• Poetry

    Let’s Have Some Fun by Charles Bukowski

    there will always be people who say, let’s go on a boat or let’s go to Argentina or let’s go to a movie or let’s go to a tennis match or let’s visit my sister or how about a picnic? and I don’t understand any of this because to me just walking across the room is like walking through flames and the first strange face I see each day adds a knot to my stomach and I don’t have the time because I haven’t paid the gas bill or checked the air in my tires and one of my teeth is aching (on the left side) and I’ve received several…

  • Books Read

    The God Delusion

    The God Delusion (audio) by Richard Dawkins Published: 2006 Narration: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward I remember discussing Dawkins and Hitchens with a friend a few years ago, and he felt that all of these pro-atheism books were a bit silly and pointless, as they were really just preaching to the choir (so to speak). It is preaching to the choir, but that choir is filled with a lot of people who benefit from hearing this side of the discussion. There is quite a bit of hate and distrust towards atheists out there, and anything gaining popularity that might support those who are feeling alone is a good thing. I live…

  • Food

    Mediterranean Chicken Stew with Cinnamon Couscous

    This may look disgusting from my crummy iPhone 3GS photo, but it was actually delicious. View the original recipe at The Kitchn for better photos. Followed exactly, there was enough left after dinner for five lunches. for chicken stew 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 medium onion, chopped 1 clove garlic, minced 2 teaspoons dried oregano 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, in puree 1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained 1 cup low sodium chicken broth 2 bay leaves Pepper, to taste 1 rotisserie chicken, cut into bite sized pieces, skin removed 1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives, coarsely chopped 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice for cinnamon couscous 2 cups low…

  • Poetry

    Happy Idiot

    I watch the jocks come out in the post parade. one will win the race. the others will lose. but each jock must win sometime in some race on some day, and he must do it often enough. or he is done as a jockey. it’s like the girls on the street trying to score for their pimp or each of us sitting over a typewriter tonight or tomorrow or next week or next month and doing it well enough once in a while or he is done as a writer, he’s a whore who can’t score. I think I would like a little more kindness in the structure but…

  • Film

    Directors Guild of America’s Tribute to Steven Spielberg

    If you follow any weblog that covers film news, you’ve probably seen this, but if not I thought I’d post it here. Hosted by J.J. Abrams and James Cameron, it’s just under two hours of discussion with Steven Speilberg on how some of your (or at least my) favourite stories came to be. At the very least it’s an interesting look into one man’s approach to storytelling.

  • Comics Read

    Old Man Logan

    Old Man Logan by Mark Millar Illustrated By: Steve McNiven Format: Trade Paperback Comic Published: 2008 Publisher: Marvel The second Mark Miller comic I mooched during my time in Vancouver was Old Man Logan. It’s a ‘what if’ story, set fifty years in the future in a world where the supervillains won. They teamed up for once and managed to kill most of the superheroes in America. Wolverine, who now only goes by Logan, is one of the few left alive, and he’s just trying to live life with his small family on a farm. He hasn’t drawn his claws, or hurt anyone, for fifty years, not since he went…

  • Comics Read

    Civil War

    Civil War by Mark Millar Illustrated By: Steve McNiven Format: Trade Paperback Comic Published: 2006 Publisher: Marvel About eight years ago I decided it would be fun to get back into reading comics. I hadn’t read any since I was a kid, so I wandered into the comic book shop and picked up the first thing that caught my eye – the trade for Ultimate X-Men Vol. 1 by Mark Miller. The Ultimate line was a non-canonical reboot of some of Marvel’s most popular books. It was a great idea, as it meant new readers could jump in without needing to know everything that had been happening for the last…

  • Literature

    Dawkins on Religious Indoctrination

    Finishing up The God Delusion, and this jumped out at me as being very true. I think we should all wince when we hear a small child being labelled as belonging to some particular religion or another. Small children are too young to decide their views on the origins of the cosmos, of life and of morals. The very sound of the phrase ‘Christian child’ or ‘Muslim child’ should grate like fingernails on a blackboard… Our society, including the non-religious sector, has accepted the preposterous idea that it is normal and right to indoctrinate tiny children in the religion of their parents, and to slap religious labels on them –…

  • Gaming

    Bastion

    Genre: Action Role-Playing Published: 2011 Platform: Xbox 360 Developer: Supergiant Games Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Time Played: ~10 hours Achievements Unlocked: 200/200 In Bastion you play as Sebastian, a kid who awakes after the world has been ravaged by an apocalypse refered to as The Calamity, which left the land crumbled and infested with creatures. It falls on him to try to rebuild the world. This is a game that strikes gold on all levels. I feel like a lot of the games I’ve played lately have one or two things really going for them and everything else is acceptable enough not to ruin the good points, but the…