Today is the day of the Ontario Provincial Election.  While I have already decided who I will be voting for, I meandered over to the website of my local community paper to get an idea of what the local candidates might be doing for the actual community.  What am I greeted by?

Right there on the front page is advertising for my local Conservative candidate.  This seems to be more than a little wrong.  I understand that editorial boards will usually endorse one candidate or the other, in this case they did endorse the Conservatives.  But in order to keep at least the air of some sort of impartiality I would think that this sort of thing would be a bit of a faux pas no?  Especially on election day?

I understand candidates and parties are free to buy advertising wherever they want, but this sort of big in your face kind of ad, to me at least, seems to be too much.  Almost as the website itself is a vehicle for that party/candidate.  I don’t see big ads for the Liberals splashed all over thestar.com or for the PC’s at torontosun.com.  Though I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised, since this paper itself is little more than a community notebook and a vehicle for 10lbs of flyers.

Oh well, off to cast my ballot.

So after a short little 2-1/2 year break, I decided why not try and start posting to this thing again.  Why?  Not really sure…why not I guess.  So what has changed in the meantime?  Sadly, while some things have changed, most things remain the same.

Let’s see…I’m 33 now, still live at home with my mom, 2 sisters, and their 2 sons.  I’m still single, depressingly so.  And while I did get a new job, it was only on contract which ended back in June.  At that point I decided “Hey, I made some decent money on this contract, I’m going to take the summer off for the first time since I was in high school”.  Had big plans for my summer off: travel, get in shape, read more, take learning the guitar back up, etc.  Well, I’m still out of shape and I still can’t play the guitar.  But I’m still glad I took the time off.  Of course now summer is over and I should probably start looking for another job…which is easier said then done.

Another factor in taking the time off was to help take care of my mom.  She has had hip/leg problems for a while, but its definitely getting worse to the point that now she can not stand up by herself, and has trouble walking more than a few feet at a time.  As a result someone, either one of my sisters or I, pretty much have to be home 24/7.  When I was on contract I worked exclusively from home so that was never an issue.  But if I go and get a new, regular job, who knows what that will mean.

So there it is, a brief synopsis of what’s been going on with me.  You’d think 2-1/2 years of a life would warrant more than 3 paragraphs…but not my life.  Obviously some other stuff happened, but nothing major…sigh.

Well this is a bit of an awkward situation. I’m a big fan of the weekend road trip, you know, maybe take a Friday or Monday off and go to a different city and do something. So when I saw that The Tragically Hip were playing in Cleveland (a city I’ve been to before and liked) and the tickets were readily available and only $25 (compared to them instantly selling out 6 nights here in Toronto for 4 times the price) I polled my friends, found 3 willing to go for sure and 2 more that were on the fence. So I bought 6 tickets, two guys since bailed out, but the tickets weren’t that expensive anyways, and that meant the 4 of us that were still going could fit in one hotel room and keep things relatively cheap so no big deal.

Cut to today, I get an e-mail from one of my friends who is already coming: “Do you still have extra hip tickets? CBC (his girlfriend) and A (her friend) are interested.” I’ve written about this CBC girl before, I don’t like her. None of us really like her. However my friend of course knows none of this (or if he does, he doesn’t let on). I’ve spent weekends with CBC and it is not my idea of fun. But on the flip side, we also know A and really like her since she’s pretty much the exact opposite of CBC: smart, funny, cool, etc.

So, what am I to do? Of course I’d like to get rid of the 2 extra tickets and on road trips, usually the more the merrier right? On the other hand, 2 extra people means an extra hotel room, means either taking 2 cars or finding someone with a van. So far, I responded to his e-mail that I do still have the tickets, but I need a definitive answer whether or not they are coming sooner than later because I need to book the hotel. I really, really would rather CBC not come, but really, what legitimate excuse could I feed my friend short of telling him ‘I can’t stand your girlfriend and she’ll ruin my weekend if she comes’? Dammit.

Why does Jim Balsillie seem to want to do everything he can to piss off the NHL in his pursuit of owning a team? He’s already been rebuffed by the league twice because of his openly stated intent to move whatever team he ends up with to southern Ontario. You would have thought his best bet would have been just buying a struggling team and keeping it where it was for a while, and then if it kept struggling move it. That way he could make it look like he really tried, maybe along the way gain the trust of some of the other owners, etc.

