How embarassing ...

I got a ride home from fellow board members of the MTSpace. I said: that's my house, ahead, with the light on. He drove right past and stopped at the next house that had a criminal-deterring, energy-inefficient, very bright light on, and a bright blue Conservative sign. I was too embarrassed to say anything. I got out and walked back to my house. I hope people don't start talking about me.

I am reminded of years ago, when I worked at an insurance company, and I accepted a ride home from the fat, cigar-chewing, caricature of a capitalist Vice-President of Data Processing, and with mounting apprehension realized I would have to direct him to the house with the bright orange N.D.P. sign. (It never occurred to me to get him to drop me off in front of a house without a sign, or with that of a more respectable political party.) I thanked him cheerfully for the ride, but if there'd been a pentacle on the door, he would not have looked more stricken. People did talk about me, I'm convinced.

My Compass

This Magazine has a link to a test where you can determine your political orientation.

Here, supposedly, are the major Canadian political parties.



And here am I:



"An anarchist? Give me a cigarette."

I am disappointed

On Saturday, I read in the Star that Elizabeth May was supporting strategic voting. This struck me as such a radical departure for a leader of a party, as such a noble gesture, that I would have considered voting for her party, except of course that she was urging me not to.

Now I find out that she never meant to say that! Like any other party leader, she wants your vote, even if it is a waste to give it her. Her party is more important to her than her cause.

Look on the bright side ...

... the good guys are beating the bad guys!!

CPC 40%
Lib 21%
NDP 21%
Green 7%

Good Guys: 21 + 21 +7 = 49%
Bad Guys: 40%

(Angus Reid Poll)

Now if we could only get them to shoot in the same direction.

Transport at Nuit Blanche

Transport will be at Nuit Blanche in Toronto, Oct 4th. Isabella and Carlo will be baby-sitting it, along with other members of the technical posse. (You can see a clip from it here.) I don't know if I'll go -- the idea of staying up all night, or even past midnight, fills me with dread. I hate driving in on the 401 (I lose hairs every time). And now Greyhound -- you could get your head cut off! I would like to live on a desolate island but with treacherous waters about, that would discourage, or better, wreck, approaching speed boats, especially personal watercraft such as Stockwell Day piloted. A cannon would be nice. (This was my favorite part of Les Vampires -- Satanas, the replacement Grand Vampire, had a personal cannon, with which he bombarded a night-club where Irma Vep was having an intimate dinner with her new lover, Moreno, who to tell the truth had hypnotized her, the dog.)

The Pathetic Sharks

I only got up nerve to buy one copy of Viz when I was working in London in 1989, but the Pathetic Sharks live in my memory as a powerful metaphor than can be applied in many situations in life.

Here is how they are described in the Wikipedia article:

Each of the Pathetic Sharks is extremely vain and childish, each one jockeying for superiority over the others based on some trivial ability or petty accomplishment which the other three denigrate, while challenging each other's political correctness and other credentials.

...

In each of their strips, the Pathetic Sharks show up to interrupt some form of social activity among humans, causing the people to flee in terror ... until the pathetic bitchery and whining among the Sharks prompts one person to announce "These sharks are crap!" or something similar. The Pathetic Sharks never accomplish anything.

The sharks swim into my consciousness with the federal election. I might compare the Liberal party to the sharks, but that would be unkind. Really, it is the Liberal Party, the New Democrats and the Greens who are the sharks! (I'm not sure about the B.Q. -- it may further their strategic goals to make the opposition pathetic.) I'm thinking this because Harper has left enough blood in the water over the past year, but so far, "these sharks are crap!"

Fact Check

Stephen Harper has said that the Liberal's proposed carbon tax would plunge the country into a catastrophic recession, and threaten national unity.

He neglected to mention it would also create millions of tiny black holes that would quickly consume the Earth, destroying forever his hopes for a majority government.

Fifteen Theses on the Federal Election

On Parties:

1. I was born into the New Democratic Party, as the child of an electrician from the Red Clyde and a CCF'er from Hamilton. But I am not married to it.
2. I do not hate the Liberal Party. I am often disappointed in it.
3. I am perhaps closest in sympathy to the platform of the Green Party, but can't see supporting a party even more marginal than my own.
4. I detest the Conservative Party in its present incarnation, but marvel that I did not detest it any less when it was more moderate. I suppose it's in the blood.
5. I did an online quiz once to determine which party I should vote for. I came out as a Bloc Quebecois supporter.

On Personalities:

1. Jack Layton. I have only heard him a couple of times on radio but he came across to me as somewhat smarmy. (But this is a Canadian failing. Think of Colin Mochry apologizing.) I wished he wouldn't feel the need to inject "hardworking Canadians" (or some such phrase) into even an answer on Afghanistan. And yet I agreed with him.
   
2. When I first heard of Stephane Dion running for the Liberal leadership, part of me, remembering his Letters to Quebec, thought he'd be an upright, intellectually courageous leader, and part of me thought he'd be "a beautiful loser". I'm more inclined to the later assessment but we will see. I think he suffers from an academic impairment, always imagining a criticism to what he's about to say, and trying to head it off. This leads him to destroy his best lines.
3. I have no opinion of Elizabeth May.
4. Stephen Harper strikes me as someone who made his mind up years ago, and is just wearied and exasperated that most people don't agree with him. He sounds like a husband telling his wife for the thousandth time (because she just doesn't get it) that you need to do X to get Y. He doesn't even consider that she might be right, he has been telling her for so long. Since she is obviously incapable of reason, he puts on a cardigan and talks to her as to a child.
   
5. I love Gilles Duceppe's accent!

On Policies:

1. Carbon tax or cap-and-trade, whatever, just get something going. Putting a cost on carbon will be good for cities, because cities are good at saving energy. Canada is good at cities. And cities are good for innovation. Cities are good for culture.
   
2. I want a foreign policy based on morality, that is to say, against war as an instrument of policy. The whole neoconservative thrust has been to relegitimize war. Mr. Harper is for war when it advances the interests of an ally, against it when it doesn't. I think we need to aim higher than that.
   
3. I don't want the Armed Forces to be made a fetish, or the core of the Canadian Identity. They do a job, that's all.
4. I think funding culture is important, just like R&D in science and technology.
5. Oh, there's probably much more I should have an opinion on, and maybe I do.
   

recycled joke

Q. Why can Stephen Harper never be circumcised?
A. Because there's no end to the prick.

This joke came floating up from the unconscious today (with the name "Nixon" instead of "Harper") as I looked at the front page of the Star. Really, there is something Nixonian about Harper -- needy, resentful, devious -- and no end to him. Putting a cardigan on him doesn't change his essential nature.