vote lulie I ran into someone while voting at the high school, someone I hadn't seen in awhile. We got caught up about kids, marriages, divorces and deaths. It made me feel good and bad at the same time. 021105 ... Q LOL, lulie! I have just returned from voting. Something similar to what happened to you also happened to me. At every election we must confront the reality that the world is bad and good, that there are some people who seek office intent on making the world worse and others who do so in the hope of making it better. Maybe people who do not vote are simply unable to deal with those basic realities? Yet the times we stand alone in the voting booth are about the only times we as individuals can have some direct influence in choosing between bad and good in the affairs of the communities we are part of - and, as citizens of our representative democracy, responsible for. Good will prevail only if good people vote. 021105 ... lovecraftian politics write in "Cthulu" when you are tired of choosing the LESSER of the given number of Evils 021105 ... nom we vote together 060123 ... epitome of incomprehensibility In natural_person I talked about applying for a job helping at the polling stations for the Quebec elections Monday. Last Thursday I filled out an online form, applying to work at several (admittedly rather bilingual) districts, and then went to my polling station to see if I could apply more directly. The person there told me I was too late, there were no jobs left, and that most people had applied "a month ago" - I was a bit annoyed, mostly at myself. But had the election even been announced a month from last Thursday? My source, Wikipedia, says it was called March 5, which was less than a month before March 27. So there, advance polling station person. So. Just now, someone called me and said substitute positions might be available. Might might might. If so, I'll be called later today or tomorrow, and have to go to a training session Saturday. The funny part is that I'm nervous speaking French over the phone, and I said stupid things like "voluntier" for the word volunteer (it's bénévole). I hope I sounded otherwise qualified. I do have une maîtrise en littérature anglaise, for goober's sake, even if I didn't remember that master's was "maîtrise." And I've done benevolating! Very benevolly, at that. Grr. How am I the direct next-generation descendent of a man who can speak 5+ languages? My mother must've had an affair. That's the only way to explain it. 140403 ... e_o_i (Then again, we do have almost exactly the same eye colour. My father and I, I mean.) Hm. Someone called me tonight while I was away and said I should call someone tomorrow morning about going to the training in the afternoon. In case they ask me more screening-out questions, I wrote down a few pertinent words. Scrutin means ballot or voting in general. Bureau de vote is polling station. A little boulot (casual word for job; emploi is the general-formal version, métier is career, and travail is work in general) can't hurt; I just blew almost $50 tonight on poetry books. But hey, they were signed. They might be worth money when I'm dead! I vote for the Poetry Party. It must exist somewhere. 140404 ... e_o_i Training session. Possible situations. One woman asked (paraphrasing) "But what if there's an immigrant couple and the husband wants to go into the voting booth with his wife to make sure they vote for the same person?" Didn't know they'd cloned Pauline Marois. Outside it was snowing, and I have a cold. 140405 ... e_o_i The trainer handled it well. She looked unimpressed but said, "Well, then you'd just tell them that people can only vote one at a time." (Except if people need assistance, and in that case the helper's name is written down. But anyway.) 140405 ... e_o_i I went into the Lachine office at 7:55 A.M. yesterday and waited with the other substitutes. I finished most of the rest of Flowers of Algernon (completed and returned it to the library today). Few were called. Or a few. Funny the difference that a makes. But I'd estimate about ten out of thirty-five. Between ten and ten-thirty, the official there said the rest of us could go home. We'd get our pay for the training session and the waiting. My nose had been dripping slowly but constantly; I'm sure I was annoying other people by sniffling and going into the bathroom only to get paper towels; and I was happy to be released into the outside. But my mother bewailed my lack of chosenness, saying I should have been there earlier, since it seemed people were picked accordingly. Although I missed being able to count votes, being curious about whom votes for whom where, I was rather glad I didn't have anything more to do there. I was