Let us start by laying out the options in this campaign. The Conservatives under Stephen Harper have managed to stabilize the economy, work to a capable degree with other parties in a minority government and not veer as far to the to the right as some on the left would like you to believe. This is why they got my vote in the last election – that right, I voted Tory in ’08. I have often argued in recent times against ethics and principles steering one’s views in such a dirty game as politics. However the second prorogation of parliament by Harper was a clear and unequivocal abuse of power. There is no use in arguing this point to the contrary. If legislative debate can be suspended for excessive periods of the time by the executive than representative democracy is no longer legally and/or actually respected in this country. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a pragmatist – the first prorogation, to avoid a coalition attempt, was for only 5 days but when the Prime Minister shuts down the government for half a session of parliament it indicates his disregard for the purposes of even voting for members of parliament in the first place. Sure, the country did not go to shit when Harper breached explicit ethical boundaries, but when authoritarianism veers its ugly head it always starts out on a good note.

Then we move to the government- (who thinks they are) –in-waiting. The Liberals are a party that quickly and eagerly overthrew the one major leader in probably all Western democracy that put environmentalism so high on the agenda. And whom do they replace him with? Someone who spent a quarter of a century outside the country in the ivory tower before returning and demanding to be Prime Minister. I truly believe Canada for a long time has been able to produce its’ own leaders and does not need to educate and train them abroad. I tip my hat to the Tories for attacking the Liberals on this point – it works. The fact that when Ignatieff’s nationalism became an issue the professor immediately wrote a book titled “True Patriot Love” only showcases his blatant shallowness.

I’d like to point out that as well as principles, superficiality for the first in this campaign has become an issue for me. Michael Ignatieff literally represents in my opinion, next to only cleaning a dirty vagina, what a douche bag truly is. Everything I loathe about intelligentsia is personified in this Anglo-American-Canadian. He just looks like the kind of professor that would give you a C- on a paper for no apparent reason except his elitism. And this is what the Liberals have campaigned on – Ignatieff’s goddamn image! They have dug they’re own grave.

On the other hand the NDP have run a quite admirable campaign. Attacking the left was on obvious and practical way to gain seats – it will work. The real wonder is the apparent success in Quebec. After winning a seat in the province for only the second time the New Democrats have gone after the Liberals hard in French Canada. They are taking a page out of the Tory book from the ’06 election except on the other side of the political spectrum. And for too long left-wing Quebeckers have only been given a meager choice between either one separatist party or one federalist party.  Also, in the last election I thought it was plainly ineffectual for Layton to be campaigning for Prime Minister – but by god it is paying off now.  Furthermore, if anyone from Newfoundland to BC was bored out of their mind on April 12^th they may have caught part of the English leaders debate and had to notice Layton’s success in all the above points. I mean, for god’s sake, show up for work “Iggy!” Typical fucking professor canceling class without notice! Layton’s elder statesman appearance has also feasibly helped boost the respectability of his leadership.

The one leader who has arguably and ironically been favoured for almost the past decade is Duceppe. You’ve got to hand it to someone who truly believes in the annulment of a constitution yet also respects and understands all its institutions and procedures so well. I’ll honestly be sad to see him go – witch is likely even if he retains his seat but the Bloc loses as bad as the polls indicate – he’s an individual with clear ideals that is willing to compromise for step-by-step gains. He has provided some bluntness and charisma that you don’t see much from federal leaders. The attacks by Conservatives accusing the Bloc of “wanting to break up Canada” can only hurt the Tories in the province.

This campaign and election could have been typically boring-as-shit but it could be taking a turn no one saw coming.  A “New” party new again. My major regret in voting for the Old Social Democrats is leaving the Greens out to dry. For the past two years I would have voted for the environmentalist party on any occasion. They deserve representation and they would shake up this static political environment we have here in Canada. However a NDP opposition would be even more substantial – and, quite frankly, even more likely. Previously I had not voted strategically. In the last two federal elections I voted for a Liberal and a Conservative respectively – both losers. (I’ll insert another admission of guilt to being a voting-whore for now having cast ballots across the political spectrum) And I have never felt my vote was “wasted.” It was simply a silent declaration of what I wanted and it took no more effort what-so-ever than a 5-minute walk and a check on a ballot. However, this time it’s too close to call in Hamilton Mountain. The Liberals are running a “star” candidate and NDP could go down. I may make the smallest difference this election, finally.

