Puck’s Blog

Well, this is what we get for voting in an Evangelical Right-Wing Christian, right?

Oh well, he only got in because of the Liberals’ corruption and won’t last long.

From Andrew Duffy on the Class of 86 mailing list: 

The Sardis Secondary School class of 1986 will be having their 20 year reunion on July 29, 2006 starting at 8pm at The Industry Night Club (formerly Good Times, formerly Earthquake Annie’s).

Darryl Campbell’s band will playing retro rock that night, and has received permission from the bar owner to give us exclusivity to the night club from 8-12am, although they are open till 2am.

If anyone is interested in some sort of daytime activities we can always use the forum board to post them. So if a group of people want to get together to go shoot a round, then they can post there and work out the details.

Now its albout getting the word out, and remember, we want everyone to sign up at the www.classof86.ca website so this is much easier in the future. No spam, no pop-ups, and no ads like classmates.com, and you can email directly.

So the Conservatives “won” a minority government.  I voted Liberal, though to be honest I felt badly about it.  I was uncomfortable about supporting a party that had become so corrupt, but I’m not a socialist so the NDP is out and the Conservatives and their neo-con ideology concern me.

I think the election results are about the best we could hope for.  There aren’t enough Conservative seats to carry out their neo-con agenda, and the Liberals have to take a long hard look at themselves and clean up their act for the next election.  I’m glad Paul Martin has stepped down — it’s something he should have done at the outset of the election to give his party a chance.  If they’d some housecleaning of people connected with the scandals the election may have turned out quite differently for them all.

In my own (new) riding, Burnaby-New Westminster, the NDP candidate was re-elected with 29% of the vote.  I find it very odd that more people can vote against someone and he can still get the position.  Perhaps it’s time Canada adopt some form of “tiered voting” where you can enter (if you desire) your first choice, then second and so on.  The first round votes are tallied and if nobody has a clear majority the losers are dropped off and all the entries that voted for them are then checked for the #2 vote and so on until someone actually has 50%+1 of the vote.  Something like this (I’m being very general about it — I’m sure there are problems with my basic description) would eliminate the drawback of multiple party systems where two similar parties split a vote and a third one gets in that most people dislike.  You know, like how Nader took votes from the Democrats in the 2000 Election, allowing Bush to win.  In a tiered voting system, people could have voted for Nader and then voted Democrat as their #2 (if they desired).

(for those not in-the-know, that’s The Humanitarian, my Superman-inspired City of Heroes character)

Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him

Man, I’m really surprised by how this is hitting me. I was 10 when the first Superman movie came out and, of course, loved it. I still remember seeing Christopher Reeve on the Muppet Show later on, and we all know how crappy my memory is so that says a lot.

Then I grew up and realized that he was just an actor and the movies weren’t really that great.

Nine years ago he had his accident and was paralyzed. Shortly thereafter I realized what a hero he really was. He could have become introverted and just lived his life as painlessly as he could have but instead he found a cause to fight for. Sure, the cause was his own, but it never felt (to me, anyway) like he was being selfish. Instead it felt like his injuries had merely spotlighted where he should be putting his efforts.

Alone I’m thinking
Why is superman dead
Is it in my head