Maple Glaze

WTF 2011: The Musical (Overview)

2011-05-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

Well, that was interesting to say the least. If you had talked to me at the beginning of the campaign, I would have said that I was optimistic that Michael Ignatieff's Liberals could make a comeback and just might secure a minority, finally defeating Stephen Harper's Conservatives. And judging by the final results, boy, would I have been wrong: Conservative majority, strong NDP opposition, rump status for the Liberals, a loss of party status for the Bloc, and finally a seat for the Greens. I don't think anyone living in Canada has been able to avoid the election results for this long, so I don't see any point in going into detail beyond that.

Which leads to my analysis: What in bloody hell just happened? It's as if Ke$ha announced that she was recording a children's album: No one could have predicted it even a month ago, and many people are still very uncertain about how they feel about the whole thing. Since all this mindscrew can't be shoehorned into one post, I would like to announce the beginning of a new limited series on Maple Glaze, entitled "WTF 2011".

In this inaugural post, I'm going to go down the list, party by party, and give an overview of what happened to each party during this campaign. However, in an effort to do something different from every other political blog out there, I'm going to do so with music, giving a theme song to each party and explaining how it is pertinent. Future posts in this series will deal with more overarching topics, such as the paradox of leadership politics in Canada and what makes some scandals stick and others not.

With that, let the music begin.

Stephen Harper's Conservatives

Theme song: "Surrender" by k.d. lang (Tomorrow Never Dies [film soundtrack], 1997)

Those of you who have followed this blog over time will likely not be surprised that a song sung from the perspective of a literal James Bond villain has been selected as the theme song of Stephen Harper in this campaign. But beyond the obvious dig at the Conservative Party, the comparison can almost be taken as a compliment.

As much as I hate to say anything positive about Stephen Harper, he was clearly in control at the beginning of the campaign, and managed to stay in control straight through to the end, even when his grip started to loosen in the face of a surging NDP. Like the villainous media magnate Elliot Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies, Harper displayed an impressive hold on the press, as this list of newspaper endorsements in the 2011 election shows. (For those who don't care to click, it's two endorsements for the NDP, one for the Bloc, zero for the Liberals, and a number I don't care to count for the Conservatives.) Even The Economist saw fit to wade into the quagmire and declare Harper to be the "least bad option".

I will not make any jokes about the misspelled sign in this picture. For all anyone knows, the guy's name could be Andrew Horray. He's clearly 4 Harper. (Image source: The front page of Tory Nation.)

Perhaps The Economist's take on the election is the most pertinent one, as many endorsements of the Conservatives shared the opinion that he was the best of a bad bunch. But it wasn't hard for Harper to occupy that territory; having just barely fallen short of majority territory in the 2008 election, he didn't need to play to win so much as simply consolidate his power, just as any Bond villain worth his Mao suit and cat would. His first goal in this strategy has always been to weaken the Liberals so that they would no longer pose a threat to him — and it looks like he got his wish. With the party now reduced to the rump status so long held by the NDP, Harper has apparently, in the words of k.d. lang, "taken care of yesterday".

And like any good strategist, Harper likely also realized that the easiest way to hold onto power is not to try to win people to yourself, but to turn your enemies against each other. I am definitely not giving him credit for the NDP surge — that was primarily caused by Jack Layton's popularity combined with the Liberals' continuing fall. But I have no doubt that the Conservatives were happy to sit back and watch the battle happen once it started, stepping in only when it started to look like the NDP would deny them their majority.

I firmly believe that had the Liberals become resurgent instead of the NDP, there was no way that the Conservatives could have won a majority. They ran a very consistent campaign, but one that was more focused on retaining the support of their base than growing out towards the centre. There was very little in their platform to draw the support of left-leaning Liberals, let alone NDP supporters, and instead a lot to make sure their core supporters showed up to vote. This gave the Conservatives a more solid floor than any other party in this campaign, but it also meant that they didn't have a lot of room to grow.

Instead, the swing ridings in Ontario, which ultimately decided the outcome, tell the story of the majority was won. Many formerly Liberal ridings, including Michael Ignatieff's own Etobicoke—Lakeshore, saw the NDP take more support than ever before, splitting the vote and allowing the consistent Conservatives to suddenly come up the middle. The old Liberal campaign tactic of encouraging NDP voters to vote strategically for them to stop the Conservatives was proven valid in this election, although, as I will say below, the strategy also backfired for them in this campaign.

Either way, Harper now has his majority. The news is not that Harper is in control, but rather that the final impediments to his power have finally been removed, at least for the next four years. And so we'll have new fighter jets, more prisons and more prisoners, the per-vote subsidy for political parties will soon be gone, and the country could end up looking quite different from how it did before. The legacy of the last Conservative majority government is NAFTA, so only time will tell what Harper will be remembered for.

Michael Ignatieff's Liberals

Theme song: "Too Little Too Late" by Barenaked Ladies (Maroon, 2000)

Early in the campaign, Ignatieff had a campaign stop where I live. I really wanted to go, but it was the busiest time of the year for university students like me, and I had several papers to write — including, ironically, a paper about Ignatieff (which I would go on to title "Gettin' Iggy Wit It", and still manage to get an A+ on it somehow). I did, however, get to see part of it on CPAC, and I vividly remember it, because it suddenly hit me that Ignatieff was finally sounding like a seasoned politician. I proclaimed to my dad at the time that whoever coached him prior to this campaign deserved a medal.

Ignatieff had always been held back by being cast, not totally unfairly, as an ivory-tower intellectual type comparatively lacking in populist appeal. His past, as I wrote about in my essay, held him back, with Harper's smears managing to turn something that should have been a personal advantage — wide-ranging experience from around the globe — into a negative, and his former opinions on the Iraq War, the use of torture, and the proper methods of conducting wars attracting much criticism.

This time around, however, Ignatieff seemed to be an entirely reinvented man: still extremely intelligent, but now with an approach more palatable to the average person. He had charisma that I'd never seen in him before, certainly more than Harper. He championed the protection of Canada's democracy from the manipulative Conservatives, and did so passionately and believably. I spent the first couple of weeks of the campaign just waiting for his poll numbers to rise — after all, with that kind of transformation, how could they not?

Those were the days... (Image source: Own photo.)

One thing I forgot: Most Canadians don't watch CPAC. First impressions are powerful in politics, and Ignatieff hadn't made a very good one. With a track record of being somewhat uninspiring, people just didn't listen when he finally changed his tune. I was admittedly biased by being a longtime supporter of his; ironically, it was Ignatieff's failed leadership campaign in 2006 that tempted me to move to the federal Liberals from Jack Layton's NDP in the first place, because I was convinced that he would make a stellar prime minister. I spent the entire length of Dion's tenure waiting for Dion to fail so that Iggy could come in as a virtual red Moses to lead the Grits out of Egypt.

Which, as it happens, has been the other major problem within the Liberal Party for many years now: disunity. The party has been fractured since the end of the Trudeau era, and it never really recovered from the Chrétien-Martin factional split. Instead, it just kind of held itself together enough to not lose to the Western protest party that was Reform/Alliance or their utterly destroyed former rivals the Progressive Conservatives. When the right was finally united, the structural faults began to show, beginning the party's slow collapse. The Chrétien-Martin split gave way to a Dion-Ignatieff-Rae split, shaking the party's roots to the point that the damage was irreparable even after Dion resigned and Bob Rae stood down. Ignatieff never received the full support of his party, so while he accepted all responsibility for the loss in his concession speech, which was certainly a classy way to go, much of the blame rests on the people who were supposed to have his back.

The final nail in the coffin for the Liberals was ironically the strategy that had kept them afloat in the last couple of elections: encouraging NDP supporters to vote strategically for them to stop the Conservatives. While it may have been slightly more effective earlier in the campaign, those calls fell on deaf ears when the NDP's numbers surged ahead of the Liberals and positioned themselves as the likely future Opposition. Near the end of the campaign, when Ignatieff still continued to repeat that the NDP has never formed government and likely never would, doubtlessly egged on by campaign strategists that really should have known better, he came off as more arrogant than realistic, almost like he was trying to question the veracity of the poll numbers.

As far as the theme song I have assigned to him goes, the title alone is enough to encapsulate Ignatieff's campaign within the greater narrative of the Liberal Party. Nevertheless, the lyrics of the song are so fitting as to almost be prophetic: "And I can be good, and I would — if I knew I was understood / And it'll be great, just wait — Or is it too little too late?" The video is equally Nostradamic (yes, I just made that word up): it features lead singer Steven Page quitting the band, just as he would for real several years later, but which can also be taken as symbolism for Ignatieff stepping down as leader the day after the election. At least the lyrics also provide some measure of solace to the embattled professor: "One day, this embarrassment will fade behind me / And that day, I could think of things that won't remind me."

Ironic bonus: Ignatieff's fall came hand-in-hand with the rise of Jack Layton's NDP. And guess what band has long been one of the NDP's most notable groups of celebrity supporters, performing several concerts at party rallies and conventions?

If the Barenaked Ladies were the NDP, would that make Steven Page the Waffle? (Image source.)

So how do the Liberals come back? One way would be to find a new leader who can inspire the unity that the party so desperately needs. Justin Trudeau is the first to come to my mind, given that he is the scion of arguably the most prominent prime minister from any party in the 20th century. Former NDP premier of Ontario and former Liberal leadership candidate Bob Rae could potentially also be a very effective choice, given that his own lost faith in the NDP could become a symbol for a move back to the Liberals nationally, but he also comes with a lot of baggage and has seemed in interviews to tentatively support a Liberal-NDP merger.

Which brings me to option number two: A Liberal-NDP merger, or perhaps more appropriately an NDP-Liberal merger. With the success of the former Unite the Right movement on display in Harper's majority victory, it seems like a no-brainer to Unite the Left. However, this is an unpalatable option on both sides. For the Liberals, a merger with the power balance as it currently stands would mean having their historically powerful party almost absorbed by the NDP, like the Progressive Conservatives were absorbed by Stephen Harper's Canadian Alliance. The Liberals have traditionally cast themselves as the centrist alternative to the NDP and the Conservatives, meaning that in the event of a merger, many centrists — especially right-leaning ones — would jump ship to the Conservatives, just as many Red Tories like Scott Brison crossed the floor to the Liberals in the wake of the right-wing merger. Meanwhile, the prospect of a merger could be equally undesirable for the NDP, because an increase in the stability of their gains could be offset by inheriting the disunity and infighting seemingly inherent in the Liberal Party, which would only be made worse if it was Jack Layton or Thomas Mulcair trying to give the ex-Liberals direction.

The next four years could very well determine the entire future of the Liberal Party, meaning that there will still be a lot of very interesting political news before the next election on October 19, 2015. (Remember that fixed election date law that the Conservatives passed back in 2006? The one that never applied because elections kept being triggered by non-confidence votes? Now that there's a majority in Ottawa again, there's no reason for this bill not to take effect.)

Jack Layton's New Democrats

Theme song: "Loser Like Me" by the cast of Glee (Glee: The Music, Volume 5, 2011)

Hoo boy. While the NDP got off to a kind of slow start, ceding ground to Ignatieff's Liberals and looking like they would suffer a slow death of a thousand cuts, they suddenly and unexpectedly took off sometime after the debates like a rocket being propelled by a controlled supernova.