For no better reason a social democrat government, or at the very least an official opposition, would ideally help a somewhat poor post secondary student like myself. And if anyone of you reading this wanted to disregard any of the further elaboration or explanation I have provided above and vote for a party based on reasoning of equal selfishness I would accept that as an absolutely appropriate political decision.

You would have to be living under a rock in Batswana to be unaware that music can be downloaded quickly, easily and almost limitlessly via the pirated media sphere of the web.  What is unfortunate is not that the physicality of musical recording has been dead and buried for the last few years but that the consumption of composed sound has become incredibly personalized. Instead of downloading an entire album and listening to it from beginning to end, consumers instead take songs from several different albums or sources and create their own individualized messy catalogs of tracks. This is where Wenner got it wrong – we haven’t seen the return of the Single, we are witnessing the time of the Playlist!

If there are still any naively motivated moral objectors to illegal downloading left on this planet the shuffling and personalized arbitrary re-organizing of musical works of art should be even more distressing to them. Not only are artists and their estates having their intellectual property pirated, those compositions are not even being listened to as they were intended to be. Playing “Hey Jude” by the Beatles back-to-back with “Fucking Perfect” by Pink is like hanging Manet’s Olympia over top a TV airing The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

I cannot begin to fathom why someone who is justifiably in love with a classic song would not want to know where it came from and where it was going. This attitude has even distorted colloquial discourse. People these days often say “I like this band,” or “I am a fan of this singer,” (notice the facebook terms). But you can’t truly appreciate something if you know very little about it. You’re not a fan of a band if you’ve only heard a few of their songs, thus what you really like is the track – not the artist.

The vast amount of artistic talent that is available on the Internet that only ten years ago would have been incredibly difficult and costly to ingest is an astonishing and wonderful event. However the consuming public’s artistic ignorance and the journalistic avoidance of this medium’s continually evolving capabilities is terribly vexing at best or cultural eroding at worst.

The people who founded this great nation of ours were Christians. They came here (some with slaves), allowed white male landowners to vote and accepted bribes – all in Jesus’ name, and that’s what counts. When it came time to write a constitution they made sure that the words multiculturalism, democracy and liberty were absent and that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were abundant.

Everyone and their mother are now being told that they can’t say “Merry Christmas” under any circumstances what so ever. I’ve heard shocking stories of people actually being paid to do and say things while their at work – this goes against the capitalist principles that have created our completely egalitarian and equal society.

Every Christmas season the profits of major companies sky rocket because white people are buying gifts for the poor. And only moderately paid adult foreigners make all those toys because we Christians would not contribute to something that exploits cheap, unhealthy and dangerous labour.

On Christmas morning children awake to find the gifts Jesus of Nazareth and his twelve elf-disciplines have brought from the North Holy Land. They are laid underneath the decorated evergreen coniferous cross of Christ. And after that the majority of the country eagerly and enthusiastically runs off to church – like they do each and every Holy Day.

Thus this is and always will be a Christian country and a Christian holiday…actually what I’ve just explained is complete bullshit. Jesus died two thousand years ago and white Christian males have been beating his dead corpse ever since. The moneylenders are still in the temple and they are there in the ignorant name of God.

To reinforce my most evident contention: there is in no way a connection between drinking a certain brand of beer and having intercourse with attractive women. There is, however, a connection between intense intoxication and sexual interaction of various degrees. You may find yourself penetrating a random orifice of some kind if you consume a high level of booze but that does not mean it’s anything to be proud of and/or are able/want to remember the next morning. There are no “Captain’s Moments” or “Bud Rules” to attracting the opposite sex. For god’s sake, a guy gets a girl’s # on a goddamn napkin in a current Budweiser commercial! A napkin? What year is this, 1970? You might as well not worry about the AIDS virus or stagflation if you’re going to regard this commercial as anything less than insulting to your intelligence on primal level.

Even worse than the above is the Coors Light commercials (I’m off Coors). What the fuck is the “Coors Light Mystery Mansion?” I am assuming from the conspicuous  clues I’ve seen it is a brothel with willing prepaid prostitutes sponsored by the Coors company and if it is anything less than that anyone who wins an invite would likely demand fellatio performed upon them forthwith based on the impressions given in the ads.  And Coors’s other big promotion or slogan is that it is somehow “colder” than other beers. How the fuck can it be colder? That doesn’t make sense – they’re all from the flipping fridge! It’s brewed in a colder place? Who gives a shit? Is it a superhero beer incapable of getting below a certain degree centigrade? Shut the fuck up.

