Congratulations, Premier Eb…Uh-Oh

B.C. Conservatives projected to win 1st majority in nearly a century after Eby’s election gamble backfires
It’s hard to explain how giddy this news made me. I was out at a restaurant when I heard it and it was all I could do not to stand up and cheer. I settled for a nice, hearty laugh and a big slug of beer instead, for the record. To be clear, it’s not that British Columbia has a Conservative government for the first time in damn near 100 years that excites me. That part’s probably gonna suck real bad real fast and I expect there’ll be a lot of buyer’s remorse going around before too long. What I love is that the voters saw through David Eby’s cheap, costly power grab and responded by feeding him steam shovels worth of shit. This is exactly what should have happened to Doug Ford when he pulled the same stunt last year, but you can’t always get what you want even when you really, really need it.

If you want my opinion and let’s face it, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t, snap elections should be illegal. The only reason we should ever be having an election before a four year term is over is because a minority government has fallen. Anything else is a waste of valuable resources that could be going to fund services that people need. You don’t need a stronger mandate, mr. politician. Mandates don’t get any stronger than a majority government. That’s how the system is designed, and it generally works pretty well that way.

No one involved in this debacle should ever work in politics again.

The B.C. Conservatives have toppled the incumbent B.C. NDP to win a majority government, CBC News projects, the party’s first since 1928.
“B.C. is definitely blue,” Premier-designate Lorne Doerkson said in a jubilant victory speech.
David Eby, who called an election two years early in hopes his party would win a stronger, fourth term, resigned as premier and NDP leader in his concession speech.

Does This Make Him The Undisputed Champion Of Football?

Depending on how closely you follow football, the name O.J. Brigance may or may not be familiar to you. I’ll confess that it didn’t ring much of a bell for me, even though he’s done something that no one else has. I’d say and likely never will again, but at the rate we’re going here…

Anywho, O.J. Brigance is the only person ever to have won a Grey Cup and a Super Bowl for the same city.

“Wait,” said someone who pays attention to football but is probably a little young. “How can that be?”

Because the CFL didn’t just start doing stupid things last year, that’s how.

In 1993, the league admitted its first United States-based franchise, the Sacramento Gold Miners. After modest success, the league then expanded further in the U.S. in 1994 with the Las Vegas Posse, Baltimore Stallions, and Shreveport Pirates. For the 1995 campaign, the American teams were split off into their own South Division, and two more teams, the Birmingham Barracudas and Memphis Mad Dogs, were added; at the same time, the Posse folded and the Gold Miners moved, becoming the San Antonio Texans. In 1995, the Stallions became the only non-Canadian team to win the Grey Cup.
Despite all American teams having the advantage of not being bound to the CFL’s minimum Canadian player quotas, only the Stallions proved to be an on-field and off-field success. The establishment of the National Football League’s (NFL) Baltimore Ravens, worsening financial problems among the league’s core Canadian teams, and the inconsistent performance of the other American teams prompted the CFL to abandon its American experiment and retrench its Canadian operations. The Stallions organization was used as the basis for a revival of the Montreal Alouettes.

You can read a bunch more about all of that here if you’d like, including Baltimore’s variety of names.

It was all over by 1996, but we were half way to history.

O.J. Brigance was on that Baltimore Grey Cup team. When it folded, he went on to play seven seasons in the NFL. He played for a number of teams, among them the aforementioned Baltimore Ravens with whom he won the Super Bowl in 2001, thus becoming the answer to a very odd trivia question.

Sadly, he died of ALS in August of this year. He was 56.

The native of Houston, Texas spent five seasons with the B.C. Lions and Baltimore Stallions, winning a Grey Cup in his final CFL season in 1995.
He played 90 career regular-season games, recording 322 defensive tackles, 53 special teams tackles, 35 sacks, nine fumble recoveries, and two interceptions.