Jack Layton has always been a popular leader, repeatedly being voted the leader Canadians would most like to have a beer with, but this had never translated into significant poll numbers for his party until now. The NDP's wildfire success has been the big story of this election, and no one can deny the accomplishment deserves its accolades. He's being credited with the return of a federalist party to mainstream relevance in Quebec. His party is now being touted as a possible future government.

This election is the culmination of years of hard work by Jack Layton and his team, who have stayed united while the Liberals allowed themselves to crumble like the Berlin Wall. Like Glee's New Directions, they weathered much criticism and the claims of naysayers that they would never make it this far, and came back stronger than ever. With such feelings of pride and joy and even ecstasy rising through the party, who wouldn't want to be a loser like them?

More proof that absolutely everything is prophetic: The cover of the album that features "Loser Like Me" is orange. Nothing is ever just a coincidence, people. (Image source.)

That statement mentions one thing that could still pose a big problem for the NDP moving forward: despite all their accomplishments, they still lost. And not only did they not form government, but the NDP surge, as mentioned earlier, is responsible for the Conservatives winning a majority, which was the last result any left-leaning voter in Canada wanted to see. The importance of strategic voting, long the bane of the NDP's existence, was validated in this election, meaning that to retain current levels of support, the NDP will have to convince Liberal supporters to vote strategically for them, as many surely did, rather than the other way around. To do so, they must prove themselves able to form a government and worthy of doing so, which should be their number-one task in the next four years.

It's going to be an uphill battle. Layton's campaign really wasn't all that different from his prior campaigns in the last couple of elections. His rivals changed more than he did, and that is arguably the key to his success more than anything he himself did differently, which means that a different set of more effective rivals could spell trouble for the orange tide.

To wit: In Quebec, where the surge started, Gilles Duceppe has been the dominant leader at the federal level for over a decade, but that inertia began started to wear off sometime in the last while. Quebecers flirted with the Conservatives as a federalist alternative, but their shine wore off pretty quickly, and the Liberals still haven't rebuilt themselves in the province since the sponsorship scandal. But a weak Liberal Party allowed a former safe seat of theirs, Outremont, to fall to NDP candidate Thomas Mulcair in a by-election in 2007, giving the New Democrats their only seat in the province, but also showing that the party was indeed a legitimate choice for Quebec voters. The momentum did not hold through the 2008 election, but there is no doubt that Mulcair's continued hold on Outremont has played a role in making the current surge possible.

The NDP seems like a natural fit for Quebec, considering their policies, aside from the federalist-separatist divide, mirror the Bloc's quite nicely, and the NDP has enhanced its appeal by including some tidbits for soft nationalists, like applying Quebec language law to federal public services operating in the province. But I would give this warning to anyone expecting them to be the new reigning power in Quebec: Remember the ADQ. In 2007's provincial election in Quebec, the same year Thomas Mulcair took Outremont, longtime third-party leader Mario Dumont led his Action Démocratique du Québec to a surprise second-place finish, seemingly indicating the beginning of the end of the Parti Québécois, in third for the first time in its history. Jean Charest's minority was unstable, however, and another election was held in just a year... in which the ADQ was virtually annihilated, fading back into obscurity as the PQ revitalized itself with a vastly more popular leader.

Considering the NDP's current surge involves a charismatic longtime third- or fourth-place leader challenging a fading separatist leader, the potential is there for history to repeat itself should the Bloc replace Gilles Duceppe with a more competitive head. This is especially true once one examines the NDP's Quebec caucus in detail. It largely consists of candidates who never expected to win, including several university students, such as a 19-year-old just months older than I am who is now Canada's youngest-ever MP (and of whom I'm kind of jealous). Most jaw-droppingly, Ruth Ellen Brosseau, an Ottawa pub owner with barely passable French who never even visited her almost entirely francophone riding during the campaign, instead spending much of it on vacation in Las Vegas, will now represent Berthier—Maskinongé in Parliament. The NDP and its Quebec lieutenant, Thomas Mulcair, will need discipline and focus worthy of Mr. Miyagi in order to whip this rookie caucus into shape, so they should be glad that they have four years to get it right.

With Quebecers apparently willing to support federal parties en masse once again, the NDP's more traditional rivals, in particular a renewed and reunified Liberal Party, could also spell the end of its success within the province and throughout the country. Personally, I will not call this election result a fundamental realignment of our political system unless the NDP manage to hold onto Official Opposition, or even do better, in the next election — or they merge with the Liberals, which, as mentioned earlier, seems somewhat undesirable for both sides.

Gilles Duceppe's Bloc Québécois

Theme song: "Misery" by Maroon 5 (Hands All Over, 2010)

The lyrics of the theme song I've chosen for the Bloc apply less than the music video, which you can click the link above to watch. In it, the singer's lover (played by lead singer Adam Levine's real-life girlfriend) starts off seemingly in love, and then gradually grows more and more physically abusive, until she gets up to completely cartoonish levels of violence that the singer is lucky to survive. At the end of the video, he finally falls and lies motionless on the ground as his lover walks away.

This is the most pertinent metaphor I can find for the defeat that the Bloc suffered in this election. The Bloc had a long-standing love affair with Quebecers, and it seemed to everyone concerned that it was destined to last. And then, suddenly, not only did the affair end, it ended so badly that the 47-member Bloc caucus was beaten to within an inch of its life, reduced to a mere 4 seats and losing party status.

Um, what are you doing with that rocket launcher? Oh, merde! (Image source: The video for "Misery".)

What happened? As I described in my analysis of the NDP's success, Quebecers were just experiencing a bad case of the 20-year itch. Gilles Duceppe's leadership was becoming tired, and the many years of voting for the Bloc really hadn't improved Quebec's standing within the Canadian federation. The Bloc's desperate move back to an openly separatist agenda later in the campaign, even bringing now 80-year-old Jacques Parizeau out of retirement to campaign by their side, reminded Quebecers of tough and uncertain times that they really didn't feel like reliving, hurting the Bloc even more. The NDP surge was unstoppable, and it seems that there's only room for one dominant party in Quebec, meaning the Bloc was all but doomed.

Is this the end of separatism in Quebec? It's far too early to say that. Having a federal party represent Quebec in Ottawa certainly can't hurt, but support for separatism has been rather stable, albeit not enough for a successful referendum, for many years. The Parti Québécois is still a force in provincial politics, and seems to be the government-in-waiting, even if only because voters are as fatigued with Jean Charest as they were with Gilles Duceppe. The Bloc itself could rise again with a new leader, especially if the NDP's caucus of surprise winners cannot hold itself together, but it could just as easily fall from relevance entirely as Quebec once again becomes a crucial federal battlefield province. The loss of official party status for the Bloc will make any comeback extra difficult, however, considering it eliminates their guaranteed time to ask questions in Question Period and denies them the ability to apply for House of Commons money for research and staffing purposes.

Elizabeth May's Green Party

Theme song: "Boring" by the The Arrogant Worms (Torpid, 2008) (Not available on YouTube, so you can either listen to the full song on The Arrogant Worms' website at the link provided, or watch this Compaq advertisement from the 1980s featuring John Cleese instead, which features similar sentiments.)

At the beginning of the song, the protagonist says that he likes to talk about the weather because it's the most interesting thing he knows. He also likes to talk about science and what he's read in the paper.

The Green Party definitely brings important messages to the table and is an important voice for the environmental movement in Canada, and many have anxiously awaited the election of its first MP (aside from that one guy who crossed the floor and then lost his seat in 2008). It seems like just another kick in the pants for the Greens that when it finally happened, it was the least interesting electoral event of the night.

The Green Party's entire campaign machine across the country was geared towards getting Elizabeth May elected in her riding. Even other Green candidates interviewed on CPAC admitted that. She won sympathy from voters after being shut out of the leaders' debates. Sure, she was running against a Conservative cabinet minister, but he was only Minister of State (Sport), and considering that she put up a strong fight against the Minister of Defence last time, it would have been completely depressing if she hadn't won. Call it an upset if you want: I call it the least surprising shift of the night.

May will no doubt ally herself with the Opposition NDP to make herself a bit more audible in Parliament, but she still doesn't have time for herself in Question Period, and any private member's bills she tries to pass are doomed to fail with a Conservative majority. If the party can build on her victory in the next election, which they just might considering it will be hard to leave May out of the debates a second time now that the Greens have almost as many seats as the Bloc, then we might have a story. But for now, until something new comes up, May gets a smile, thumbs-up, and a suppressed yawn from me.

So that's how I saw the 2011 election overall. Tune in whenever I get time to write more posts to read my take on political scandals in Canada and why local MPs simultaneously don't matter and yet mean everything to voters.

Prologue to a B-Grade Horror Movie

2011-04-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

"Slowly, but surely, the long-dead blog lurched back to life. It seemed to instantly heal the damage it had sustained from the forces of decomposition, and seemed to be living once more. And yet there seemed to be something different about it.

Had the zombie apocalypse begun? Only time would tell."

Yes, Maple Glaze is alive once again, and not actually, to my knowledge, a zombie! Inspired by the entry into the blogging world of my friend over at The Dark Side of Academia, I've decided that I'm going to once more attempt to keep this project up-to-date. Unfortunately, I don't have enough time right now to add another substantial new post, but I promise to do so within the next day or two. In the meantime, enjoy the pretty new template, which is much closer to what I originally envisioned for the blog. I should have most of the kinks worked out now.

Braaaaaaiiinnnss.

Well, except that one. I may need a priest for that one.

Michael Ignatieff's Iggy-Nation 2010

2010-01-11T18:12:00.000-08:00

Today I had a unique experience to see a Canadian political leader that you may know from the news or, if you've been following this blog for a while, the "Pokémon Parl Version" banner formerly on the right-hand side of this page. And I'm not talking about the Rt. Hon. Stevie Blunder. (Pun unfortunately intended. I need help.)

Leader of the federal Liberal Party Michael Ignatieff was at Dalhousie today to have an open question-and-answer session with students from Dal and King's College, an associated institution that shares its campus. By showing up a full hour in advance, I was able to get a seat in the second row from the front, along the aisle, permitting me not only to see and take pictures well, but also to shake Mr. Ignatieff's hand as he walked up to the stage in the centre of the room. I was also able to take note of the fact they were playing music before Ignatieff arrived; while most of it was far too quiet to make out over the noise of the crowd, I'm certain I heard Coldplay's "Life in Technicolor ii" close to when the man would make his entrance. (If anyone wants to take guesses on the significance of the song choice, if any, be my guest.)

After an introduction by the Dal Student Union president, Ignatieff started the talk by going over some of the key issues that he saw facing Canada as a whole. He identified green energy as something Canada must work to develop despite our "energy superpower" status gained largely from the Alberta oil sands. He also criticized Harper for spending proportionally less on renewable energy than the state of Alaska under Sarah Palin's government. (He excused himself for making that comparison, but stood by it.) On the issue of carbon emissions, he reaffirmed the Liberals' commitment to a cap-and-trade system, and the importance of not waiting for the US and President Obama to make the first move. On the economy, he tied the recession in with our aging population and expanded on the challenges that will necessarily come about from that, with special respect to shrinking pension funds that will need to be replenished by the rising generation. He closed with an affirmation in the importance of intellectual property in the 21st century, saying that "the most important resource Canada has now is between your ears."

