So there's an election Monday. Let's get this over with first:
This blog endorses Diane Freeman for the riding of Waterloo.
I'm making this endorsement for two reasons. One, I honestly think she's the best candidate for the job. And
two, C-51.
Also the TPP, which has come along recently, but that only helped reaffirm my decision to
vote NDP this time around. We'll get back to that.
C-51
C-51 is a travesty of a law, enshrining secret trials and creating secret police, eviscerating any remaining Internet
privacy protection. It needs to be repealed. It can't just be amended, slapping on a little bit of oversight. It
furthers the Conservatives' agenda to criminalize dissent and flies in the face of our Constitution and Charter of
Rights and Freedoms.
It cynically exploits the murder of a Canadian soldier to strip Canadians of the rights that our soldiers supposedly
died for. Soldiers that Harper so dearly loves to talk about. Soldiers Nathan Cirillo was standing guard over.
It makes me so fucking angry.
I'm appalled that the Liberals supported this bill and even more shocked that they'd choose to defend it in this
election campaign. For that reason alone, I can't vote Liberal this time around. Strategic voting be damned.
Two parties have pledged to repeal C-51: the NDP and the Greens. So those are my choices.
Yup. Ellen and I are getting married. This Sunday.
I'm nervous. Not about the being married part---I'm totally at peace with that. I'm nervous about how the day will go,
will it meet everyone's expectations, and so forth. Which is probably normal and it'll be fine and you're probably going
to counsel me not to worry about it, except I do worry because I want Ellen to be happy with things, or at least not
disappointed.
I think she feels similarly, in different ways, about me.
I don't talk about Ellen much here, or elsewhere online. A long time ago she asked me not to, so I've stuck by that.
That's part of why I've posted less, and what I've posted has been less personal. As Ellen's become more and more of my
life, it gets harder and harder to talk about my life and leave her out of it. So I've just talked less.
Wedding planning in general is stressful. And we've crammed it in a shorter-than-traditional amount of time. Neither of
us, though, really wanted the wedding planning stage of our relationship to consume our lives for longer than necessary,
and it's been pretty consuming. So we're a bit crunched. And it's not the expertly planned and executed extravaganza it
could be. But I do hope it will be a nice day with friends and family as we publicly affirm our commitment to one
another.
Finished season 1 of Sense8. It is not a good show. It's self-indulgent and nonsensical, brimming with melodrama and an
unearned sense of its own importance.
I loved it anyway.
I think because I really just like the characters. You spend a lot of time with them. They all lead improbably
complicated and dangerous lives. You've got a Chicago cop, kick-ass Korean MMA fighter lady, Kenyan bus driver (which,
it turns out, is more complicated and dangerous than it sounds), Icelandic DJ in London, trans-woman computer hacker in
San Francisco, Indian research doctor and bride-to-be, German jewel thief and Mexican telenovella star. And they can
each channel each others abilities. It's a 90s or 2000s graphic novel quasi-superhero story.
And the fact that one of them is a telenovella star is the subtle hint that tells you how to frame this thing. It's
_supposed_to be a crazy fantasy story. So just go with it.
I do wish it spent more time digging into the science fictional premise. But that's my taste.
So much of this show is utterly ridiculous. Bits of it are pointlessly gratuitous (in various senses). I can't justify
liking it as much as I do. But I do.