Nope, instead he went and executed what looks like some sneaky backdoor play on the NHL to try and take the league completely out of it and put the sale and movement of the Coyotes in the hands of a bankrupty judge instead. Of course this got the NHL’s back up and now they are saying that the Coyotes owner might not have been able to put the team in bankruptcy protection by himself anyways, that this is contrary to league rules, etc.

It seems so odd that someone like Balsillie who apparently desperately wants to get in on the NHL is so seemingly disdainful of all their normal procedures. If he’s willing to do all these shenanigans just to get into the NHL, what the hell is going to happen once he’s actuall IN? Plus if this bankruptcy/move does actually go through, it makes the league look kind of mickey-mouse and sets a bad precedent doesn’t it?

Then there’s the actual issue of where the team would actually go? Everyone seems to think its a no-brainer that an NHL team would have no trouble surviving in Hamilton, Kitchener or even somewhere in the GTA such as Vaughn. I’m not so sure. The strangest suggestion seems to be Kitchener-Waterloo, which with a population of 500,000 seems pretty small to be home to a team.

Another team in greater Toronto probably makes the most sense population wise, but I’m pretty sure the Leafs would be way more up in arms about a team being here than say in Hamilton. Not necessarily because of splitting the hockey market, though that would be a pretty big concern, especially if it meant it might siphon off some corporate sponsors/seat holders. I think the biggest worry the Leafs would have about another team in Toronto would be that would mean there would be another venue for concerts and the like, which is a major source of income for MLSE.

Plus, would Leafs fans in Toronto really turn out in droves for a transplanted Coyotes team? It’s been said time and time again that Toronto isn’t a hockey town, its a Leafs town. Sure there would be an initial surge of interest, plus people probably eating up season tickets trying to get in on the ground floor, hoping they become as valuable as Leafs season seats. But really, outside of people living in Toronto who cheer for another team and want to see them when they swing through town or fairweather/disenchanted Leafs fans, who would really want to cheer for the Vaughan Coyotes or whatever?

So really, if Balsillie does get his way and moves the team, I can’t really imagine it going anywhere other than Hamilton. They almost got a team once before but were beat out by Ottawa. They are probably far enough away from Toronto that the Leafs wouldn’t object too much though they’d probably want some sort of compensation. It would probably hurt Buffalo though I’m not really sure how many fans regularly cross the border to see a game unless they are playing the Leafs. They also have Copps Coliseum, though from all reports it needs a major renovation to be up to snuff.

But all this may very well be a pipe dream if the NHL has its way anyway. Despite the Prime Minister and Ontario’s Premier going on about how southern Ontario deserves and can handle another team I’ve got the feeling that because its Jim Balsillie and because of the way he’s trying to go about this the NHL will do pretty much anything they can to find another way out. Whether that means staying in Phoenix or relocating to Kansas City or wherever.

Great weekend of playoff hockey, with every team I was pulling for winning. Game 1 of Pittsburgh versus Washington was pretty good. As much as I dislike him, it seemed Crosby was really the only one on the Penguins trying, where’s Malkin? Not entirely sold on the Caps’ Varlamov, he seems to give up a lot of rebounds and be out of position often, but you can’t argue with results I guess.

Then there was Chicago not screwing up a second straight comeback like they did in game 1. This time once they tied it up the kept the pedal down and took it to Vancouver. The Cancucks have to be feeling a little uneasy don’t they? They blew a 3-0 lead in the 3rd period of game 1, only to be saved by an absolute collapse by Chicago in the dying minutes of the game. This time Chicago came back from an early 2-0 deficit.

Carolina rebounded nicely from a pretty poor showing in game 1 to even up their series. Cam Ward has been playing pretty well, while Tim Thomas didn’t have a particularly good game. Should be a good series though.

But the series that has me most interested is Anaheim vs. Detroit. Mainly because my friend is a Red Wings fan who always goes on and on about them, and we have $20 riding on the Red Wings repeating as champions. But I also like the Ducks, they seem to be a good combination of skill and toughness (hopefully what the Leafs will be soon under Brian Burke). This series has generated a lot of discussion because of the hit on Jiri Hudler by Anaheim’s Mike Brown. Brown got 5 minutes and a game, but no suspension. Personally I didn’t think it really even deserved a penalty, it looks like Hudler made the pass, had his head down, and got nailed by Brown, but whatever. Yeah there was a bit of blood, but that was more his visor cutting his face than the hit itself. I don’t really see anything horribly cheap or late about it at all.

