What's Your Favorite Song Lyric?

My current favorite is "Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die." It's from the song "Crumbs from Your Table" on U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. I know it's not a feel-good lyric; it's not a feel-good song. But it's an important topic to consider: it refers to the poor, the oppressed and the AIDS-afflicted in Africa (many millions of whom are children) not being given the help they need but having to beg for it from richer countries and still not receiving enough.

Why should they have to die just because they happen to have had the misfortune of being born in Africa and not the U.S. or some other well-off nation? And I've learned recently that the aid African nations do receive is a joke: on average, for every dollar received in aid, about $1.15 is sent back to repay old debts to rich nations (and it's $1.30 in the poorest counties).

Beyond simply considering the topic, it's important to do something to help if we can. Bono helped in the founding and is very active in the efforts of the organization DATA (for Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa). So far, I've added my name to the ONE Declaration ("The campaign to make poverty history") on the DATA website (www.data.org) and beg you to do the same.

Wow, I remembered my user name!

Has it really been over three months since my last post? That's not actually surprising - I'm at my least productive during the winter months (like one step short of hibernation). Greetings to all my readers (yes, both of you - you know who you are).

For my sister

My sister Lisa is the biggest Seinfeld fan I know. I have no idea what percentage of the postings on her blog consist of Seinfeld trivia questions, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was told it was upwards of 50%.

Beyond Seinfeld, she is actually an avid enthusiast of all pop culture trivia. (I still can't believe she beat me in a game of Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture Edition 2 on a Scrabble question - it should have been mine!)

That said, I would be remiss to not recount tonight's episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire for her enjoyment. Not only is it pop culture week on the show, but the $100,000 question for one of the contestants was as follows:

"As revealed in the series finale of 'Seinfeld,' what is the Soup Nazi's name?"
A: Aziz Nesin
B: Zef Hasani
C: Yev Kasem
D: Ali Kadare

If anyone I know can answer that question, it's you, Lisa. (I won't post the answer yet so you can have a crack at it first.)

Interestingly, the contestant (who actually guessed incorrectly and went home with $25K) was one third of the "I Heart Jake Ryan" team from VH1's World Series of Pop Culture.

Maybe not a blogger?

Even the casual observer will notice that I don't seem to be a natural born blogger.

Here's a tangent...

Alright, so we were shopping at Costco tonight and I came across an electric pencil sharpener I just had to have. (I know, that's got major tangent potential in itself, but let's not go there now.) As I opened the package, I noticed that among the ubiquitous product superiority declarations printed on the packaging was the following: "Sharpens to a Perfect 16 degree Point." One of these days someone's going to have to explain to me the virtue of a "Perfect 16 degree Point" sharpened pencil.

Bonus points for anyone who can shed any light on the subject. BEWARE: If you happen to be knowledgeable on this topic, you may just inadvertently reveal yourself to be a bigger geek than I am. (Extra bonus points to anyone who can identify the movie quote paraphrase in the first paragraph.)

My little sister made me start this blog.