Being Racist Against a Nation is Okay... as Long as They Are Not a (Free) Nation

This is low, wrong and in the end, the accuser is guilty as well! (But there's actually no crime, at all! Not even anything morally reprehensive!)

Since when working with a Palestinian ACTIVIST and SCHOLAR is a bad thing?

Be it McCain or Obama, since when being Palestinian is a sin? Should we all put them in a huge reservation or concentration camp?

Oh yeah, true... they already are!

The World is Their Battleground...

Meh, fuck national sovereignty and international law, we're going in!

What would the US do if another country would do the same in their country? We're not talking about job-seekers here...

When You Have Friends Like This...

McCain's vietnamese torturer supports his campaign.

Crazy World...

Strangely enough, this might not help Obama WITHIN the USA...

Alberta is Not a Tory Stronghold Anymore.

A NDP candidate was elected in Alberta!!! Wow...just wow!

She won by just 400 voices!

For outsiders, Alberta is known as the heartland of the Conservative Party. Every electoral district in the province has been represented by Conservatives for years. This is, in my opinion, the most impressive victory of the campaign.

The Edmonton-Strathcona riding is where I lived when I was in Edmonton this summer. This place just got a bigger place in my heart!

Canadian Elections...Go Vote!

You didn't vote yet? It's not too late!

Politicunts: American Elections, Part III

This guy might soon be victim of a road rage accident:



I'm flabbergasted. McCain-Palin supporters are classier every day!

Politicunts: American Elections, Part II

A good american:



Speechless..."Un imbécile heureux" (A happy idiot) as we'd say in Québec...

Shitty Trucks, Big Trucks, Good Luck!

The first two photos are not mine, but I couldn't resist stealing them, mostly since we see the great times I had dealing with an over-heating truck on Canada Day Eve.



It started the week off on the right step, taking 6 hours to get to a city 3 hours away...



And this is the giant trucks we had to deal when we were replanting land in the middle of a gigantic open-pit coal mine.



But the best truck I had to drive this season was the rollogon. The slowest machine to ever roll over earth, and sometimes, mud. Contrary to my supervisor's original beliefs, it won't go over a crevasse though. I'm doing the classic John-John pose there.

Alright, guess I just wanted to post pictures of shitty and/or big trucks. I'll leave you with this one:

Politicunts: Canadian Elections, Part V

In the spirit of the Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart, and by recent news that they are invited to not answer questions from national media journalists, here's a flowchart I've done to help Conservative Party candidates when they are dealing with the medias:

(click on image to enlarge)

Life...Na-Na-Nanana!

Hey reader, did I tell you about my life, nowadays?

No?

Weird, I'm sure I did...Oh well, it's probably because I have none. It consists mostly of sleeping at really weird hours, doing nothing, procrastinating, getting to bed at even weirder hours because I'm doing nothing, but I don't want to go to bed yet as I have been procrastinating and unproductive. Then, I read on politics, visit the same 5 websites, revisit the same 5 websites to see if there's anything new (turns out, there's nothing new, the world seems to stop moving when you stop moving...Or maybe it's just that visiting the same website every 20 minutes doesn't give quite a lot of time for the webmasters to update their content, mostly when the subjects treated are limited or heavily specialized)

Huh... where was I? Right, in my room, doing nothing.



I do things though. Saturday, I went to see the Montreal Canadiens' last pre-season game. They lost 3-0, they didn't push it to avoid injuries, quite boring.

I also go for a few drinks once in a while, but my favourite neighbourhood bar, La Promenade just closed down as it has been bought by a trendy bar owner from the Plateau Mont-Royal to get it a little hipper. I hate how they are slowly "gentryfying" my neighbourhood. I fled the Plateau for that exact reason 7 years ago and now, just like a bad Zombie movie (where the Zombies would wear stylish thickly-rimmed glasses and palestinian scarves, thinking they reached the ultimate of cool despite not being able to sustain a conversation for more than 5 minutes, spending their school loans on expensive beers and hit the food bank to save a few bucks), it keeps coming back to kill me, slowly, softly, fashionably. (Yep, I'm judging...)

Granted, Chez Baptiste is not the most bourgeois of establishments, but it does have that "Plateau" feel (nothing against the Plateau itself, it's just that some people made it a parody of itself), with foosball tables instead of pool tables, slightly more expensive beers and cluttering the place with a shitload of busy tables. I do appreciate high quality beers, but I already have a pub for such drinks, with the best terrasse(patio) in town and I don't like my next door tavern to be full of people full of themselves screaming while holding metal rods...

But hey, back on doin' nothin'.

So, there's actually a few things I ought to be doing. First, I should write back to my treeplanting regional manager to send him my non-production day hours, as it's basically worth $2,500 and it should have been paid a month ago by now. But the fact it hasn't is completely my fault (And Microsoft's fault, as my new computer didn't come with Office and I couldn't open my boss' Word document. Also, I love to blame Microsoft for random stuff, I mean, they kind of replaced God, right? Oh, no, wrong, that's Apple that does the religious sect stuff...My bad!)

