“[My friend and I] spoke about the existential loneliness we are both experiencing at this time in our lives. This loneliness stems not from a lack of friends, problems with spouse or children, or absence of professional recognition. Neither of us has any major complaints in these areas.
Still…the question ‘What am I doing, and for what reason?’ lurks underneath all of our good feelings about friends, family and work… Without a deep-rooted sense of belonging, all of life can easily become cold, distant and painfully repetitive.” – Henri Nowen, “The Road To Daybreak”
Here are some statistics from 2003 conducted by The Jenkins Group:
• One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
• 57 percent of new books are not read to completion.
Shocking, right? I mention these statistics because I am currently picking out the books I’m going to read in 2013, drawing heavily from the Best Catholic Books of All-Time list posted by Brandon Vogt:
I’ll be posting my 2013 Reading List in a week or two. So what books do you plan to read next year?
I little while ago I finished reading a great article series on Catholic Exchanged entitled “How not to become Catholic” by James Tonkowich. I highly recommend it:
I’ve now posted quite a few Best of British posts and, although I’m sure I’ll do one or two more at some point in the future, I’ve pretty much covered most of the British comedy shows that I love. For this entry I thought I’d mention two relatively recent shows produced by the comedy duo David Mitchell and Robert Webb.
Peep Show
The dubiously named “Peep Show” was my first exposure to Mitchell & Webb. The show’s central characters are two friends, Mark and Jeremy. Mark is repressed, uptight and slightly obsessive, whereas Jeremy is his antithesis: directionless, hedonistic and more than a little thick.
The humour is often crass and tasteless, but has some really wonderful moments. The camera will often switch to the view of one of the characters and, when this happens, the audience gets the privilege of hearing that person’s inner monologue. Upon trying to talk his way out of a tricky situation you hear Jeremy think “That’s it, just say whatever you need to say….they’re just words…you can think about what they mean later”. We are also treated to a wonderful presentation of “bloke wisdom” when, while talking to a girl, we hear Mark think: “My God, she’s beautiful….I bet nobody’s ever told her…I should tell her!…wait, no…if I tell her and she realizes it, she’ll dump me for sure”…
That Mitchell and Webb Look
Following the success of “Peep Show”, Mitchell and Webb produced a comedy sketch show. I think it’s hard to do sketch shows well and it’s extremely hard to keep the comedy standard consistent between different sketches.
It’s quite rare that I ever want to watch an episode of a sketch show more than once, but I’ve found “That Mitchell and Webb Look” to have good replay value, having some particularly great sketches such as the Nasty Vicar, The Homeopathic Emergency Room and, of course, what’s comedy without some Nazis?
On the occasions I visit a non-Catholic congregation I always seem to end up getting a preacher who tells me to turn to my neighbour and say stuff. Well, it turns out that this presentation technique really annoys Michael Joiner too…
Since today is the 
I’ve now posted quite a few 
On the occasions I visit a non-Catholic congregation I always seem to end up getting a preacher who tells me to turn to my neighbour and say stuff. Well, it turns out that this presentation technique really annoys Michael Joiner too…