Would You Vote For This Man?

I sure as hell wouldn't. That poor cat looks terrified. I wouldn't want a prime minister who scares cats. I want one who just claims to talk to the spirits of his dead dogs, like Mackenzie King. This is why, for the first time ever, I'm going to vote NDP. Jack Layton seems like the kind of guy who would really go overboard about the death of a family pet. You know, have a full funeral in the backyard, erect a little gravestone, maybe even play 'Taps' on a harmonica. How would the other leaders react? I can see Stephane Dion being surprised to learn that he even owned a dog. Elizabeth May would grind the dog's corpse into some kind of biodegradable fuel. As for Gilles Duceppe, he'll be covering up the animal's death due to his illegal dog-fighting ring. It's sort of like Michael Vick's operation, except instead of getting dogs to fight other dogs, it's simply Duceppe himself against a series of Dobermans in staring contests. Duceppe is undefeated. This is also how he won the Bloc leadership. He just stared at Michel Gauthier until energy beams eventually shot out of Duceppe's eyes and into Gauthier's mind, sort of like the scene in Ghostbusters II when the Vigo painting takes control of Peter MacNicol.

That paragraph made no sense. Anyway, surprisingly, dead canine disposal is not my top criteria for picking a new prime minister. I'm not sure if I really have one, to be honest with you, given the fact that this might be the most pointless election in recent Canadian history. If I owned a farm, I would be ready to bet it on another Conservative minority government, so we'll be right back to where we started. The only thing different will be Stephane Dion's quick resignation as Liberal leader since....well, geez, this is just a downright John Tory-esque performance from ol' Stephane. Talk about a non-entity. Dion has conducted his campaign with the calm demeanor of Frasier and Niles in the episode where they buy a posh restaurant.

Am I throwing my vote away by voting NDP? Probably. My riding has been dominated by the Liberals since 1993, when Sue Barnes came to power and then proceeded to become the most invisible Sue that isn't a member of the Fantastic Four. She is the definition of a back-bencher. She is to the Liberal Party what Jason Frasor is to the Toronto Blue Jays. Why, then, has she kept being re-elected? Well, as much as I'd like to think it's because my fellow London-Westers are too smart to fall for the Conservatives' bullshit, it may also be due to the fact that the Cons' candidates have been....er, weak, to say the least. For example, in the last federal election, the Cons ran Al Gretzky, uncle of Wayne. This seemed to have been his only qualification for the job. I don't even know what joker is running this time around --- Burt Yzerman? Glen Federov? Tom Geoffrion?

It's unfortunate that, due to my still-temporary living arrangements in Toronto, I can't vote in my TO riding's race, which is a humdinger. Peggy "No Relation To Steve" Nash vs. Gerard "GMK" Kennedy, in a titanic showdown of political heavyweights...well, maybe light-heavyweights, but still. Now that's a battle to sink one's teeth into. Though I'm voting NDP overall, I'd like to see Kennedy win just so he's in good position to take the reins of the Liberal leadership from Dion in the manner of a child telling his bumbling dad to move away from the computer screen so the kid can properly set up the father's e-mail account.

So yeah, NDP it is. Maybe. I dunno, I might end up voting Liberal anyway, I'm a creature of habit. Though I feel the NDP gets a bad rap sometimes (I mean come on people, Bob Rae's premiership was over a decade ago, and given that he ended up running for the damn Liberal leadership, it could be argued that Rae wasn't a deal NDPer anyway), the NDP's platform of "we're the least incompetent" isn't exactly inspiring. I'll have to just make up my mind on election day. By the way, are we sure that we couldn't just have a write-in campaign for Barack Obama instead? He could run both countries, I'd be cool with that. The funniest part of this election season is how entirely overshadowed it's been by the American presidential campaign. I could have an in-depth discussion about the merits of Obama vs. McCain with about 50 people I know, but literally nobody gives two shits about this Canadian election. It's depressing from a patriotic standpoint in another way, too. The United States seems ready to elect a progressive leader* whereas we'll be stuck with Stephen Harper. How unfortunate. This will really hurt my national superiority complex. It will take a lot of Tim Horton's coffee before I'm able to recover.

* = I'm relieved that, according to recent polls and barring some huge turning point, Obama is going to win by anywhere from comfortable-to-landslide numbers. I was initially worried that Sarah Palin would end up being the new hat that would help Malibu Stacy McCain win over the impressionable voters while Lisa Lionheart Obama sat on the shelves, but it turns out I just got my Simpsons analogy incorrect. Turns out McCain was Mr. Burns and Palin was the three-eyed fish.