ted's bed

The camera pulls back to reveal your true identity
Look! It's a sheep in wolf's clothing
A smoking-gun-holding ape
-It's a Hit, Rilo Kiley

Well, I was allowed to vote, but it wasn't easy. I'm still not really sure what the problem was. The volunteer initially tried to send me to Nanaimo, but I eventually won her over. I think she bent the rules for me, but in the end, she told me she wasn't sure if my vote would "count". But I marked an X and put it in the box, so take that Duncan-Cowichan Electoral District.

So. Whoop-Dee-Doo. Nothing happened. And we're still stuck with a bunch of monkeys. I read a headline today... "Harper Pledges 100M Towards Climate Change". What a joke. How can you oh-so-totally-miss-the-point? I guess it's really more like make-people-feel-like-we're-actually-doing-something. Depressing.

If you can't tell, I'm angry about the whole thing.

Anyhow, I feel somewhat compelled to talk a little about Proportional Representation (PR). This subject has come back on the radar recently, considering this election summoned the poorest voter turn-out in Canadian history, and that despite most Canadians not wanting Steve to be Our Guy, that's who we got.

Proportional Representation is a system of voting that is somewhat more nuanced than our current First Past The Post (FPTP) system. There are different forms, but it essentially makes individual votes actually "count" and it reflects the actual wishes of the electorate much more accurately. Here is an example based on our recent election as demonstrated by a table on my cousin Jeffy's blog.

Party	Conservative	Liberal	New Democrat	Bloc Québecois	Green	Christian Heritage	Independent
Popular Vote (%)	37.6	26.2	10.0	18.2	6.8	0.2	0.7
Parliamentary Seats (#)	143	76	50	37	0	0	2
Number of Seats under a System of Proportional Representation (#)	116	81	56	31	21	1	2

This nicely demonstrates how under a proportional system, things make a little more sense. Like, considering that almost a million people voted for the Green Party, they would end up with 21 seats, rather than 0. But there are arguments against this system, of course. Here are some of those arguments, as laid out by a guy who would stand to lose some of his influence under the new system.

British Columbia and Ontario both had referenda to see if we wanted to switch to this method for our provincial elections, but we both blew it. In BC, the form of PR they chose is called Single Transferrable Vote, shortened to BC-STV. Despite the acronym's uncanny ability to conjure up images of genital lesions, 58% of people in BC voted to change to this system, which didn't quite reach the 60% cut-off. Luckily, we get another chance in May 2009.

Anyhow, I won't blather on. But if you're interested....

Here is good argument for proportional representation by some guy called Ed!

Here is a site about BC-STV

illegitimate child falls into well

Any chimp can play human for a day
Use his opposable thumbs to iron his uniform
And run for office on election day
Fancy himself a real decision-maker
-It's a Hit, Rilo Kiley

We spent the weekend in Vancouver for Thanksgiving. I was thankful to be home. I was also thankful to be able to go to Courtney's mom's house and enjoy a lovely dinner on saturday. All I had to do was stir some gravy. It was sweet.

As mentioned previously, Courtney is going to Mayne Island for the next two weeks, so I had to ride my motorcycle back to Duncan today in the rain. I almost didn't make it.

But that story starts in Toronto where I thought I had left my cell phone charger when I was there a couple of weeks ago. I had asked a friend from class (Rachel) who was there on elective, to go to my other friends house to pick it up for me, which she did. She got it back to Vancouver, but forgot to leave it for me there, and ended up bringing it to Nanaimo, where her parents live, as she was there visiting for Thanksgiving. So all I had to do was stop on my way to Duncan and pick it up. How convenient. Except when I showed up to get it.....
1. It was not my phone charger
2. When I returned to the motorcycle, my headlight had stopped working.

So I sat around in the parking lot of a strip mall trying to figure out how to get the light to work again. Then I tried to figure out where I was going to sleep for the night. I didn't have Rachel's phone number, but coincidentally, she is staying at my parent's house in Castlegar for the next two weeks. Thankfully, my parents still have an answering machine that plays the message aloud as it is recorded, so I was able to get a hold of Rachel and ask if I could stay at her parent's house. Anyhow, as I pulled the bike around to make my way back there, the headlight comes back to life.

So here I am in Duncan again.

But what I was going to write about is the election tomorrow.

I'm thankful for being able to vote. I think I've figured out a way to do this in Duncan, despite the Duncanites trying their hardest to prevent me from casting a ballot. So if you've forgotten- it's election day tomorrow! Get excited!

festubert

It isn't how you drive the car, it's how you look behind the wheel

-Snowed In/Cruisin', Joel Plaskett Emergency

First week down in Duncan. It's been pretty good so far.

I may have mentioned in my last post that Courtney and I bought a car. We've been thinking about it for a quite awhile and finally caved. Living 20km down the highway from Duncan and commuting on our bicycles just wasn't going to work for a month. I tried it the other day and had to sing my "please don't kill me" song to all the tractor trailers barreling past at 110 km/h in the rain. Furthermore, Courtney is going to Mayne Island for 2 weeks after this, where apparently having the car is "mandatory". Anyhow, we broke down and bought one. Actually, we broke down and made Courtney's dad buy one (we paid him back).

It's still my opinion that cars are evil machines- polluting the air, killing people and costing us lots of money. But boy are they comfortable. When you are bike commuting in the city, enjoying the fresh air, getting exercise and moving faster than the traffic, it's hard to understand why many people are trapping themselves in expensive, dirty metal boxes and then jamming up the roads with them. After spending some time driving in my own car now, I can understand the seductive power of the automobile. It's just so damn easy. You sit there, warm and comfortable and have the ability to move at incredible speeds.

We will keep biking when in the city, but I'm looking forward to being able to use to car to get out of town on adventures once we are back to Vancouver.

We bought a white 2006 Toyota Matrix.

a presidential rub-down