What came after the prepared statements was even more interesting. In response to a question on post-secondary funding, Ignatieff said he would support replacing the current system of lump-sum grants, which the provinces can spend as they wish on anything (e.g. roads), with a fixed post-secondary transfer to the provinces to ensure comparable levels of funding nationwide.

Post-secondary education also formed the answer to another question, this time on economic stagnation in the Maritimes. Ignatieff said that Atlantic Canada has several strengths, such as perseverance and community solidarity, that would help in our economic growth. But he also stated his oft-repeated belief in the importance of post-secondary education, and that the large number of universities and colleges in the region are and will be major economic engines.

Perhaps most interesting about this line of thought was Ignatieff's suggested creation of a national Ministry of Research, which would be responsible for giving scientific research grants as well as coordinating national research projects across several different provinces. The example he gave was a hypothetical oceanography research program run as a partnership between Dalhousie and the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

He also raised the idea of cultivating the "Canadian experience" by incentivizing students to study at multiple universities in different provinces, such as a student starting their studies at Laval in Quebec and finishing at UBC. He admitted he wasn't sure how this would work, but it was an interesting take on how to further unify the federation, and possibly the most complete federal vision he has articulated to date.

At one point, a question on Ignatieff's position on Israel came up, drawing some ooh's from the audience due to the highly sensitive nature of the question. In stark contrast to his infamous comments back in 2006, Ignatieff handled it well, affirming the right of the State of Israel to exist and the Liberals' support of it based on "the Holocaust, its democracy, and its free society". But he coupled this with a strong statement that peace could only be achieved by a mutual Israeli-Palestinian agreement on a two-state solution, something that drew applause from the crowd.

Another sensitive question, this time much closer to home, seemed to catch Ignatieff momentarily off-guard. It was a question about the future of the monarchy in Canada and of the Senate. Sidestepping the monarchy itself, Ignatieff affirmed his support for the Governor General, and then proceeded to make a politically gutsy defence of an appointed Senate. He had two main arguments to this effect. The first was the fact that there are many highly qualified people that might not be able to win an election, but still deserve to sit in Parliament and have things to offer. His second point articulated the problem of having two elected Houses: which House can claim superiority over the other? In our current system, the elected Commons is considered to be more powerful than the appointed Senate, but with two elected Houses, deadlock could ensue. He finally inserted the caveats that senators should have term limits, but then backtracked to say any kind of Senate reform would have to be approved by all 10 provinces in a constitutional amendment.

The talk ended with a unique twist on the traditional thank-yous. As parting gifts, Ignatieff was not only given a Dal t-shirt, but also, ostensibly in recognition of how stressful this time must be for him, a case of Alexander Keith's beer. It was a nice closer, and appropriately Nova Scotian.

Overall, the talk really impressed me, as well as many people I've talked to about it since. While I may have always been a federal Liberal supporter, my support for Ignatieff personally had been waning for some time until today. Ignatieff is clearly more comfortable in front of a crowd than a camera, likely since it's a situation much more analogous to his experience as a professor. But he also seemed much more relaxed and candid when answering questions than he usually does on the steps of Parliament. In my opinion, this national tour is already shaping up to be one of the best ideas he's come up with as leader, and if he can manage to channel the same energy on camera that he did today surrounded by a crowd of university students, he may be able to secure 24 Sussex yet.

The moral of the story: Don't count Michael Ignatieff out. The honeymoon may be over, but it's not too late for the flame to reignite.

"Something" from Nothing

2009-12-28T15:20:00.000-08:00

Punny titles aside, this post is a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment in the making. For those unfamiliar with the term, "Big-Lipped Alligator Moment" or "BLAM" is a term coined by Lindsay Ellis, the "Nostalgia Chick", in the Critic/Chick review of Ferngully. It describes any sequence in fiction that comes completely out of nowhere with little warning, has little if any relevance to the plot, and, once finished, is never spoken of again. Which is how this blog consisting mostly of political musings, song parodies, and Pokémon battles is now going to bear witness to a satire of encoded "predictions" in various works ranging from the Bible to the works of Nostradamus. Why? Because I feel like it, that's why.

(And before anyone points out that this process of foreshadowing has prevented this post from being a true BLAM, remember that my taxes pay your salary. Or my contributions to the market economy contribute to your salary. Or the market economy in general creates the conditions for your job to exist. Or some other logical construct that implies a vague sense of responsibility to me.)

Presenting: How the Beatles song "Drive My Car", released in 1965, accurately predicted the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008, as conceived of in real-time during an MSN conversation.

First off, we need to understand the premises of the song. The singer is Obama himself, while the girl he is singing about is a personification of the American people. Now for the lyrical analysis.

     Asked a girl what she wanted to be
This is straightforward. Anyone running for President needs to find out what the people want.
     She said, Baby, can't you see?
     I wanna be famous, a star of the screen
America wants to rebuild its tarnished reputation and reclaim its place as a "star" among nations.
     But you can do something in between
This line is a recognition that the American people as a whole will always be greater than a single man (or woman), but also that the President still has a special role to play.

     Baby, you can drive my car
The voters give their permission for Obama to sit in the metaphorical "driver's seat" of the country.
     Yes, I'm gonna be a star
The people of the United States look forward to their global reputation's renaissance.
     Baby, you can drive my car
     And maybe I'll love you
The latter line clearly predicts the "Barackmania" that swept the US and the world in the wake of his election.

     I told that girl that my prospects were good
Obama already had successful careers as a lawyer and local politician, as well as a loving family, and didn't need the Presidency to be happy.
     And she said, Baby, it's understood
     Working for peanuts is all very fine
     But I can show you a better time
The American people, however, had a greater purpose in mind for him than simple personal success.

     Baby, you can drive my car
     Yes, I'm gonna be a star
     Baby, you can drive my car
     And maybe I'll love you
I've already dealt with this.
     Beep beep mm beep beep, yeah
A censor-friendly dramatization of Republicans' reactions to Obama's election.

     Baby, you can drive my car
     Yes, I'm gonna be a star
     Baby, you can drive my car
     And maybe I'll love you
The people who voted Democrat outnumber the naysayers, so this extra repeated chorus is here to drown them out.

     I told that girl I could start right away
This is Obama giving his acceptance speech and vowing to get down to business fulfilling his promises.
     When she said, Listen, baby, I got something to say
     I got no car and it's breaking my heart
The legacy of George W. Bush's presidency and the looming global recession have left the US in shambles compared to previous decades, and must be rebuilt from the ground up.
     But I've found a driver and that's a start
The American people trust Obama to be capable of succeeding in this task.

     Baby, you can drive my car
     Yes, I'm gonna be a star
     Baby, you can drive my car
     And maybe I'll love you
     Beep-beep mm beep-beep, yeah
     Beep-beep mm beep-beep, yeah
     Beep-beep mm beep-beep, yeah
     Beep-beep mm beep-beep, yeah
     Beep-beep mm beep-beep, yeah
The extra Republican swearing at the end is a bonus prediction, namely about the rise of Fox News.

There. I hope that made some modicum of sense. Special thanks to the TV Tropes page "You Fail Logic Forever", specifically the section on the Sharpshooter Fallacy, for inspiring this burst of creativity. Stay tuned at some undefined point in the future for when I prove that Elton John's song "Philadelphia Freedom" predicted the invention of low-fat cream cheese.

What I Might Have Written for My Poli Sci Exam 2...

2009-12-11T18:33:00.000-08:00

... Electric Boogaloo. To celebrate the (slightly-late) first anniversary of the founding of Maple Glaze, as well as the end of my winter exam season (which culminated in today's Political Thought exam... yes, you can all see where this is going), I have decided to write a sequel to the post that started it all. New philosophers have been added to the roster, old ones have evolved (with one intentional exception — see if you can figure out the meaning behind it), and all of them represent a unit of my Political Thought class this semester. Behold, as the philosophers face their greatest challenge yet...

Arceus, the Alpha Pokémon. Or, more accurately, the Pokémon equivalent of God. Yeah. You know your legendaries have jumped the shark when...

Script

[Enter Keith. Enter exam. Suddenly, the set becomes the top screen of a DS displaying a Pokémon battle. This music begins to play.]

Wild ARCEUS appeared!

Go, MACHIAVELLI!

MACHIAVELLI used APPEAL!
MACHIAVELLI put on an air of virtuousness in an attempt to pacify enemy ARCEUS!

Enemy ARCEUS used JUDGEMENT!
Enemy ARCEUS found the works of MACHIAVELLI to be heretical and has ordered them to be banned!
MACHIAVELLI's Attack and Special Attack sharply fell!

MACHIAVELLI used VIRTÙ!
MACHIAVELLI has ordered the brutal arrest, torture, and murder of a lesser enemy of the state to strike fear into the heart of enemy ARCEUS!
But, it had no effect!

Enemy ARCEUS used PUNISHMENT!
Enemy ARCEUS has turned MACHIAVELLI's name into a derogatory adjective!
MACHIAVELLI fainted!
Use next philosopher? (Yes)

Go, TOMHOBBLIN!

TOMHOBBLIN used DOUBT!
TOMHOBBLIN questioned the existence of enemy ARCEUS based on the unreliable nature of secondhand accounts of personal revelations!

Enemy ARCEUS used POKE!
Enemy ARCEUS gave TOMHOBBLIN a light prod to confirm that it does, in fact, exist!
It's super effective!

TOMHOBBLIN used SOVEREIGN POWER!
TOMHOBBLIN has convinced the nation to give up their rights to an unquestionable absolute sovereign in order to do battle with enemy ARCEUS!

Enemy ARCEUS used JUDGEMENT!
Enemy ARCEUS banned every work ever written by TOMHOBBLIN or his pre-evolved form, HOBBES!
Fearing excommunication, the people of the nation have abandoned their absolute sovereign!

TOMHOBBLIN used KINGDOM OF DARKNESS!
TOMHOBBLIN argued that the church of enemy ARCEUS is founded on ignorance and misinterpretation and as such should be rejected!
Enemy ARCEUS's Special Defence fell!

Enemy ARCEUS used PUNISHMENT!
TOMHOBBLIN was forbidden from publishing any other works in England on the subject of social philosophy!
TOMHOBBLIN left to resume publishing in Amsterdam!
Use next philosopher? (Yes)

Go, LOCKEOT!

LOCKEOT used RIGHT TO REVOLT!
LOCKEOT, based on previous imperilments at the hands of the Pokémon Trainer such as the battle against DEOXYS, as well as his near impossible odds of victory against enemy ARCEUS, has determined that the Pokémon Trainer has lost his legitimacy as a ruler and as such may be opposed with force!

The Pokémon Trainer used APPEAL!
The Pokémon Trainer reminded LOCKEOT that by joining enemy ARCEUS, LOCKEOT would be supporting a god other than the Christian God!

Enemy ARCEUS used APPEAL!
Enemy ARCEUS argued that LOCKEOT's Letters Concerning Toleration permit all religions apart from atheism!

LOCKEOT fled to the Netherlands to re-evaluate his philosophy in light of these new concerns!
Use next philosopher? (Sure...)

Go, MILTON!

MILTON used JEREMIAD!
MILTON began loudly complaining about the moral decay of society!

