Bloggity blog blog…

And even more embarrassing when I can't locate all the pieces of a set because I put it down somewhere and then promptly forgot where.

In any case, I've been sorting out my media collections (very slowly) and finally watching/reading some things I've had and neglected for years.

Currently I'm watching my thincase box set DVDs of Fruits Basket, which I've read a couple of the manga volumes from the library and it seemed like a standard cutesy contrived-situation reverse-harem shoujo thing (though now I think I might actually look it up and give it another go, since old wank comments indicate that it gets darker and weirder as it goes along).

( Everything I learned about Fruits Basket, I learned from Fandom Wank. This can be said of a surprising number of fandoms, come to think of it. )

Speaking of Fullmetal Alchemist, I went and ordered the newer Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood anime series during the recent RightStuf sale (and did a rewatch of the original on my old DVDs which I finally got around to unwrapping) and of course went looking for some old wank to entertain myself with.

Sadly, I was doomed to be disappoint since it seems that the height of FMA wankery happened even before I started watching the episodes when they first aired on YTV in the mid-2000s and then just plain stopped a couple of years back, at least in terms of being reported on FW.

Maybe it just got dumped in Unfunny which doesn't keep memories or do tags, but I was really hoping for some remake-vs-original anime/more-faithful-than-thou-to-the-source-manga type stuff.

Oh well, if I want to see adaptation wank, there's bound to be a bunch of it upcoming with the new season of Game of Thrones (yay for Amazon's recent pricedrops meaning I'll be saving an extra $13 + tax over what I thought I'd be paying on the 2nd season Blu-Ray, even over the original extra 10% off I managed to get), though it'll probably be all Unfunny fodder.

( My few fandoms never get the funny wank. Well okay, there was that Scott Summers Snapewife thing, and there's always Rob Liefeld vs Everyone: Who'd Win?, but generally it's like Sturgeon's Law, in a way, with 90% of everything crud. )

And speaking of the officially-authorized ASOIAF cookbook, A Feast of Ice and Fire turns out to be pretty nifty and incorporates selected text from old medieval/Elizabethan/Roman recipes used as inspirational sources, though not nearly in as interesting way as a dedicated medieval/ancient recreationist cookbook such as Pleyn Delit or any of the other number of such which I'm tempted to look up again.

I tried the Dornish Duck with Lemons recipe, which turned out okay, though next time I think I'll rub the ground pepper and chile powder inside and outside the duck instead of incorporating it into the glaze, and reduce said glaze further and that might work better. Or maybe I just finally buy a proper stainless steel roasting pan and rack that fits into a convection toaster oven.

Picked up some rainbow trout and rosemary to try the Trout Wrapped in Bacon recipe which is a "Southron" dish, but no longer have bacon in the fridge, so I'll need to do a whole bunch of remedial shopping (not just for this, but other stuff as well) tomorrow.

So, the Fandom Wank wiki is down. And after 2+ weeks, seems like it's not coming back up again anytime soon.

And this was the year I was going to try and make some contributions, too, with some of the funnier food wanks*.

The other thing which is down is paid account creation/upgrading for JournalFen. Apparently they changed some stuff and now there are error messages all around when I try, although the FAQ does contain a years-old procedure for how to pay manually by routing everything through a processing server which I'm not sure if it still works or not.

I did want to throw some more money at JF for keeping my stuff around for all these years (and providing me with much entertainment in the process) and thought of upgrading some sort of auxiliary account/community (since I've been Paid Permanent since shortly after I got a signup invite here). I expect eventually I'll contact Paid Support and ask them what the proper procedure is nowadays.

Over the holidays, I did go and buy a Permanent Account over at InsaneJournal while they had them cheap on sale, mostly as thanks for keeping my stuff there for all those years when they could have deleted it (and apparently went and auto-deleted a bunch of inactive free accounts with content in them on fairly short notice; don't know why mine didn't get hit) and also so that they don't delete it in the future while they're still alive.

And I bought some Dreamwidth Points which I'll someday apply to upgrading my as-yet-unused account there so I can cross-post to multiple journals and use Google Analytics to creepy-stalk any visitors or something.

