If, like me, you work from home because you dropped out of college and therefore don't have a real job (woo! Suck it, English majors!), then chances are you've probably seen one of the many infomercials floating around out there where overly cheerful white people lose their shit over a machine that will inevitably break after about three uses. And if you're like me, you stare at them the same way you stare at clowns or the spider standing between you and the bathroom: with sheer, unadulterated horror.

Think about it: the occupants of infomercials live in some sort of pocket universe, a microcosm where their joy and, to a lesser extent, their entire being, revolves entirely around one specific little contraption. To properly conceptualize this, walk into your kitchen and pick one appliance. Imagine you live your entire life around it like some sort of inanimate, benevolent dictator who, on occasion, makes toast. See what I'm getting at?

Nothing encapsulates this theory more than the commercial for the baby bullet! Yeah, someone out there figured that mothers would line up to buy crappy smoothie makers if they called them baby bullets. I know, right? Anyway, when played at the regular speed, the damn thing is pants-shittingly terrifying. But when slowed down, it offers a passing glimpse into the soul of a man as he watches everything that he is die. I'm pretty sure this video was playing on a loop in HP Lovecraft's mind for his entire life. Needless to say, it is hysterically funny, but NSF YOUR SOUL.

All right, let me just get this right out of the way: the '90s had the best kids shows ever. Hands down. No contest. I mean, yeah, the '80s had its moments, but nothing will ever beat the sheer, unadulterated joy that was Legends of the Hidden Temple. Case closed.

That being said, the '80s are a close second, if only because kids shows were awesomely gay back then. And I don't just mean in the whole ThunderCats/He-Man muscle-men-in-thongs sort of way. I mean full-on camp. This is the decade that brought us Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony (but not the kickass 2010 version) and best of all, Jem and the Holograms. For the uninitiated, Jem was basically Gaga before Gaga: her magical earrings turned her and her friends into rockstars, and her rival basically amounted to a trashy rip-off (modern-day equivalent would be Ke$ha with shades of Avril Lavigne).

And if you needed any further evidence of the massive gay following of the show, the above is an actual ad. On a kids network. It comes from the guy with the super-gay voice who did those honey badger videos, and I think this proves without a shadow of a doubt that even children with no concept of human sexuality are watching this show thinking, "This show is gayer than a rainbow unicorn, and I love it." No offence to Glee, but this is the only show about singing gays that kids should be watching.

I know admitting this is the equivalent of setting fire to my credibility as a bibliophile, but I've never read any of Stieg Larsson's Millenium series. Wait, wait, wait! Before you tie me to the stake and burn me by using copies of Dan Brown's latest crime against the written word, hear me out. I missed it back when everyone was initially getting into it, and by the time I started getting details, I was pretty much the only person in the world who hadn't read it. At that point, it's better not to show up to the party than to show up late and annoy everyone. Plus, it contains a lot of... well, let's just say, "questionable relations" and leave it at that. Needless to say, it's not something your 12-year-old can write a book report on.

But lo and behold, I can finally have my cake and eat it too. The trailer for the American film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo just leaked and... yes, it looks amazing. Ridiculously so. Let's break this one down, shall we?

First: David Fincher is directing it, and you can kind of see shades of Fight Club in it. I think we can all agree that was around the time Brad Pitt was at his hottest.

Second: Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig are both fine actors. Rooney establishes herself as a talented up-and-coming actor, and Craig looks like this:

'Ello, guv'nah.

Third: that song in the background? It's Karen O and Trent Reznor's cover of "Immigrant Song." Remember that episode of South Park where the boys discovered a frequency that makes people crap their pants? Well, I think we've just discovered the frequency that causes people to have violent, earth-shattering orgasms of the auditory canal.

Anyway, I haven't read the books or seen the original movies based on them (I'm sure they're all lovely too... or not – whichever side the majority agrees with), so what I'm about to say is based entirely on this one little trailer. This movie looks pretty rad.

So, a story recently dropped about how Facebook founder and Jesse Eisenberg-look-alike Mark Zuckerberg has decided that he will eat only meat that comes from animals he has slaughtered. Why? Beats the shit out of me. Rich people are weird. When you consider that Charlie Sheen once made $2 million per episode of the single worst show ever made and then subsequently tried to use that money to build a mansion out of crystal meth and the corpses of strippers... well, it doesn't take a genius to see that money makes people completely crazycakes.

Anyway, PETA didn't like Zuckerberg's decision one bit because, let's face it here, PETA doesn't like ANYTHING. Seriously, their budget is split 50-50 between thinking up new ways to be outraged over petty bullshit and paying fame whores to take naked pictures for a cause they know fuck-all about. Naturally, PETA decided to fuck everyone who just had their houses demolished by a tornado, because that guy they loosely based The Social Network on just killed a pig for sustenance!

Here's the thing about PETA: I'm sure on some level their hearts are in the right place, but when it comes down to brass tacks, they are stupid. Actually, calling them stupid would be an insult to people with sub-average intelligence. PETA's pure, unadulterated incompetence in everything they do is probably the main reason why people hate animals. They don't get it! Who's going to try to emulate Mark Zuckerberg's diet? The guy is built like a five-year-old with brittle bone disease. He would need to grow a mustache on his balls just to be considered manly enough to wear high-heeled shoes. And even if he weren't such a huge pansy, he'd still be morally in the clear because animals eat other animals. While not all animals do, placing moral superiority on one choice over the other is pretty damn stupid when neither action has any major consequence in the grand scheme of things.

But none of that really matters because, ultimately, PETA is just utterly clueless about the moral complexities of using animals for our benefit. Hell, the senior vice-president of PETA is dependent on insulin, which is incredibly ironic when you consider that insulin is tested on animals and contains animal products. Whoops. And they seem to think rolling out a new photo of a naked model every time someone kills an animal is going to convince anyone that killing said animal is wrong? Really? If anything, PETA's continued existence is probably the cruellest thing to happen to animals ever. And just to show you that I love animals, here's a dog with a heart on its butt. Why? Because it's, OMG, SO CUTE!

That's right. Today, Goodhandy's celebrates its fifth birthday! Ironically, that means it's not even old enough to drink yet. Unless you're from the South. They bottle-feed with Everclear down there.

Anyway, in honour of this glorious day, let's take a look at Goodhandy's by the numbers, shall we?

Age of Goodhandy's: five.

Age of Mandy Goodhandy: 20 something.

Age of Mandy's tits: eight.

Average number of abs per bartender: five.

Average number of drinks it takes a patron to get super shitty: two and a half.

Number of movie references Todd Klinck will understand in his lifetime: zero (but only because it's impossible to go into negative integers).

Number of annoying hipsters per night who ask, "Isn't this the club from Scott Pilgrim?": three.

Number of people who've had sex in the diamond rooms: 14,284,961. (Never walk up there barefoot. You will get pregnant.)

Famous person who may or may not but probably didn't unless they did have gay sex in the diamond room: not Tom Cruise.

So, happy birthday, Goodhandy's! And here's to five more years of proving that Toronto is the single most slutty city ever.