I experienced much culture this weekend. Possibly too much as I'm totally exhausted tonight.

Thursday night after work I saw my first two TIFF movies. Room 237 was great. The conspiracy theories and secret meanings behind the movie The Shining are not very credible but the presentation in Room 237 was most amusing. My favourite theory is that The Shining is both an admission of guilt and an apology by Stanley Kubrick for faking the footage from the original moon landing. The theorist was quick to note that he does believe NASA landed on the moon, just that the footage was fake. I'm really glad I re-watched The Shining just last week as it added a lot to this film. Student was a much harder movie. I had forgotten how dark and serious the novel Crime and Punishment is; the movie adequately reminded me. The cinematography was great though and it was amazing the beauty presented in the dilapidated suburbs in which the movie took place.

Friday over lunch I saw Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing. This was by far my favourite of the four films I saw this year. It was shot over twelve days using the original script from Shakespeare and the set was just Joss Whedon's house. You could tell the cast and crew had a great time making the film and that it must have been a big fun party. The result was fantastic and enjoyable and everything you'd expect from such talent. Watch this movie. I also made the effort to read the play before seeing the movie and this definitely added to my enjoyment. I really need to go see Shakespeare more (I think I've only seen two of his plays ever). Stratford is so close...I need to exploit that.

Friday night a couple friends came over for a Scotch Tasting Night. As much as I enjoy fine beers I'm trying to find a back up drink for when I don't feel like consuming many pints of liquid. Scotch seems like a good drink to pursue because of the complexity of flavour and the many many years of history behind it. We managed to bring together 7 or 8 different kinds and then spent the evening moving through them while playing board games. We had good variety and I'm definitely interested in trying more in the future. The winner of the night for me was the Cragganmore 12 Year Old Single Speyside Malt.

On Saturday Matt and I went to our first Tafelmusik concert of the season up at Bloor and Church. It was good as usual and it was a great day to walk so we walked there and back from downtown. After the concert we met up with Adrienne and got supper before heading out to Echo Beach at Ontario Place for the Sheepdogs concert (again walking). There were three opening bands: Zeus, The Sadies and Yukon Blonde. I really enjoyed the Sadies and of course the Sheepdogs and it was a pretty good venue (despite being a bit chilly). After the concert I walked home for a total of about 20km of walking on Saturday.

Today I had my final TIFF screening, The Suicide Shop. I was a bit surprised to find that the movie was in 3D and so I had to wear the glasses. I try to avoid 3D movies because it normally doesn't add anything. They didn't do a bad job for this film, but again, it didn't need it. Despite the 3D, the animation had great style and I loved just looking at the film. The story was fantastic for the first three quarters but the ending struck me as trite and simplistic. The movie sets itself up to deal with the very real and serious issues of depression and suicide (through farce and dark comedy) and then doesn't really follow through. Overall though it was worth watching and I'd definitely watch it again.

The pace of my reading has slowed lately, mostly due to my busy August. I did read two books though, which I'm going to unfairly compare based on their only common feature: both are English translations of the original.

Love in the Time of Cholera is by a Nobel Prize winning author and although I cannot read or speak Spanish I feel like the translation (by Edith Grossman) must have captured the feeling and lyrical quality of the original because it was so very enjoyable to read. The words and sentences flowed in a way that made the book feel like it was written in English by an especially gifted author. The story and characters were fantastic too, although I admit to having personal difficulties with sections discussing the progression of married life. I feel very robbed of all that and some of the more moving parts left me a bit bitter.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest has certainly made a lot more money and maybe been read by more people than Love in the Time of Cholera, but obviously it is not in the same league from a literary point of view. Also, when I read the Stieg Larsson books I find the sentence structure and language a bit rough. I don't speak or read Swedish but I feel like the problems are an artifact of the translation. The translator for Love in the Time of Cholera is quoted as saying "...a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of critical interpretation." I feel like Stieg Larsson's translator didn't subscribe to the same school of thought. Perhaps it is actually a problem with the writing (the source material isn't exactly high literature), but it doesn't feel like it. Despite these issues, the book itself was just as gripping as the previous two in the series and I finished the second half in a marathon reading session one night after climbing.

It's fun to intersperse trashy thrillers with Nobel Prize winners; it makes for interesting comparisons.

August was rather busy for me; I had two weddings plus the bachelor party, rehearsal, and other planning for the second wedding since I was one of the best men. Chris and John's wedding was fabulous and it was a privilege to be John's best man. I think I did OK with my speech and we all had a great time at their joint bachelor party up at Blue Mountain.