The six-foot, 236-pound defender spent the next seven years in the NFL as a member of the Miami Dolphins, Baltimore Ravens, St. Louis Rams, and New England Patriots.
He made 42 total tackles, three forced fumbles, and two fumble recoveries over 98 career regular-season games.
Brigance retired following the 2002 season and was hired as Baltimore’s director of player development in 2004, a role he held until his death. He won the Best Overall Player Development Program award in 2005 and 2006.
He was diagnosed with ALS in 2007, which led he and his wife, Chanda, to found the Brigance Brigade Foundation, a nonprofit designed to raise money and awareness about the disease.

Maybe Try Changing Your Brain Instead


I don’t know what this dork thought he was doing, but if it was anything other than being painfully unfunny, showing off his rotten judgment and probably losing an election, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. Also, if one person booing you is enough to make you storm off in a huff like that, politics might not be for you.

And what’s up with the woman who walked out with him? Why would she do that? Unless of course the two of them planned this as some sort of stupid conservative culture war thing.

“The students are hurting our feelings! College is bad! Woke ideology! Listen to our podcast!”

Two candidates running to be mayor of North Bay, Ont. — Dan Seguin and Melanie Demers — walked off the debate stage Monday evening in protest after an audience member booed Seguin’s opening remarks.
With the Oct. 26 election just days away, the debate took place at the Nipissing University Student Union centre and was to be focused on student issues.

However, things escalated quickly. In his opening remarks, Seguin said he believes a woman is going to win the race for mayor.

He then pulled out a light pink bra from his suit jacket and placed it on his shoulders.
He said he’s going to “change my sex” to convince more women to vote for him.
“I want to feel that the women who told me they weren’t going to vote for a man that now they can vote for a woman,” Seguin told the crowd.
“Now, I’m going to have a few (more) votes.”
When a spectator booed, Seguin and Demers both demanded the spectator be removed or they would leave instead.
“That’s not right,” Demers said while packing her things up. “I’ll walk out with him. Bye.”

Moderator George Legler, co-president of the Nipissing University Political Science Society, tried to get the situation under control, asking Seguin and Demers to stop talking.
Ignoring Legler, they both walked off the stage. Campus security was called and escorted the pair out while audience members clapped.
“I’m getting out of here. This is disgusting,” Seguin yelled out to the crowd.
They did not return.

Who Are These People? Local Candidates Try To Answer

Another helpful who should I vote for in the municipal election guide, this time thanks to CBC Kitchener-Waterloo.

They asked all of the candidates in all of the races to name their top three priorities, talk a little about how they would work to address each one, and then tell us anything else they think we should know. In addition to the region it also covers Guelph, so it’s even more useful. Not everyone has answered, but they’re adding responses as they come in, so you may want to check back more than once if you haven’t made up your mind based on what’s already out there.

Speaking of out there, I found this wile looking through the answers from Kitchener’s Regional Council candidates.

Mike Wisniewski
Top 3 issues:

  • Did not list three specific issues

Statement:
I’m running for Regional Council because of an issue I’m having with a local business that also happens to have a contract with the Region of Waterloo. That business has asked me to take my patronage of their service elsewhere while refusing to provide an explanation as to why. 
[Editor’s note: CBC is not naming the business until we are able to include a statement from them.]

I simultaneously want to know everything and nothing about whatever is happening here, but it’s nice to see the old crank spirit is still alive and well in this era of constantly being told that no one cares enough about anything important to do anything about it.

Voting Info For The Municipal Election, The Stuff That’s Still Useful

I need to come up with more creative ways to say the usual “Hi. It’s me. Remember me?” because that’s getting old. Either that, or I need to show up more often. Either way, it’s municipal election time, and I’m going to try and put some useful info up here.

Unfortunately, because life lifes and municipal election websites are confusing, I have already missed putting up the advance polling stuff. They ended yesterday, and that makes me sad. It makes me especially sad because they had an advance polling location suuuuuper close to us. Plus, all the advance polling spots were supposed to have the talking machine that lets us vote independently. If only I had felt prepared to vote by yesterday, we could have just walked over and done it. But sadly, I did not.

