littlewoodenman

All of the “Get a Mac” ads are enjoyable, but I particularly enjoyed this latest one. I like how in the future Macs will be blue and PCs will be brown.

Spacing asks why people love Toronto on Vimeo

"Sin Nombre" Official Trailer ¶ Sin Nombre will be coming to select theatres later this month. It features Honduran characters and plotlines, as well as Honduran actors (the male lead is from Tegucigalpa). Looks really good.

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— Dave Barry

Juan Serrano

I just found out today that someone I considered a friend died a couple of weeks ago, after a long-drawn-out struggle with brain cancer. I knew about his affliction for some time, and that the prognosis wasn’t good, but it’s still a shock.

We will all miss the way he’d lean forward and squint, listening intently to what you’re saying. We will all miss the way he laughed, even at the things that frustrated him. We will all miss watching him hunt around for his glasses, which were usually right there on his forehead. We will all miss how those glasses were bent and broken, but still perfectly usable, thank you. We will all miss the way he despised being referred to as Don Juan.

A death like this is always shocking, but somehow, because it happened to Juan, it seems particularly unfair to me. Juan was a kooky, eccentric, absent-minded professor — literally — and a pleasure to be around. His death feels in some ways like a deliberate attack on everything joyful and passionate. He did not die, he was stamped out of existence.

Fue un placer, Profe.

NEW Inglorious Basterds (2009) Trailer ¶ A WWII movie by Quentin Tarantino. Looks promising in all sorts of ways, but I’m pretty sure the WWII genre might be done after this.

— Jerry A. Coyne, "Seeing and Believing" ¶ This is a long, but interesting, article on how to reconcile both religious and scientific truths. The big problem, as evidenced by this quote, is that believers and non-believers approach truth in different ways.

This is music to my ears. I’d say I’d love to hear how wackos Jenny McCarthy, but I don’t care — I just hope this is the final nail in the coffin for the anti-vaccination movement.

Tim Minchin – 10 Foot Cock & A Few Hundred Virgins ¶ This is obviously NSFW — you’ve been warned! — but so, so awesome on so many levels. Like he says at the beginning, if you’re religious at all you probably won’t like it.

I don’t generally like comedy performed to music, but this is edgy and pointed enough that I can make an exception. Tim Minchin is quickly becoming a favourite, I think.

I really, really fucking hate the Snuggie. For one thing, we’ve already had something like this for centuries — it’s called a blanket.

For another, it makes you look stupid. You people wearing Snuggies look like druids or members of a death cult. These things look weird.

I suppose the next logical step in the comfort-as-fashion-statement train wreck that is the North American dress code would be to wear one of these Snuggies with a stylish pair of Crocs. When that happens, put me to sleep and wake me up when it’s over.

As most places seem to be doing these days, Humanist Canada wanted to put the slogan “You can be good without God” up on buses in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia — my stupid, backwards little hick-town of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Transit officials have refused to accept the proposed message, saying it’s too “controversial,” but will reconsider their decision if the message is further “toned down.” Ha!

So, in case you’re thinking of buying ad space on Metro Transit buses in the near future, remember: messages for the anti-choice organization Birthright and slogans like “The Vaginas are coming” are acceptable, but watered-down atheist viewpoints are not. Got it?

— Christian Lander, author of the funny blog, and now book, Stuff White People Like ¶ Further to my previous post, I guess!

Why Toronto Is So Great

These figures come from the summer/fall 2008 issue of Spacing, a magazine that’s so good it was a favourite of mine before I even moved to Toronto. Anyway, here are some interesting factoids.

8% of Canada lives in the GTA. 30% of recent immigrants to Canada live in Toronto. 50% of Torontonians were not born in Canada. 47% of Torontonians speak a first language other than English or French. 15% of Torontonians are not officially Canadian citizens. 47% of Torontonians identify themselves as visible minorities.

I love this town, man.

This is pretty much why I have almost no respect for the so-called “sacred institution” of marriage.