--HAVE YOU ANY DREAMS YOU'D LIKE TO SELL?

…Yesterday was the 40^th anniversary of the Watergate break-in.  In some ways it seems longer ago than that.  There have been over 270 books written about it.

…I watched “Hitch” again the other day.  “Hitch” with Will Smith.  It’s such a fun film and despite a couple of cheesy parts, pretty adorable.

…Adele’s album “21” had its 24^th week non-consecutive week at #1.  It has sold a grand total of 9.34 million copies since its March 2011 release.

Selling 9.34 million copies today would be akin to selling 27.9 million in the 1980’s.  Today, almost no one even comes close to selling 1 million copies.

…It’s interesting how where you live determines your life and your life’s priorities.

A few months back Hugh Hefner was divorcing his 23 year old bride when the split became bitter over who would get custody of their toy poodle.  (Hefner is 86).

Yesterday I read about a Chinese woman who was dragged into a police van, beaten about her head and legs, driven to a hospital where she was injected with a serum that aborted her fetus.  She was 7 months into term.  In China most families are only allowed to have one child.  The particular woman couldn’t afford the $6,000 fine she faced, thus her ordeal.  The Communist Chinese government, home to the planet’s most populous country, controls its population through heavy fines, threats of violence and regular actual violence.  And, disturbingly, it’s all considered normal.

…Here are a couple of things I like for the new week:

"Someday, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer." Phillip Brooks

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." –Aristotle

“I intend to live forever.  So far, so good.” Stephen Wright