Mandatory Canadian election post

I have a backlog of about three blog posts that I think aren't good enough to publish, or I'd like to connect them in some meaningful way, but the reach exceeds the ol' grasp, so to speak.

One is just a negative rant about how I am fuzzy and sleep-deprived and how living in Estonia or at least Tallinn offers nothing for my deeper self -- no autumn drives in the mountains, no Native American spirits. I wonder if this sort of piece has been done. It starts "it's October and I can't believe how depleted I feel already!" Is this something you would like to read? I did not think so. I go on to complain about how there are no decent alternative Southern rock bands playing here. It's that sort of piece.

Another post is basically about stupid things I have done recently, like leave my Mac power adapter in a cafe close to closing. Yes, expensive to replace, and definitely stupid, but not really good or interesting literature, I fear.

The third one concerns something I found out recently from my friend Aaron: that the photograph of the log cabin I use as my Blogger icon, which by some freak accident of cropping resembles an American flag, was actually taken in Canada.

Is there some kind of deep symbolism here, I wonder.

The answer is no, of course, but the fact that an archetypal image for an part-American blog is from a cabin somewhere north of Dawson Creek should not come as a surprise.

Canada is an intrigiung country -- it is the cold dark matter that puts the gravitational relations of the continent in place. It gives us Americans hope -- both as possible lebensraum for the ascendant nascent state of Red America, and that we (the good guys) will get some of the Arctic. Alaska we can obviously forget about, now that we've seen what the local moose-packing glitterati are like.

Canada is sentimentally also my second- or third-favourite country, depending on what mood I am in when I wake up in dear old lovely Tallinn, city of my dreams, ahem, and beautiful October days.

I believe, though I am not sure, that when Giustino writes that European powers have never quit meddling in the Western Hemisphere, that he isn't really talking just about St. Pierre and Miquelon, which is a clearly suspicious thing and a provocation, but that he means Canada.

I have to confess something: I had not heard of Stephane Dion. I thought he was a right-winger for a team in the Adams Division ca 1985. Seriously, the name sounds like it, is it not so? And he talks like a Dion as well.

One reason for my ignorance is that the best Canadian bloggers I know have either stopped taking blogs, or they cover the US election instead.

I do tune in to the Toronto Sun from time to time, but the news that Canada held an election recently reached me through the BBC. It was almost a surprise election, I think, called by the Conservatives, who aren't even really in power. Americans would not understand such a concept as minority government, thus I simplify. I think for the purpose of the global media consciousness, it was a surprise. More is written about Yushchenko's battles within Orange than is about Canada.

I give the Conservatives credit for the idea. Imagine if Bush, a minority president, with his popularity dipping into the teens, had called a snap election in 2006 or 2007, maybe just as the surge hit the fan. It would probably have failed, and he would have expected as much, but it would give him a new lease on life. It would have made him seem more dynamic. It would have made him not a lame duck, but a duck with a deep bone bruise, or perhaps with a clipped wing.

Once again, I have proved that Americans are pathologically incapable of writing about Canadian affairs in all but the most superficial light. QED.