One of my favorite podcasts is called Coverville.  The premise is simple – all cover songs, all the time.  A week or so ago I put in a request, in honor of Shakespeare’s birthday, to do a cover of Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet.  Ask and ye shall receive! I wish he’d mentioned Shakespeare’s birthday, but hey, I’ll take what I can get :).

http://bookbabble.net/2008/05/02/bookbabble-episode-3-the-new-shakespeare-gary-barlow/ I was unfamiliar with this podcast until they stuck Shakespeare in a post title and showed up on my radar :).  If there’s folks out there like me who are always on the lookout for some more intellectual / literary audio to fill up their MP3 players, this one might be worth checking out. Note that I haven’t actually *listened* to it, yet – I sync my ipod once a day before the evening commute home.  I’ll let folks know tomorrow how it is.

http://esubulletin.com/articles/news/2008/05/01/former-ku-professor-speaks-shakespeares-true-ident This article starts out as the standard “Guy things that Edward de Vere wrote the works of Shakespeare” argument.  But his spin is different – he’s a crypto guy.  He thinks there’s secret messages. Apparently 99 of the sonnets contain some version of the symbol EOX.  This, of course, must stand for the Earl of Oxford.  QED! One of the sonnets also contains a pun on Hathaway.  We’re expected to believe that Oxford was so sneaky that he wrote in puns about his pseudonym’s wife?  (Thanks to Bill Bryson for that one.)

http://areyouhappynownormanmailer.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/the-burden-of-proof/ Dugg for calling the anti-Shakespeareans (more accurately I believe they prefer anti-Stratfordians) a “cabal”.   🙂

Ok, everybody, time for me to ask some help of you once again.  My company’s doing a “green initiative” project, where we brand our product as environmentally friendly and then try to milk the marketing for all it’s worth.  (Cut us some slack, it’s not like every company in the US isn’t doing the exact same thing right now :)).  Anyway, we’re putting up a new web site decorated with a variety of quotes on the subject, ranging from saving the environment to general sorts of pro-activism comments (all those variations on “the worst you can do is, thinking you can do little, to do nothing.”)  I said, “Can I throw some Shakespeare in there?” and they said “Absolutely.” So that’s the challenge.  I’m looking for Shakespeare quotes relative to the green/environmental movement.  Can be either about the value of nature (and protecting it), or the larger picture of “its better to do something than nothing.”  I am doing my own searching, not trying to get folks to do my homework for me :), but thought I’d see if anybody out there’s got some that come to mind.  My Bartlett’s is at home, otherwise I’d start there.