Well, that was a nail-biter. We, erm, sort of won. Assuming that Helen can cobble some sort of working alliance together...

Three things.

1. Most reliably good type of jam, no matter the brand: raspberry. Raspberry jam kicks ass because it's sweet and tart at the same time.

2. Vote early. Vote often. The law says I'm not allowed to campaign on behalf of any party today. But I think you know where my allegiance lies.

3. I have an ear infection. It hurts. I like codeine. And I feel woozy.

Last year, I thought I had the whole US election thing sorted. I thought 'hey, it's going to be close, but I think it'll be all right in the end'. Well, we all know how that turned out: Bush won again, Brent got punched in the face at a traffic light, and the whole northwestern motorway was closed off because some crazy man killed his toddler and then killed himself by throwing himself under a truck, causing our commute home to be three hours long. November 3rd, 2004: not such a good day on any level (local, state, or federal).

Thus, I am not even going to attempt to guess who is going to win our general election this Saturday. The polls are all over the place and whichever one of the main parties wins, they may not be able to form a government without some sucking-up to the minor parties to form a coalition. But as Brent says, this whole campaign has been a salutary lesson: New Zealanders are just as fucking stupid and illogical and selfish when it comes to politics as any other country's population. National became a viable threat to Labour by race-baiting and tax-cutting (generally the refuges of a scoundrel!), and some people in this country seem to think that Maori are getting some great governmental deal and have a radical separatist agenda. Um, NO, you idiots: Maori are getting a shitty deal (just one monetary example: their life expectancy is something like eight years lower than ours! They hardly ever get enough superannuation at the end of their lives to justify their tax burden! They contribute MORE tax than Pakeha as a result! Bah.) and radical separatism and ethnic pride and self-governance are entirely different things (see, for example, the Scottish in Great Britain). For pete's sake, by 2050 most of us will be part-Maori: is that separatism? As for this tax cutting shit, most people seem incapable of analysing it enough to note the causal line between tax cuts and reduced public services. Don Brash doesn't even seem to know what he's talking about half the time, Helen Clark is consistently 'preferred Prime Minister' by about twenty percentage points in surveys, we discover that a scary Christian cult have been working for National... yet they're still polling above 40%? WTF?

Frankly, I give up on trying to understand this stuff. Even if National wins (eeep, what a horrible thought), Brent and I are fine. In fact, this election bribery stuff works well for us no matter which parties form a government. Maybe I should try and approach this the way everyone else seems to: I'm not voting for the country, I'm voting for myself.

I think voting solely for yourself is wrong, though. I just do.

Sigh.

Spin *this*, you incompetent, murderously negligent, devious, indifferent assholes. Warning: the last minute will probably break your heart.

This is just the worst.

I don't even want to think about the pets, either.

Word McWord.