Double~take | the rest of the story

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…
(A Tale of Two Cities)

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fter years of being an avid Star Trek fan, I have the questionable talent of being able to quote whole scripts from memory, which strangely includes dozens of lines from pieces of classic literature. Half of Shakespeare’s published works, A Tale of Two Cities, Moby Dick…

Angels and minsters of grace defend us (Hamlet)
Cry “Havoc” and let slip the dogs of war! (Julius Caesar)

The only problem is, no matter how well I know the scripts of whole sci-fi movies, I have never read any of those quoted works, and so these quotations float around my head without any kind of context. I can only guess as to how the original story goes.

And he piled upon the whales’ white hump, the sum of all the rage and hate… (Moby Dick)

Kudos to Grace, who sent me an article a week or so ago about the general perception people have of the Christian “afterlife”. Which is, basically:

When you die, you go to heaven. (The Bible)

(It’s not just out of context, but misquoted as well…)

It had never before hit me that this was ALL people might believe. Floating around disembodied for all eternity? No wonder it’s not viewed as such a big deal… I wanted to find out if this (theoretical general perception) really was the case, but I haven’t quite managed it. I haven’t had a chance to ask anyone outside my workplace yet, and no-one has fallen into my blatantly transparent attempt at online data collection (I asked a question on Facebook). So I’m still working on it…

Double~take appears every Saturday on theRubicon. Find past Double~take posts and a bio of Stephanie Hung here.

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