There was some other stuff I wanted to blog about, but it can wait for its own post (and for me to get a proper supper, too) and I've been meaning to post more often anyway, on the time-old principle of "I bought it, I should probably use it at some point", which I never really do anyway.

* "My breaducation, let me show you it", "are those shepherd's pies made from real shepherds?", and maybe the Jamie Oliver† thing, even though that's somewhat out-of-date.

† Mostly so I can make a joke about the Naked Chef and wank. Damnit, Safari, stop auto-correcting to that to "sank". It's not the same thing at all, unless it's in conjunction with shipping wars.

So, in an effort to Do Better in the future/now that the faux-pocalypse is officially kind of over, went around retrieving a bunch of old passwords/logins for social networking/creative stuff.

And a lot has changed since I last touched it. I'm not even sure what will work to post to/backup from my various LJ-based journals (those which are still up and haven't imploded/collapsed due to various sites being shut down from dwindling clientele and all). Half the links from LJ's official page and supporting communities are dead (and about a 3rd of the developers seem to have deleted their personal accounts as well). That's not an encouraging sign.

I suppose what I end up using in the future will depend on whether or not I can get a copy of my own back onto my computer again. I think that lets out Blogger (I never liked their interface and apparently they've gone and made it worse since then).

Well, at least JF will still work with my old tools, if I can find them. There's something to be said for not updating the code.

At least, not on Journalfen, anyway. Maybe it's still lurking on one of the other accounts.

So, first post from the shiny, shiny new MacBook Pro (non-Retina). They seem to have changed a bunch of stuff between Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion and I'm still not getting the hang of the trackpad, which seems to think that my finger combination always wants to right-click, but I've basically had it for about a half-hour and I already love it to death.

And I'm scared of scratching it and want to buy it a protective hard-case and a bunch of accessories. Maybe I'll stop by one of the Apple mall stores tomorrow and see if they have any on display to check out how they look.

Also, need to dig up a sacrificial 1GB USB stick if I can, to create the recovery/reinstall disc. Sure, it's supposed to be built-in to the system now, but I don't trust it to work if things really get b0rked.

And now I'm noticing how much my hands seem to sweat (and I just washed them, like, three times already, too). Maybe someplace will have those silicone keyboard covers like I had for the old PowerBook.

Aside from that, I'm quite pleased, especially as it seems this model not only still has Firewire (I was thinking I'd need to get a Thunderbolt-to-FW adapter), but also the SuperDrive (I was thinking I'd then need to get an FW 800-400 adapter to hook up the external to). Mind you, I wouldn't have minded too much if they had removed the optical drive like I thought, since it would save on weight. But I can always pick up a MacBook Air next year if absolute thinness and lightness starts to be a thing that I really want.

Well, my idiot fellow Canadians just voted in a Conservative Harper Government™ majority.

People really don't pay attention to stuff, do they?

Ah well, at least it's only four years and with Harper off the leash now, he's going to be completely out of control and people will get well and truly sick of his policies and attitude and vote all his mostly incompetent and/or corrupt personnel out of office the next time.

Provided enough of them finally pay attention this time around.

( “Out of sight, out of mind” apparently == “Invisible Idiot” in apocryphal auto-translations )

So minor optimism there and hope for the longer-term future. Because in the short term, it's likely to get really, really bad, and the people who most can't afford to suffer will be the ones doing so because a lot of people just weren't thinking about anything other than themselves when they went and voted (if they even went so far as to think, instead of auto-stuffing their party ballot).

And now for a little cathartic rant.

( Mercer-style Talking to Canadians totally sarcastic mode ON: Congratulations, Canada, on re-electing a government found in contempt of Parliament! )

I think I'm going to go buy some stuff while the CAD is still reasonably high, before the inevitable "don't tax, but spend, spend, spend, and on useless cosmetic things we mostly don't need instead of real maintenance and repairs and actual services" kills our net worth.

And look over my banking stuff again and see how best to rearrange my money for optimal investment yield. Because with four more years of Flaherty's fiscal incompetence ahead and likely to be no further oversight from Kevin Page's budget accountability office, I'm probably going to need every dollar to pay for a whole lot of services purely out of my own pocket from now on.