Enemy ARCEUS used PARADISE LOST!
Enemy ARCEUS questioned MILTON's status as a true philosopher!

What's this? MILTON is evolving… right in the middle of a battle!
All right! MILTON evolved into the glitch philosopher MILTONNO.!

MILTONNO. ü5èd OLDE ENGLISH¡
MILTONNO. iиførmèD enemy ARCEUS øf thè Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth!

Enemy ARCEUS used OXFORD DICTIONARY!
Enemy ARCEUS literally threw the book at MILTONNO. for his archaic spelling and glitched dialogue!
MILTONNO. fain¥op}al«s¥~
•∆∆asµ√gµtçtgçhy∆≤ª

93 ERROR.
Use next philosopher? (Shoelace)

Go, HUME!

…

I said go, HUME!

HUME reminded the Pokémon Trainer that cause and effect relationships are never certain, and as such he cannot assume that HUME will attack as soon as he yells "Go, HUME!"

Enemy ARCEUS used COMMON SENSE!
Enemy ARCEUS argued that one cannot hope to live a normal life if one must question the logical validity of every individual action that they take!
HUME agreed with enemy ARCEUS!

HUME used CONVENTION!
HUME argued that the best way to catch enemy ARCEUS can only be discovered through a long process of trial and error!

Enemy ARCEUS used JUDGEMENT!
HUME's years of atheism have finally caught up with him!
HUME fainted!
Use next philosopher? (Do you really have to ask?)

Go, ADAMSMITH!

ADAMSMITH used DIVISION OF LABOUR!
ADAMSMITH summoned MONTESQUIEU and ROUSSEAU to fight alongside him!

MONTESQUIEU used SPIRIT OF THE LAWS!
MONTESQUIEU argued that the "divine" laws of enemy ARCEUS cannot apply universally as conflict with the different "animating spirits" of different societies is inevitable!
Enemy ARCEUS's Special Attack sharply fell!

ROUSSEAU used FORCED FREEDOM!
ROUSSEAU argued that enemy ARCEUS is born free, but everywhere it is in chains, and the only way to break free is through giving up its self-interest in favour of the general will of the community!

Enemy ARCEUS used APPEAL!
Enemy ARCEUS argued that it exists in the state of nature, something that ROUSSEAU thought impossible to return to!
ROUSSEAU joined enemy ARCEUS!

ADAMSMITH used INVISIBLE HAND!
The free market has determined that the economic potential of allowing enemy ARCEUS to remain in the wild outweighs the value of catching it!
ADAMSMITH has left the battle to run a factory manufacturing "I Battled Arceus and All I Got Was This Lousy Pin" souvenirs!

MONTESQUIEU used TROGLODYTES!
MONTESQUIEU summoned a tribe of Troglodytes to attack enemy ARCEUS!
But, all of the Troglodytes were self-interested and had no principles of equity or justice, leading to them competing with each other excessively and killing each other off before reaching the battle!

Enemy ARCEUS used TACKLE!
MONTESQUIEU fainted!

The Pokémon Trainer is out of usable philosophers!
The Pokémon Trainer whited out… whatever that means!

(Enemy?) ROUSSEAU used PITY!
ROUSSEAU asked enemy ARCEUS to aid the Pokémon Trainer!

Enemy ARCEUS used JUDGEMENT!
Enemy ARCEUS took issue with ROUSSEAU's non-theistic "civil religion"!
ROUSSEAU fainted!

GAME OVER
CONTINUE? (Next semester…)

Signs of Life

2009-10-04T17:38:00.000-07:00

No, this blog is not dead yet! I just haven't had much inspiration as far as blog posts are concerned in the past several months, nor have I mustered the will to start trying to summarize three weeks I spent in Europe in August. (So much to say, plus over 2000 pictures... I still don't particularly want to sort through all that.)

But inspiration always comes from the unlikeliest places. In this case, it was a video of Stephen Harper singing "With a Little Help from My Friends" with backup from, among others, Yo-Yo Ma. It was the first definitive confirmation of Harper's status as a living human being, and actually a pretty good performance to boot. So, in honour of this, I decided to write my first new song parody in several months, a summary of major political events in the last two months. Its title, "Signs of Life", has a triple meaning, referring to Harper showing signs of life, the Canadian political arena showing signs of life, and this blog showing signs of life. In short, signs of life signs of life signs of life signs of life signs of just post the song already.

(Note: I apologize if the meter is slightly off in parts. Usually I sing my parodies out loud to make sure they fit, but today I have a very annoying sore throat. I may therefore edit it once I can talk again.)

"Signs of Life"
By Keith Lehwald
A parody of "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles
October 4, 2009

I saw the news today, oh boy
'Bout a prime minister who sang a song
And though he sang it rather well
Well, I just had to grin
I saw a YouTube vid
He sang a classic Beatles tune
From Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
The audience all stood to clap
Meanwhile the orchestra
Just sat back and used all their effort so as not to start to laugh

I saw an ad today, oh boy
The Opposition in a leafy glen
The masses all let out a yawn
But I just had to look
Having read his book
I'd love to win your vote

Woke up, got out of bed
No hair to comb atop my head
Put my helmet on and had to go
Rode my bike down, destination PMO
Saw the man, we had a chat
Made a deal, and just like that
The election's dead and we relaxed
Then somebody asked 'bout my credibility
Ahhhh…

I read the news today, oh boy
Some kind of tussle over Outremont
The party lost their Quebec man
But they don't need a hand
Until they figure out where it was they parked the campaign van
I'd love to win your vote

This is Keith Lehwald, reminding people not to call anything dead until they see the coroner's report. (Not that they do reports on blogs, but... OK, I admit it, this is a failed metaphor. Give a sick guy a break.)

MJ and Me: Remembering Michael Jackson

2009-06-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday, as I'm sure all of you have heard by now, the world lost one of its greatest entertainers. For all of his eccentricities, Michael Jackson deserved the outpouring of support that has come in the days following his sudden passing. In his memory, today, I will be reflecting on how I made the transition from an uninitiated kid knowing only the controversies to a devoted fan who even shed a couple of tears when the news broke.

It may come as a surprise to those who don't know me very well, and even some who do know me quite well otherwise, that I was not always a big fan of Michael Jackson. Growing up, I wasn't really a big fan of any musician, period. I knew two types of music: the music of the 50s, 60s, and 70s played on the radio stations my dad listened to, and the music from video games I played. When I listened to tapes or later CDs (my family took a while to jump on the CD/DVD bandwagon), they were almost all homemade mixtapes of tracks from Super Smash Bros. Melee, the Sonic the Hedgehog series, or F-Zero GX. I could recognize a couple of songs by the Jackson 5, but I didn't know who sang them at the time, and I honestly didn't care. To me, they were just more of the songs on endless rotation on the oldies stations, and as much as I enjoyed listening to them, I had no real attachment to them.

As a result, I never made the connection between those songs and a bizarre middle-aged man who occasionally made the news. The Michael Jackson I grew up with was an almost alien creature, a product of countless plastic surgeries infamous for allegations of child abuse and owning a personal theme park. Jokes about happenings on the Neverland Ranch were commonplace in the years following his molestation trial in 2005, and I took part in them, not really knowing anything about the accused apart from the fact that he was once apparently a musician. By this point, I could also recognize some of his more famous solo works, like "Billie Jean" and "Beat It", but again I still wasn't attached to them.

But, over time, the controversy quieted, and I went from joking to complacency, knowing who Michael Jackson was but not really caring beyond that. The turning point actually came late last year during an MSN conversation with a friend of mine, Alex Safatli on November 29, 2008. (His now-long-dormant blog, ProseInverse, is linked to from my blog list.) We were discussing costumes based on Code Geass, specifically based on the outfit Lelouch wears as Emperor of Britannia. At one point, Alex sent me a link to a particularly badly-done version available on eBay. I was criticizing the way they made the hat when this exchange occurred:

Me: That's almost criminal.

Alex: No. It's almost smooth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxeNZOLNh4c
Most random video ever, by the way.

That YouTube link, now dead, linked to the music video for Alien Ant Farm's cover of "Smooth Criminal". I knew that it was originally a Michael Jackson song, I recognized the kid's dance moves, and I recognized that the chimp in the music video was a reference to Bubbles, but I did not recognize all of the multitude of other MJ references in the video until much later, meaning I just saw the video as a series of incredibly random events. Nevertheless, I liked the song, and listened to it repeatedly on YouTube.

After a little while, I also became curious about the original version. This was also evidently very easy to find on YouTube. Listening to it, I quickly grew to like it more than Alien Ant Farm's cover. By the end of December, it was one of my favourite songs of all time, and I was always looking for excuses to insert it into conversation. A series of New Year's pictures I posted on Facebook was littered with excerpted lyrics from the song as a joke based on this phenomenon.

All this time, I had just been listening to the song on YouTube. Browsing HMV on January 13, I came across the Michael Jackson compilation CD Number Ones for $10. After making sure "Smooth Criminal" was on the track list, I bought it.

This CD gave me a new appreciation of MJ's incredible catalogue of music. "Billie Jean" went from a rotated song on the radio that I could barely remember to the memorable, danceable song it deserved to be. "Black or White", the song that came after "Smooth Criminal" on the track list, grew on me in a big way despite never having heard it before then, at least not that I could remember. It finally clicked in my head that "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" was sung by Michael Jackson. "Dirty Diana", "Earth Song", and "Blood on the Dance Floor" stood out as new favourites. Perhaps most significantly, I finally learned why "Thriller" was so famous, having strangely enough never heard it on the radio. With oldies radio focusing mostly on the 60s and 70s and popular music being confined to the 90s and 2000s, the 80s were a virtually unknown decade to me, with Elton John, Billy Joel, and Rick Astley (cough) being notable exceptions.

Over the past six months, Number Ones eventually became my favourite CD, and Michael Jackson my favourite singer, buoyed largely by "Smooth Criminal", which had definitively become my favourite song. I even tried to teach myself the dance as performed in live concerts, which I now know most of the moves to. I repeatedly considered buying more Michael Jackson CDs, especially the expanded, 2-CD compilation The Essential Michael Jackson, but being a spendthrift, I decided each time that I would be better off saving my money, considering I already had all of my favourites in a neat little package (never mind the fact that I hadn't even heard most of his other songs) and I had a trip to Europe coming up in August that I needed to save up for. So I just kept to just listening to Number Ones and watching videos on YouTube for other songs, such as "Remember the Time", intending to buy more CDs when I had the money. A week ago today, four days before MJ would pass away, I decided that I would buy some version of the King of Pop compilation album while I was in Europe. (It was an album, released to coincide with Michael's 50th birthday, for which fans from each country voted on which songs would be included. For some reason, it was never released in Canada or the US.) A couple of days later, after listening to the 2008 remix of "Billie Jean" on YouTube, I also decided that I would buy the Thriller 25 CD the next chance I got.

Then came Thursday. I'd just come home from meeting with a friend, and I was in a pretty good mood. As I walked over the hill between the bus stop and my home, I listened to "Thriller" on my MP3 player, even lip-synching to the words as long as there was no one else in sight. As I sat down for supper, CNN was reporting breaking news that Michael Jackson had fallen into a coma. I fell completely silent and stared at the TV in disbelief, ignoring my dad whenever he tried to say something. The news of his death followed fairly soon afterwards. After I recovered enough to break my silence, I managed to get the TV in my bedroom working again so I could continue to watch the coverage. At one point, CNN played a montage of clips from Michael Jackson's most famous videos; I was literally brought to tears when they showed a clip of him gripping the microphone in his white 1930s gangster outfit and singing "Smooth Criminal". I was simply in disbelief.