tired and not feeling well. "What's two hundred dollars instead of one hundred?" I asked rounding-outedly and irritably. Laughter. "Don't answer." Stereotypical conversational fragments. Cues. Numbers. I stayed at the computer, being useless, and letting the oven burn a set of brownies I was asked to watch. Grr. In the afternoon I dragged myself out of my torpor to go and vote. Green Party it was, after being assured our riding (why's it called "Marquette" anyway? that sounds like the word for a stamp or an address label) always voted in the Quebec Liberal MP. If not, I'd have felt compelled to strategically vote for him. I felt relieved when I heard the Liberals had won. There's no reason a brain surgeon will automatically make a good leader, but it seems he'd know about the health system at least. And at that point I wanted anybody but the PQ in power. The Parti Quebecois made a good call after the last election, in my books, by neither drastically raising or lowering tuition fees, since either way would've likely resulted in social chaos - the what_the_fuck_am_i_doing_here singer might not find that a bad thing, though, and I also feel for those having trouble affording school, as I did in my last year at Discordia and then again as I took an extra semester to finish my project at the University of Forgotten Canadian Heroes. But their stupid "values charter" which, if passed, wouldn't allow public service workers to display "ostentatious" religious symbols - that made me angry, more so than the tiresome language politics. Hating the English language makes sense. I do it myself from time to time. But saying that you're promoting women's rights and secularism by pushing a law that's basically targeted at Muslim women who wear hijabs is hypocritical and discriminatory. I thought secularism meant religious neutrality, in that the state has no official religion but everyone's right to proclaim their religion or lack of it is protected, within reason. In some states atheists are technically barred from government. Is that a problem? Of course! but it's not the opposite problem, just the other side of the same coin. Or a similar coin, like a dime instead of a nickel. I don't think the Liberals were entirely fair to Fatima Houda-Pepin, though, and nothing's black and white. Except for black and white, of course, but not even black and white people are black and white. What would Ayaan Hirsi Ali think of all this, I wonder? I disagree with some of her ideas in her book I read - the "Enlightenment" ideal I'm skeptical of, for instance - but I also admire her. I wonder what she'd think of all this. Anyway, that Charter is done for, for now. I voted for the trees, so I shouldn't hypocritically waste energy. I raise my glass to the ol' environment, so may it live long and prosper. 140408 ... e_o_i They were supposed to pay me seven or eight hours' salary (for the training and the waiting) and they haven't yet. I sent them an email. It takes me a long time to write emails in French. Grrr. 140602 ... e_o_i Someone called me, though, quite promptly. Apparently the cheque was sent to the wrong address, and they're cancelling the old and sending the new. (Spellcheck thinks cheque should be "quench," and that there's no such thing as spellcheck. I vote that to check might be to quench.) 140602 ... nr i hate the need for strategic voting, but... sigh. i like jagmeet but the NDP really needs a super strong, charismatic, confident leader like jack layton (RIP) in order to have a chance at even a minority win. 210920 ... nr (minority win meaning winning with a minority government) 210920 ... e_o_i In my lifetime, the district I live in has always gone Liberal, except after the NDP "orange wave" in 2011. Last Saturday (advance poll) I voted for the federal Green Party, first time in my life. Why? Impressed with the leader? Don't know her well (I thought she made good points in the debate, but I didn't listen to it all). A desire to bring symmetry, all four members of the immediate family voting green, including, oddly, the conservative Christian (Mom, not that she can be simplified to that only)?? Brainwashed by Sparky, my parents' electric car??? Boyfriend said he was annoyed by the party's infighting a few months ago, which is fair. But their candidate was the only one who responded to an email I sent (lazy form thingy, Amnesty International) asking what they'd do about indigenous rights. 210920 ... e_o_i Oh yeah, I ranted about the Quebec things I talked about in 2014 here: against_bill_21. I am also about to compose a Very Original Poem about my parents' car, Sparky. 210920 ... e_o_i attempts linkages Lemme try that again. Electric_car. Sparky. 210920 what's it to you? who go blather from