I feel sorry for those in the position where they won't be able to, who'll number a lot more in the years to come.

Finally went and updated DeepestSender to work with Firefox 3.5. Also finally went and put in some new CSS for the old JF since there was some sort of glitch in, uh… November, according to system, which killed off the linked stylesheets which came with the pre-packaged S2 styles.

( I swear despite what this may look like, I am not actually colourblind. )

Which is a shame, because I really wanted to try out ”LESS — Leaner CSS”, which is pretty much how I've always wanted stylesheet writing to work. But it turns out that the default install of Ruby on the Mac doesn't come with the gem tools. WTF, Apple?!

And while I'm finally posting again: ATTN MY FELLOW CANADIANS—

The iTunes Music Store (version canuck) is currently offering FREE DOWNLOADS of two episodes of The Nature of Things (Climate Change & Earth Energy), plus the Pirate Special of Mythbusters, and some other stuff.

I don't know how long they'll be up, since I'm not sure if they rotate TV offerings every Tuesday like they do the music, but if you happen to catch this before 9PM Eastern, you can get nifty free stuff. Scroll down to the bottom of the intro Store page and click on the Free on iTunes section for the goodies. Must have iTunes store account.

Also, if you're thinking of buying stuff from RightStuf's current 10/50|25/100 bargain bin sale, be aware that some of the items are priced at roughly the same without coupon as they would be with, and if you end up stuffing those in your cart as extras to make up minimum shipping cost in the expectation that the discount will go to the higher-priced eligible items, it doesn't.

So beware buying anything listed as being eligible that's already $4/$5 unless it's to make up the exact required number to get the sale price.

Those have been your public service announcements from me today.

So Archambault's website had this promotion, 20% off selected Québécois BDs.

( It's like they're actively *trying* to get me not to buy from them at all… )

Well, while irritating, this isn't an insurmountable annoyance (except, perhaps, for Archambault, who just lost 134.92$ of my money, which they could have probably used to shore up possibly-sinking parent company Quebecor).

After all, the library does have most of the other Rabagliati and Delisle albums and will no doubt be getting in the latest.

But I really did want to own the damn things which I could then read at my leisure and Support Canadian Talent and Canadian Business at the same time, especially at 20% off.

Eh, hopefully they have an equivalent sale sometime soon, preferably before the albums go into reprints and the cover price goes up.

On a further note, earlier this week, our voter cards finally came in the mail, which was a relief, since the election's less than a week off, now.

Also arrived in the mail, X-Men: The Animated Series, volumes 1 & 2 on DVD, which I will freely admit I have absolutely no nostalgia for, having only ever seen a handful of episodes on repeats as a kid, and thinking that the similarly named Batman: The Animated Series was much, much better; an opinion I hold to this day.

( Riddle me this: How is a provincial legislature candidate like a mutant registration actor? )

Hopefully it's a sign that in the future, Canadian political pandering will begin to less resemble the laughably ridiculous version to be found in cheap 90s comics-based cartoons.

* In fact, the voices for all of them were probably done in Canada, just like they were for X-Men: Evolution and possibly also the new one given how cheap it is to buy our film industry's services.

Which explains why for once, Wolverine is the only X-Man who doesn't sound like a total stereotypical cliché; not that Bad Generic Southern Accents Spoken By People Who Have Probably Never Heard the Real Thing are exclusive to Canadian acting and/or writing, mind you.

One of these days, I'm going to have to have to make a dedicated Stephen Harper icon.

Something with “What, Me Prorogue?” encircling his smarmy lying-to-the-public official speech face, or maybe from his 22 Minutes appearance with “SO I HERD U LIEK HANDCUFFS”.

( My tax dollars at waste, if I actually were to pay any. )

Thankfully, I can enjoy some schadenfreudian glee that Harper and his party are slipping nastily in the polls.

Ignatieff strikes me as a back-stabbing bet-hedging shilly-shallying fence-sitter, May still gives off those lurking crazy PETA person vibes, and the most impressive thing about Layton is his New Democratic pornstache, but I'd take any one of them over Harper anyday, even if I don't think the current NDP should be put in charge of the money either.

