heard before.

TV crime dramas aren’t usually a source of great quotations, so watching Criminal Minds has been a pleasant surprise. Here’s a sampling of quotes used in the first 6 episodes of the series.

Would I care if we lost the “War on Terror”? Would I be ashamed that we turned tail and ran away? If there was a way to get all of our military forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan, would I vote yes? If I was in charge, what would I do?

I’d get our troops out of there. Would I care if we lost? Nope. Would I be ashamed? Not any more than I already am for going into there in the first place. I’m certain as nails that I would pack up our people and get them out of there. You want to know why?

• CNN.com Specials – Faces of the Fallen

There are so many that we have already lost just on the first page of this list of casualties that I want the ones that have survived to come home right now. I don’t care if the rest of the world thinks we lost or that the terrorists won. I just want the soldiers that have survived to come home.