TWE

The melancholy bugle keeps playing for Hollywood. > A box-office jolt from the magic kingdoms of Kong, Narnia and Hogwarts will close Hollywood's year with some holiday cheer, though not enough to offset the biggest decline in movie attendance in 20 years. Link [http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/

From Australia [http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0%2C5744%2C17562237%25255E2702%2C00.html] : > The first national abortion figures show more than 84,000 pregnancies are terminated each year, or one in four pregnancies. Australia is the land of permissiveness. I thought as long as everyone

As the tiresome countdown to the uncensored Howard Stern continues, some good news comes out of satellite radio land: > [Bob Dylan] has signed on to serve as host of a weekly one-hour program on XM Satellite Radio, spinning records and offering commentary on new music and other topics, starting

> A 19-year-old German girl has sued her mother for confiscating her two guinea pigs, a dog and a litter of puppies and giving them to an animal home, authorities said Wednesday [http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2005-12-14T175533Z_01_DIT464522_RTRUKOC_0_US-GERMANY-PETS.xml&

> Judging the Narnia books solely by their Christianity is an impoverished way of reading them. It is a reflection more of our polarized moment -- in which a perceived cultural divide has alienated Christians from secular culture and secular readers from anything that smacks of religious leanings -- than

No one wants to let go any more (which is another way of saying "no one wants to love unconditionally any more"), and the pre-nup is a great example of it. In Hollywood, where I assume pre-nups are as common as quit claim deeds, they're taking

The LA Times runs a story about a fitness instructor who encourages customers to abstain from alcohol for one month [http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-bodywork12dec12,0,1780030.story?track=hpmostemailedlink] . A few excerpts: > The few who made it, successfully braving social occasions and surprisingly intense peer pressure,

> [A] little online surfing shows how excited advocacy groups and gay movie goers are about [Brokeback Mountain]. It's reaching screens amid a flurry of other mostly smaller gay films with prominent names attached, which has caused some industry wags to proclaim 2005 the "Year of the

An alarm clock that you have to chase down (thereby making you get out of bed) in order to make it stop [http://www.yankodesign.com/product_info.php?products_id=641]. The day I need one of these is the day I stop getting up in the mornings.