Grain of orange, sea of blue

To quote James:

so i voted.
and i lost.
and i'm glad.

After fifty-five days of discussion, complaining and brief bursts of frustration, I cast my ballot with the masses on January 23, 2006. While I had made my election decision (sort of) prior to the holidays, I really enjoyed the election process. I gave each candidtate a chance to woo my vote--distract me with their rhetoric. I loved watching the commercials (mostly online as the cable was dropped in November) and the debates. The daily coverage. The foodballs and snowballs. The photo ops. The brief moments of passion. The not so brief moments of policy debate.

Yup. Good times.

In the last federal election, I voted strategically--one of those cynical constituents who felt it was better to vote against someone rather than voting for them. For some reason, this time around I became more idealistic (with a touch of fatalistic) and decided I would vote for the party/candidate that appeared most similar compared to my own ideals and ideas for Canada.

It was odd, really. I felt very empowered by this new sense of participation in democracy. I was making my voice heard. I was making a difference. I was part of a great tradition where the populace met to speak out and create a better nation. So, during my lunch break, I walked with much purpose to my polling station, got myself a ballot and marked an X next to my favoured candidate.

And then I watched said candidate was trounced by 24,000 votes.

Natalie described counting the ballots at that polling station. It was like listening to a skipping CD, stick on the incumbent's last name. Even though the CD is solidly stuck, you keep on listening because you hope that it will get past the scratch and get to the rest of the song.

So, welcome to the new Canada. Not that much different from the old Canada, really. Just slightly more to the right. To be honest, I'm not heartbroken about the result. As Rex Murphy said during the post-election Cross Country Checkup, there's something here for everyone: a Conservative government; a punished, but not decimated Liberal party; a reduced Bloc; ten more NDP members; and a single independant from Montreal who was elected to the pleasure of his grass-roots supporters (and with the support of his media personality). It's a balanced minority government for a country that wasn't doing to bad to begin with.

The excitement of the election is over. I guess we can all go back to doing what we did before. Last night I watched DaVinci's City Hall at Tony's. Good times once more.

Surprized? Not really.

I heard a story on the radio yesterday about a businessman in Airdrie who has dropped his old website in favour of a new one. Some time later, after his lease of the old domain name expired, it was promply purchased and renovated into a porn site. So watch out next time you're looking for Heritage Refrigeration's website.

But it got me to thinking: I hope that doesn't happen to blogs that are left alone for too long. What degenerate things would be posted on DarNat? (that's a rhetorical question, everyone, so please don't make suggestions)

So, yeah, we neglected the blog over the holidays. There were no pictures, musings about fruitcakes, stories about presents, games played and other debacles. Rest assured that all happened, but you didn't hear about it here.

No, our first post-holiday blog entry has to do with the election. Does that mean we've entered the election blogsphere? Are we one of the blogs that that writer in the Globe and Mail cruises? Probably not. We simply can't compete with Feschuk. We'd like to, but we can't.

So n0w that we've waded into politics, let me give you a bit of an update on the political state of the Le Bray/Sit household. Enamoured with the democratic process and desperate to see a Canada we like come January 24th, we have become slightly involved.

Yesterday we went to our candidate's forum at Broken City and watched the crew debate it up. It was pretty interesting/fun with standing room only. Apparently, I showed up on Global News in one of their crowd shots - so says Will.

We dropped to new social lows as we made plans around the two English leader's debates. Rather than ignore them like the rest of the population, we made plans to crash Ryan and Karissa's home, eat mozza sticks and pizza and watch the hillarity ensue. Good times all around. We have plans to do election night (January 23th) there as well.

And in more exciting news, Natalie will be a poll clerk for election day. Yup, she'll get paid to give you a ballot and explain how to use it. As I've learned, eating your ballot is illegal, so I think her job is to tell people not to do that. She'll also be responsible for counting the ballots, which sounds like a pretty cool job. That just means that she won't be able show up at Ryan and Karissa's until after her results are in... I think she's come to terms with that responsibility, though. I, on the other hand, will be eating homemade pizza and flipping between election and hockey with the Boley's. Good times are expected.

This will be unlike the 2004 election when I returned to my car after voting only to find that I had left my keys in the ignition behind a locked door. So, I asked the residents of a nearby townhouse if I could use their phone to call a tow truck and ended up watching the election coverage with them while I waited for two hours for the truck to show up. I was pleasantly surprized to find other left-leaning people in Calgary.

So go vote. Even if you don't know who to vote for or don't care. If that's the case, go spoil your ballot. Heck, you could vote for yourself.

Now, let's change the mood a little:















For more of this action, go to www.stuffonmycat.com. Yes, it's silly, but I need something to distract me from the election.

Cheers!

I can smell the nerd

I have some horrible news.

Steven Harper doesn't like Star Trek: The Next Generation. He thinks it's "crap." The man, who unfortunately may become our Prime Minister, likes old Trek. So we can look forward to him sending red shirts to Afghanistan. He may even use the notwithstanding clause to ensure that Kirk is cooler than Picard.

I saw this article here and it's a laugh a minute. My favourite revelation is that he quotes from the episodes. "Dammit Rob, I'm a Reform Party member, not a wussy Conservative Party member."

I can only hope this is what frightens Ontario voters to turn back to a Liberal minority. God knows countries make fun of us enough already.