6 books i want to read and cannot find :(

1: Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens
by Neil Cole

2: Organic Community: Creating a Place Where People Naturally Connect
by Joseph R. Myers

3: The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out
by Mark Driscoll

4: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
by Shane Claiborne

5: Faith Works: How to Live Your Beliefs and Ignite Positive Social Change
by Jim Wallis

6: The Relevant Nation: 50 Activist, Artists And Innovators Who Are Changing Their World Through Faith
by Heather Zydek

A Man and a Woman

True love never can be rent
But only true love can keep beauty innocent

I could never take a chance
Of losing love to find romance
In the mysterious distance
Between a man and a woman
No I could never take a chance
‘Cos I could never understand
The mysterious distance
Between a man and a woman

You can run from love
And if it’s really love it will find you
Catch you by the heel
But you can’t be numb for love
The only pain is to feel nothing at all
How can I hurt when I’m holding you?

The soul needs beauty for a soul mate
When the soul wants… the soul waits …

For love and faith and sex and fear
And all the things that keep us here
In the mysterious distance
Between a man and a woman

A Man and a Woman, U2

Alas, Oprah, I Loved Ye So Well

Oh Oprah, Oprah, Oprah.

I once loved your crazy shows where you paid off bills for some lucky never-do-well, roused your audience to raise money for your Angel Network and gave beauty makeovers so dramatic that you made ugly ducklings weep. I used to be unashamed to say I watched the Oprah Winfrey show because - well - there was some good being done through her show. Plus, Oprah herself could be really charismatic and inspiring when she talked about the need to help others.

But now, I find the direction of your show difficult to comprehend and almost repulsive. First, the public skewering of James Frey. Then, the increasing propensity to talk over your guests. And now, the inexplicable throwing of your moral weight behind the most unbelivably pretentious self-help book I have seen in a long time - "The Secret"

"The Secret" is far more noxious than anything John Gray or Anthony Robbins has put out because at least those guys never crossed over to the realm of claiming their bag of postive thinking tricks were used by Einstein, Jesus, Moses and Leonardo da Vinci. They never claimed their theories were scientific or a spiritual truth. (Can I pause to scream into cyberspace right now: ARGH, HOW I LOATHE "THE SECRET"! And I loathe how people will fall for its clever tricks because of slick packaging and clever copywriting! How can people buy into this snake-oil rubbish!)

I think this Salon article pretty much sums up my disillusion with Oprah and her works. I loved that woman and I still love her crazy, "I want to help the world" attitude. But girl, you are so not helping the world right now with this "Secret" rubbish. Please, stop. the. insanity. ( rant over)


Excerpt from Oprah's Ugly Secret by Salon.Com's Peter Birkenhead

"The promises of Oprah culture can seem irresistible, and its hallmarks are becoming ubiquitous. Believers may be separated into tribes according to what they believe, but they do it in pretty much the same way, relying on a "Secret"-style conception of "intuition" --- which seems to amount to the sneaking suspicion that they're always right -- to arrive at their tenets. Instead of the world as it is, constantly changing and full of contradiction, they see a fixed and fantastical place, where good things come to those who believe, whether it's belief in a diet, a God, or a Habit of Successful People. These believers may believe in the healing power of homeopathy, or Scripture or organizational skills -- in intelligent design, astrology or privatization. They all trust that their devotion will be rewarded with money and boyfriends and job promotions, with hockey championships and apartments. And most of all they believe -- they really, really believe -- in themselves.

For these believers, self-knowledge is much less important than self-"love." But the question they never seem to ask themselves is: If you wouldn't tell another person you loved her before you got to know her, why would you do that to yourself? Skipping the getting-to-know-you part has given us what we deserve: the Oprah culture. It's a culture where superstition is "spirituality," illiteracy is "authenticity," and schoolmarm moralism is "character." It's a culture where people apologize by saying, "I'm sorry you took offense at what I said," and forgive by saying, "I'm not angry at you anymore, I'm grateful to you for teaching me not to trust shitheads like you." And that's the part that should bother us most: the diminishing, even implicit mocking, of genuine goodness, and of authentic spiritual concerns and practices. Engagement, curiosity and active awe are in short supply these days, and it's sickening to see them devalued and misrepresented."

Yet another reason to love Italy

Where else in the world can you find a bunch of hot-blooded male cooks who have such an innate sense for the theatrical that they can stage an impromptu chorus (with all of them singing in parts!) without missing out a beat as they dish out freshly grilled meats to the public?

No, this is not a stage performance - thought it just might be a scene straight from Les Miserables' "Do You Hear the People Sing?", if the characters were not French revolutionaries but Italian cooks.

The cooks just happened to set up their table with a very dark alley as a backdrop. Coupled with the smoke from the multiple grills rising up as dramatic mists and blazing white-lights turned on them, and you had an instant street musical worthy of Broadway. And one had the comedic timing to cheekly interject in between harmonising, "No Photo. No Photo. No flash." although all their grins told you they were eating up all the attention.

Good song with good food. Bravissimi!

The Meet Cute

"The Meet Cute"

I learnt this new phrase while watching that amazingly awful romantic comedy The Holiday en route to London three weeks ago. The Holiday reaches new depths of mediocrity with the scenes between Cameron Diaz and Jude Law (gorgeous people but ARGH, noxious plot!) but at least had a few charming bits during the Kate Winslet scenes. (But of course I also think Kate Winslet can do no wrong. hee.)

Anyhow, Kate Winslet plays poor melancholy Iris, a magazine writer nursing her pummelled heart. Her ex-boyfriend is that kind of cad that still wants to remain friends but keeps things so fuzzy that you are always wondering hopefully if he still likes you and wants to get back together. So Iris flies all the way to California to escape her crummy life.

Anyhow in the Hollywood neighbourhood, Iris befriends Old Screenwriter because he has lost his way home and she decides to kindly offer him a ride. That's when he tells her about "The Meet Cute"

According to good old Wikipedia:
"In the film The Holiday (2006), Eli Wallach's character Arthur Abbott (a Hollywood screenwriter) described a meet-cute by saying "Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in and both go to the same men's pajama department. The man says to the salesman, I just need bottoms, and the woman says, I just need a top. They look at each other and that's the meet-cute." "

In other words, it's one of the conventions of romantic comedy films where you have the contrived encounter of two potential romantic partners in unusual or comic circumstances. During a "meet-cute", scriptwriters often create a humorous sense of awkwardness between the two potential partners by depicting an initial clash of personalities or beliefs, an embarrassing situation, or by introducing a comical misunderstanding or mistaken identity situation.

So if screen mimicks reality to some extent, I wonder how many of the couples I know began with a Meet Cute in real life?