But then, Flaherty's thoroughly unfit at that, too, so they probably can't do much worse and at least they won't be likely to be claiming unknown future revenue from a quickie fire sale of Crown assets to their corporate buddies as part of a balanced budget.

Well, The Nature of Things is finally coming out on DVD. It's a kind of mixed bag of not-that-great themed episodes, some of which I already have in TV caps, but I'm going to buy it anyway to Support Canadian Television I Like and thereby encourage the release of more Canadian Television I Like on DVD.

Hopefully they'll put Dragons' Den on DVD. If they can sell Canadian Antiques —ing Roadshow, then I'm sure they can sell the vastly more entertaining and informative DD.

I did watch the UK Dragons' Den's Around the World Special, which took a look at the various incarnations of the show around the world.

( “There's something really *visceral* about watching people beg for money, and having in front of them people who can give it to them.” )

Apparently, the US may or may not be getting their own version of the show fairly soon, for which apparently Kevin O'Leary is consulting them, if he hasn't actually signed on.

If he has, I suppose our neighbours to the south will be able to enjoy his bitchy bon mots regarding the unfeasibility of poorly pitched and badly thought-out business ideas, which are always entertaining to listen to and often eminently quotable.

Good clean mean-spirited fun.

I think this is the earliest I've ever finished my taxes.

( I may be slightly optimistic on this matter. )

Ah well. At least I get a chance to hopefully vote at least one of the three out of office this year.

And speaking of other parties that don't deserve my money but want to take it anyway: the Royal Bank of Canada, which in all honour should be ashamed to associate itself with any of the component parts of its name.

Last year, before the economy seriously started drowning itself in the toilet, I'd contemplated putting some spare cash into a GIC with Royal Bank.

Now I'm very glad I didn't.

( Stupid, stupid RBC )

No wonder they got sued for billions of dollars for meddling in the US sub-prime mortgage market.

I'd almost sooner burn my money in hell than invest with them now.

I think whoever runs RBC should really join the ranks of FOX, who've come up with yet another amazingly novel “entertainment” concept with which to horrify the sane.

Ahahahaha… you stay classy DIE IN A FIRE.

The only way this show would be even remotely watchable by people who aren't complete assholes would be if it were set among the FOX corporate executive ranks, which really, it ought to be.

But in the category of shows I think a complete waste of time and money, I am happy to report that CBC's Sophie, which is truly, truly terrible†, has been cancelled.

They'll probably replace it with something just as bad, but at least it will be a fresh and new kind of badness until the novelty wears off.

Kind of like the CRTC's ever-increasing kowtowing to the ridiculousness of Bell, which has decided to stop even trying to fairly compete as a business in favour of kneecapping the little guy instead.

The little guy being not only their own customers (long considered mere payment-peon locked-in-contract-serf fodder), but also the third-party resellers who make use of the lines which Bell lays claim to.

( “Selling you our lemons, say the Bells of St. Clemens…” )

Thankfully, my ISP has warned all its customers about this, even though the lowly general public only has until midnight to submit comment, which has miraculously opened up for this day alone, it looks like.

Even though I don't live in a Bell-serviced area, I think it sets a very bad precedent to let one monopolistic company determine policy for the entire business. And that's exactly what I'm going to tell the CRTC.

Not that I think it'll do much good, since apparently at least one of the guys who makes major policy decisions for them is an ex-Bell executive who could probably swim, Scrooge McDuck-style, in the kickbacks he's probably receiving.

But every little bit helps.

* Seriously — a creationist chiropractor who refuses to even comment about evolution on religious grounds as our Science Minister? Why, God, why?!?!?

† And a derivatively awful Jeph Loeb terrible, rather than an endearingly incompetent Ed Wood terrible way, no less.

Apparently, the clouds decided to get in on April Fool's today, by dumping approximately 2 inches of snow this morning, which promptly melted in the afternoon sun.

This being the sort of winter weather we normally get during a normal winter, instead of the annoying and unseasonal blizzards we actually got this actual winter.

Ahahahaha… this would have been a lot funnier if the entire city hadn't been snowed in and mostly shut down over the corresponding previous holiday.

You're about three months too late, O clouds.

Mind you, I'm not really in a position to complain about tardiness, having not written in this journal since even before the blizzards started last autumn.