The point where I started to feel better again came when CNN was covering a gathering outside the Apollo Theater in Los Angeles, where the career of the Jackson 5 had begun. A large group of people were standing there singing "Billie Jean", and a couple were dancing to it. When the reporter asked one of the people involved what they were doing, he responded that they were celebrating Michael's life instead of mourning his death. Despite only really discovering Michael Jackson six months ago, I too had much to celebrate.

The next day, I took my lunch break to head down to the HMV on Spring Garden Road to buy some of the CDs I had long intended to buy. By the time I got there, a single copy each of Bad and Dangerous were the only MJ-related items left in the store; the cashier told me of someone who had come in that morning and bought one of every MJ album they had. Later that afternoon, on my way to a friend's house, I stopped in the Mic Mac Mall HMV and bought their lone copy of the DVD Live in Bucharest, the only MJ-related item left in that store. And over this weekend, I've looked in several places for Thriller 25, though I still haven't found it. It was my way of celebrating Michael Jackson's life: listening to more of his music that I had not yet heard. Already, the albums are making their way up my list of favourites, especially Dangerous, which I feel is underappreciated. Notably, while listening to Dangerous, "Will You Be There" stood out, since I could clearly remember having heard it as a young child, but I hadn't heard it since or realized who sang it. It was quite a surprise to hear it on a Michael Jackson album.

Over the past several months, my opinion of Michael Jackson the man also changed dramatically. Having been introduced to songs like "Earth Song" and reading more about his personal life, I became very sympathetic to him. Having performed since the age of five and assuming a lead vocal position in the Jackson 5 by eight, on top of having an abusive father, he never had a real childhood. After learning that, it became obvious that all of his later eccentricities evolved in pursuit of the childhood he so desperately wanted after being deprived of it.

Reading more details of the two accusations of child molestation, I concluded that MJ was innocent, based not only on the ruling of the 2005 trial but also on realizing important aspects of his relationship with children. An overgrown child at heart himself, it seemed to me that he genuinely cared for children and wanted nothing more for them than the ability to live out happy and carefree childhoods like he never had the chance to. It was for that reason that he would invite them to Neverland. If Michael indeed saw himself as a child, or at least wanted to be one, then it would be easy to see how what he would have seen as simple play dates might be misinterpreted by other adults as a sign of pedophilia.

Furthermore, most people overlook his numerous contributions to children's charities, including his own Heal the World Foundation, which even on many occasions gave underprivileged children the chance to come to Neverland themselves. Out of all the many children that had gone there and spent time with Michael, only two had ever complained of abuse. In the first case, the investigation was closed due to lack of evidence and no charges were laid, and when the alleged victim was called to testify in the 2005 trial, he left the country to avoid testifying.

In the second case, several people who had spent time with Michael as children, including Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin, testified that nothing inappropriate had ever happened between them, and many of the witnesses for the prosecution were ultimately found to have had prior disputes with Michael and therefore the possibility of ulterior motives. The most potentially damning evidence brought forward was two books containing photos of nude boys found in Michael's home, but both of these were commercially available artistic works that featured both clothed and naked boys, not child pornography. MJ's vindication in the face of this evidence, and further evidence for my viewpoint detailed above, comes in the form of a message he wrote on the first page of the books: "Look at the true spirit of happiness and joy in these boys' faces, this is the spirit of boyhood, a life I never had and will always dream of. This is the life I want for my children." Even Neverland Ranch itself was named after the place in Peter Pan where children never grew up. (Michael owned a 1911 edition of the original novel Peter and Wendy to boot.)

If there was any lingering doubt about Michael's intentions, one only has to look at the songs he has written and performed. As his music matured since the days of the Jackson 5, Michael nevertheless brought a childlike idealism to many of his songs, notably "Man in the Mirror", "Heal the World", and "We Are the World", the last of which he wrote and subsequently performed with a large group of other prominent singers. By 1995, when he released the album HIStory, he had endured his first round of molestation accusations, and new songs such as "Earth Song" seemed to embody a frustration with how the world was while still holding out hope that it could change. "D.S.", another song from that album, was a direct expression of his frustration with the allegations and the fallout.

All of this is not to say Michael Jackson was perfect. While not ill-meaning, Michael's mental health still deviated quite far from the norm, and his physical health was questionable. Any questions about prescription drug abuses will be answered only by the autopsy results, but I consider it most likely that if there were abuses, they were in response to medical problems or accidentally-developed addictions, not the result of seeking a high.

Nevertheless, through it all, Michael Jackson remained a humanitarian who genuinely desired a better world in the much the same way that a child does once they learn about violence or poverty. He was a loving father of two sons and a daughter, even if they didn't appear in the media very often. And of course, he was a singer and dancer of a calibre that may never be seen again. Michael Jackson may have left us, but his music never will.

To celebrate the legacy of the King of Pop, I will now conclude this post by sharing a clip from the movie Moonwalker that serves as the full-length version of the "Smooth Criminal" music video. It is both, as mentioned above, my favourite song and, in my opinion, the best music video ever made. (The Nostalgia Critic said it best in his review of Moonwalker: While "Thriller" revolutionized the music video, "Smooth Criminal" perfected it.) Enjoy.

Why Not Whynott?

2009-06-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

The NDP majority government (yay!) is not the only the only thing that made history in Nova Scotia this week. This week, the riding of Hammonds Plains—Upper Sackville elected the youngest MLA in the history of the Nova Scotia legislature, Mat Whynott. He's 23 going on 24, beating the previous record set in the 1871.

Reading an article in the Chronicle-Herald about him today, I realized we actually have many things in common. For starters, we both have had an interest in politics from a young age. Whynott joined the NDP when he was 15. I almost joined the NDP when I was 14, the minimum age to attain party membership, but for some reason I waited. It worked out, since less than a year later, I would re-evaluate my opinions during the 2006 Liberal leadership contest. This event educated me on the finer points of the Chrétien and Martin governments often lost in opposition criticism, convinced me that the Liberals were a better party federally than the NDP, and introduced me to a certain candidate named Michael Ignatieff. I would be lying if I said Iggy did not play a large role in bringing me over to the Liberal side federally. Joining the debating team also played a large role by introducing me to the notion that big business is not inherently evil.

(Unfortunately for Stephen McNeil, no similar event occurred for me on a provincial level. I lost all faith in the NS Liberals during the tenure of Francis Mackenzie as leader, and the most exciting thing that came out of the convention that named McNeil as leader in 2007 was running into the federal leader, Stéphane Dion, in the Halifax airport as he was returning to Ottawa after speaking there. This all occurred while Darrell Dexter's NDP continued to become more and more centrist and moderate, meaning its values coincidentally changed at the same pace and at the same time mine did.)

Since all of the main political parties in Nova Scotia have one unified membership for both federal and provincial levels, I have not been able to commit to membership in either yet. If I had to choose, I would choose the federal Liberals over the provincial NDP, for the reasons that I plan to eventually run for Parliament and the fact that I don't know what the NS NDP will look like after Dexter retires. It seems Whynott has not had a similar episode of cognitive dissonance, which makes me a little envious.

There are still several other things Whynott and I have in common, if not our federal allegiances. He did a BA with a major in political science and a minor in French at Saint Mary’s University; I'm currently doing a combined honours in political science and French with a minor in law at Dalhousie. None of his high school classmates were surprised when he stood for election; on my end, there is already a Facebook group called "Keith for Prime Minister", and my political aspirations were even mentioned in a speech given by my former French teacher, Mme. Starratt, at my high school graduation when I was receiving the Governor General's Medal. On a less political note, we both listen to 96.5 Kool FM, and a co-worker of mine at the Dalhousie Registrar's Office Imaging Department, Jillian Smith, had Whynott as a reading buddy in elementary school. (The degrees of separation theory is frighteningly accurate sometimes.)

So, why is all of this comparison relevant, as opposed to just random observations on a Monday morning? The main issue for me is that because of Mat Whynott, a part of me feels like I'm lagging behind. Never mind the fact that I'm six years younger than him. He's travelled to Israel and Palestine to observe the conditions there, so I'll have to make a whirlwind tour of Tibet, Laos, Vietnam, and the Korean Demilitarized Zone before I turn 23 to match him. He's overseen an election in Trinidad and Tobago, so I'll have to oversee the next one in the tiny unrecognized country within Moldovan territory known as Transnistria. He's apparently addressed the UN, so now I have to address the United Federation of Planets. (If it means legally changing my name to Jean-Luc Picard and calling my vehicle of choice the USS Enterprise, then I will make it so.)

I'm rather stuck for now when it comes to running for election myself, however. Even if I were to join the Liberals tomorrow, there is already a very popular Liberal, Geoff Regan, serving as the MP for my riding of Halifax West, and I would not want to oppose him anyway. Even if Geoff quit, I'd still have a very tough nomination battle to fight. I would also have trouble running against the current MP for Halifax, Megan Leslie; despite the fact that she's a member of Jack Layton's team, I've met her and hold a great deal of respect for her. I don't have a particular connection to the NDP MP for Sackville—Eastern Shore, Peter Stoffer, but he has been a prominent supporter of a more moderate stance in the federal party, and it would be a massive uphill battle for a young, relatively inexperienced parachute candidate to win against such a popular MP who possesses legendary canvassing skills. Even if I end up going to McGill for law school and tried to run there, it would be very unlikely that a young Nova Scotian could even win the nomination for a Montreal riding, even disregarding the fact that many of them already have Liberal incumbents.

So, for the time being, it looks like Mat Whynott wins this bout. But, then again, it's not his record I'm really looking to beat. I have no intention of sitting in the Nova Scotia legislature at all. No, the record that truly matters to me is the one currently held by Joe Clark: Canada's youngest prime minister. And I have until I'm 39 to pull that one off.

2009 NS Election: My Thoughts

2009-06-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

"Holy first-past-the-post, Batman! It's an actual political article!"

Right you are, Robin. With a general election almost here in Nova Scotia, I figured I had to say something about it. Now, for the uninitiated, here’s how the standings in the legislature were before the government fell. The Progressive Conservatives, led by Rodney MacDonald, formed the government; Darrell Dexter's New Democrats formed the Opposition, trailing the PCs by a single seat; and the Liberals of Stephen McNeil were a fairly distant third, with less than half the seats of the NDP. Most polls suggested a possible minority government for the NDP, with the Liberals often placing second, ahead of the PCs. Some more recent polls even suggest the possibility of a majority NDP government.

With that out of the way, it's time for something substantive: my opinion. Until 2006, Nova Scotia was led by John Hamm. While he was also a PC, his government was fairly competent, with its key plank being reducing Nova Scotia's astronomical debt. This will surely be the legacy of his government, if only in comparison with the disaster story that followed.

In 2006, Rodney MacDonald became leader of the PCs and premier in the wake of Hamm's retirement. Nova Scotians showed that they were willing to give him a chance by re-electing him to a minority government that year. At this time, Frank magazine bestowed upon him the moniker "Rocket Rodney".

