But First, This Message

Cats, as Bill Cosby once said, are not cool at all.

One of the most revolting things about this animal is the manner by which it eliminates its waste. Specifically it excretes into a small box of sand. A human must then search through the rubble and sort out the nuggets for disposal. The human then must take the disgusting mess to a suitable receptacle (surprisingly, this includes the garbage can) and dispose of the waste.

This seems inefficient, and the process and its progenitor would doubtless have died out in the long process of evolution, were it not for one thing: The gullibility of the human female.

A friend recently gushingly described how a former cat once evaded the household for a year or so, returning (presumably after suitably exhausting the local supply of silly women who feed stray cats) almost a year later.

The cat was greeted with gushing affection, food, and drink.

I got drunk at a party and stayed out overnight a little while ago. . . Results were not consistent with anecdotal data.

"I've never understood why women love cats. They don't listen, they don't come in when you call, they like to stay out all night, come home and expect to be fed and stroked, then want to be left alone and sleep. In other words, every quality that women hate in a man, they love in a cat."

--Author unknown to me. Here are some other sentiments.

Any single male who unabashedly admits to voluntarily living with a cat should be assumed to be a) Gay or b) Pathetic upon first encounter.

Whoa--this, unlike cats, is just cool!

But Back to Politics

I listed a few things I want from my next government in the previous post. I didn't address these:

Canada's relationship to the US. My take is simple. I want closer, better-honoured trade ties, continued but not expanded defence co-operation. This country has no business participating in a fictional, unworkable, and ominous "missle shield" (coming to a nation near us in 2002).

Environment: We signed the damn Kyoto accord. Whether I support it per se or not, we must act in accordance with our promises. I think the science may be faulty, but I'll go along as long as one of the objectives is to reduce our dependance on oil.

Parliamentary reform: I'd support Genghis Khan if he agreed to do away with the Senate. The sole useful thing this political vermiform appendix of a chamber has done was this report.

Electoral reform: Personally I'd like mandatory voting, but it ain't gonna happen. So I'd settle for an (again Aussie-Style) approach: You choose candidates in accordance with your preference. This means that you pick someone you want to win, then order your second, third, etc. preferences. If no-one comes up with a simple majority, the candidate gets dumped and the votes get passed to the people who were #2 choices on all that candidate's ballots.

What this means is that morons who lose sight of the main objective can't create the sort of split in the vote that leads to somebody who normally wouldn't win well, winning. Think of the split among right-wing US-ians that allowed Clinton to win (and pray President Kerry turns out to be more like him than like the current Barney Fife of a cheif exec.).

Highly unlikely--but I think I'll post my choices that way.


Agriculture and industry: I want the government to ditch subsidies and open the markets to competition. Why should I pay a premium for imported foodstuffs and goods if the local producers simply can't compete? There are reasons to promote food crops in Canada--but simple failure to survive on the open market isn't one of them.

And before you say something like "farming's part of our heritage" please bear in mind: So's the fur trade, so's christianity, so are Tim Horton's Doughnuts (and only one of those do I want in my life, most of the time).

Our place in the world: Canada, as a first-world nation, has a responsibility to show the halt, lame, and backward a better way to go. We occupy roughly the same space on the mental desktop of the world as Norway. We need to extend our hand to Africa and the Middle East, especially in the matter of cheap anti-AIDS drugs, treatments for disease, encouraging international and regional trade.

And HONESTY! Damn, damn, DAMN am I sick and tired of people telling me they'll do one thing and then doing several others--or sying stuff like "I won't put that to a vote" (at first). Two successive Governments have yakked about eliminating the GST. Then voters act surprised when it doesn't happen. Basically I want a politician who doesn't speak like one. Like Doug Henning was, maybe.

But WHERE, o lord, WHERE to find such a person and party?

Watch closely. Or from Farley away. Bugger..