September is looking like it will be a bit quieter, although I've just added a bit to my schedule by buying tickets to four films at TIFF.

On the evening of Thursday the 13th, I'm seeing two films: Room 237 at 6pm and Student at 9:45pm. Room 237 is documentary about the secret meanings and conspiracies behind Stanley Kubrick's film, "The Shining" which is based on the book by Stephen King. Student is a rough interpretation of Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" set in modern-day Kazakhstan; I'm interested because "Crime and Punishment" was the main book I used for my OAC English ISP.

On Friday the 14th, I'm seeing Much Ado About Nothing at 11am. It uses the original text from Shakespeare and was shot in just twelve days. Most importantly though, it's done by Joss Whedon and it stars many of the typical Joss Whedon actors: Amy Acker (Angel), Alexis Denisof (Buffy, Angel), Nathan Fillion (Buffy, Firefly), Sean Maher (Firefly), Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson in the various Avengers movies).

Finally, on Sunday the 16th I'm seeing an animated film called The Suicide Shop. It's a black comedy about a family run business that sells suicide. They run into difficulties when their son turns out to be inappropriately happy and optimistic. I love animated films and the style of this one looks great.

If anyone is interested in seeing any of these shows please feel free to attempt to buy a ticket (I think there are still tickets for the shows I'm seeing but they sell out fast) and then let me know. We can meet up somewhere and go together!

In between all these films, on Saturday the 14th, I'm seeing The Sheepdogs, along with The Sadies, Yukon Blond and Zeus at Echo Beach with Matt and Adrienne. It should be a good show!

I just got back today from the annual Civic Holiday Algonquin camping trip that I go on with friends and family (see here, here and here for descriptions of previous trips).

I'm not doing a full blog this year like I have in the past and I didn't really take any pictures. The trip was much the same as in previous years with a group of 20 people made up of the usual suspects. It was an excellent time as always, but I just wasn't up to taking photos. I'm having a lot of trouble getting back into photography (disregarding my big trip to Australia/NZ).

Some of the highlights from this trip included celebrating Judy's 50th birthday with cake and champagne and also golfing with a club, tee and golf ball all carved from wood by Anthony (the ball was particularly spectacular). The other interesting thing this time was that the park was under a complete fire ban as it's had almost no rain this year. In fact, we almost had to cancel the trip because the east end of the park was closed due to forest fires up until a week ago. With no campfire we had to alter the menu a bit so that we could cook everything on the Coleman stoves. It wasn't a problem though and we made up for the lack of a campfire by sitting on the beach a lot.

I definitely want to go camping more than once a year. In particular I'm looking at doing a long canoe trip in the Northwest Territories with Matt in summer 2013, possibly with Canoe Arctic. I've seen so little of my home country and it's time to start remedying that!

I don't have a lot to say about this one. For anyone who is not familiar with Neal Stephenson, he seems to write books exactly for me. Super geeky and often epic in length. Cryptonomicon included a Perl script and the Baroque Cycle numbered about 3000 pages. I've read all his novels. One of the main plot devices in Reamde is a fictional MMORPG called T'Rain. The book was awesome and I loved it but it certainly wouldn't appeal to everyone.

I competed again in Warrior Dash today for some reason and the small amount of training I did really paid off! Last year I finished in 39:35.50 and I was totally exhausted and destroyed. This year I did it in 36:43.15 and I felt pretty ok at the end. I was still tired but not in any way destroyed. It was lots of fun and the accomplishment made me feel like maybe I should keep up the training after all.

I'm done my trip journal for Australia and New Zealand! It's over 23,000 words, has 565 pictures and 12 videos. Lots of work, but it was great to re-live my experiences from two wonderful countries (and shared with awesome/amazing/epic people/dogs: Patrick, Toni, Kiera, Shannon and Jane).

I was going to skip blogging about this book due to vague and unspecific feelings of social unease. In the end it was precisely those feelings that made me realize it was important to write this post.

I am an atheist. Despite my vaguely Anglican upbringing I have been an atheist for a very long time and I came to this position on my own without any direct influence from others (I did not know any atheists or read any subversive atheist literature). For as long as I can remember I have tried to imagine all the possibilities concerning any issue and I think I was 8 or 9 the first time I pondered the possibility of the non-existence of a god. By the time I finished my high school science classes any remaining shred of belief was gone.

