So about a month ago, on the ever-excellent Definitely Not The Opera, I happened to catch an interview with Paul Anka that wasn’t nearly as annoying as I had thought it would be. Why on earth would Paul Anka, the definition of not-pop-culture, be doing on the CBC’s pop-culture program? I mean, my parents listened to that stuff — not me. (Well, ok, not my parents, being that they were more the Cat StevensYusuf Islam type, but you know what I mean.) And I like to think of myself as being a pretty hip and with it kind of guy. Paul Frickin’ Anka?

Okay, fine. If it be known, DNTO was in Ottawa and talking about Ottawa’s favorite teen idol-turned crooner. And he did have a new album coming out — Rock Swings. The premise was baffling: Anka does crooning covers of rock and roll songs from the 1980s and 1990s. Fine, I can deal with that, too. And then Sook-Yi played one of the tracks from this new album, a cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” “oh, this is gonna suuuuuck..”

First impression: Yup, it sucks.
Second impression (about a week later): Hey, this song is stuck in my head.
Third impresison (about a week later still): Hey, this song is still stuck in my head.
Fourth impression (a month has gone by): I wonder what else is on that album?

So I broke down and bought the damn thing the other day. It’s been in my car ever since. And I cannot, for the life of me, decide whether it’s an abomination that should be hauled out and destroyed, and the minds of everyone who has listened to it wiped, or whether it’s really fucking brilliant. If nothing else, Anka deserves credit for having the guts to try something like this — it’s not exactly a gimmick and it’s not exactly an homage, it’s more like a retelling of the same story with a slightly different twist. Purists (read: old-school Nirvana fans) will freak out and argue, as some reviewers on Amazon have, that no one should ever be allowed to remake songs with completely different moods and emotions; “Smells Like Teen Spirit” cannot and should not ever be a peppy, upbeat thing. I suppose they have a point, but it’s a pretty lame one; why shouldn’t people be permitted to put a new twist on an old work? I mean, it’s not like Cobain’s around to complain, is he?

On that point, I think it comes down to people thinking the “purity” of a particular song is going to be ruined if any performance ever differs from the original version. Which I can sort of appreciate; “Hold On,” for instance, was always an angry song and Sarah McLachlan got it right on the Fumbling Towards Ecstasy tour when she played it as though she were lashing out against a cruel fate, but it sorta morphed, over time, into a sad melancholic ballad, and I don’t like this one bit. I also resent the repeated use of “Angel” as a romantic song — damn, people, do you not know the back story behind that song? So I can understand the reluctance on the part of die-hard Nirvana fans and resistance from Bon Jovi and Van Halen groupies to accept these new versions, but as someone who (a) wasn’t that into Nirvana that first time around and (b) can appreciate a good cover (heck, one of my favorite albums is full of them), I gotta say, this album works. I don’t know why, but it works.

Sarah Harmer’s in town tomorrow night. This is the third time that I’m aware she’s played here, and the first time I’m actually going to get a chance to see her play — the first time I skipped it for something I thought would be more important at the time, the second time I was in Japan. Now, at $25 a head for a festival seating outdoor show in Centennial Square, I’m finally going to get a chance to see her play live. Finally. Yay me.

British Columbians are being asked to decide whether to radically change the way MLAs are elected. In the past, we’ve used the old first-past-the-post system of electing candidates. Now, the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform has recommended that we implement the single transferrable ballot (STV) as a new way of electing provincial representatives. There are lots of sites out there, pro and con, on this issue. Here are my four reasons for voting no.