Funny story. This morning I was too lazy to get out of bed but I wanted to visit the 5 websites, so I extended my arm to my table and dragged the laptop in bed, forgetting that my iPod and my camera were attached to it. Both fell off the table, which stands higher than the usual table. I was quite disappointed to see that my iPod was not broken and my camera was slightly broken. In the iPod's case, because I can't wait to dump this fucking Apple product in the recycling bin and get another company's mp3 player, but I was still relieved I wouldn't have to spend money just yet, and in the camera's case because it's such a solid and efficient camera, despite getting slightly outdated, that I'd never expected I'd break the little battery cap thingy. Nothing some scotch tape wouldn't repair, but I really did expect the expensive, disposable, unreliable and fragile piece of crap that is an iPod to break first.

Did I ever tell you how much those things cost to replace batteries, hard drives and earphone jacks? Oh, I hear you, "might as well buy a new one!"

Sure, that's what they actually say and do, they'd rather replace than repair. But aside from the fact that a battery or earphone jack should be cheaper than a brand new iPod, they know that their shit is so cheaply built that it costs nothing to replace it, and the only reason they can overprice such pesky things is because they market them very, very well to naive young kids with money to waste since they can't drink yet. I was caught too...

If objects could be douchebags, they'd be iPods.

Funny how I'm actually not pissed, but reading this post, it looks like I am. Actually, I'm in a really good mood (Doing nothing remains awesome, mostly when you can rub it in your friend's faces) and I have great people around. Won't say much on that side though. Besides, shitty stuff makes for funnier stories!

Oh well, back to bed, it's noon soon.

Vote Story

I have a friend who's on Québec's version of Big Brother, ineptly called, like France's version, Loft Story. There's another person on the roster that I know a little. I'm not bragging here, these people are actually the only reason why I'm watching the show and I'm currently talking about it, but don't expect me to reveal their names, post embarassing pictures or tell juicy stories. One's a good friend, the other's a friend's friend and friends don't do that kind of shit, I think. I'll cheer for them though, even if the show is sometimes, I must admit, somewhat insufferable.

But I just wanted to talk about this show in regards to a politically related, albeit trivial, point. Out of the 14 participants, only one, Arcadio, made an issue of the incoming elections and his worries about not being able to vote. The show's host gave him an absentee ballot form. This is admirable, and it doesn't mean the others won't vote, maybe they were just not as vocal about their citizen's right, but I sincerely doubt it. I still need to publish another Youth Voices post, but a lot of messages I received tell me young voters are generally disheartened by politics.

It cost some money to cast a vote on the show, and they'll still get thousands of votes, some people even going as far as doing fundraisers to get more votes for their favourite. Federal elections are free, if not, nobody would vote. Those kids want people to vote for them, but they probably won't vote for anybody themselves. I've heard one say that they were "models", I think that would have been a good place to start...

There's a favourite bar of mine closing down tonight, I plan to be there for the last call.

Big Brother

I love calling the government. I had to make sure my name was on the electoral district list as I was living in a different one in the last federal election. It was quite the adventure.

First, I called Elections Canada and I was greeted by a wonderful IVR (Interactive Voice Recognition) system. Don't get me wrong, I have worked with those systems for years and I have no problem using it as they are usually faster when it comes to basic operations or information requests. The problem with that one was that it actually didn't recognize my voice. Now, I do have the pretention to think I speak decently well in both french and english, but the IVR system made me doubt myself.

After many attempts that would invariably send me back to the main menu after every swear word, I was told by the IVR that I needed to call my local office. After trying to get a local phone number with the directory assistance (They said they usually get a number during an election, but not this year...), I called back my new friend, IVee, and finally got to speak to an agent that recognized that they had a lot of comments on the limitations, to be polite, of their IVR system. He also understood every word I said, which is pretty cool! But he told me I didn't call the right place as I had to call my local elections office.

Back to step one. "Wait, do you have the number?"

"Sure, what's your postal code."

I gave him my postal code, he gave me a number. I called that number.

Wrong number. "This is the office for the Hochelaga district, your postal code tells me you are in Rosemont-Petite Patrie."

"Yep, I knew that, do you have the number?"

"No, sorry."

Calling IVee back. "For French..."

"French"

"To..."

"Elector's card"

"If you..."

"Register"

Speaking to a human being again, I explain that I need the number for Rosemont-Petite Patrie.

"What's your postal code"

I gave him my postal code.

"Oh, well, we don't have any listings, that's probably why you were referred to the wrong number before."

"You refer people to wrong numbers when you don't find them?"

"Well, not really, it was probably an educated guess..."

"Educated, eh?"

Then, he gave me a number. I called that number.

"Hi, I want to make sure I'm on the list."

"Were you on the list in the previous election?"

"Yes, in a different district."

"Well, you'll have to show up at our office to make the changes, we can't do them by phone."

"I guess I can do that on election day?"

"Yes, but I hope not everybody will do that, could be long"

"Oh well, with the participation rate, shouldn't be too much of an issue..."

Then, I had to call a provincial medicine insurance plan for some athlete's foot medication reimbursement, as I'm currently eligible, being unemployed (but not on unemployment benefits, I want to add). Here's another IVR:

"Please know the exact date when you became eligible for our plan"

I hung up...enough shit for a day.

P.S.: Bonne fête Stéphane!