I'm Just A Voice In Your Earpiece

Nearly a week without a new post! I have been full negligent. Nothing terribly exciting happened this week, though, with the exception of a spider and a healthily-sized centipede appearing as guest speakers in my public affairs lecture. There has also been bizarre weather, -25C at the beginning of the week turned into 3C or so by a day later, and there has been freezing rain, outright melt, and then today huge volumes of snow. Yesterday night was the most exciting part of my week: I explored new parts of the public transit system to go see Jeanne's Wildfire show. It was absolutely wonderful, very "we are the world" but in a good and non-cheesy way. Things that aim to inspire world change have a way of turning to bathos, but the performers were all so good that they handily avoided this problem. The hall was packed and the audience was absolutely up for it, and such a multi-religious, multi-ethnic crowd that all the talk of "Unity in Diversity" actually did make sense, because everyone was enjoying the same show and clapping along together.

When I said before that there had been no excitement this week, I lied. I spent three and a half hours manning the NDP table (or, as they put it in non-gendered language, "tabling" for them). A few choice nutters came to talk to us, but so did some very thoughtful people. I ordered Bingley from my poli sci class to come see me, so he did (Bingley because blond and genial, though certainly not all inbred like Mr. Bingley in the new Pride & Prejudice adaptation). My fellow tabler and I engaged in a friendly debate with the Liberal tablers across the room, who confirmed the existence of Liberal arrogance even in the young ones. Honestly, while I can almost believe the whole "natural governing party" shtick, actually presenting yourselves as the only way to save the country from eternal Conservative hegemony is a tad hubristic. And by "a tad", I mean "hugely". There is, after all, a third option... [cut to NDP talking points]. In this particular election, I think the Liberals need to be taken to the woodshed, enough so that I'd be OK with a Conservative minority and a strong NDP caucus. That said, I do want the Liberals to come back into power fairly soon. If they could do an internal shakeup and return humbled, and also if they could govern from the centre-left like they are supposed to, then I'd be very pleased to see them back.