So here’s the part that prevented me from posting this sooner. When I went to the where to vote page, after some hickups, I was able to look up my ward and figure out where all the polling places were. But then I wondered how I was supposed to know which places would have the machines. There’s a sort of helpful accessible voting page, which has become more helpful since I looked at it on October 3 when I originally wanted to post this. Back then, it just said there would be machines at all advance voting locations, and one station per ward on election day, but neglected to indicate which one. I even had someone look at the screen and review both the where to vote page and the accessibility page, and they never saw the list of places. Now, there is a list of places, and it matches the ones I squeezed out of the poor employee who answered the phone when I called them and asked how I’m supposed to find these magical machines if they don’t tell me where they are. Am I supposed to play roulette? Well, squeezed is an exaggeration. They were very nice and gave me all the locations for all the wards. They did say all that information is on the website, and I said I looked and didn’t see it. Could it have really been there all along? I’m going to hope not.

But thankfully, either because they updated the website, myself and the other person are confused, or maybe my call had some effect, no roulette is required, and I don’t have to do fancy HTML to make lists or tables with the wards and polling spots with machines because they’re right there on the page. Woo! If they weren’t there, it would have been nice to have a message there that told me that that information was going to be populated later, and maybe tell me when so I don’t keep checking back.

Also, in case you’re like me and never received your voter information card, here’s the list of acceptable types of ID. Phew, I have a few of them.

I’m happy that a couple of weird things that happened to me when I last looked at the site aren’t happening any more, but one little oddity still is. Every time I hit the control key on its own, it opens the admin panel for the election website. This is a thing I see often with government websites. I know it’s supposed to be a shortcut for admins, but here’s something people don’t realize. Screen-reader users sometimes hit the control key to get the screen-reader to stop talking. So every time that happens, the admin panel opens up and I have to click back and try to consciously prevent myself from hitting control. This is especially annoying if a webpage has steps to complete in a process, such as looking up which ward you live in. Sometimes having to click back to the page makes the whole interface mad.

I hope this helps someone, and I hope our voting experience is better than the last one. Usually they are. Here we come…just as soon as I figure out all my choices.

A Note For The Chatty Fellas Behind Us At The Grapes Of Wrath Show Last Night

Thank you for eventually piping down. It was nice that only two people had to ask you. Maybe it was more, but I’ll give you whatever credit that calls for because I only noticed the woman in front of us and the man who I believe came from somewhere off to our left. I think Carin might have been getting ready to be the third, but thankfully her services were not required. That’s thankfully for you, by the way. I’ve said it before, but it never hurts to repeat it. Carin is one of the loveliest people you could ever be lucky enough to meet in your lifetime, but take it from me, you dooooooooo nooooooooot want her upset at you. And if she is upset at you, in around 96% of cases that’s entirely a you problem. Your case was not one of the other four percent, just to be absolutely clear.

I hope that you learned something from last night’s experience and that you had a pleasant evening when all was said and done. We certainly did, in spite of your efforts. But just in case you didn’t and also for the benefit of others like yourselves, here are a few things to keep in mind for future outings.

  1. None of us paid to listen to you flap your yap. If this news comes as a surprise to you, here’s a simple way to keep it straight. If we had, you’d have been on the stage where the men with the guitars were rather than in the audience with the rest of us.
  2. If I’m not directly beside you but can hear you over the people that we did pay to listen to, your conversation is too loud.
  3. You also, I assume, paid your money to listen to that same band. So shut up while they’re performing, dummies. It’s not just our money you’re wasting, it’s also your own.
  4. It’s great that you want to hang out and have a chat. But if that was your plan, why not take it to any of the other dozens of bars or restaurants in the area? I’m sure they’d have loved to have you. We, on the other hand, would have loved having you removed.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Who Are These People? 2026 Waterloo Region Public School Board Candidates Edition

Here is an extremely helpful 2026 Waterloo Region municipal election guide courtesy of Citified. There are a few editor endorsements and whatever the opposite of endorsements is, along with a variety of links to various resources to help you figure out the whens, wheres and whos of everything.

The most useful bit, for me anyhow, is the breakdown of the school board races. Those are important to me as they should be to you even if, like me, you don’t have kids in the schools. We’re paying for those schools regardless, so it would be nice if they function properly. And as I’ve said before, your kids impact my life on the daily, so it would be nice if they too function properly. Thanks to this, I’ve gone from knowing 0 things about 0 candidates to having a decent enough idea of which names to consider and which to avoid, which is all most of us can realistically hope for, I think.

