It's that time again.

If you haven't heard yet, we are in the middle of electing our beloved leaders. BS is flying fast and furious everywhere and promises to make our lives a veritable paradise abound.
Who are the protagonists in the epic clash, well for those of you who do not live in our beautiful land here is a rapid who's who.



Stephen Harper: leader of the Conservative party. Comes from the Reform/Alliance (radical right) party before they took over the conservatives after having united their fortunes. He is known to be autocratic and doesn't really feel that he needs Parliament except to rubber stamp his decisions from the PMO (prime minister's office, a kind of unelected executive). He is a kind of "Bush lite". His platform is mainly law and order (even if the statistics prove that crime has gone down), more military, tax cuts to the large corporations (which probably means that I will be paying more taxes to make up the difference), Republican style attack ads and scare mongering. Has ties to the oil industry and the religious right.




Michael Ignatieff: Liberal leader, liberals being analogous to the Democrats in the US, is an unknown quantity since this is his first election as leader. He is an academic and was at Harvard before becoming the Liberal leader after coup-d'état against the last leader who had even less charisma. His popularity is not the highest at the moment and his chances of forming a government are pretty slim. His platform is left of center and contains promises for families and the middle class. If he does not have a good showing or Harper gets elected with a majority, his days will probably be numbered.




Jack Layton: the leader of the New Democrats. This is a socialist party a bit like the Labour party used to be in the UK. Jack is probably the best liked of the leaders. He seems to be a genuinely nice guy. His party advocates for higher taxes for corporations and the rich, more social programs and more environmentally friendly actions. He is a nice guy but nice guys usually finish last.





Gilles Duceppe: leader of the Bloc Québécois is a big bad separatist, according to Harper he has horns and a forked tail. He is a charismatic and pragmatic leader and is probably the best statesman of the bunch. He is wildly popular in Québec and his party stands to win about 50% of the popular vote here. He usually wins most of the seats for the province. His platform is socialist with the added bonus of wanting to take the province out of the Canadian Federation. His party runs no candidates outside of Québec but that doesn't stop him garnering popularity outside the province.





Elizabeth May: leader of the Green party. This party garnered about 10% of the vote but has elected nobody to parliament. As the name says their platform is principally about the environment and socially they a also a socialist party (kind of goes together). Doesn't have a chance in hell of forming the government but that isn't stopping them from trying.
So there are the choices. If you haven't yet figured it out I'm not a great Harper/Conservative fan and I can only hope he doesn't win enough seats to get a majority because, with apologies to my American friends, I really don't want to live under an American style Republican Right government. There is also my feeling that Harper's style of social policy will play into the hands of the separatist Parti Québécois (provincial separatist party with ties to the Bloc) who will use the fact that Canada has values that we in Québec (we usually have more socialist values here) can't live with. They will then have a referendum and might just win it.
So on May 2nd it's off to the polls we go. I only wish sometimes that there was always a final choice on the ballot, "None of the above". I'm willing to bet that this option would get the most votes.

- Posted from my iPhone

Sillines, just plain silliness

It always strikes me as strange how a nation of stiff upper lips like the English can produce such off the wall humour. They bring silliness to a high art form. Of course by now you have probably figured out that I've been watching Monty Python. Though it was made in the 60's it never fails to make me laugh. I've always wondered what it says about my character, after all British humour, from what I can gather by talking to my friends, is either a love it or hate it proposition. It seems to leave nobody indifferent. I admit freely that I find British humour irresistibly funny,
Now for your viewing pleasure, are two of my all time favourite sketches. One of them even has a Canadian connection. ;o) I love the Dead Parrot sketch because of the myriad ways John Cleese finds to tell the clerk that his parrot is demised, deceased, passed on, no more, expired, gone to meet his maker.

The other sketch with the Canadian connection (BC to be exact) is of course the Lumberjack song...the incongruity of a big rugged lumberjack in drag paints a picture that is hard to resist. So here it is, enjoy ;o)
PS: It's a sing along version so go right ahead...

