Sir Monkeypants and I were playing with the election numbers this morning (and just let me say what a huge relief it is that we are not facing the words “Stephen Harper, Prime Minister” this morning). The minority government leaves some interesting possibilities.

Although they are saying on the CBC that the minority Liberal government will likely do very well (receiving support from the Conservatives on fiscal issues, and support from the Bloc/NDP on social issues), the actual seat count is quite interesting. Say a vote happens in which the Liberals and NDP unite. Combined, they have 135 + 19 seats — 154 votes, exactly half of the house. Now suppose the Bloc and Conservatives vote against — they have 99 + 54 seats, 153 votes.

Now another important factor (I think) is that the Liberal party must appoint a Speaker Of The House. Traditionally, the governing party picks the Speaker from their own MPs (ironically, so that in the event of a tie, the vote will go their way). The Speaker only votes in the event of a tie. So if the Liberals give up one of their own to be Speaker, they’ll only have 153 votes as well (combined with the NDP).

You might think, okay, that’s a tie, so the Speaker votes, end of story. But it’s not really a tie, because there is one other vote in the house. One Independent guy was elected in B.C. I think this could be the first time ever an Independent could be the swing vote in the house. Imagine the power! It’s like being on Survivor and being wooed by two different alliances at once!

So who is this guy? He’s Chuck Cadman. He used to be a Reform MP for his riding, but after the merger of the Conservatives and the Alliance, the new party chose someone else for his riding, so he ran as an Independent and won. Assuming he still has conservative ideals, and isn’t bitter about the fact that he lost his party’s nomination, I think we can count on him to side with the Conservatives in most cases.

This tells me that Paul Martin should possibly consider not picking the Speaker from his own party. I wonder if that has ever happened before.

In any case, the next month or so should be pretty interesting!

…to vote today.

Captain Jelly Belly is an early riser — he’s usually up around 5:30 or 6am. But yesterday he had a lot of trouble napping, and as a result slept in this morning until 7:30am. Amazing!

Sadly, I have a terrible cold so in order to be sure I’d get enough sleep, I went to bed at 8pm last night, so by the time 5am rolled around, I was pretty ready to be up. But you can’t have everything.

Still, good sleeping Captain!

Captain Jelly Belly and I spent a half hour this afternoon making light sabers out of his megablocks and having duels. This is definitely why I had children.

In other news, I Crushed Richard! Crush Richard is a trivia game they play every day at Sir Monkeypants’ work. It’s based on a game they used to play on Xfm here in Ottawa, Crush Rush. Richard is a super smartypants and every day they ask his challenger three trivia questions, then Richard answers the same three, and the one who gets the most right wins. He actually rarely loses, but today I went 3 for 3 and he didn’t get any right. Blanked! Slammed! I rock.

I really dislike Stephen King. I think he’s a hack writer with little to say, and his column on the back page of Entertainment Weekly has done nothing to dissuade me from that opinion. Last week’s column, though, asked people to send in their favourite movie quotes from recent times — the kind that make for in-jokes and conversation shorthand between your personal friends and family. Although as trite as his other ideas, there’s nothing I love more than talking about movie quotes, so here are a few of mine — most of which I use at least once a week with .

From The Princess Bride:
(grandfather to grandson): Yes, yes, you’re very smart, now be quiet.
(Inigo to Miricle Max): Please, sir, we’re in a terrible rush.
(Wesley to Buttercup): Gently…GENTLY!
(Inigo): Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya…

From Die Hard 3:
(McClane): Nice…rhymes.
(Zeus): Not even God knows what you’re doing!

From Speed:
(Annie): But I’m not available to drive tomorrow. Busy.
(Annie, to kids in the road): Why aren’t you in school! Why aren’t you in school!
(Annie, to cars coming at her while she’s driving on the wrong side of the road): People stay out of my way!

I’m sure I’ll think of a million more tonight. See the comments section for any additional quotes I think of.

What are your favourites?

I’m no devotee of the Liberals, but I firmly belive that Stephen Harper is bad news for Canada. His views on many controversial issues — abortion, gay rights, immigration, military involvement overseas — are just plain scary. I hate the fact that I live in a country where so many voters are more interested in “punishing” the governing party than looking seriously at the issues and deciding what actually makes sense. I hate Dalton McGuinty as much as the next guy (he’s so shifty!!), but Stephen Harper is a real loon.

Sure, go ahead and vote Conservative on June 28th — you’ll “punish” Paul Martin for like, a week, and punish all Canadians for about five years. Nice going, Canada.

Kay, I’ve heard Shrek 2 is pretty good, but I have no intention of seeing it because I didn’t like the first one, and totally didn’t understand why everyone thought it was the bees’ knees. It was my “Big Fat Greek Wedding” of that year.

