Very cool, my MSN Messenger Display Pictures are now available at Mess with MSN Messenger as Freemoticons! I really should start knocking some more off my ever growing to-do list…

You might have already seen Sarah McLachlan’s video for her song World on Fire, but if you haven’t, I encourage you to check it out here (NOTE: You must have Quicktime installed).

Basically, the premise is that instead of spending the $150,000 budget on the video, many donations were made to support people in need around the world. The claim is that the video was made for only $15 as a result. Now, I don’t want to take anything away from what Sarah has done here, as I think it is a great thing. But seriously, $15? I don’t think so.

Someone had to get a hold of all that stock footage. Even if it could all be acquired royalty free, someone had to dig it up, and I doubt Ms. McLachlan did that herself. Someone had to create all of the transitions and animations that appear in the video. Last time I checked, Sarah was not a computer animation specialist. Somone had to register the domain name (thats $15 right there), create the website, and host it. Someone had to put the video together into a Quicktime file so that it could be played on the web. Unless Sarah owns the video camera, someone had to buy or rent it. I could go on…

See my point? It’s a great thing you have done by donating money to those in need Ms. McLachlan, but please don’t lie to me and tell me that your video only cost $15.

At our movie night last night at Felicia’s, one of the movies we watched was Saved! It’s a religious comedy, starring Mandy Moore, Jena Malone, and Mr. Home Alone himself Macaulay Culkin. I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect going into this movie, but I did recall seeing Macaulay Culkin on Conan and it looked funny at the time. So I started watching with an open mind.

The movie follows the story of Mary (played by Malone), a Baptist high school student who becomes pregnant and outcast. Mary questions her faith and finds salvation in two unlikely fellow students.

This movie really surprised me! And oddly enough, I rather enjoyed it! If you are a usual reader of my blog, you’ll know that religion and I don’t usually get along. Okay, we almost never get along. What I liked about this movie however, is that it was not afraid to poke fun at the stereotypical religious themes. It wasn’t afraid to go a bit over the top (and Mandy Moore did an excellent job of exaggerating her role as lead Jesus-cheerleader). At the same time, I think the movie has enough material there for the religious-types.

Almost all of the actors do a great job in this movie, except for probably Mary’s mother and Pastor Skip, who are just not believable. Moore does a great job with her character, especially since it is the exact opposite of every character she has ever played before – mean, benevolent, jealous, etc. Culkin played the handicapped guy quite well, and it was interesting to see him act again after so long. Malone did a decent job, but I think the best performance was given by Eva Amurri who plays the slightly eccentric Cassandra. Talk about nailing a character.

If you are looking for a funny movie, with a religious theme, then you’ll like Saved. If you are looking for a hardcore, everyone let’s get together and pray type of movie, you will most likely be disappointed. I liked Saved, and I look forward to new movies from Culkin, now that he is back in the acting thing. Check it out for a laugh!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadians! Hope you enjoy your holiday Monday. Just heard about a bit of sad news to start the day (or more accurately, end yesterday, going to sleep momentarily):

“Superman” actor Christopher Reeve, who became a committed campaigner for spinal cord research after being paralysed in a riding accident nine years ago, has died of heart failure, his publicist says.

Reeve, 52, went into a coma on Saturday when he suffered a heart attack during treatment for an infected pressure wound and died in Northern Westchester Hospital on Sunday afternoon without regaining consciousness, publicist Wesley Combs told reporters on Monday.

Just a reminder to be thankful for what you have!

Read: Reuters

Signed up for BlogExplosion last night and so far it seems to be working quite well! I heard about it a week or two ago, and we mentioned it in one of Blogosphere News episodes. Basically, you visit other people’s blogs and in return you get lots of traffic to your own blog.

I am not sure how much of the traffic is quality traffic, because it’s pretty easy to just cycle through the blogs without actually looking at them. Anyway, if you want some extra traffic, give it a shot. Sign up here!

This is priceless:

1. Make sure you have a virus scanner installed, as the first time I did this, something got blocked by Symantec.
2. Go to Google
3. Enter “french military victories” in the search box
4. Click “I’m Feeling Lucky”
5. Laugh at the page that appears, and click the link for more laughs!

Man I couldn’t stop laughing…

Read: Jason Bentley

If you are looking for a good podcasting directory, check out loudpocket. They just added BlogosphereRadio bringing the list of podcasts to 46. Should be interesting to see how this number grows over the coming months!

We just posted a new episode of The Vlog at BlogosphereRadio.com. In this episode Andrew and I talk about Halo 2, Hilary Duff, Eminem, and more. Plus, we release the world exclusive Vlog Remix of Hilary Duff’s new track Fly. You don’t want to miss this show!

5.8%…WHAT!? – Listen Now!

Ignore the fact that I am sick…lol…and the two or three seconds of strange voice distortion haha!

You might have heard that yesterday afternoon the price of oil reached $53.04 USD per barrel. Reasons include concerns about winter fuel supplies in the US, operational problems in the Gulf of Mexico and petroleum industry strife in Nigeria and Norway. However, what you probably did not realize, is that the price of oil has been worse:

While oil prices are about 70 percent higher than a year ago, they are more than $27 below the peak inflation-adjusted price reached in 1981.

So really, the price isn’t all that bad. Or in other words, it could be a lot worse.

The overriding concern among oil analysts these days is the world’s scarce surplus production capacity, or supply buffer, which is dangerously thin at around 1 percent above the global demand of 82 million barrels daily.

Solution? Develop the damn oil sands and destroy OPEC Canada! My god, quit wasting money on old submarines and spend $300 million to develop a more efficient way to extra oil from Alberta’s HUGE reserves. That’s what I would do if I was Dictator of Canada.

Read: Forbes.com

If you have any doubt that China is going to be the next major economic power of the world, read this:

In a survey of major multinational companies, 29 percent of respondents predicted that Internet technology will have the largest positive impact on their business in the next five years. That answer was second only to “growth in China,” cited by more than a third of the companies.

A set of 50 companies that Dow Jones calls the “global titans” were sent the survey questions. The companies include Coca-Cola, Exxon Mobil, Dell, IBM and Intel.

Read: CNET News.com