But I do have a fairly decent reason for that: i.e. my PowerBook's hard drive having decided to give up and die, just in time to celebrate Christmas.

( I think the ultimate moral of this story is: Never buy anything made by Seagate. Also, backup early, often, and with paranoid redundancy. And when all else fails, rock your Mac. )

And so now you know how to possibly pull your data from having a failing Fujitsu HD which has been making whirring, grinding noises before it completely dies.

I will note that Fujitsu seems to have gone out of the hard drive manufacturing business, which may or may not say something.

Thankfully, now everything's working again, and I managed to pick up two Acom drive enclosures on sale for half their regular price (after again paying much more for another the first time it went on sale) and once I can find a decent model of HD to put inside, my backup problems will be closer to solved.

Just as long as it isn't a Seagate, because I'm never buying anything from them again. I hope they go the way of Fujitsu, because really, they deserve it.

Apparently, our neighbours to the south are holding their election today.

CBC's been promising special coverage tonight. Given their previous featurettes on the candidates, the issues, the corresponding local media coverage, not to mention the sometimes startling views of the eligible voting population*, it kind of looked the US was headed for a re-enactment of their civil war. Or their revolution; it was a bit hard to tell.

Hopefully all goes well, the clearly less incompetent candidate gets voted in by a decent margin, and there is neither rioting nor societal collapse nor imposition of martial law.

Or four months of recounts and lawsuits, for that matter. Though admittedly, for persons not personally involved, that's like bonus entertainment value.

Speaking of entertainment value, I got to watch the Christmas Special of the UK version of Dragons' Den, which is not only much more British, but also much more bitchy.

It's like they went and transplanted Kevin O'Leary's personality into at least two of the other dragons.

( “Anyway, I can't invest in crap like that. Maybe other crap, but not that.” )

Wolverine and the X-Men was back this week. And it was a bit of a surprise.

( Given the long white hair, red and purplish suit, and apparent electrical powers, I thought they'd poked the bottom of the continuity barrel and it had spat forth Joseph. )

Decent ep with a sucky feature guest star but a good look at the other side of the mutant team equation.

On The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos, whose name I have finally learned to remember to spell properly by noticing that only the o's after the l's don't require extra u's, they had some political reporter guy from Rolling Stone magazine, plus Farley Mowat.

The reporter guy was interesting enough (apparently his magazine has decided it will be stationing him to cover the McCain camp during the election results for the express purpose of gloating), but Farley Mowat was awesome.

( “After my third liver transplant, I switched to vodka.” )

Really nice and entertaining insight into the man who's been so influential on Canadian literature and culture. I should dig up that copy of his Vikings that I bought at a library booksale last month.

Apparently, while The Hour has a YouTube channel, they have yet to put up the Mowat interview. But it looks like it's available directly on their CBC website.

* I'm afraid that from this here vantage point, y'all kinda sound like somewhat deluded crazy people. Bless your li'l hearts.

For the first time in ages, I got home on Sunday early enough to catch the beginning of Heartland, which proceeded to reward me by having its best episode of the season thus far.

( “Who's up for some branding and castrating?” )

As always, good, clean, wholesome family-friendly fun, and I hope it continues this trend of getting better each week.

Normally, CBC puts on some sort of Sunday night movie afterwards, but this week, they chose to air a new two-hour Canadian-made documentary about George W. Bush, The Bush Years.

( Somewhere in America, a village is missing its idiot. )

In the end, he's sort of a sit back and take advantage of the benefits of other people's actions without ever thinking about the ethics or the costs, all in an attempt to deal with his raging Daddy issues kind of guy.

Sad, really, that someone so unsuited could end up wielding so much power and ultimately doing so much harm.

* Veterinarian Scott has some form of First Nations ancestry; I'm not sure whether that's the role adapted from the books, or just the actor himself.

† At least, the bits involving whip-wielding dominatrixes in telegenic leather corsets.

‡ As opposed to getting off Scott Free, which is an accomplishment reserved for Big Barda.

Looks like I bought my Scotia Special Rate GIC just in time.

( Dance for my money! Dance! )

I calculate that with annual compounding, it should give me an 11.7% return on my investment, which is supposed to be low, but much safer than dumping it into, say, the stock market.

