what they don't realize is that they are liberals and what they think is liberalism is actually a type of right-wing populism pushed historically by the progressive party, often as a front for christian groups. liberals are all about free speech, free markets and individual rights. crucially, they're strongly in favour of a separation of church and state.

what these idiots have succeeded in is little more than to confuse people about words and concepts that they don't actually have a good understanding of. if you watch the show, you're left to conclude that liberals are a type of fundamentalist christian.

rather, a liberal is exactly what stone and parker are, and their target of ridicule is religiosity - bordering on what engels called utopian socialism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hriKiBbw3nU

why are all the burns' excellents on youtube sanitized to make it seem like he's just a nice guy with a bad rap?

where's the evil corporate overlord? are ceos not allowed to be villains anymore?

fucking liberals.

it's actually fairly common here to see unifor banners paired with conservative party yard signs (you know the ones, they're standard across north america) on the lawns of upper middle class houses. unifor is the big auto/energy union. i've been aware of this connection for a while, but i kind of expected it to be an under the rug thing rather than something openly flaunted. it's surreal to see how normal it is.

it doesn't make sense on first glance, but it does when you work the politics out in more detail. big union members in southern ontario are very well paid. they're more worried about their taxes being too high then they are about their collective bargaining rights and their political choices reflect that economic comfort. it's no longer "the bosses are stealing my wages to live in luxury" but "the government is stealing my wages to distribute to the community". the difference in function is less important than the perceived lost wages, regardless of the comfort they live in.

nobody wants to talk about it, though. the conservatives don't want to risk losing one of their most effective attack mechanisms, so they keep attacking them. the ndp don't want to come off as utterly irrelevant, so they keep acting like they represent them. but it's all a charade...

there's an election today. i'm not voting. i do sometimes, i don't sometimes. for today, i'm in a relatively new riding and i simply don't know the local candidates or local issues well enough.

i don't expect much to change, though.

kinda feelin' bad about the centipede.

hey, i never tried to capture the thing. well, the whole symbiosis revolved around it's freedom.

i saw a baby one the other day....

the thing is that if i knew it was in there, i would have helped it out. how long was it in there?

a morbid, ridiculous thing to obsess over. i need to go find some steel wool...

i was wondering where my little centipede buddy went and why it was slacking off.

turns out it fell in a pot, couldn't get out, and dehydrated

i think the reason i wasn't seeing the roaches was mostly due to the weather, not the centipede. still...

there's a gaping hole in the wall for pipes. i've done enough drywalling to know you're supposed to fill holes this big, but that was overlooked. i'd guess that keeping the roaches out has a lot to do with filling it up with steel wool. it's way too big for caulking, and i'm not buying a drywall sheet for this....

the other bad spot is in the closet, near the piping, but one thing at a time. and i think i've mostly already fixed it anyways, although i saw one in there yesterday for the first time since last september.

i managed to keep the roaches out more or less completely over the winter, i don't think i saw more than two, but they're back now with the warmer weather. it's not at an infestation level, it just seems like they're freely entering from outside. but, if i don't find a way to close the entry path, i'm really asking for trouble.

they're the asian species, which means they'd actually rather be outside. the asians don't usually infest, they just come inside looking for water. but, they bring the most bacteria with them because they either come up through the pipes from the sewer or they come in under the wall from the yard, where they're known to eat various kinds of animal feces.

so, while they may not want to stay here, they're filthy disease carriers while they're in here.

i'm going to rip the stove away from the wall today and see if there's any way i can block the entrance points. foam. steel wool. whatever. the only way to really kill them off would be with a community-based program; i could spray everywhere in here and kill every single one that's in here, but if they're breeding freely next door (or in the sewers) then it's just a waste of effort. knowing that isn't likely, the key has to be to keep them from coming in.

well, the internet polls were completely inaccurate, as one would expect them to be. hopefully, that's the end of internet polls. the ivr were better than i'd have expected, but i think they got lucky. with turnout at 46%, polls are tough indicators. the one telephone poll i assumed would be closer was not entirely wrong - it got the ndp numbers the closest, of all the polling done.

overall, there was really very little change overall in seat count or distribution, so i'm not admitting a bad prediction at all. it seems like conservatives in the gta decided not to vote for anybody, and i'm going to guess it had something to do with hudak's transit plan.

to be clear: what i got wrong was low pc turnout. which is a strange thing to see, and something nobody was really talking about.

what the polling firms were pushing was the idea that low ndp turnout might push a liberal majority. the phone poll demonstrated that this was probably wrong. instead, low pc turnout pushed the majority. so it seems like the polls got it right, but it was actually a sort of a fluke.

if it wasn't the transport issue, why else couldn't the conservatives get the vote out?

age of voter, maybe?

2018 - 1945 = 73.

life expectancy in ontario is 81.

there's going to be some big changes, soon. is this the beginning of it?

for those out of the province, i should mention that the premier elect is openly gay. i'm not aware of any other premiers or governors that are open lesbians, nor of any that have won majorities. but if it was a factor in the election, nobody talked about it. it just wasn't mentioned. as it shouldn't have been. which is why i'm mentioning it. it's some social progress to elect a gay premier without anybody even noticing she's gay....

it kind of ties into the changes in demographics that may have kept the vote down.

i don't think anybody expects the tories to lose their hold on rural ontario. but, if the age structure shifts, they might be hopeless in urban areas unless they make some radical shifts.

uploading guitar demo from 2010 to soundcloud

this is another broken jam session and will come off as really simple (and it is, on some level) if you don't appreciate the subtle dissonance. regardless, it's easy to hear the stomp under it. i don't write much of it, but i'd love to start a really dirty garage rock band...

https://soundcloud.com/deathtokoalas/2010-09-19a