As his term continued, it became clearer and clearer that Rodney had no plan to continue his predecessor's fairly popular legacy. Big spending became the new motto of the government, prompting Frank to change their nickname from "Rocket Rodney" to "Baby Buchanan", after John Buchanan, one of the biggest-spending premiers in Nova Scotia’s recent history. The final stage of this metamorphosis of the PCs came right before the election, when the government was defeated on a proposal to use profits from the province’s offshore natural gas projects to fund new spending in the budget. This was the same money that John Hamm had mandated by law to go exclusively to servicing the debt. By now, the Rocket has sunk low enough for Frank to simply call him "Smugly MacDonald".

At this point, I'm not really paying much attention to the promises of the PCs, despite the fact that their radio ads have become almost as ubiquitous as Taylor Swift’s song "Love Story". ("You were a voter that wasn’t pleased / And your daddy said, 'Stay away from that Rodney'…") In three years of government, virtually every policy implemented by Rodney's gang has either not impressed me or outright turned me away. With a record like that, I don't believe they can be trusted to suddenly start doing the right thing.

This leaves the NDP and the Liberals. A curious thing happened while the NDP ascended from third party to government-in-waiting: they and the Liberals switched places, sort of. A similar thing happened in the UK, with the third-way Labour Party moving into the right of the political spectrum as it grew more powerful, while the remnants of the Liberal Party merged with the Social Democrats and moved left. Today's Liberal Democrats are largely a persistent third-place party.

Now, before anyone makes the observation that Labour's popularity is falling massively, remember that its drop is primarily due to two reasons that don't affect Nova Scotia politics: the commitment of British troops to Iraq, and the introduction of a new leader, Gordon Brown, who hasn't managed to catch on with the electorate.

Nevertheless, the switch is obvious and staggering. At first glance, Liberal Stephen McNeil's policies seem like great ideas that are long overdue. He's done a great job of presenting himself as a populist, doing what the people want him to do. However, the cost of implementing all of these policies would be astronomical, as a May 23 Chronicle-Herald investigation shows. Through all the tax cuts and price caps, McNeil seemingly doesn't care about the fact that we're currently in a global economic crisis, and on top of that, we already have the highest debt per capita in the country. All his talk of "living within our means" in the first debate was apparently as lost on him as it was on me, considering that debate literally put me to sleep. Perhaps he feels that he's unlikely to be elected, and can therefore make any number of promises, knowing he won't be expected to keep them. Sounds a little like the federal NDP's Jack Layton, doesn't it?

Even though the policies seem at first glance more like the now-discredited principles of supply-side economics, they are clearly targeted at lower-income voters, suggesting a left-leaning bent. It's some bizarre blend of Keynesian stimulus spending with the tax cuts and deregulation of the Washington Consensus. Worse yet, McNeil seems convinced that his plan will cause revenues to skyrocket and therefore pay for itself. While I believe in stimulus spending, this is not stimulus. This is loading loonies into a machine gun and firing them at random, hoping to hit the special bonus target to win a large plush animal stuffed with $100 bills.

Now, before anyone accuses me of turning my back on the Liberals, I still strongly support Michael Ignatieff and my local MP, Geoff Regan. I also wish Mr. Regan’s wife, Kelly Regan, luck in taking the Bedford—Birch Cove riding from the PCs in the provincial election. But on a whole, the federal and provincial parties could not be more different. I laughed when I saw Ignatieff and McNeil together at a campaign event, because it was obvious they had little in common beyond the name of the party.

Then we have the NS NDP of Darrell Dexter. Dexter hasn't made any big promises, instead focusing his campaign on a couple of simple planks, the most ambitious of which being to balance the budget within two years. I'm not sure if this is possible, but I give the NDP a lot of credit for actually trying as opposed to McNeil's approach. On a whole, the NDP's policies are very economically moderate while tending to be socially liberal. That sounds like a certain federal party I know…except with union support. The NS NDP has become what seems like a walking paradox: a centrist workers' party.

Nevertheless, this brings me to my main point: A true supporter of the federal Liberals, who supports their policies more than their name, should, in my opinion, also support Darrell Dexter's NDP over Stephen McNeil's Liberals in this election. I am first and foremost a centrist with a socially liberal bent, and I feel that Dexter represents that better than McNeil.

So how did the NS Liberals end up in this wilderness? After the NDP became the Official Opposition in 1998 and the Liberals fell to third in 1999, the NDP has moved increasingly towards the centre in an attempt to expand its support base. While retaining its original left-leaning supporters, it was also able to erode the Liberals' centrist base by using their Official Opposition status to claim greater legitimacy as a viable party. As the NDP marched to the centre, with the right still firmly held by the reigning PCs, the Liberals desperately had to find some way to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack. In the last election in 2006, they failed to do that, and suffered massively as a result. If McNeil has succeeded in anything, it is making this distinction.

The future could prove interesting, however. If the NDP takes government as expected, there could be another power shift like that in 1999. With the PCs losing credibility faster than I would lose a boxing match with Muhammad Ali and the Liberals on an upswing, we could end up with a system like that of British Columbia, where the Liberals and NDP vie for power and the Conservatives have become all but irrelevant. In a very unlikely extreme case that is nevertheless remotely possible based on the most recent poll, the remnants of the Liberals and PCs could merge to form a new party to challenge the NDP, as happened in Saskatchewan with the Saskatchewan Party. (No one needs to bring up the Nova Scotia Party that ran candidates in 1999 and 2003. In 2003, they only beat the Marijuana Party by 29 votes, despite running candidates in five more ridings than them. Enough said.)

One thing is certain: Stephen McNeil or his successor will have to transform the Nova Scotia Liberal Party during the next few years to remain relevant. They can't keep coasting on the failures of the PCs. In the meantime, the NDP will likely form government, and I firmly believe that this is by far the best outcome given our choices.

Remember to vote on June 9, no matter whom it is for.

(Side note: The decision for which candidate for MLA to support in my riding, Halifax Fairview, was ridiculously easy.

Graham Steele (NDP): An outstanding representative for the past eight years, an overall good guy, a high ranking NDP MLA, and a shoe-in for cabinet in an NDP government.

Brad Armitage (Liberal): The guy who sets up Stephen McNeil's sound system at speaking engagements.

Paul Henderson (PC): The picture on his pamphlets is actually intimidating. I've summed it up before as "Paul Henderson is about to shoot you." (Some credit needs to go to TV Tropes for that.) He's also PC.

Amanda Hester (Green): Who? I'd honestly never heard her name before until I checked the CBC riding profile tonight.

I think the choice is pretty obvious. On top of that, for two years, I had represented Halifax Fairview in the Model Legislature as a member of the "Orange Party", and, in my second year, actually ended up as leader of the party through an interesting chain of events. The events were held in Province House itself, and therefore I sat in Graham Steele's seat. Both years, I left notes in his desk wishing him and the NDP well. When I graduated from high school last year, I finally got the chance to meet him – when he was there to present me with the Eileen O'Connell Memorial Scholarship. He remembered the notes, and later extended an invitation to help with the campaign. I accepted the offer, and therefore, for most of the election, I have been a volunteer for his campaign. I feel it makes up for the fact that I'm still not of voting age despite recently finishing my first year at Dalhousie, and won't be until September.)

Whew. That post was long. Regardless, again, remember to vote on June 9!

Bolsheviks in Canada?

2009-03-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

While the title of this post might seem like an attempted attack ad from Rodney MacDonald's Progressive Conservatives against Darrel Dexter's NDP, there's actually nothing political about it — at least, not related to current politics.

While procrastinating on some homework today, I remembered seeing a form at work that mentioned a street in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia named Clovis Ave. Immediately linking it in my head to a character from Code Geass, my all-time favourite TV show, I decided to go on over to Google Maps to look up where it was.

After finding Clovis Ave. near the neighbourhood of Spryfield, I ended up randomly scanning the map for other interesting street names. Two in particular stood out. The first standout was White Glove Terrace. If someone has not yet driven down the street with a stereo blasting Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean", it must be done soon.

The second street needs a little historical knowledge to understand its significance. Behind the West End Mall, off of Chebucto Road, is a street named Joseph St. Now, at first glance, this would be normal: after all, Joseph is a common name, as evidenced by other streets like Joseph Howe Drive. But here's the catch: Joseph St. intersects in a semi-symmetrical pattern with Churchill Dr. and Roosevelt Dr. (See this map.)

Now, who were the three main leaders (the "Big Three") of the Allies in World War II? Winston Churchill of the UK, Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the US, and...Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union. The "St." in "Joseph St." could even be expanded to "Stalin", although this minute detail is almost certainly a coincidence.

Before you all accuse me of conspiracy theories, this would not be the first time that such an arrangement of streets or other landmarks has been named after the Big Three. Wikipedia lists several examples. For example, three streets converge in Amsterdam's Victory Square, which were named after Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, respectively, after the liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi control in 1945. In British Columbia, three mountains in the Rockies were named Mount Roosevelt, Churchill Peak, and Mount Stalin to honour their leadership of the Allies. In this context, the arrangement of streets in Halifax is relatively unspectacular. (Image source)

What makes the Halifax arrangement stand out is the fact that most of the other examples have since been renamed. Stalin Street in Amsterdam was renamed "Victory Street" after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, and Mount Stalin in British Columbia was finally renamed to Mount Peck in 1987 amid protests from the Ukrainian-Canadian community. Virtually every other example on the Wikipedia list, even those in the former Soviet Union, have since been renamed to remove all traces of the Soviet Man of Steel. Halifax, meanwhile, was apparently content to simply use Stalin's first name instead of his last name and plead ignorance.

In a day and age where political correctness dominates, it is ironic to see such an extreme example escape its reach. Recent news stories in Halifax and elsewhere have involved calls from the First Nations community to rename places named after Edward Cornwallis and Lord Jeffery Amherst, such as Cornwallis Park and various towns named after Amherst, due to their involvement with allegedly genocidal campaigns against Native peoples.

The names of Cornwallis and Amherst, for better or for worse, have become integral parts of Nova Scotia's history, and much of the opposition to the renamings comes from people who wish to err on the side of simplicity and tradition. They claim that when someone mentions one of those names, they don't automatically think of the historical figure associated with it. These are fairly strong arguments, because officially changing any place name creates a lot of confusion and hassle at various levels, which is likely why there is still a town named Swastika in Ontario. (Granted, it was given this name long before the Nazis existed, but historical context didn't stop the town of Berlin, Ontario from being renamed Kitchener in 1916.)

But when the need to rename a place is seen and action is taken, it should at least be something significant. The wronged First Nations groups calling for the renamings outlined above surely would not be satisfied with, say, changing "Cornwallis Park" to "Edward Park". You have to wonder why the City of Halifax did not do this in the first place. Perhaps it was never actually named "Stalin St.", and "Joseph St." was seen as a halfway point between paying homage to a prominent Allied leader and alleviating fears of the expansion of Communism in the postwar world. If the street were to be renamed, "Mackenzie King St.", honouring Canada's WWII leader, is an appropriate alternative. Either way, the current municipal government is not going to care.

And so our little, largely unrecognized monument to Stalin will continue to stand without any of the controversy created by Cornwallis and Amherst. Maybe it's because there aren't enough Ukrainians in Halifax. Or maybe it's simply because the residents of this unassuming street don't realize who they're honouring.

