I do suspect my star ratings average too high. But, of course, star ratings are ridiculous. I'm stuck with them.

If you find an occupation you love and spend your entire life working at it, is that enough?

All but a very few of us are in debt. We exist as entities who borrow money and spend the rest of our lives making interest payments on a debt tally that never seems to budge. Whatever wealth we have, in labor, property or cash, is suctioned to the top.

Open-heart surgery is now part of a typical life experience for many people. Folks talk casually about 'having a stent put in,' as if they had their tires rotated.

Last year, I reviewed a nine-hour documentary about the lives of Mongolian yak herdsmen, and I would rather see it again than sit through The Frighteners.

I wear a pedometer, a little device that counts every step. It works as a goad, because you walk additional distances to pile up the numbers. The average person walks 2,000 to 3,000 steps a day. I walk 10,000 steps a day. I have lost a lot of weight as a result.

When we go to the movies, we identify with the characters we see. That's why we go to the movies; we have a voyeuristic experience; we have an out of the body experience. The screen is more real than our thoughts are at the moment we are looking at the film and we place ourselves in the place of the people on the screen, and when they behave nobly, it makes us feel noble, when they are sad and when they have lost love, we feel sad; we can identify with that.