Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Mypolitics

I will begin with the confession that must be made. I am a political mess. Never mind political theory. The prospect of participation in local and national politics always makes my skin crawl (no really it is actually doing that while I write this). Perhaps when I have more time and energy I will delve into all the environmental factors that have led to this condition. For now I will offer an anecdote.
I do try (weakly) to participate in politics reading the odd newspaper commentary or pursuing policy on party websites. On October 10th Ontario is holding its provincial election. I am a new resident of a newly configured riding with no incumbent running (and so most locals in town are of no help to me). I can't vote for a party because I am not pulling for any particular team. In the local rag I finally saw a brief profile of each candidate running (seven of them!; including candidates from the lesser known Freedom Party, Libertarian Party and the Family Coalition). As I was looking at the candidates I noticed that a number of them were quite young being in their late 20s. Then I saw the profile for Mark Cairns, the candidate for the New Democratic Party (Our "third" option for those reading outside of Canada).
I did a double take when I saw the number 20 pop up after his name. Hmmmm is that number in reference to his years in politics, no the picture does not match. It is indeed the age of the candidate running in my riding. After doing a little research I came across a link to his Myspace site.
Here I learned that my future leader's mood is optimistic. He expressed himself further in his About Me section.

I'm a punk from Kitchener Ont. I love my friends and family lots. I'm a workin class joe who wants to make the world a better place some how someday…...... I am the Kitchener/Conestoga N.D.P. candidate for the upcoming provincial election in Oct.(MAKE YOUR MARK, HOMMIES!) If you like what you see drop me a msg. and i'll get back to you.
KxWxDxP Mark

(I am not sure if he missed the xNx in Kitchener-Waterloo NDP)
His general interests are (directly copied and pasted) "chillin. skankin. partying. rockin out. pondering life."

This October Kitchener-Conestoga (Hommies included) remember Mark Cairns your NDP candidate.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've just discovered that a student only just older than this, in one of my courses, will be standing in an upcoming election. We've been having these after-class discussions that I had taken to be academically motivated. I've only just realised that the student was asking questions with an eye to campaign strategy... I'm cringing more than a bit at this, as my responses were not given with a much more abstract reference point in mind... Context matters... ;-P

Heidi the Hick said...

Wwwwwow.

I like his hair...looks like a fun guy...he's got the right colour shirt on...

The optimistic part of me is happy to see young fellas getting involved in leadership. The closet screenwriter part of me is picturing an entire Canadian government run by punks, guitar players, and, um HOMMIES.

i dunno. My skin is crawling so bad with all this talk of politics that I must stop typing now...

(I thought hommie was the pennsylvania dutch word for calf. )

Unknown said...

He is sort of dreamy isn't he?

johnny m said...

good heavens. i don't live in ontario or anything, but if i needed another reason not to vote NDP...