Dear Winlog,

I hate you madly.

Yours sincerely,

Premee.

Well you could knock me over with a feather.

After days of relentless inner prodding, jabbing, and nudging, I went to the stupid Conservatives website and downloaded their stupid platform. And I liked it. It was as if I had been goaded into reading all the Harry Potter books and found that they were actually good (which didn’t happen, as is well-documented elsewhere in this blog). I mean I was quite shocked, really. If Mr. Creepy-Eyed Harper can pull off even a couple of items from his platform, I shall take off my top to him.
There are things I disagree with, true; I dislike that they won’t ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which I feel should be done just for the look of the thing. But I’ve read it and I don’t see why it can’t coexist with a Canada-specific or - better yet - province-specific environmental program. The Kyoto Protocol itself is exceptionally vague as regards methods of reducing greenhouse gases anyway.

I also dislike the Conservative stance on gay marriages. I can think of three girls right off the top of my head that I want to marry, have their children, visit Thailand with, dance at our kids’ weddings, and die in their arms. But Mr. Slimy Botox-Head says that won’t be happening, so boo on him. Also my boyfriend says I can’t.

Also, I don’t like their plan for the Fisheries. For instance, they want to establish a judicial committee to determine the causes behind the catastrophic failure of the Fraser River salmon fishery. I can tell them why it failed in three words and save them fifty million dollars: “Salmon is tasty.”

Now, all that aside, I like that they want to scrap the gun registry. While I worked at Stantec I knew three people who owned so-called ‘long guns.’ They used them for hunting only, and one of the owners had used his gun to scare off some moron trying to break into his garage. They had gun safety training and practiced regularly, paid all their fees, and called no man Mister. I’d rather have any of those three armed than pretty much anyone I can think of. It’s nice to know how to use a gun and how to defend yourself.

I want private healthcare. I want a clause in the Constitution that clearly delineates property rights in Canada. I like that the Conservatives noticed and disliked our ‘culture of entitlement.’ Call me crazy (or Protestant or whatever?), but the Nanny-State thing has been bothering me lately.

And Kim, before you throw rocks at me for not mentioning abortion rights, the platform says they “will not initiate or support any legislation to regulate abortion,” and the regulation of abortion, I think you’ll agree, is what most women were worried about. From the wording it appears that Mr. Chubby and company will simply continue to look the other way, which is as it should be, since that’s none of their damn business.

In short: it looks as if the Conservatives chime most closely with my personal beliefs after all. Holy jumping Jesus pants.

I’m going to go lie down.

When I grow up, I’m getting a komodo dragon, naming him ‘Kool Moe D,’ and building a fence around my backyard so he can’t get out. After he undergoes basic attack lizard training, I will unleash him upon my enemies. His fundamental dragonosity will be intensified by a few weeks of light starvation and an educational regimen of electric shocks from the komodo dragon obedience collar I will have invented by that point. After all my enemies have succumbed to K.M.D’s lethal bites, I will use him to threaten major political figures and their families until they give in and hand over control of the country. Following my coup, I intend to make Quebec into one giant skating rink, kick everyone out of BC and make it a wildlife reserve, and rename Canada ‘Premonia.’

Any questions?

Good.

(Image copyright www.komodonationalpark.org)

Ah, New Year’s. The big letdown after all the presents and glitter of Xmas. A time of year when ominous avatars hang in the air like… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

After my Xmas break, which included a pleasant if awkward Aronyk Xmas party and a severe head injury (two different occasions for once), I was really looking forward to New Year’s eve. I had bought my ticket weeks in advance and the event itself looked hip and fun. I had even bullied and pleaded my way into having an escort drive down from Edmonton.

The gong show began that night. We showed up exactly at 9, when the tickets said the doors would open, and found a polite mob of well-armed, zoot-suited and cocktail-dressed thugs. They all looked sort of rich and arrogant and ready to get shmammered and party like it was 1999 (again). But our venue for the night, the Devonian Gardens, is only accessible by one elevator, and the security guys were only letting eight people up at a time. The crowd grew unruly; menacing talk was heard; my escort got the Crazy-Eye about ten minutes in and I thought he was going to go berserk and start screaming.

We were lucky and got in around 10; by 11:45, there was still about a third of a mob left downstairs. And the place was still almost totally empty. It was like a ghost party. The Devonian Gardens are gigantic, for one thing; and for another, only about 1000 people were allowed in. Plus, someone had turned off all the lights except for red and blue party lights, which made the place extra creepy and not really conducive to partying. We wandered around through the artificial fog, tripping over boulders and splashing in the koi ponds, looking for the overpriced bar or the two DJs or something, anything, to make it feel like New Year’s eve. I didn’t even take any photos, since they would have been of the Mr. Cross ‘Maybe you should draw a picture instead’ variety. It was terrible. Put it this way - the highlight was getting our coats at five past midnight and going back to the hotel.The next day we woke up and greeted the new year with unclouded eyes and eager hearts (at $9 a drink, getting sloshed wasn’t an option the night before, even for me). We had a jolly big breakfast at Denny’s with another friend and congratulated ourselves on escaping the Party of Doom. The hotel was going to boot my date out of the parkade, so we were going to go move the car to my apartment’s visitor parking. And then the car refused to start.

The AMA guy, Gob bless him, crawled underneath the car and started it manually by bypassing the starter with a screwdriver, creating a new problem: the car couldn’t be shut off. Not even to gas up. “You’ll never get ‘er started again,” Mr. AMA said gloomily. My date made some interesting noises before explaining to the guy that he had to get back not to the south side of Calgary but the north side of, um, Edmonton - on half a tank. “Then you’d better leave now and not stop driving till you get there,” said Mr. AMA.

So our goodbyes were said two days early in the parkade of the Sandman hotel downtown and the dude peeled rubber out of there, possibly never to be seen again.

Anyway, long story short, he was able to fill up while running in Red Deer (note: this is illegal) and made it home in one piece muttering about bad omens for 2006 the whole way. I was relatively philosophical - after all, it beats the year we got t-boned by an SUV after watching the fireworks in Edmonton, eh? Happy New Year!

The Explosion - Philip Larkin

On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In the sun the slagheap slept.

Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke,
Shouldering off the freshened silence.

One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark’s eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

So they passed in beards and moleskins,
Fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter,
Through the tall gates standing open.

At noon, there came a tremor; cows
Stopped chewing for a second; sun,
Scarfed as in a heat-haze, dimmed.

The dead go on before us, they
Are sitting in God’s house in comfort,
We shall see them face to face -

Plain as lettering in the chapels
It was said, and for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion

Larger than in life they managed -
Gold as on a coin, or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them,

One showing the eggs unbroken.