1. It’s too damn complicated. I’m a reasonably smart person. Moreover, I’m a reasonably smart person who enjoys politics. And although I understand STV, it took me the better part of an hour to figure it out, and I’m still not sure I fully “get” it. Any voting system that requires a flowchart and complex mathematical formulas and can’t be explained in less than five minutes to your mom is too complicated.
2. There’s no accountability. Or, if you prefer, you can’t actually vote against some candidates. Under the current systme, you can specifically vote against someone by casting a ballot for the person most likely to be elected if not the guy you hate. Under STV, those opportunities don’t actually exist — you run the very real risk that your potentially excess vote will go to someone you don’t like even though you never actually cast a ballot for them. For instance, if I’ve got a real hate on for the NDP candidate in my riding (and I do), I can easily make that work in my favor by casting a vote for the Liberal candidate. Under STV, this kind of voting isn’t possible anymore.

   Also, because a group of MLAs would represent an electoral district, it’s tough to figure out who you complain to, or who your beef is with. Say all four leading candidates in Victoria managed to win seats, and I’m annoyed about something the province has done. Do I complain to Shiela Orr, Carole James, Jeff Bray, or Rob Flemming? Say I get pissed with one of these MLAs. Can I play them against each other, or do I have to be stuck with one of them, or…? It’s the same problem I’ve had since I moved out here and had to start dealing with slates of candidates for city council — I grew up under a ward system, where you had an alderman and a mayor. Well, we have a mayor (and a damn fine one, if I do say so myself), but which municipal councilor do I bug if I have an issue? Who do I pester to get things done? How do I make that decision? That’s never been made clear to me, and I’ve lived here (as I say, as a politically-interested resident) for an awfully long time now. At least provincially and federally, I know who I can complain to.

3. And I can’t rank those assholes anyway. For those of us who view the majority of candidates with little more than thinly veiled contempt, the idea of ranking a half-dozen or so isn’t particularly appealing. When the majority of your voting comes down to “who do I hate less?” the prospect of having to rank candidates in order of slime appeal isn’t, um, very appealing. Moreover, there’s very little you can do about it anyway, aside from leaving the name off the ranking. But I don’t understand what happens when you do that, either.
4. It’s too much friggin’ work. To my mind, this is the best argument against STV. Even if I wanted to rank all the candidates in my electoral district, and wanted to do it honestly (i.e., no #1 followed by five or six #12s), it would be waaaaay too much effort to try and figure out how I felt, relatively speaking, about each individual candidate. I would probably have a clear favorite, but after that, it might get kinda muddled. Who do I like more, the Sex Party candidate or the Marijuana Party candidate? Democratic Reform or some random independent? How do those four compare against each other? I don’t know. I bet you don’t, either, and the number of people who do is a teeny tiny minority of the population. So how are candidates going to be ranked? The same way they’re picked now — at random. Only this time, there’s a very real chance that a candidate ranked entirely by random is going to get elected, and who the hell knows who you’re actually going to end up voting for?

Proponents of STV like to talk about how it will lead to a greater diversity of opinion and more representation. Yeah, I don’t think so. I think we’ll end up with a lot of coalition governments, and we all know how much fun those things can be. A lot of people were honked off in the wake of the last provincial election that we had “no effective opposition”; I hate to break it to these folks, but when you have a majority government, you can more or less do whatever the hell you want, whether you have a majority of two seats or a majority of a zillion seats. (The only issue is party discipline, but that’s a separate problem that has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the opposition.) STV won’t fix that. STV won’t fix problems of local representation, either — it’s tough to do that when you’re confronted with a larger electoral district and multiple representatives.

A strong argument can be made that STV will increase voter participation and encourage people to become informed and, hopefully, vote. But that’s shouldn’t be the point of electoral reform. It shouldn’t be a coercive tool to get people to pay attention to a subject most of them hate. I’m a political wonk and I hate the amount of work that’s involved in finding out who believes what (and there are some real shockers, like when I discover that, modulo their fiscal policy, the Green Party is exactly what I want at the federal level). Normal people won’t put in a tenth as much work, and so the STV will be wasted because they’re going to do what they always did — vote for the candidate they understand and trust and acknowledge, and then leave the rest of their slate blank. And, like I said, I don’t really know what happens when there are more candidates than rankings. People are lazy. They don’t put that much effort into making voting decisions now. They’re even less likely to put effort into a system that requires much more, um, effort. Under FPTP, their laziness doesn’t hurt. Under STV, laziness is a dangerous thing.

