Why Canada voted for the Blue Man Group

May 2011 a small percentage of Canadians elected Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada to a majority government. Blue swept the west and staked new claims in Ontario, routing Liberal strongholds, while the NDP swept forth from Quebec, turning the baby blues to orange.

As we handed Stephen Harper the keys to the Canadian kingdom I had to ask myself, how did this happen? I've spoken to a number of Conservative voters I know and in almost all situations ignorance was key.  Voter apathy is so virile in Canada that either citizens simply don't vote, or they vote based on hunches.  Most that I spoke to that voted for the Conservatives, voted for Harper because he seemed inoffensive, or worse, voted against Ignatieff or Layton because they "didn't like them", and Harper was the safe choice.  When asked what was wrong with Iggy, my friends and family had no words for it. He was simply not for them. If you ask me, that is the result of absorbing years of attack ads. Character assassination is a wonderful tool in politics because it leaves people distrusting someone on unfounded claims years after they first witnessed it, when they can no longer remember what it even was. And Stephen Harper himself has been the King of Character assassination.

The other straw leg that propped up the blue wave was the Economy.  Yes, Canada has weathered the global recession decently, but we also went into it with a fiscal surplus thanks to the Liberal party. Let's not forget the collective opposition parties had to also threaten to topple the Conservative government and form their own just to get economic action to prevent the recession taking root here. Of course, I'm generous when I say they threatened it. In fact, the opposition parties were thwarted from enacting it only by a backdoor maneuver by Harper to disable the Parliament of Canada for an entire session to save his job. But don't worry, he set a dangerous precedent of favouring hanging onto power over respecting the elected representatives of Canadian citizens for us.  After all, the Coalition was bad. Losers shouldn't win, and a collection of losers, never should. Even if they represent the majority of Canadian voters. Mr. Harper has continually shown not only a blatant disregard for the design of our democracy, but also a caustic willingness to degrade public understanding and faith in it and to sidestep its controls at every chance.

But hey kids he's the new boss. Don't worry, first up will be to get rid of those disgusting public handouts to political parties for election funding. You know, that $1.70 that the Green party gets for every vote they receive, so that they can continue to be a viable representation in our political scheme for those that share their views.. in example, those who voted for them. I can't imagine they are flush with cash from corporate sponsors like the Oil Fields-loving and Corporate Tax-cutting Conservatives that want to take away that lifeline, but I guess that just means they are taking up valuable oxygen and need to have life support cut off. In a nation that is so apathetic towards voting, among other reasons because they feel their votes don't matter, we will strangle off fringe parties and further diminish the power of a vote. That's not just smart that's S-Mart, as in Stephen smart.

The final reason I heard for voting blue almost made me throw up in my mouth: election fatigue. Apparently the unfair toll taken on some Canadians by requesting that they represent themselves at a voting station for 10 minutes every 8 months to a year is just intolerable. And how dare we! Better to hand control over to someone, anyone, and not have to worry about it for 4 years. I mean, how much damage could they do? Canada has got to be one of the easiest and safest places to vote, all you need is 10 minutes and a name in mind to mark. But lo there be'est the quandary. Election fatigue isn't the problem, the problem is citizens that are tired of being bothered to think about choosing a government, they are tired of deciding between leaders, and tired of trying to understand where they themselves even stand on the issues. Often I hear people complain that they don't even know the party platforms, where the platforms are generally stable year after year on the main issues, and I think they are just upset no one has told them what the current issues ought to be, because they surely don't know. Let's face it, if you voted for a majority on that basis alone, then you voted for a babysitter to take care of everything for you while you worried about your Me Time. It was selfish and spits in the face of representative democracy.

What's done is done, and over the next four years we get to start blogging all the things we need our next government to undo. But every staple of our current parliamentary democracy that Harper tears down, will invariably stay down.  After all, this election has proven that Canadians do not care about them. As long as you can don a cardigan, fake smile at your kids, and say "the good ship Canada is O K", while burning Robert's Rules of Order behind your back, well, we'll give you a bloody promotion.

Why #yxu is a Bad Label

In the Twittersphere for London, Ontario there has been a trend recently to change what we use as a hashtag, or label, to identify tweets pertaining to our City and area.  For years now I have been using #LdnOnt as the hashtag for London.  As you can guess, simply using #London is often confused with London England and searching on that hashtag brings up both resident's tweets.  Recently, there has been an influx of competing hashtags, such as the current favourite #yxu.  Primarily, I see no reason to change my tried and true hashtag but let's see why I don't like #yxu.

Why is #yxu a bad Label?  It is Cryptic, Elitist, and Immemorable.