Now let’s discuss the social ignorance of major brewing companies. According to most alcohol commercials women are magical little hot fairies that appear when you order a drink at bar. They’re just there for our amusement and they’re all incredibly attractive. If this were true I’d be fucking hammered right now. And of course there is the courtesy black guy. This is the house-negro that smiles when his white friend is able to cleverly impress a girl because of the confidence empowered in him by a certain brand of alcohol. Of course every three white guys has one black friend that dresses in white-people garb and gives us a thumbs up whenever we have sex and he doesn’t. I aspire for a day when companies reach the level of still-ignorant, money-driven political incorrectness when an Asian guy, a brown guy & a guy in wheelchair all appear one-to-four with middle-class adult white males in corporate advertising.

If we are to at all slow down the wholesale of this bullshit, incompetently broadcast, racist, sexist and insulting fantasy world we must simply do the opposite of what these ads want us to do. Please, stop buying their shit. If you think a commercial is stupid don’t put down your semi-hard-earned flow for that subpar product. They’re insulting your intelligence and you willingly and knowingly became a dumber person every time you consume that which you are told to consume.

-       George Costanza

When confronted with the task of peeing in a public washroom nine times out of ten I will choose to whip my dick out in a private, comfortable stall. I don’t do this because I am a homophobe; I simply don’t want to see another man’s penis and I don’t want another man to see mine. It is an incredibly obvious decision to easily avoid NOT having male genitalia in my purview.

The Showers

I’ve been told that when one showers with completely nude men in a gym or after a game there is certain “etiquette” practiced. Apparently you somehow ignore the multiple hideous members around you and this evidently leads to an absolute heterosexually comfortable environment. I, myself, don’t play sports and thus don’t have the undeniable pleasure of carelessly waving my big thang around the locker room. However, I could somewhat fathom not being as fazed once getting into the habit of it. Yet why to so many straight men is the thought of several women showering a blatant sexual fantasy and males doing the same together not considered in the least bit homoerotic?

Homophobia

Now that I’ve proven any guy that has seen another man naked is a complete and gigantic homosexual I will explain my obvious and staunch heterosexuality. I don’t fear gays, I don’t fear a gay’s dick particularly, but what I do fear is dicks in general. These things are disturbing. I’m dickophobic – a sub-negative attitude towards certain groups in society (men) that precisely allocates my type of personally explicit sexual discrimination.

Insecurity

If you happen to be a dude that often pisses in urinals you’re likely to presume I’m shy or ashamed of my genitals. Of course I am, but that doesn’t mean I’ve never been nude with someone before. I’ve been around the block on a few occasions and those situations were awkward and graphic because we made funny faces and our genitals were exposed.

Penis Size

Of course I have a huge penis so this in no way has anything to with why I use stalls. If anything, I need the extra space to properly maneuver my schlong.

Types of Urinals

There are different types of urinals and some lend themselves to being evaded. The smaller units that stick out and cause you to stand back about ten feet, or the rarer troughs, are a no-brainer. If you’re at a concert venue that has a washroom equipped with these compact awkward receptacles you’ll probably learn by heart the length, circumference and pubic hair design of the men on either side of you after a 30 second tinkle. There’s also the kind that extend to the ground – I feel like I’m going to get pee on my shoe when whiz in these. If there are barriers or “splash guards” between urinals – then I have no problem. They should all have these obstructions. Women pee in stalls; they don’t just pop-a-squat along a wall of drains with only their hips and asses covered.

Types of pants

Wearing pants with a button-fly is a consequential deterrence towards the use of a urinal. It is very difficult to unbutton a fly without unfastening the top stud under the belt, thus you need the privacy to wave freely and avoid your buckle slapping up against the side of urine-soaked ceramic.

When I’m Drunk

Then I just don’t give a fuck. Drinking seems to encourage the revealing of reproductive organs.

Conclusion

In short having the decision to either relieving myself in private or touching shoulders with someone else while they do the same is a forgone conclusion. Homoeroticism exists in the nearness of same sex genitalia and if all I have to do is go behind a door to avoid this than I will.

What these people are doing when they say this is lying. And they are not telling the truth for either or both of two reasons. First being you may have contacted them via the Internet and they did not respond. This means they do not like you and most us are guilty of telling such lies as to avoid communicating with someone we find annoying. The second reason why someone would pretend that their lives are so exciting and important that they can’t look at photos of people they barely know is because there are insecure about who they are. They want to give the impression or illusion that they actually are too important or busy to social network. This is just sad. This is sadder than the tremendous excitement that I (and I’m sure many of you get) when we see a “friend request” notification.