Of course now this has resulted in various media types like Damien Cox of the star saying this is yet another example of the NHL being soft on hits to the head, etc. Hudler was already half crouched over and pretty much only at Brown’s chest level, how is that head-hunting? Should players not be allowed to make big open-ice hits anymore just in case someone might get a concussion? It’s silly. What’s even sillier is that both Cox and Bruce Dowbiggin in the Globe & Mail criticize the people on Hockey Night In Canada for all agreeing it shouldn’t be a suspension, while praising the TSN talking heads for at least somewhat disagreeing amongst themselves. As if its somehow totally impossible that someone could look at that hit and not seeing anything horrifically wrong with it.

The other great thing about the Ducks/Red Wings series? Triple overtime in game 2, with the Ducks eventually coming out winners. I love overtime in the playoffs. Its just so great being on the edge of your seat, knowing that every bounce of the puck could potentially be the end. Which is why I was aghast to hear Bob McKenzie on TSN after the game proposing that the NHL look into altering OT by eventually going to 4-on-4, either immediately or, as he suggested after the 2nd overtime. Is nothing sacred in the NHL anymore? Overtime marathons become the thing of legend, so we should look into fucking it up right?

Even worse was James Duthie then floating the dreaded shootout in the playoffs idea. The day shootouts decide playoff games in the NHL may be the day I say good riddance to watching the NHL. I was initially against shootouts during the regular season, still don’t particularly care for them and never knew what was so bad about a tie, but whatever. But the playoffs are a completely different animal and should never ever be left to a shootout. Canada losing in Nagano in 1998 in a shootout was bullshit, partly because Marc Crawford is retarded for not putting Gretzky or Yzerman out there, but mostly because hockey’s a team game that shouldn’t be decided by a glorified breakaway relay.

The sad thing is, playoff shootouts are probably inevitable. I’m sure NBC wasn’t too happy that Sunday’s game went until almost 6:30 instead of being over before 5pm. I’m sure they (or whoever is broadcasting the game in the US) would be totally in favour of anything that could give them a guaranteed end time so they could be sure not to cut into other important programming like horse jumping (what was scheduled to follow hockey yesterday) or local news. The NHL under Gary Bettman has time and time again proven willing and able to kowtow to whatever they think will make the game more marketable south of the border.

Miss California to campaign against gay marriage

So the girl who became semi-famous for giving a convoluted answer to a question about gay marriage during Miss USA is going to work with a group to “protect traditional marriages.” I haven’t heard of anyone wanting to get rid of traditional marriage, didn’t realize they were under attack? The notion of ‘traditional marriage’ doesn’t carry much weight these days anyways, what with half of marriages ending in divorce and whatnot.

For the life of me I just can’t figure out why this issue bothers these people enough that they’ll devote so much time and money to fighting gay marriage? Maybe its against your religion, but what if I don’t follow your religion, do I still have to do everything your religion says? No. Maybe its a social thing, its just not done, etc? Well, I don’t know about you, but it seems society is changing pretty fast, and perhaps its time for the laws to catch up? Wherever its been legalized, things haven’t descended into anarchy. The gates of hell haven’t opened up and swallowed Canada whole.

Who does gay marriage hurt? No one that I can think of. Quite the opposite, it would seem to allow gay people to experience all these wonders of being married that opponents of gay marriage are so fervently trying to uphold. Why withhold such a wonderful thing from people just because they happen to be gay? I think there are far more pressing issues in the world today than who should be able to get married to who.

This morning, the police finally moved those Tamil protesters off of University Ave in front of the US Consulate. Its about time. Of course everyone has the right to protest, but shutting down a major street in downtown Toronto for 4 days is absolutely ridiculous and inexcusable.

How could the Toronto government allow the protest to go on for so long? Doesn’t this set a horribly dangerous precedent? I mean, there always seems to be one group or another wanting to protest the US, is everyone now going to be allowed a few days? What if the next group isn’t allowed as much time or space, how soon will the cries of discrimination fly? Where was David Miller in all of this?