Tales from Mackenzie King's Diary, Vol. 1

2009-02-21T08:38:00.000-08:00

William Lyon Mackenzie King. A great Prime Minister. A Liberal. The guy on the $50 bill. There are a great many reasons he should be remembered, not in the least his diary. Kept from the time he was an 18-year-old undergraduate at the University of Toronto in 1893 right up to a couple of days before his death in 1950, the diary was the place where King wrote all of his personal observations about the people, places, and events around him. And for the most part it was updated daily, quite unlike this blog. A quote from the website A Real Companion and Friend: The Role of the Diary in Mackenzie King's Life sums up well what I wished to say next:

It is thus surprising that King in his will, ordered that his diary be destroyed, "except the parts which I have indicated are and shall be available for publication or use." He was undoubtedly concerned about all the personal details contained in the diary, accounts of illnesses, psychic research, and dreams, as well as his candid comments on various persons. But there were hints that he did not really want the diary destroyed at all.

And thus it is on that Government of Canada-run website that the entire diary, all 30 000 pages of it, is available for anyone with an Internet connection to browse.

Now, any diary contains a mix of both profound reflection and some, well, stranger entries. King's diary is no different. But some entries stand out as being very interesting or completely bizarre, especially when viewed through the lens of history. Some of these are entries I've known about for a long time, but because I didn't have a blog before, I couldn't share them online. Therefore, to remedy both this and the drought of posts on this blog, I hereby present the first (highly irregularly updated) series on Maple Glaze: "Tales from William Lyon Mackenzie King's Diary". Enjoy.

June 29, 1937 was a big day for King. He was finishing up a three-day visit to Germany; he would start home the next day. But before that happened, there was a big item on his agenda left to accomplish: meet with the German leader. Now, anyone up on their history will realize that in 1937, the German leader was none other than Führer Adolf Hitler. Yes, just over two years before he would declare war on him, King had a cordial meeting and discussion with Hitler.

King wrote extensively of how this meeting went, and a great many of these details are worthy of posting about. However, what has always stood out to me is one of the last pages, where King talks about the end of the meeting and gives an evaluation of Hitler as a person. Here are some of the key excerpts:

As I got up to go, Hitler reached over and took in his hands a red square box with a gold eagle on its cover, and taking it in his two hands, offered it to me, asked me to accept it in appreciation of my visit to Germany. At the same time, he said he had much enjoyed the talk we had had together, and thanked me for the visit. When I opened the cover of the box, I saw it was a beautifully silver mounted picture of himself, personally inscribed. I let him see that I was most appreciative of it, shook him by the hand, and thanked him warmly for it, saying that I greatly appreciated all that it expressed of his friendship, and would always deeply value this gift. He went to give it to someone else to carry but I told him I would prefer to carry it myself.

This passage is telling in a couple of ways.

1. Hitler thought a picture of himself would be a great souvenir of Germany. This shows just how enormous his ego must have been, since it shows that he thought the best item to represent all that Germany stood for was an image of himself, that he was the very personification of Germany. Granted, he has become such for the years of his rule, but that Hitler thought of himself that way even before the beginning of the war is striking.

2. King did not find it at all strange that Hitler was giving him a "personally inscribed" picture of himself. Imagine if during Barack Obama's recent visit to Canada, Stephen Harper had given him a silver-framed, personally inscribed picture of himself. Every tabloid in both countries would have had a field day both deriding Harper's ego and possibly suggesting some kind of homosexual affair between them. Also, one has to wonder exactly what Hitler inscribed on the picture. "Thanks for coming!" "To my friends, the people of Canada, at least the Aryan ones." "Pay no attention when parts of Czechoslovakia start mysteriously disappearing." And so on.

But it gets better.

He then drew back a few steps to shake hands and to say good-bye in a more or less formal way. I then said that I would like to speak once more of the constructive side of his work, and what he was seeking to do for the greater good of those in humble walks of life; that I was strongly in accord with it, and thought it would work; by which he would be remembered; to let nothing destroy that work. I wished him well in his efforts to help mankind.

Of course, it is exactly his humanitarian efforts, especially alleviating poverty, for which Hitler is remembered today. In other news, a passenger plane recently avoided a collision with a flock of pigs over Manitoba. (Image source)

This passage, more than anything, makes me wonder exactly what efforts King is complimenting Hitler on. More than likely, it is some project like Kraft durch Freude that has since taken a backseat to World War II and the Holocaust in the Nazi German section of history books. Neither the Final Solution or the Aktion T4 Euthanasia Program had yet begun in 1937, so it is thankfully not possible that King was talking about either of those. And we can safely say that King was not referring to Germany's expansionist Lebensraum doctrine under which Germany would later be merged with Austria and other nearby territories.

But it still gets better.

I then thanked him again for having given me the privilege of so long an interview. He smiled very pleasantly and indeed had a sort of appealing and affectionate look in his eyes. My sizing up of the man as I sat and talked with him was that he is really one who truly loves his fellow-men, and his country, and would make any sacrifice for their good. That he feels himself to be a deliverer of his people from tyranny.

OK, back up. It's one thing to say that Hitler thought of himself as Germany's saviour; that much has always been obvious. But to say he had an appealing and affectionate look in his eyes? That's like George Bush taking on a quiet and cerebral air about him. As for loving his countrymen, well, Hitler did have a great pride in his vision of the German race, so I guess it could be said that in a strange, perverted way, he did love his countrymen, just as long as they weren't Jewish, Roma, mentally or physically handicapped, Communist...the list goes on.

And it still gets better (worse?).

To understand Hitler, one has to remember his limited opportunities in early life, his imprisonment, etc. It is truly marvellous what he has attained unto himself through his self education. He reminded me quite a little of Cardin in his quiet way, until he begins to speak when he warms up and begins to get carried away with what he is saying. He has much the same kind of composed exterior with a deep emotional nature within.

OK, that's all reasonable. To understand someone, you have to understand their history. And it's fair to be impressed with how Hitler engineered his rise to power and to compliment his oratory skills. I can't comment on Cardin, though, because I'm not sure who King is referring to, and I'm sure it's not the Vietnamese-American pop singer who is the only result for "Cardin" on Wikipedia.

His face is much more prepossessing than his pictures would give the impression of. It is not that of a fiery, over-strained nature, but of a calm, passive man, deeply and thoughtfully in earnest. His skin was smooth; his face did not present lines of fatigue or weariness; his eyes impressed me most of all. There was a liquid quality about them which indicate keen perception and profound sympathy. He looked most direct at me in our talks together at the time save when he was speaking at length on any one subject; he then sat quite composed, and spoke straight ahead, not hesitating for a word, perfectly frankly, looking down occasionally toward the translator and occasionally toward myself.

OK, what the heck. It's one thing to say that someone's skin is "smooth"; taken on its own, that's creepy enough, although perhaps it was less so in 1937. But to say that about Hitler, that's just downright disturbing. I don't even want to think about what kind of moisturizer he would use. And then he also compliments his face and his eyes. It almost sounds like he's describing his first date more so than a political meeting. And it's freaking Hitler! And here I thought it was only Neville Chamberlain who was secretly smitten with Hitler, showering him with gifts like Austria and the Sudetenland in the name of "appeasement".

I discovered this passage a couple of years ago, and it's stuck with me to this day as one of the most hilariously disturbing things ever written by a politician, especially a Canadian one. King had a habit of making comments on people's physicality in his diary; in 1934, he described British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald as "handsome" when viewed from the side, saying, "His eyes are dark & at one time doubtless were piercing..." But he didn't go nearly as far with him as he did with Hitler. Maybe this is why he wanted his diaries destroyed. Don't worry, Mr. King, your secret is safe; after all, not that many people read this blog anyway.

And so ends this edition of "Tales from William Lyon Mackenzie King's Diary". There will be another whenever I find something else worth posting from said diary. As for Maple Glaze in general, expect the next post to come whenever I finish one of the handful of song parodies that I've had in the works for the past couple of months, including the aforementioned Billy Joel ones. This is Keith Lehwald, reminding everyone that Neutrogena has a proud history going back to 1930 and may or may not have been used by the German elite of the day, but has always remained politically neutral thanks to being based in Switzerland.

Beat It, Word!

2009-01-26T16:58:00.000-08:00

All right, so this update took longer than expected. I blame the McGill Winter Carnival Debating Tournament and a political science essay. But no matter: I have, as of today, followed through on my promise.

Well, sort of. I was actually planning a return to political parody. But, since I haven't had time to write that properly, this is instead another diversion, except with a story behind it.

While writing my political science essay, I had three programs open: Firefox (with an average of about 12 tabs), iTunes, and Microsoft Word 2004. My computer is an early 2007-model MacBook with 256 MB of RAM. Hilarity ensues, especially considering how darn much RAM seems to be used by the Office suite. (Even with 12 tabs open, Firefox was faster.)

Frustrated by the slow speed at which I could switch between my research program and my writing program, I began singing along to the song then playing on iTunes, Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl". I made up new words based on my frustration as I went along, trying to rhyme. And then I realized I was doing an extraordinarily good job of it. It was then I decided to write it out. Within about 30 minutes, I'd gone from some random singing to a full song parody. In fact, roughly 40-50% of the parody is actually made up of those random, improvised lyrics. It therefore has a distinctly different feel than most of my other song parodies, sort of like how in Super Smash Bros., Kirby and Jigglypuff have very different play styles despite having similar abilities. With that said, enjoy!

"Microsoft Word for Mac"
By Keith Lehwald
A parody of "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel
January 24, 2009

(Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh)
(Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh)

Office Mac
It was a program that seemed on track
To let me interact with Windows
But that's not quite how the story goes
Enter my woes

Oh, Microsoft Word
It's been slowing down my computer
As long as I have installed that program
It's been a glutton for my tiny RAM
Makes me say "Damn!"

And when it runs, it takes all RAM on my laptop
And when it loads up, my apps slow and stop
They say it's not so bad
But I think I've been had

By Microsoft Word
It is my only option in Tiger
I can't get Office 2008
Because my laptop's specs are not that great
I must upgrade

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Microsoft Word
It's more bloated than a piece of turd
Don't get me started on PowerPoint
It hurts more than a dislocated joint
What rhymes with joint?

Maybe I should switch to iWork and Pages
Or get some more RAM so it won't take ages
This song parody fits:
I wrote it in TextEdit

Not Microsoft Word
It's been slowing down my computer
So here's my warning if you have a Mac:
Leave Office sitting over on the rack
And don't look back

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Microsoft Word
It's Microsoft Word
I'm frustrated by Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
I'm frustrated by Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word...
(fade out)

Next time, be on the lookout for the Billy Joel parody that I'd actually planned to post. Or maybe something to do with Michael Jackson. (And for the record, I personally lean towards thinking he's innocent. But that's a topic for another post.) (June 28, 2009 edit: This is that other post.) This has been Maple Glaze, where it doesn't matter if you're black or white, but red, blue, and orange may be subject to bias.

Happy New Year / Meme Attack!

2009-01-06T21:22:00.000-08:00

"Where the hell is Keith?" is a joke Facebook group devoted to me created by a friend of mine after the 2007 National Student Commonwealth Forum in Ottawa. That phrase likely also describes all your thoughts on why Maple Glaze has been silent for so long. My excuse is that I was doing so many things over the Christmas and New Year's season that I didn't have time to write. I also blame being away from home for about one-third of that time.

