No, Ricky! No..! (#2)
Monday, April 28, 2008
Don't wear your sweater inside-out! I don't know, the lengths you'll go to just to grab people's attention...
Labels: ricky
Expelled Exposed
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
A detailed look at the Ben Stein movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
Bus Stop Bible Claptrap
Friday, April 11, 2008
The weather this morning was crappy - cold, wet and windy. I took the streetcar in to work and everyone onboard was in a foul mood, including the driver. The car was packed and there was barely enough room for people to get on at each stop. The driver kept asking everyone to keep moving to the back, but he wasn't getting much response because I guess the car was just too full and people couldn't move along.Anywho, all this to say that there I was, standing there like a sardine in a tin, and all I had to look at was this stupid, sucky ad by some bible-thumping organization calling themselves Bus Stop Bible Studies. The ad featured a baby with sappy words going on about how 'you' nurtured 'me' and grew 'me', blah blah, apparently quoted from that font of all contradictions, the Bible. In a sick way, my gaze kept returning to the ad, it was so bad.
I shouldn't buy into this claptrap by supplying the URL, but it's just so cheesy that I had to: http://www.busstopbiblestudies.com/
Of particular interest, if you're strong enough to enter the site, are the PhotoThoughts ads these people use for places which don't allow religious advertising. The pictures and wording are incredibly inane and I can't for the life of me imagine how these ads could be construed as being non-religious; I'll have to do some research into the advertising standards with respect to this.
So, in an attempt to redress the balance, I think it's time for me to re-read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion when travelling on the TTC.
Labels: bible, marketing, richard dawkins, the god delusion, ttc
Margaret Cho is “Beautiful!”
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
So, last Friday we went to Massey Hall to watch Margaret Cho as she visited Toronto on the Canadian leg of her tour, “Beautiful.” The hall was packed with fans, with the gay crowd outnumbering the straights by a decent majority.
Opening her show was Liam Sullivan whose character, Kelly, is experiencing YouTube and MySpace fame right now with her song, “Shoes”, which we got to experience first hand on stage. At first, Liam came onstage as a butch lesbian and sang us few songs before introducing a video showcasing some of his other characters in various Boys-in-the-Hall-style situations. This was okay to begin with, but the video seemed to go one for an inordinate amount of time and at one point I was beginning to feel like I was in a glorified movie theatre with no hope of ever seeing a live Margaret Cho.
Eventually, however, she did come onstage and began her act. Now, I like Margaret Cho, her humour can take me by surprise every now and then and I find that refreshing. This being said, I’ve seen her last two tours on DVD (this was the first time I’d seen her live) and while I really enjoyed those shows I started to notice how they all followed a similar thread; fag hag humour, gays gays gays, lesbians, then some skits about her mom (although she didn’t focus on her mom very much this time round).
Still, she is very, very funny and her deadpan delivery can be priceless!
All in all it was a good show, but now that I’ve had the experience I don’t think I’d go see her live again. Next time she does another tour I’ll rent the disk and watch it in the comfort of my own home, with friends and wine.
Opening her show was Liam Sullivan whose character, Kelly, is experiencing YouTube and MySpace fame right now with her song, “Shoes”, which we got to experience first hand on stage. At first, Liam came onstage as a butch lesbian and sang us few songs before introducing a video showcasing some of his other characters in various Boys-in-the-Hall-style situations. This was okay to begin with, but the video seemed to go one for an inordinate amount of time and at one point I was beginning to feel like I was in a glorified movie theatre with no hope of ever seeing a live Margaret Cho.
Eventually, however, she did come onstage and began her act. Now, I like Margaret Cho, her humour can take me by surprise every now and then and I find that refreshing. This being said, I’ve seen her last two tours on DVD (this was the first time I’d seen her live) and while I really enjoyed those shows I started to notice how they all followed a similar thread; fag hag humour, gays gays gays, lesbians, then some skits about her mom (although she didn’t focus on her mom very much this time round).
Still, she is very, very funny and her deadpan delivery can be priceless!
All in all it was a good show, but now that I’ve had the experience I don’t think I’d go see her live again. Next time she does another tour I’ll rent the disk and watch it in the comfort of my own home, with friends and wine.
Labels: beautiful, margaret cho, massey hall
I wonder how much this dog would go for, on e-Bay?
Downward Dog
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
If you've read some of the earlier posts in this blog, you may by now have realised that we're big animal lovers and that we have a few pets in our household; two cats and a dog, to be precise. We adopted all our pets from the humane societies in Ottawa and Toronto. In April 2006 we adopted a 19-year-old Beagle/Basset Hound mix named Lucky, whose previous owner had passed away after looking after her for 17 years or so. El Franco and I adopted Lucky and she eventually became known in our building as the diaper dog; she was incontinent, due to her advanced age, and we had to put her in a diaper whenever we exited the building when taking her for a walk. We didn't think we'd have Lucky for very long--maybe three months tops--but she surprised us all by hanging in there for a total of 13 months, at which point we had to put her to sleep once her heart started to fail.
The experience was sad, but also enriching.
Not long after Lucky's passing, we decided to adopt another old dog and, after regularly checking their web site, went back to the Toronto Humane Society and came home with a 12-year-old beagle. We've had Sara since around October, 2007, and at first she was completely unsettled at having moved into a new home. She would very often shake uncontrollably in her bed and flinch away if we tried to pet her. She hated going out for walks and didn't enjoy the company of other dogs in the neighbourhood, to the point where she'd turn around and pull on her leash to go back home to her bed. That's pretty much what she does all day, lie in her bed and sleep until it's mealtime.
The experience was sad, but also enriching.
Not long after Lucky's passing, we decided to adopt another old dog and, after regularly checking their web site, went back to the Toronto Humane Society and came home with a 12-year-old beagle. We've had Sara since around October, 2007, and at first she was completely unsettled at having moved into a new home. She would very often shake uncontrollably in her bed and flinch away if we tried to pet her. She hated going out for walks and didn't enjoy the company of other dogs in the neighbourhood, to the point where she'd turn around and pull on her leash to go back home to her bed. That's pretty much what she does all day, lie in her bed and sleep until it's mealtime.
Still, she's a cute dog and after spending time with us for almost 6 months now, seems to be relaxing more. The cats don't bother her; in fact they steer well clear of her, preferring to leave her to her own devices. She's settling in nicely and seems quite comfortable in our presence these days, to the extent that she doesn't shake too much anymore and even accepts a pat on the head without flinching away. She also seems to be enjoying her walks more and tolerates an unrequited sniff from a friendly dog or two, with an aloofness that's seemly for her age.
Sara's small bed appeared to be just the right size when we first brought her home, and she would curl into a tight ball and remain there for hours on end. That's not the case these days, though, and she gaining a reputation for practising her own version of Yoga, with the bed being her floor mat. Here are a few photos of Sara, caught in a number of positions as she excercises and stretches her old bones.
Labels: dog, pets, sara, toronto humane society, yoga