Don’t you despise when you get a friend request and you can’t place how you know this person for the life of you? Or it’s some jackass from high school you never talked to? (Why can’t it be a hot broad?! That wants to have sex with ME?!!) But we’ll ad them anyway…got to keep that friend-list high.

And are you ever away from your computer for a few days and when you expect to check facebook there will be like 5 notifications of varying importance and then when you login it’s your one friend calling you a “fag (or some other homophobic term)”? That’s when you know your life is pathetic. But so many of us are all in this pathetic, lonely, social networking boat that is sinking into the abyss of insecurity and anti-social behavior.

One more thing about facebook, and I think I’ve said this before: if you’re one of those people whose accounts I see over your shoulder at school or elsewhere and you have like 20 different requests that you’ve been ignoring for months – I’m coming after you! I’m hitting those goddamn requests! Some of us need and want that shit to get us up in the morning. And, almost more importantly, those notifications you so arrogantly chose to ignore could be immature friends sending quotes from funny movies, or possibly tags of horrible drunk photos of yourself that you’d never want to see. This shit is your life.

The point is: check facebook, you have nothing better to do, write on my wall, write on other people’s walls because it is filling that suicidal void in our lives and besides masturbation gives the world-wide-web a purpose

9) The Price of School Related Shit/Books: A coffee mug with your university’s name on it: 10$ – that’s a fair price. It’s plastic and made in China. You can afford it on a student’s budget. How about 75$ for a paperback book that you’re required to read 20 pages from and you’ll only do 5 and still get a B? Nothing wrong with that at all. No regulation needed. Professors and publication companies gain very little from this mega rip off.

8 ) Protests: If you’re in university you’ve got to protest every goddamn crack in the sidewalk. If the school tells you that you have to shit in a toilet pick up a sign that says, “Poo Freedom Now!” Everyone’s a fucking anarchist in Uni. Little do they know that they bend over and take it before they’re able pay for Bristol board and wood made from cut down trees in the rain forest.

7) School Spirit: who really gives a shit?

6) Emailing Profs and TAs: Good luck ever getting a response. Professors and Teaching Assistants have the only occupation in the Western World where they make their email addresses known and have absolutely no obligation to reply. Of course they have “other responsibilities.” I know when a customer asks me a question at my minimum wage job I tell them “I have studying to do – I can’t be bothered to help you even though I’m being paid to do so”

5) Left-Wing Bias: The war is over, the bums lost! Why is it that every social science teacher is a Marxist, Neo-Marxist, Socialist or whatever they’re calling their failed ideology these days? Profs get paid, right? And they buy shit too? OK then fuck off.

4) Marking: Here is how they mark a paper/exam in a social science/humanities class – they have a giant fucking wheel with the letters “A” to “F” labeled around the circumference and they spin it. In all honesty there is nothing in my four semesters at university to show that TAs and Profs mark with any formal direction what so ever. It is completely arbitrary.

3) Citation: Who invented this stupid shit? You can’t just write the name of the book and author, it has to be done a certain way. And of course it’s different for every department and every professor because apparently a PhD doesn’t allow you the intellect to understand Chicago style if you’re a Poli Sci Prof. Is a TA going to have a fucking seizure if the name of the author is in italics instead of the journal name?

2) Students Asking Unnecessary Questions: Put down your fucking hand. “When is something due?” If you didn’t ask that no one would ever know. This shit is not posted anywhere. And then there’s those who actually enjoy what they’re learning – you shut up too. Don’t make the lecture any longer to inquire about some intellectual masturbation.

1) Reading and Writing: This is all we goddamn do at university. Reading books and writing essays, read/write/read/write/read/write…Holy fucking shit every student that graduates is going to walk into their first real job interview and be asked, “what are you experienced at?” and all they can say is, “I can read AND write and do absolutely nothing else.” What job description is there that says, “we’re going to pay you for forty hours a week to come up with five ten pages essays on bullshit every few months”? All this drivel  is just words rapped around quotations in order to make the minimum number of pages required. However as long as we use the right citation, criticize the establishment, have a left-wing bias and get in touch with the TA/Prof in an non-electronic format they might actually pull something higher than a C+ out of the marking lottery used by the ivory tower to “educate” the masses.