It is Cryptic because it is nonsense.  The letters do not stand for anything at all and you can not decipher its meaning by simply looking at it or cross-referencing it to any knowledge of London aside from it's actual precise representation.  So in other words, the only way to understand what it is, is to look it up and even then, it means nothing more than a code for London's Airport.

It is Elitist because if you do not know we are all using it, you would likely not intuit to use it.  My argument for this? How many people in London actually fly in or out of our Airport?  I've lived here for 6 years and have flown to British Columbia twice and don't even know where our airport is, let alone the code, I fly out of Pearson.  I have flown out of the Powell River airport twice and have no earthly idea what it's airport code is. Nor do I know the airport codes for Prince George or Orillia where I also resided for a number of years.

Ask yourself if someone in Hamilton or Chatham would think to look for London tweets by our airport code?  What about someone in Somalia?  I understand some major Canadian cities are using their codes, namely Vancouver and Toronto, but let's face it guys, those are two of the busiest International airports in all of Canada.  London is not.  So the way you'll know how to find our tweets is if... you already know the password into our elite club.

It is Immemorable because it is nonsense!  There is no mnemonic property at all to #yxu or any other airport code aside from pure coincidence.  For example, nearly every time I fly to Vancouver and decide to use the airport code at booking I have to double-check whether YVR or YYZ is Vancouver or Toronto - and that one even has a coincidental mnemonic in it (YVR has VR for VancouveR) but I start wondering, "or was it the opposite of what makes sense."  You see I can get doubtful because I know YYZ means nothing.  I know YXU means nothing.  How am I to remember them other than through sheer repetition?

In my opinion a good label, a good index, a good way for people to find each other is not something they have to learn.  It isn't something WE have to learn to use and memorize.  It is whatever comes naturally, whatever makes sense, and whatever means something. #ldnont isn't perfect, but it at least means something when you read it.

Made the Move

At the risk of losing part of my readership I renamed to Human Fail Machine complete with a new address.  Unfortunatly, Blogspot/Blogger lost my entire historical comments in the process.  There is an official thread in the Blogger forums with 165+ people in a similiar situation.  Epic. Fail. Google.

If you want to read the comments you can actually find them at http://humanfailmachine.wordpress.com/ where I had experimentally imported this blog prior to the move in case I liked it better.  Getting there...

What's in a Name?

Hello my trusted readers.

I've been sporting the name Epic Fail Hour for a little while now and I've recently come under the notion that the name could be better.  I have taken a liking to the name Human Fail Machine and propose a name change of this blog to that.  I feel the first name evokes an impermanence that was appropriate when I started blogging but the new name implies the potential and need to fail is inherent in the undertaking and that it's somehow more permanent.

I like that it is a metaphor for a person and not a time.

Also to me it seems less cynical and more poetic (what little I know of that).

What say you all?

Weekends Wasted and the Challenge to Fail

Another weekend come and gone.  I am always so excited for the weekend to get here only to spend it entirely camped out in front of my computer or my XBOX or sleeping in to make up for my self-destructive weekly habits.  Sometimes it seems I spend my whole life looking forward to being disappointed.

But don't we all?  We look forward to movie releases, book releases, game launches, TV Shows, holidays, vacations, family events, seasons, weekends, classes, trips, finishing things, starting things, buying things, meeting people, being rid of people, and accomplishing something.

Look at how much life we miss out on in the meantime!  Not to mention many of those activities end up being less exciting or fulfilling than we imagined.  But some of them do, some of them are completely fulfilling, and these always involve great loves or great people.

By all means look forward to that writing class in which you will be enriched by other people's passions or look forward to that turkey dinner with the family where your love banks will be recharged.  Look forward to making music or poetry or playing sports; look forward to whatever you are passionate about. 

But please don't just look forward to them, actually do them.  Are you looking forward to seeing your sister next month?  Call her!  Are you looking forward to learning guitar?  Play!  Are you looking forward to meeting someone? Go out and look (or talk)!  Are you looking forward to being in shape? Work out!

That is sometimes hard enough to do for the little things but what about the giant ones like pursuing your dreams, taking risks, and trying something new?

This concept has played in the lives of generations of people.  Most of us are held back because we are afraid of failure and rejection.  We have the misconception that if we do not succeed immediately we are failures and that is somehow a bad thing.  I've got news for you; humans are fail machines.  We are designed to fail at something until we get it right.  If you are not failing at something new, then you are doing it wrong.  Sure you learn a bit from success, but you learn so much more from failure.

Whatever you do, don't hide at home behind your hopes and dreams, venture forth and fail!