I also don’t see the need. Was what we had so terrible, so broken, that it was unsustainable? It’s not like we’ve had cases of rampant electoral fraud, or suspicious results, or people promising to deliver states with black-box voting technologies that magically end up doing exactly that in opposition to exit polling data, or people who can’t figure out how to use their existing ballots. This isn’t, you know, Florida. If we had problems that we coming out of the system, then yeah, I could see the logic behind looking at alternatives. But we don’t, and I don’t.

Is it broken? Nah. Bent, maybe, but not broken. Not worth overhauling right yet.

Even more reasons to hate that Canadian Tire guy. I’m deeply pleased to see I’m not the only person who dislikes him so much. Deeply, deeply pleased.

PS: Definitely not work-safe, or for those with sensitive eyes and brains.

One of the best things about not having a blog anymore, and not really paying attention to blogs that aren’t jwz and USS Mariner, is that I have no idea what’s going on in the world. It’s very liberating — my blood pressure is much better, and I don’t get worked up about dumb shit anymore. I’m much calmer and much happier. s’great, actually. Highly recommended.

Unfortunately, one of the side effects of not paying attention is.. not paying attention. So major events pass me by. Not things like Pope Deathwatch or anything like that, but things like the electoral reform issue on the ballot on the 17th in British Columbia (I don’t know what STV is, and I’m not sure I want to find out). And things like the latest developments in AdScam. I knew there was an inquiry on, but had no idea what was happening until fairly recently, and I still don’t have a clear picture. Government throws money at problem, money ends up in hands of cronies. Got that. Not sure what to get worked up about, since we knew the Liberal Party was full o’ crooks years ago. But something happened in the past couple of days, the outrage has hit white-hot levels of intensity, and the PM addressed the nation last night to deal with it, promising an election within 30 days of the Gomrey Inquiry’s final report.

I have no real desire to go back to the polls anytime soon. I won’t vote for the Liberals, I can’t vote for the Conservatives (notwithstanding my qualified support in the last federal, they’ve lost me with their dumbshit position on same-sex marriage), I categorically refuse to vote NDP, and oops, that’s it. I’d vote Green, since they seem to be best aligned with me on the non-major policy issues, but I can’t shake the feeling they’re.. well.. hippies. And we know what happens when you give hippies power. (Nothing. Which actually.. might not be such a bad idea. Anyway.)

What’s funny about the PM’s statement is the reaction from the other parties to it. And the hell of it is that the reactions had almost nothing to do with the actual issues; you could have predicted it going in. Both the Conservatives and the Bloc are chomping at the bit, unable to contain their glee that an election is looming. They stand to win big from AdScam, so they have the most to gain, and they can’t really lose — voters pissed off at the corruption will vote for Someone Else, and that someone else, in many relevant parts of Canada, is going to be the Conservative candidate. For the Tories, they want to know whether they’ve managed to pick up enough pissed off former Liberal supporters in Ontario to form a government, majority or otherwise. I doubt it — the Liberals will have their lead cut by the Bloc, but I suspect those Ontario voters who could be persuaded to vote Tory would have done so already, and so the bulk of the support is going to shift to the NDP. (This is a well-documented trend in much of the country, where the second choice of Liberal voters tends not to be the Conservatives, but rather the Dippers.) To explain the Bloc’s reaction, replace “Conservative” in this argument with “Bloc,” and “Ontario” with “Quebec.” The irony is tough to swallow: A program that was designed to quell separatist rhetoric in Quebec may end up enhancing the profile of a separatist party in Parliament. Who knew?