College students could care less if the school was swindling them. At Mohawk College in Hamilton there were obvious hustles used on students to snatch from their already meager purses. For example, anyone enrolled at the school was charged for a locker on campus – even though there are 6,000plus students to lockers. And the administration is so authoritarian you’d think the Dark Lord of the Sith Dick Cheney himself was in charge of that dog and pony show. A professor at the collage was actually gagged and eventually fired for criticizing the school over a triviality. However those attending the institution aggressively ignored any attempts by the student newspaper to showcase the evident abuse of power. The student’s focus is ONLY on their diploma and what doors that piece of paper promises to open.

In university it seems few are as concerned with entering the workplace and are instead wide-eyed at any vague injustices and inequalities that may occur on campus. At Carleton University I’ve noticed protests so meaningless and vain that I can only conclude those involved would start a rally in their family kitchen if their hand got slapped going into the cookie jar. In Ottawa there was a surprisingly great uproar against the compulsory fee for a discounted student bus pass. To be against this is equivalent to opposing paying taxes because you don’t use all public services. Furthermore every one of us submits to unfairness by paying for tuition, textbooks, gas, cable, phone bills etc. It is naïve to protest against one unequal fee while willfully paying for another.

What the radical vocal component of university campuses doesn’t understand is that once we graduate we’ll then need to find a job and sell our labour/intellect. And in that situation we are consequently slaves to those who pay us. That doesn’t mean you can’t fight for certain rights but it does mean there are many inconveniences and inequalities that are inevitably outside our control. The apathy that so many college students have is unfortunate because they could practice at least some resistance in order to halt the rather obvious injustices imposed on them and others.

What interests me about the divergent views of those that go to university compared to college students is the stereotypical nature of each group’s characteristics. It is so utterly cliché when a young social science student straps a protest sign to a piece of wood when a higher authority exercises that authority. On the other hand college students are behaving just as blindly conventional when they regard training for the workplace as the workplace itself. It as if those studying for a diploma have already accepted that they are only paltry workers who are there to be taken advantage of and are incapable of doing anything beyond their assigned tasks.

Both attitudes are blatant polarities. And in my experience and true cynical temperament I have a hard time settling on either side of the fence. On the one side I don’t believe we should give up and sit on our hands just simply because injustice cannot always be prevented. However, I also think that if we are to object to every instance of unfairness we would be downright exhausted and unable to function in this society. The rational path would somewhere down the middle where one does not allow others to walk all over them but realizes that getting their toes stepped on every once in awhile is an unavoidable certainty

It is obvious that there are certain eatables that may have potentially unhealthy ingredients in them.  However, while I may not have a vast array of knowledge in the area of nutrition I do know that I am poor and that I eat relatively healthy. At the grocery store I look at the product’s name, the price tag and either buy or don’t buy it. I rarely eat junk food and even more scarcely purchase fast food, chips, pop or any other obviously harmful edibles. I regularly eat vegetables (carrots, celery, cucumbers, potatoes), fruit (apples and oranges), brown bread and non-sugary cereals. I cannot afford to get any organic shit or ultra-healthy breakfast products and, yes, I eat a lot of grains because they are cheap. Mommy and Daddy don’t buy my groceries all the time. Mommy and Daddy don’t cook most of my meals. And Mommy and Daddy don’t wipe my ass – I wipe my own ass. I have to pay for my own shit so I have to buy what’s affordable and moderately healthy. I go for the low fat with most dairy products and what have you. I don’t know a lot about nutrition but I know enough to assume low fat is probably better. Why do I have to get a lecture about what’s in a cereal bar or why you shouldn’t eat so much pasta when I never asked to be informed?

The only thing worse than people who go on tirades about chemical byproducts in imported fruits regardless of the cost, are those that point out the most obvious food facts. Somebody could be eating McDonald’s and there’s always some douche that says “that is sooo bad for you.” Oh really?! We’ve got a fucking genius among us! Hey Einstein, you ever eat a Big Mac when you’re high on weed? Here’s a nutritional equation for you: it’s fucking fantastic! I think I may fight to see another day if I eat my third Quarter Pounder meal this year.

If the person eating the food didn’t ask you to attempt to stop them from consuming it the exact last moment before they swallow, don’t do it. Also don’t assume that everyone understands nutritional terms (What the fuck is “Malic Acid?”). So unless I am slitting my wrists in front of you, morbidly obese or about to eat something that will kill me at that exact moment let me worry about my own body. Keep your enlightened opinions of fast food and cryptic knowledge of No Name sliced bread to yourself.