Goodbye To One Of You

Am I the only one who heard that Skip the Dishes and Instacart were going to team up to offer each others services through both apps and wondered which one of them is about to be bought out? That has to be the goal here, right? How does it make any sense otherwise? Cannibalism is only mutually beneficial if at least one of you has agreed to be on the menu, and cannibalism is exactly what this is.

My guess, which I should make clear that I’m basing on little more than the fact that my brain works, is that Skip is in trouble. If you use it, you’ve surely noticed that they’ve spent years trying to become more than just the takeout guys. They expanded into alcohol which seems like a natural fit, but they’ve also added places like drugstores, Walmart and M&M Food Market, which is a clear attempt to break into the grocery business. If that attempt were going well, why would they suddenly hand all of that success over to Instacart?

Instacart, though, does have something to gain. Unless they’ve done such an awful job of it that I haven’t noticed, they haven’t been publicly trying to crack the restaurant market. But if they wanted to make a run at it, starting out wouldn’t get much easier than finding a friend with a long list of clients. And if that friend just so happens to also have some money problems, all the better. Negotiating is much more fun when you’re the one in the position of strength.

My prediction is that by this time next year if not sooner, we’ll be calling Skip the Dishes Instaplate.

Skip and Instacart have announced a new partnership. Starting today, Skip customers can start ordering grocery and retail products through the Skip app. Instacart customers can access Skip’s network of more than 50,000 national and local restaurant partners.
Also, Skip+ members can get $0 delivery fees on Instacart-powered grocery and retail orders. Instacart+ members can also get $0 delivery fees and reduced service fees on Skip.
On Skip, you just need to open the app and tap the grocery icon. In the grocery section, there are more than 130 retail banners and more than 9,000 locations in Canada. And on the Instacart app, you can tap on the restaurant icon and browse through 50,000+ national and local restaurants.

Two Things I Can’t Stop Thinking About

First is this song. It’s fun having something in your head that you can’t sing out loud because you’re spending the weekend with small children and old people. Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.

I like the idea of writing about how much your own band sucks to save everybody else the trouble. I’ve been told I suck doing this more than I ever was playing music, but it has happened. My response, when I was in a position to offer one, was just “thanks.” Sometimes I think it would have been fun to ask for specifics, but then my smart brain kicks back in and reminds me that nothing useful would have ever come from that.

It also reminded me that I don’t just come on here and bury the absolute hell out of shitty songs anymore. Those were some fun times, but I think I might be getting too old and mellow for that now. It’s either that or there are just way too many other things to get angry about these days, and you can’t always be upset, even for fun. I think it’s a little of both.

I can’t think of a decent way to transition out of this, so let’s just go ahead and say that I’ve also been thinking about my new underwear.

I’m not a big brand loyalty guy when it comes to these things. With underwear and socks my main criteria is “How many for how much?” so I just tend to grab whatever makes sense at the time. but I’m not sure how much sense my most recent purchase makes in retrospect.

They’re comfortable enough, at least based on the one pair I’ve needed to use so far. But they’re going to present a big problem eventually and I’m not sure how I’m going to solve it.

Some day soon, I’m going to have to wear these things in public. And at some point while I’m there, I’m going to have to use the washroom. If I can find a stall, there’s no issue. I can just whip down the pants and go to town. But that’s not always going to be an option, and that’s where the trouble is. Because these things, which for the record are Athletic Works Men’s Boxer Briefs, feature, or perhaps I should say do not feature, an extremely important feature. there is, for whatever reason, no frigging dingdong hatch on the front! Never in my life have I encountered this, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to deal with it. Did I get a package of defects, or has this become a thing and I’m only now discovering it? And if it is a thing, why? Who sits around designing underwear and says to himself “if only there were a way to make these less convenient”? Like I understand if maybe you don’t enjoy using urinals, but making sure that doing so is utterly impossible seems a tad extreme.

I can’t return them, so I guess I’m going to have to do my best to get used to the concept of having around the house underwear. What a weird thing to have to plan for. I give myself a week before I forget to plan for it.