Entries from June 2005

i was having a dream last week about chris martins from coldplay. he was giving me a rather vigorous massage while weaving this convoluted and rather dull story about sexual conquests in the upper quarry of brazil. i have absolute no idea if there is such a place as the upper quarry of brazil, but that’s what the guy said and you gotta take the brits at their word, don’t you? for some reason stephen chow was there, frowning rather disapprovingly at the spectacle while teaching harry dean anderson the finer points of oyster shucking.

i often have dreams involving famous people. i don’t know if admitting this leaves me just one or two steps away from a life of pure cliché, but what the hell. at any rate, it’s late and i’ve decided i don’t like capitalization any more. well, at least right now, until i get a that dream job redesigning the lcbo nhl abc ibm etc. web site.

it’s been incredibly hot and muggy here. so hot that you start to feel like your brain has evaporated itself into an extended steamy vacation, and nothing but pure bullshit comes gushing out of your mouth in unstoppable waves. i would say that this post fits into that category (which normally mean that it gets regulated into the draft bin for an eternity) but i don’t care, and i’m sick of looking at the previous post. that’s why you subscribe to the feed for this site anyway, right?

okay, enough of that. to make up for this waste of your precious seconds and minutes, here’s a photo of a mace flower i took at the jardin botanique de montréal:

This was too important to relegate to the sidebar: last night the government passed the same-sex marriage bill, giving all gay and lesbian Canadians the right to marry across the country.

In the most technical of terms this was mostly a formality as same-sex marriage was already legal in most provinces (Alberta being the big exception), but from a legal and symbolic perspective this was huge. The fact that the Liberals managed to get this bill passed in the most precarious and vicious of minority governments is truly amazing.

I’m so proud to be Canadian.

Update: Spain has just passed into law their own same-sex marriage bill and same-sex rights equalization. Go, Spain!

I enjoy a good celebrity commencement / graduation speech as much as the next person, and thought it would be good to gather all of the ones I could find into one post. If you know of one I’ve forgotten, please post it and the URL in the comments and I’ll add it to the list.

Without further ado:

• Will Ferrell speaking at Harvard
• Jon Stewart at the College of William & Mary (?)
• David Foster Wallace’s speech at Kenyon University
• Steve Jobs at Stanford University
• Conan O’Brien speech at Harvard University
• Humanity.org has a great list of commencement speeches, including Toni Morrison. Bono, the Dalai Lama, and John F. Kennedy.

There’s gotta be more than just these available online - let me know if you find another.