I don't want to discuss my own atheism here but instead my reasons for being uneasy writing this post. It is one of my most strident beliefs that spirituality is the most personal topic. There is no person on earth, not parents, siblings, friends, children or spouses (and certainly not strangers), who should presume to try to influence your own beliefs on matters of spirituality. But at the same time one should not feel ashamed of their beliefs or lack thereof. Yet I do feel shame in certain situations. I avoid lines of discussion that might lead to this topic with all but my closest friends and family. In mainstream society atheists are still viewed with some level of suspicion.

Although I came to atheism on my own, I recently decided to pursue the thoughts of others on the topic. I've been reading some of the more popular books from The Four Horsemen of New Atheism such as "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins as well as the book which is the subject of this post.

I found both books interesting, but it was definitely a case of "preaching to the choir," a particularly apt metaphor in this context. The biggest new idea for me (presented by both books) is the notion that involving children in organized religion is abuse. Intellectual abuse to be specific. Organized religion hinders the development of critical thinking skills. At some point all religions have an element of "because God said so" at which point it is no longer acceptable to question the statement. The mind of a child is a blank and infinite canvas and the nature of children is that they seek to fill that canvas by questioning everything around them. This is a wonderful trait that should be endlessly encouraged. The questions of a child should be answered honestly. Rational, evidence-based justifications should be provided for all instructions and directives. If something is unknown, that fact should also be shared with the child and they should be encouraged to seek out the answer on their own. "Because I (or God) said so," is never acceptable. The trials and realities of life cause our minds to close and our thinking to become rigid as we age; that process should not be hurried along with non-answers and veiled threats of hell-fire.

Religion is such a sacred cow (wow, lots of metaphors have a religious bent, this post practically writes itself) in almost all societies. To suggest that it should only be engaged in by persons who have reached the age of majority would never fly. But if it happened that you could only join an organized religion after you had time to develop your critical thinking skills I suspect that organized religion would become a much more minor part of society. In such a society I would not hesitate in discussing a topic or writing a blog post which tangentially might reveal my own (lack of) beliefs.

Postscript: I would like to add some meta-comments about this post. I've always thought about broaching the topic of atheism on my blog but this was not the way I imagined doing it. I backed myself into a corner by deciding to blog about every book I read and then reading this book. Despite that misstep, this was a really neat writing exercise for me because it was extremely difficult to keep the post concise and focused on a single point (ie. the thing I found most interesting in the book and how it applied to my own situation). There are so many tangents that I wanted to run off and explore and it is so easy to make snide generalizations about religion that would have added nothing to the content of the post and only inflamed emotions. I hope that I have managed to meet my goals. Most importantly it is not my goal to judge or influence the beliefs of others. I have friends and acquaintances from all manner of belief systems and I have many times enjoyed sharing their religious traditions with them at holidays (and would gladly join them again). Those experiences have always been positive and not an attempt to influence my own beliefs. My only beef with religion is the need many of its adherents feel to spread their own personal brand to others. In particular, many feel that religion should influence the policies of our secular democracies which is just so completely and totally horrifying. Keep it personal and keep it the hell out of government.

I've been pretty busy lately. Thursday and Friday I was in Montreal for work. It was a fast trip and I spent most of the time at the office, but it was still fun to see co-workers there and also to see a little bit more of Montreal. I've been there twice now for work but never for fun and on both work trips I didn't have much time to see anything. It seems like a really great city so I'll have to visit it properly sometime soon (beer-acquisition road trip anyone?).

On Saturday I went to Matt and Adrienne's house in Burlington for a yummy Canada Day BBQ. All of the food (sausages, potato wedges, baby bok-choy) was done on the BBQ and Adrienne made a delicious blueberry pie (in the oven) for dessert. Michael and Laura were also there and it was fun to catch up with them.

On Sunday Chris and John came and parked at my place and we spent the afternoon at the pride parade and related events. It was fun and afterwards we went to Betty's for supper. We also went to "G for Gelato" which is a new Gelato place that opened really close to my apartment. It was amazing! I'll be returning there for sure.

Today I went climbing in the morning and then spent the rest of the day working on my Australia/New Zealand trip journal. I'm pretty close to being finished and I expect to have it posted by the end of the week. It's a big one!

Finally I've started training for Warrior Dash. I've managed to force myself to run four mornings per week for the last three weeks and I hope to continue this until the event (after which I will never run again).

I just read these two books back to back and they were both great. I've only recently started reading Michael Ondaatje and everything I've read by him has been fantastic. Normally I enjoy fiction for the story or the characters, but this is the first author whose books I enjoy for the words: the actual words he chooses and the way he pieces them together into sentences and paragraphs until they become story and emotion. I've so far avoided reading his best known work, The English Patient, but I think I'll pick that up next time I restock on books.