Ontario Election Coming Up

The first election I qualified to vote was the Federal election in 2000. The Chretien Liberals were destined to win with a majority. I didn't vote in that election. My riding was held (and still is) by Jim Karygiannis. I liked the Liberals, but I am indifferent to the incumberent candidate. So I just stayed in Kingston that day and drank coffee in the Sleepless Goat watching the rain.

Since then, I abstained from every single election. Federal, provincial, municipal, plebicites, referenda. Nada. No vote from this disaffectionate, young Politics major. I even wrote an essay on why I am not voting for my college newspaper. Looking back at it now, it was depressive, pretentious, and gothy. I even used a brandy bottle to described why I was not voting. WTF.

This election coming up and the accompanying referendum on Proportional Representation might be important. It may produce minority government. The British-style Westminister System is about to be abandoned for something that was described by a citizen comittee to be "more fair."

There are something, for which, the ramifications are never entirely clear to all those who are participants in the thing. Elections are one of them. The theology of democratic-liberalism has as one of its main tenet beliefs that wisdom is carried by the greatest plurality of even the most ignorant of masses. Even if many unwashed, individuals are dumb, all of them put together are smarter than the smartest person in the world.

I like that. I personally agree with it.

This time around, I am actually tempted to break my ballot box virginity. But who I choose and the things done inside the little cardboard box I am not revealing. A gentleman never kiss and tell.

Anita Roddick, Founder of Body Shop, Dead

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Obit-Roddick.html?ref=business

So that's it.
Feels like the end of an era.

Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: A Home In The New World

Still reading the same book for the last week. A collection of short stories by Asian-American authors. Very good Asian-American authors. Chilling. Shocked. Powerful prose that shakes the soul leaving one numb.

Everyone who met me the last week thought I was depressed or upset: I could only tell them that I was reading and feeling a little shell-shocked.

Not the whole truth. I feel sick. There is a small little tuff of nausea in my stomach going through each page of the book. I wished the editor, Jessica Hagedorn, had put a few more comedies in ther to lighten up the load. But her attitude probably was, "who can laugh when so much is unhappy in the world. With Asians. In America."

I just finished Bharati Mukherjee's "The Management of Grief" was the perfect story about Toronto. I liked also the hyper-macho "Rico" by Peter Bacho. And Marilyn Chin. I honestly think I love her. And the enigmatic selection "Ahjuhman" from Chang-Rae Lee's "Native Speaker." Magical realism of Eric Gamalinda's "Formerly Known as Bionic Boy."

Feeling all sick and frighten and nauseated. It is as if that this is what I should aspire to and I cannot look at myself in the mirror and not see the seed of this thing in it.

Frightening. Truely frightening.