(Diz-claimer: I don’t honestly believe most of the Bloc’s voters are itching to separate. That ship, it seems, has pretty much sailed for the current generation. I have no evidence of this, but that’s how it feels to me; the Bloc’s popularity right now is more a function of Liberal stupidity and Quebecois self-interest. It’s no different from westerners voting Reform.)

The Liberals’ reaction is easy to predict, too. Of course they want to wait. They want to see if they can ride it out and regain support in the next half-year or so. The NDP reaction was even more predictable: They’re the only other party with a vested interest in making sure that the government doesn’t fall. See, the problem is that if the government were to fall tomorrow, we’d probably end up with a minority again, but with the Conservatives holding most of the cards. You think a minority government under Harper is likely to cut deals with the NDP to advance a legislative agenda? You think they’d be willing to cut a deal with the Bloc to advance an agenda? (Now that I think about it, this might be kind of funny to watch.) Not likely. While the NDP is likely to pick up seats, their influence in the next minority government is probably going to be diminished. At the moment, Layton can play the role of negotiator, holding Martin’s feet to the fire over various issues in exchange for Parliamentary support. I can’t see Harper doing the same thing.

The hell of it is that that scenario — a Conservative-lead minority government, forming a coalition chiefly with the Liberals — might be in everyone’s best interests. They’re necessarily going to rely on consensus and deal-making in order to get anything done, and so you’d probably see the influence of the socially conservative wing of the Conservative party diminished significantly. They could do some pandering, of course, but how effectively can you pander when you can’t actually get anything done? It’s doubtful the economic policy would change significantly, and we might actually be able to have the Important National Conversations about health care that we really really need to have under a Harper government. Will I support it? Not a hope in hell — like Jay Currie, I’ve lost my patience with the Tories and I cannot in good conscience ever support a party that is willing to make principled arguments about why it’s OK to discriminate against a particular group of people. But it’s interesting to think about.

‘kay. I’m done writing unsubstantiated punditry for the next four months.

RJ45 jack on Lappy broken. That’s bad.

But it’s under warranty, so Dell will fix it. That’s good.

It has to go to Newmarket, Ontario. That’s bad.

But Dell will pick up all the costs associated with shipping! That’s good.

It will take up to 1.5 weeks for the repair to be completed. That’s bad.

But it actually came back today (Friday), after being sent out on Wednesday! That’s good.

Unfortunately, it came back even more broken than it went out. That’s bad.

I give Dell props for fixing it fast. We’re talking about a sub-48 hour turnaround time; my box made it to Newmarket at 9:44 on Thursday (according to the tag on the machine), and Purolator had it again nine hours later according to the tracking information. Apparently, since it’s been a long time since I moved anything by air courier services in this country, I had forgotten how frickin’ fast these things can be. (And, let’s face it, getting something from Victoria to Toronto is not like getting something from Victoria to, I dunno, Inuvik or whatever.) So that’s pretty cool. But somewhere along the line, something didn’t go quite right — a cable got banged loose, the LCD got jostled, something happened that made Lappy arrive dead. Well, not exactly dead; I am, after all, typing this entry on it. But the LCD will glow as though someone has applied power, but will not actually display an image. When it does display an image, it flickers, like the cable’s not seated properly. But the cable is seated properly, because I checked (it’s amazing what you can accomplish with a phone tech and a screwdriver). So back to Newmarket it goes.

I have high hopes that this will fix the problem in a suitably speedy manner, and that I will get my machine back by, oh, say, Wednesday next week. Because that would be sweet. Because I’m going away on Sunday next week, and then I’m going to have to play follow the package, and that’s never fun. So there’s always hope. In the meantime, it’s nice to have Lappy back, even if I have to use an external monitor (thus more or less rednering the whole point of having a laptop, um, moot).

Have I mentioned I hate computers lately? I do. I really, really do.

Evolution of Ichiro:

The fourth version of the Ichiro Suzuki bobblehead doll was unveiled to its living likeness last night, and the Mariners’ star right fielder was none too impressed.