But yet another reason why I’ll be avoiding it forever is that Shrek is in like, every other ad on TV. I can’t remember the last time a character was so over-exposed. I saw maybe two ads for the movie itself, then at least 10 others for other products — Sprite, Burger King, some cell phone…others I don’t recall. Some of the ads are clearly aimed at adults, not kids.

Is Shrek-mania really this prevalent? Is the world so hungry for Shrek that they’ll buy anything the stupid green ogre tells them to? Don’t the owners of all these companies think his persona is becoming washed out, as he shills for so many products?

I hear that Starbucks gets a pretty big plug in the movie itself, as well. I’m starting to wonder if Shrek 2 is a film or just one big advertisment.

We just got back from a long trip to Southern Ontario to visit our parents, and it was tiring but overall pretty good. The first Friday we were there, however, we had a really surreal experience at my mom’s house. It seems she and my older sister have become addicted to PBR — Professional Bull Riding. Every Friday they excitedly tune in to see their favourite riders (they know all their stats and history) and their favourite bulls (they know them all by sight and name and reputation) compete to see who can be the victor in just 8 seconds of time.

At first and I thought maybe they were joking, but they’re deadly serious. And so we watched PBR. We couldn’t decide if it was a serious sport, a scary event, or a source of hilarity — maybe a combination of all three. I’ve decided my favourite bull is Spinner Bait — good name. My mom’s favourite bull is Slick Willy, because a few weeks ago she had trouble reading his all-block-letter name on the TV screen and thought it was “Suck Willy,” and now every time he comes out to do battle she declares that “Suck Willy” is in the house. My sister likes Little Yellow Jacket, who is apparently the son of Little Red Jacket, one of the meanest bulls around.

They agree that the best rider is some guy named Rick who is from Canada, who sadly didn’t do well because he dislocated his shoulder at last week’s meet. Their backup for cheering is a set of twins who both ride, who have some sort of weirdly incongruent names like Ashley and Benton, that sound like they should be attending the opera or a wine tasting, instead of lashing up a bull’s testicles and going for a ride. Actually, I’m not too clear on the testicle thing, since my mom helpfully pointed out that some of the bulls (whom, by the way, she thinks are really cute) have clearly been castrated. I guess in that case, they’re just really mad all the time anyway, and don’t need any extra incentive.

Sir Monkeypants’ favourite part of the evening came when my mom said that she couldn’t believe “how much that bull is buckin’ that man” which led to lots of silly giggling on our parts — hee hee, she said “buckin’.”

I guess it’s not a bad way to spend a Friday night.

Fox’s sitom Arrested Development has already been given tons and tons of positive press in Entertainment Weekly, but it really is a fantastic show worthy of all critical praise. Although its ratings have not been great, Fox has decided to gamble on renewing the show for next season — it will air Sunday nights after The Simpsons.

Starting this Sunday, Fox will start showing it over again from the pilot episode, so now is your chance to get swept up in the mania. The pilot is on at 9:30pm; in subsequent weeks, the show will be on both at 8:30pm and 9:30pm every Sunday.

Check it out — it’s well worth it.

Kay, I know that posts about politics are really boring, but lately the CBC has had some awesome coverage of the election on their airwaves and it has me thinking. One of the issues they are giving a lot of attention to is democratic reform, and I’m ashamed to say I’ve never questioned our democratic process at all, or given it any thought. Smarter people than me, however, have pointed out that our current system is not quite fair, because we live in a multi-party country. In any given riding, the votes might be split such that the winning candidate did not receive 50% or more of the votes; with enough candidates running, the winner might get as little as 30% of the votes. That makes it seem like the winning MP doesn’t actually represent the majority of his constituents.

Another major point is that parties that are relatively new on the scene are not likely to win any ridings, even though they may win a significant percentage of the popular vote; this makes people a) not want to vote for that party because it’s pointless, and b) find that their views, if they agree with that party, are completely not represented in the house. For example, The Green Party is trying very hard to become a legitimate party this election by running a candidate in every riding, but since they are unlikely to actually win any seats, anyone who likes them and votes for them will find their views completely unrepresented when it comes to law-making.

The CBC has been talking a lot about how European countries work. Apparently quite a few of them have mixed systems, where the winner in each riding goes to parliament, but some extra candidates go too, based on how much of the popular vote their party received. So, say the Green Party gets 5% of the overall vote, they’d be guaranteed some sort representation in the house — maybe 1 or 2 votes — in order to give the people who voted for them proper representation.

It makes sense to me, and I can’t believe I never thought of it before!