Mind you, for regular GICs at comparable terms, the rates are still much, much better at Canadian Tire and ING Direct (and apparently they have this nifty referral program where I can generate invite codes and both me and new signups get a $13 bonus), plus theirs are cashable at a reduced rate.

But at least the big banks are trying, for now.

I myself will be doing my part to help the economy along.

The Canadian economy, that is.

( Supporting local merchants and merchandise. )

Anyway, provided I buy Canadian-only releases from Canadian retailers at Canadian prices, I should be able to support local/national business without taking a price hit from the fluctuating exchange rate.

I've found out recently that a number of nifty local talent stuff is coming up for release.

( Fortunately, not another compilation of “Canadian —ing Antiques Roadshow”. )

And there's my contribution to keeping the economy afloat, while keeping myself reasonably and affordably entertained.

Unlike the federal government's contribution, which is to reveal a sudden retroactive $1.7 billion deficit. Yeah, you couldn't have told us this before the election, eh?

Oh, right. You wanted those votes and lied to get them.

I will admit to being somewhat sadomasochistically amused by the growing backlash in the comments, calling out Harper on his repeated election campaign statements that he would absolutely not run a deficit while claiming that his rivals all would.

But then, it's not really that much of a surprise, considering the creative accounting practices the current ruling party likes to use for its campaigns and funding in general.

In and Out Scandal, version 2.0, anyone?

In the ahahahaha…WHAT column for the day: US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan shocked, shocked!, I tell you, by credit crunch.

( Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor, it seems. )

Lesson to be learned: provided you start with sufficient funds you can lie and cheat and steal all you want, and when you run out, you can go crying for more and get it.

( I wish our respective economies weren't quite so intertwined. Or at least, that we hadn't sold out quite so much to foreign investment. )

Caught up with the last half-season of Spectacular Spider-Man.

( The symbiote really is the crazy stalker jilted ex of the Parker-verse. )

Not really to my taste, but still fairly decent, and a neat adaptation of the core mythos.

Now, on to another Peter who is overburdened with both power and responsibility, and handles neither well.

( Heroes )

I still don't think this season's going to turn out to be any good, but it's beginning to look like it'll at least be entertaining, short-term.

* Fun fact: some of the problematic salmon farms currently lining our coast were kicked out of Norway because they didn't meet that country's much higher operations standards.

Yay, Canada, land of lowered expectations and lurking listeriosis!

It seems that my Premium Permanent JournalFen account carries with it some 1500 icon spaces, one of which I am devoting to my new icon for representing Canadian politics: Gilles Duceppe giving Stephen Harper the classic British double-finger salute during the federal election leader's debate (version anglophone).

Poor Stéphane Dion got the double-finger today as he agreed to step down once the Liberals had chosen a new leader during their new leadership convention, from which he would be excluded from consideration this time around.

( In the annals of Canadian history, you just know undereducated future schoolkids are going to confuse him with Céline. )

I usually get home on Sundays just late enough to miss the first half-hour of every Heartland episode. Fortunately, the writing holds up well enough that I can understand the back half.

Even more fortunately, some kind person puts them online the next day. Today I finally caught up in full with what's been going on with my favourite family-owned and operated fictional Albertan ranch.

( “Corporate equine retreat” or dude ranch? U-decide! )

I think they've actually wrapped up all the outstanding plot threads from the first couple of episodes, and it'll be mostly new stuff and character development from now on.

This week's Wolverine and the X-Men episode featured the obligatory fight scene with the Hulk.

In Canada.

Which is a frozen wasteland, naturally.

( What? No Alpha Flight? )

A boring episode unless you really, really like big pointless claw-fights and/or Bruce Banner a lot.

I was all set to open up a couple of new bank accounts and purchase some GICs, now that RBC and Scotiabank are offering decent interest rates on the latter as a time-limited special to lure in fresh funds.

I wanted to spread my money around, just in case of admittedly unlikely Canadian bank collapse, and headed out to the local branches with the intention of doing so.

( “$100 placed at 7 percent interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase to more than $100,000,000 — by which time it will be worth nothing.” — Robert A. Heinlein )

This is why I don't normally bank with the big 5.

Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow, another fine straight-to-DVD production from the folks at Marvel Entertainment.

This, incidentally, was part-produced and recorded in Canada, which no doubt means it's slated for a few airings on YTV to make up the obligatory Canadian content percentage.

( “You think Asgardians really say ‘jerk’?” )

Cute enough if you like “[Fill in the Blank] Babies” sort of things, but really not very good.

Much better is the new Wolverine and the X-Men series, which actually has a decent plot which seems to be going somewhere, and is clearly pandering to the “Hey, look, it's a five second cameo of my favourite X-Person!” crowd with its many blink-and-you'll-miss-it guest appearances.

( More killer robots! More dystopia! )

So far, so good. Though their legs all look like twigs which couldn't possibly support their weight. I keep expecting them to keel over from structural collapse.

Well, the elections are over, resulting in a 300 million dollar waste of taxpayer money involving the lowest voter turnout ever, with an extra dollop of voter disenfranchisement on the side.

Myself, I had no problems. It was a quick in and out* for me, but I am disturbed by the quantity of reports of people who had difficulties.

However, I am pleased that my province had an above-average percentage of people who were actually willing and able to cast their ballots.

( “There may be no measures and no candidates you want to vote *for*… but there are certain to be ones you want to vote *against*.” )

In any case, the country's already starting to experience fallout, not unlike a mushroom cloud with hints of a nuclear winter to come.

( Let the backstabbing begin! )

Well, now that the hoopla is over, I'm finally catching up to some stuff I've been ignoring earlier, including the new season of US network TV.

( Heroes )

Better than the second season (it would be hard not to be), but still mostly providing entertainment via the ever-popular model of Trainwreck in Progress rather than actually being good.

( Ugly Betty )

Ugly Betty is still quite entertaining in its over-the-top soap opera way, even if I find the characters profoundly defective, personality-wise.

I'm kind of toying with whether or not to try this year's Smallville or not.

On the one hand, it's the probably final season and the running aground of the failboat will likely be spectacular.

On the other hand, one of the three decent actors on the show finally managed to leave, and the general cast isn't pretty enough to make up for the resulting acting deficit when they have to deliver their ridiculously bad scripted lines.

Maybe I'll just watch the US election race instead.

That's bound to be just as awful and trainwreck-y, in the same sort of appalling glance-and-wince way.

Mind you, it could likely end up getting too damn depressing.

* Not to be confused with a quick In and Out scandal.

Unfortunately, the referendum on that got overturned by not making an arbitrarily imposed after-the-vote 60% minimum.

The sad thing about the way the current system is set up is that I spend several weeks researching the parties and their platforms, looking into the advisibility and affordability of their plans, and the past records of their leaders and ministers, and cast my vote as best I can.

( Sometimes I wish we could divorce the local candidates from their parties. )

My province: practicing the fine art of the “fuck you” vote since we kicked the last bastard out.

( “Lying, stealing, and having a receptive arse are all absolute necessities for a political career.”— Aristophanes, The Knights )

I'm glad it looks like it'll be another minority government, because quite frankly aside from Duceppe, none of the party leaders are fit to be in charge of a pot of geraniums, much less the entire country.

Hopefully they'll be so caught up in squabbling and infighting that they won't be able to do much harm beyond wasting some $300 million of taxpayer money on Harper's little ego trip/power grab.

Well, due to the Elections Canada blackout, we're not getting any news on the results for another few hours, so I'm going to get something to eat.

Happy Sukkot to any observant Jewish Canadians who were unable to vote during the holiday which started today.

I hope you managed to do your advance voting last week.

And I hope a goodly portion of you voted to stick it to the guy whose party timed the election so inconveniently, not to mention who went and sent you a bunch of unsolicited greetings cards whose addresses were apparently gotten by either gathering up a list of members of Jewish organizations and/or just deciding that certain names had Jewish associations; I can't decide which is creepier.

This post just begs for a Richard Nixon head-in-a-jar mounted on a killer-robot-body Futurama icon. I don't have one of those, so in lieu, the marking on the flank of Minnie Moo, the cow branded by nature and seized by Disney corporate interests.