Striking a pose with his cap doffed, the new bobblehead will be given out tomorrow night to the first 25,000 fans through the gate, to commemorate Ichiro’s record-setting 262-hit season last year.

Fixing a glare at the doll in the dugout before batting practice, Ichiro pushed its head so it was shaking back and forth instead of up and down. “I say, ‘No, No, No,’ ” Ichiro said. “I don’t say, ‘Yes, yes, yes.'”

Ichiro cracks me up.

Thieves removing gas from vehicles:

Police are warning motorists to lock up their gas tanks.

The recent boost in gas prices, now over $1 a litre at many Greater Victoria gas stations, has prompted thieves to target unwary car owners by siphoning gas.

Saanich police report that gas thefts have been reported in the Ker Avenue and Glanford Avenue areas.

They urge motorists to invest in locking gas caps to deter thieves. Police also suggest car owners park as close to their homes as possible.

It’s a crime spree!

So as a temporizing measure to solve my network connectivity problems at home (the Lappy will, as expected, have to go into the depot in Newmarket, fucking Ontario, for servicing — more later), I went out this afternoon and bought a D-Link DI-524 wireless router. I didn’t really need another router — I really just needed an access point — but I’m cheap, and it was on sale (with a rebate that makes it less than $50 at the local Electronics R Us). Given how much fun I have when I configure consumer grade networking gear I was expecting a fight.

Most of the time, I freely admit this is my own fault. I’m too damn stubborn to read the idiot manuals, and I figure I ought to be able to plug it in and have things work, or at least be able to hack around the “user friendly” components and make it do what I want it to do. For instance, like I said, the DI-524 is a router. I already have a router on my network. It works very nicely. I suppose I could rip it out and replace it with the DI-524, but I don’t want to do that; my network works just fine, and the less time I spend screwing around with my configuration, the happier I’m going to be (since it’s less likely to break that way). I fully expected the DI-524 to fight for gateway control, and start arguing with the other hosts on the network that provide DHCP service for the entire environment, and make me figure out how to talk directly to it to disable the dumb shit through its inevitably craptacular Web interface.

But much to my surprise, when I plugged it in, it found there was already a local DHCP service operating. And, moreover, that said local DHCP service would assign it an IP address without having to do any stupid negotiating. And, moreover, that it already had a non-standard subnet (I don’t, for historical reasons, use 192.168.1.0/24 as my internal netblock), and so it should just grab an address in that /24. And that it should probably pass DHCP requests from clients on to my original DHCP server. So when Lappy’s list of wireless networks was refreshed, and it connected automatically (we’ll have to do something about that), the request for an address and routing information went straight to the network’s DHCP server, and everything is sweetness and light.

It might be the first time I’ve ever had any piece of networking gear Just Work right out of the box. Hot diggity damn, I love this thing. Did I mention it’s 802.11g? Yeah, it’s 802.11g. 0wned.

I’d really like it if we could get to a form of civic discourse where the reasonable — and perfectly understandable — response to someone’s idiotic blathering were not simply to say, “Fuck you,” and walk away.

Whether that would come because the discourse got better, or because the response got better, I’m not too picky about. I’d just like to get to that place.

3F04. Fiction. 1995. It looked like this:

Kirk Van Houten: Er, I, for one, would like to see the cafeteria menus in advance, so parents can adjust their dinner menus accordingly. I don’t like the idea of Milhouse having two spaghetti meals in one day.

Few other events in the Simpsons universe so perfectly captured the essence of Kirk Van Houten. I love that line, coming as it does in the middle of a wholly unremarkable Treehouse of Horror episode. It was the fabulous combination of being true to a character and being entirely nonsensical in the context of the real world — the sort of thing that the Simpsons used to excel at.

France. Real life. 2005:

Menus for the week are posted on school notice boards so parents can plan appropriate evening meals; many town councils also put them their website.

I guess Kirk was French.

(What do French kids eat? They eat like this. Wow, I don’t eat that well.)