Weird Canada

Since summer vacation is here and is conducive to levity, here is a collection of weird and wonderful little stories from our great country Canada.

WHO WOULD HAVE SUSPECTED?

In April 2001, police in Vancouver, British Columbia, ended a three-year crime spree when they arrested 64 year old Eugene Mah and his 32-year-old son, Avery. The Mahs had been stealing assorted lawn and garden items from homes in their neighborhood, including garbage cans, lawn decorations, recycling boxes, and realty signs. Why did they steal them? Nobody knows. Eugene Mah is a real estate tycoon worth a reported $13 million. One local psychiatrist said the thefts may be due to an obsessive compulsive hoarding disorder. They reportedly stole a neighbor's doormat ... and each of the 14 other doormats the neighbor bought as replacements.

BEAVER FEVER

In June 2003, two disc jockeys in Toronto caused a SARS panic in the Dominican Republic. Z103.5 Morning Show hosts Scott Fox and Dave Blezard thought it would be funny to call the resort where their co-worker, Melanie Martin, was vacationing. They told the desk clerk that Martin had smuggled a "rare Canadian beaver" into their country. But the desk clerk, who didn't speak much English, thought he'd heard the word "fever." With SARS (Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome) being big news at the time and Toronto being one of the cities where the disease had spread, the clerk panicked-and locked the woman in her room. The entire hotel wasn't quarantined, according to the station's news manager,' but staff were at the point of contacting medical authorities when the disc jockeys finally convinced them that it was all a misunderstanding. Martin was released from her room that afternoon.

COMING IN FOR A LANDING
Lucette St. Louis, a 66-year-old woman from Corbeil, Ontario, was rounding up three runaway pigs owned by her son, Marc, when she became the victim of a bizarre accident. One of the 180-pound pigs had wandered into the road and a passing car hit it. The impact sent the pig airborne, landing on top of Mrs. St. Louis and breaking her leg in two places. "Well, at least," she said, "I can tell my grandchildren that pigs really do fly."

DEATH MERCHANT

Roman Panchyshyn, a 47-year-old Winnipeg retailer, upset some of his fellow residents when he started selling $65 sweatshirts that read "Winnipeg, Murder Capital of Canada Escape The Fear" in his store. The shirts showed the city skyline dripping in blood. "We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly to promote Winnipeg to the world," complained City Councillor Harry Lazarenko, "and I don't want this to give us a black eye." So he contacted the premier to see if Panchyshyn could be stopped. He couldn't-the shirts are accurate. Winnipeg has the highest murder rate in Canada. Said the unapologetic Panchyshyn, "The truth hurts."

WEIRD CANADIAN RECORDS

• On August 30, 1995, Sean Shannon of Canada recited Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy in 23.8 seconds an average of 655 words a minute.
• On August 17, 1991, 512 dancers of the Royal Scottish Dance Society (Toronto branch) set the record for the largest genuine Scottish country dance (a reel).
• In 1988 Palm Dairies of Edmonton created the world's largest ice cream sundae 24,900 kg. (54,895 lbs.).
• In 1993 the Kitchener Waterloo Hospital Auxiliary filled a bowl with 2,390 kg (5,269 lbs.) of strawberries.
• Four hundred mothers in Vancouver broke the record for mass breast feeding in 2002.
• In Feb. 2000, 1,588 couples at the Sarnia Sports Centre broke the record for most kissing in one place at one time.
• Dave Pearson holds the record for clearing all 15 balls from a standard pool table in 26.5 seconds at Pepper's Bar in Windsor, Ontario, in 1997.
• In 1998 1,000 University of Guelph students formed the longest human conveyor belt, laying down in a row and rolling a surfboard over their bodies. In 1999 they set the record for simultaneous soap -bubble blowing.

Stories taken from the Bathroom Reader collection, a hilarious collection of strange facts and trivia. For lovers of trivia and weird miscellaneous information, it's a great read.