It's interesting that some time ago, I read an article from the UK's Guardian newspaper's website, about how Stephen Harper is “The Canadian Nixon”.

Because just in time for the holiday weekend, it comes out that Harper basically lied under oath about a taped interview in which he mentioned his party's offer of “financial considerations” to now-deceased independent MP Chuck Cadman, in return for a vote supporting Harper's motion to bring the then-Liberal government down.

( Regardless of whether or not he admitted to knowing exactly what “financial considerations” were offered, isn't it still illegal to try bribing an MP's vote with any such kind of “help” anyway? )

I actually wouldn't mind the Conservative Party being in charge if they had a different and hopefully more ethical leader, provided they stuck to their supposed core values of fiscal and personal responsibility and accountability (which we could all practise a lot more of).

Just so long as they stayed well away from further attempts at disrupting our fine Canadian institutions of freely available national healthcare, publicly sponsored arts and culture by the people for the people, diversity and tolerance of all our residents and their non-violent and non-hateful beliefs, a safety net and helping hand for the less fortunate in our society, and freedom from religion, as well as of it.

And did something positive about the environment and also less pandering to big business to the detriment of the common people, while they were at it.

Anyway, just as a reminder that Alberta produces more than toxic oil sands and politicians who are all hat and no cattle but maybe a cattle-prod or two (with a soupçon of lurking fundie megalomania between the hat and the cattle-prod) I will mention that Heartland, my second-favourite CBC dramedy, which I am pleased to see got renewed for an extra 20 episodes this year, is back. For once, the CBC execs shows taste!

It's based on a series of books about a family horse ranch by some US writer, originally set in the States but relocated to Alberta for the TV adaptation, and it's really quite nice.

( Good, clean, wholesome fun )

I'd probably be a little less lost if I hadn't missed half of last week's season opener and forgotten the rest, but otherwise the show was its usual pleasant look into a nearly completely alien way of life, as far as I'm concerned.

Always interesting to see how other people live.

And speaking of alien lifestyles and angsty adolescent drama, CBC followed up Heartland with their Sunday Night Movie, which turned out to be “Booky Makes Her Mark”, one of a series of tales adapted from some Beloved Canadian Children's Classic not unlike Anne of Green Gables, only newer and less popular.

( This, among other things, is why I'm never having children. )

Overall, a decent heartwarming movie that seems to be made more with the tastes of adults than kids in mind, given the overall “Believe In Yourself And Follow Your Dreams But Don't Be A Complete Wanker Because There Are Always Other Unfortunate People Whose Concerns Dwarf Your Own And Also You Look Stupid” tone of the whole.

I'd still rather have watched a movie about her hard-working, non-complaining, and somewhat cuter sister, though.

Yesterday, Harper finally released his party's platform from under his sweater, conveniently right after the three days of advance voting, for which there was a turnout of 1.5 million, passed.

( “The cake is a lie.” )

Tonight on The National, it was Stéphane Dion's turn to do the “Your Turn” interview which Layton and May had already engaged in, a segment where he fielded questions sent in by viewers about his party's platform.

According to the format, he wouldn't know beforehand which ones would be picked, and would have to answer spontaneously to their little camera diatribes.

He did both better and worse than I would have thought.

( “Stephen Harper may speak English better, but I speak the truth better in *both* official languages!” )

Overall, slightly more of a weasel, with somewhat more of a plan, than I'd initially thought.

I think I wouldn't mind having Dion as Prime Minister, although I wish he showed more willingness to be flexible when it came to inter-party cooperation. He should have a minority government to teach him the error of his ways.

But he seems to have thought things out and have decent, obtainable long-term objectives based on already proven examples, while still taking the short-term into account, provided the ensuing conditions let him carry them out.

As “Pete from Scarborough” commented on the CBC website,

“Dion's model is working wonders around the world. The fact that he needs to see a speech therapist does not diminish the superiority of his vision.”

Anyway, it was apparently cut down from a longer interview shown in full on The National's website, which I'll have to check out, along with Layton, May, and hopefully Duceppe's if he showed up for one.

Because he'd make a much more awesome French-Canadian Prime Ministerial hat trick pick, really.