But I know you don't want excuses. You want funny. And I'm about to provide it. Surprisingly, however, this first post of 2009 is not political in any way. It's hard to write good political diatribes when Parliament is prorogued. Therefore, this post concerns another hot topic in society: Internet memes. (Hey, you're not supposed to be laughing yet...)

This post is also the first of what will certainly be many song parodies to appear on Maple Glaze. For those who don't have me as a friend on Facebook, most of my satirical work that I posted on Facebook was actually in the form of song parodies. (I may eventually repost some of them here.) This particular one is, unlike most of my parodies, based on a contemporary song. Feel free to sing along! Now...Coldplay, I choose you!

"When Memes Ruled the 'Net"
By Keith Lehwald
A parody of "Viva la Vida" by Coldplay
January 6, 2009

Facts used to rule the 'Net
Back when it was ARPA's pet
Now I'm just browsing YouTube for shows
Now I beg, "Don't tase me, bro"

There used to be logic
In the websites on which I'd click
Every hyperlink would say
Exactly what the website would display
Now I try to filter trolls
Over 9000 Rickrolls
And even on Wikipedia I'm
Always haunted by the Numa Numa guy

I hear more cowbells need to be ringing
Gone deaf from William Hung's singing
Goatse and 2 Girls 1 Cup
Have always made me want to throw up
For some reason I can't explain
There are mother-f'ing snakes on my plane
From Badger Badgers to LOLcats
That was when memes ruled the 'Net

Used to always be really fun
Listen to "Tunak Tunak Tun"
But now nobody still makes a fuss
'Bout "All your base are belong to us"
Leeroy Jenkins leads the charge
To a new land: this is Sparta
In the quickly-flowing Chocolate Rain
Matt Harding's headbutted by Zidane

Leave Britney Spears alone I tell you
Or Chuck Norris will come and kill you
The Star Wars Kid tests his lightsaber
Against Stephen Colbert's green screen capers
For some reason I can't explain
Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's popular again
Coke plus Mentos equals jet
That was when memes ruled the 'Net

Ninjas seem to have all the answers
When Hitler's lost all his Panzers
General Bert could not be bothered
To fight snowy owls and Mr. Rogers
For some reason I can't explain
You've been Canon Rocked and lost The Game
To the Obama Girl
Now the 'Net memes rule the world

Stay tuned, because sometime in the next week or so, Billy Joel will be in the spotlight! Also, don't forget to subscribe to the RSS Feed so you never miss an update. This is Keith Lehwald, over and out.

Michaëlle Got Run Over by a Harper

2008-12-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

...sitting in Rideau Hall Thursday eve. You can say they are just reserve powers, but as for me and Dion, we believe.

For a week, it seemed like the opposition parties were going to have a wonderful Christmas. Stéphane Dion was going to get to sit in the big chair in the PMO, Jack Layton was going to finally get a ministerial portfolio, and Gilles Duceppe was looking forward to holding the balance of power. All that was left for Stephen Harper's stocking was a big lump of coalition.

And now the tables have been turned. Harper got his prorogation and has effectively burned the lump of coalition in his fireplace in an attempt to warm his cold, partisan heart. See that black smoke rising from the chimney? That's what's left of Dion's chances of staying on as leader until May, let alone becoming PM.

But you've all heard this story before. I'm effectively just repeating things I've heard on CBC. And here at Maple Glaze, that's a no-no. I strive to tell the stories that aren't being told. In this case, I will be giving a voice to minor parties that have been unjustly ignored in the midst of this constitutional crisis. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the following totally (un)official "statements" from Canada's minor parties.

Canadian Action Party: "First the US let 9/11 happen. Now Michaëlle Jean has granted Stephen Harper his prorogation. From these events, it is clear to us that the world is currently controlled by a secretive Japanese cabal of computer programmers known only as Game Freak. We need to pull our troops out of Afghanistan and send them to Kyoto immediately!"
Libertarian Party of Canada: "Listen, we want government out of our lives as much as you do, but do you have to keep spouting that conspiracy nonsense? You're giving us other minor parties a bad name."
Neorhino.ca: "No kidding. Not even we're that crazy."
People's Political Power of Canada: "We see the current political crisis as a symptom of continuing male domination in Canadian politics. We need to see more strong women in politics, like Elizabeth May."
Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada: "Hey, are you another socialist party? Because you're looking fine, and I think we could definitely hook up."
People's Political Power of Canada: "See, this is the attitude toward women that we're trying to change...and, no, we're not socialist. (We really need to change our name.)"
Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada: "Well, you all can come over to our place and..."
People's Political Power of Canada: "You do realize our leader is a guy, right?"
Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada: "And our leader is a woman."
People's Political Power of Canada: "..." [cue multiple head explosions]
First Peoples National Party of Canada: "The current leaders of Canada's major federal parties have demonstrated a remarkable inability to work together. Therefore, we propose a radical idea for reserve reform: move them all up North for a couple of months, and let us take their houses and offices in Ottawa. They may only return after they all have a collective vision quest and smarten up."
Communist Party of Canada: "We in the Communist Party of Canada regret that we were not invited to join this so-called 'progressive' coalition. It only proves the continuing domination of the capitalists over our society. Workers, it is time to unite and take this country for ourselves!"
Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist): "Don't listen to those Maoist fools! Lenin's path is the only true way to communism!"
Communist Party of Canada: "Lenin was a hack. And don't forget that it was your precious Soviet Union sold us out to the capitalists!"
Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist): "Oh, yes, we forgot how much of a communist utopia China is. Their economy is growing from the blood and sweat of the workers oppressed by the new capitalist class!"
Work Less Party: "Hey, I think we're all just a little bit stressed out here. I think Harper's set a good example. Parliament's taking some time off, and so should the rest of us. As a matter of fact, I think I need a sandwich."
Marijuana Party of Canada: "Dude, I have the munchies too. Hey, maybe we should start our own sandwich coalition. You know, we could get the Ham Party, and the Lettuce Party, and some Mayo Québécois..."
Christian Heritage Party of Canada: "Why are we surrounded by such sin and despair?"
Western Block Party: "Because Harper's killed the western independence movement. Come on, Dion! You're the only one who can make Alberta angry enough to hold a referendum!"
Newfoundland and Labrador First Party: "Naw, Harper should stick right where he is, b'y. He'll get the public right mad enough for us to separate ourselves, 'specially since we's after becomin' a have province."
The real Newfoundland and Labrador First Party: "While we agree with that statement in principle, we would just like to remind everyone reading this that we don't actually speak like that...b'y."
Progressive Canadian Party: [gets absorbed by the Liberals before they can make a comment]

Well, I don't know about you, but I feel enlightened. This has been Maple Glaze, bringing you only the sweetest news in Canadian politics and waiving all liability for any cases of diabetes that may result.

What I Might Have Written For My Poli Sci Exam...

2008-12-03T15:47:00.000-08:00

...if I wasn't so determined to get a good mark in the class that will become one of my two majors. This is what happens when you study to the tune of Pokémon remixes.

Deoxys, the DNA Pokémon. In the context of this note, the "DNA" stand for "Do Not Ask".

Script

[Enter Keith. Enter exam. Suddenly, the set becomes the screen of a Game Boy displaying a Pokémon battle. This music begins to play.]

Wild DEOXYS appeared!

Go, HOBBES!

HOBBES used LEVIATHAN!
HOBBES argued that the state of nature is not beneficial to enemy DEOXYS, and therefore, enemy DEOXYS should peacefully submit to the rule of the Pokémon Trainer in order to protect its natural rights!
But, it had no effect!

Enemy DEOXYS used PSYCHIC!
Critical hit!
HOBBES fainted!
Use next philosopher? (Yes)

Go, LOCKE!

LOCKE used TACIT CONSENT!
Locke argued that by entering the battle, enemy DEOXYS has tacitly consented to being caught!
But, it had no effect!

Enemy DEOXYS used KNOCK OFF!
LOCKE became confused!
LOCKE has left the battle to provide philosophical support for the American Revolution!
Use next philosopher? (Yes)

Go, ROUSSEAU!

ROUSSEAU refuses to fight, preferring to return to a small-scale, community-based agrarian society!
Use next philosopher? (Eh, sure)

Go, MILL!

Enemy DEOXYS used EXPRESS OPINION!
MILL refuses to deny enemy DEOXYS's right to express its opinion, despite its status as a minority of one!

MILL used EXPRESS OPINION!
MILL and enemy DEOXYS have started a debate!

ROUSSEAU has returned!
ROUSSEAU used VOLONTÉ GÉNÉRALE!
ROUSSEAU argued that all combatants must act according to the general will of society!

MILL is enraged!
MILL attacks ROUSSEAU on the basis of supporting tyranny of the majority!
ROUSSEAU fainted!

Enemy DEOXYS used PSYCHIC!
MILL fainted!
Use next philosopher? (Might as well)

Go, MARX!

Enemy DEOXYS used PSYCHIC!
Enemy DEOXYS's attack missed!

MARX used PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION!
Enemy DEOXYS has no property or income, so it had no effect!

Enemy DEOXYS used APPEAL!
MARX realized that DEOXYS exists in a state of primitive communism!
MARX has joined enemy DEOXYS!
Use next philosopher? (What the heck)

Go, KEYNES!

Enemy DEOXYS used RECESSION!
Civil discontent rose!
Enemy MARX used PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION!
Critical hit!

KEYNES used ECONOMIC STIMULUS!
KEYNES regained health!

KEYNES used COLLECTIVE INSURANCE PROGRAMS!
The creation of the welfare state has placated the working class!
Enemy MARX fainted!

Enemy DEOXYS used PRIVATIZATION!
Enemy DEOXYS's attack missed!

KEYNES used PROGRESSIVE COALITION!
Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe have surrounded enemy DEOXYS!
Enemy DEOXYS cannot move!

Pokémon Trainer threw a MASTER BALL!

All right! DEOXYS was caught!
Give a nickname to the captured DEOXYS? (Yes)
Enter nickname: HARPER

HARPER was sent to Bill's PC.

A Sweet Beginning

2008-12-03T14:54:00.000-08:00

"You should start a random weekly blog."

That is what my friend Charles "Candescence" Lu said on MSN in response to a note I had just written on Facebook. It was a parody Pokémon battle involving some of history's greatest political philosophers. I gave it some thought, and I realized that he was onto something. Over the hours after that comment and the following day, the blog slowly formed in my mind. This is the result.

Maple Glaze will be a hopefully regularly updated blog (although the exact schedule has to be figured out through experience) based on political news in Canada and abroad, as well as anything else I might feel like writing about. But I will also attempt to make everything funny. Except maybe this post. But it's hard to make people laugh in an introduction.

Regardless, expect in the future to see a variety of articles ranging from intellectual satire to, well, Pokémon battles. We're in for a possibly wild ride. Don't start that diet just yet, because it's time to indulge in Maple Glaze. (OK, I admit it, that was a terrible pun.) To celebrate the inauguration of the blog, and to hopefully give you a taste of what will exist beyond the introduction, I will now repost the Facebook note that started it all. Deoxys, I choose you!