Being Thankful is difficult in the current world paradigm

No, I'm not going to talk about the world economic crisis.

Charlie Brooker wrote the piece I was going to write, so I don't need to do it now.

He of course wrote it much better than I would ever have done.

He of course doesn't have to weave tales of domestic bliss and gardening into everything he publishes, which makes it easier.

But still...

... I know when I'm in the presence of writing genius.

geneflects sortof...

I had to look up the spelling of that word. I don't often have to do that, but when I do, I always find I'm trying to put a U in the word somewhere.

I wonder why that is?

You'd think I'd be trying to put an I into the word.

I'm not going to talk about reality television either.

When did you change to accentmonkey.com? How posh!!! I'm all jealous now...

Even though I love So you think you can dance?, which is what we watch over here in Canader.

It's too early in the season to have an opinion on it, apart from the obvious one which is why are all the contestants from Ontario? Which I'm not going to address because the answer is that Ontario is where all the funding for extra-curricular youth activities is spent, because Ontario decides the government.

And I don't want to get into politics tonight.

Apart from one thing I need to say: the Canadian election is actually very interesting this time around, because we get to choose between:

the Tories: who are bastards according to everyone you talk to, even Tories, but who did actually did foresee some of this mess and tightened some, possibly relevant, banking rules just in time - not difficult in banking-conservative Canada though (it costs $3 to take money out of your bank account with another bank's ATM here, I kid you not) - so no big kudos for the grey eyed robot and his lackeys out there,

the Liberals: who have a John Bruton type geek leading them, but have a very interesting Green Shift policy that would shift the economy's taxation system to a carbon tax based one with reductions in income tax and investment in green jobs. Which is a great idea as far as I can make out, but which of course is really scary now because no one knows whether they'll have a job in a year's time. Unfortunately, the policy is incomprehensible when explained in a thick Quebec accent so nobody understands it except its author, Stephan Dion, soon to be former leader of the Liberal party (although this man won the leadership against Bob Rae and Ignatieff, so who knows....)

the NDP, which is doing pretty well right now touting their usual business bashing stuff. People are getting it this time round of course. But they have a strange and inevitably pro-business take on energy, i.e a cap and trade approach, which is obviously a curved ball thrown in to demand blind obedience from the intelligent yet committed NDP voter (or else the outcome of the Canadian Auto Workers' union having five seats on a four seat energy policy committee),

the Bloc, who were supposed to die this election, but who are having far too much fun picking on Harper for cutting cultural funding just before the election to leave the party on time (and of course, where would they go, now that money to spend on good parties has been withdrawn),

and the Greens, who were on 13 per cent last time I checked, which means they are going to fuck the numbers up for everyone else in their version of the Nader approach to saving the planet. Why don't Greens just vote for other people? Instead of trying to be in charge? It would work. Honest.

Results on Wednesday morning with your oatmeal for all you international political junkies. Will Canada be a weathervane for the lumpen prols worldwide? Probably. Will the prols save us? Probably not.

Not a lot to be thankful yet.