You can never have too many books

While cleaning out my apartment last month, I came across a $50 gift certificate for Chapters that I received from my MA advisor a couple of years ago when I first worked as his TA. Today I finally got around to wandering over to Chapters and asking if they would still honour the certificate. Lo and behold, they said it was fine, and so I got to go on a mini book buying spree!

( Book list )

Someone made a quiz about Canadian politics?

According to the PoliticsWatch.com quiz, I can feel equally comfortable voting for the Bloc Quebecois or the National Democratic Party in the upcoming federal election. As it's highly unlikely that the BQ will be fielding candidates in the heart of Toronto, bastion of English Canada, (and I have a few issues with elements of their platform not addressed in this quiz, like the whole "let's break up Canada" thing), it looks like I'm destined to vote NDP. I still have three more years to vote socialist*, so I think I'm okay, but the Liberals had better get their act together before the next election. Either that, or the Red Tories need to infiltrate and wrest back control of the Conservative party so that I can vote for them.

It's interesting to note that, once again, the Green Party has been excluded. This despite the fact that it's polling at 5% and has candidates running in many more ridings than the Bloc. And speaking of minority parties, what ever happened to the Rhinoceros Party? No wonder people aren't voting any more--all the fun's gone out of it.

And now I'd better go prepare for semiotic_trader's and a_just_society's arrival from Montreal.


* The three year limit is based on a favourite political saying of my father's: "If you haven't supported the NDP by the time you're twenty, people wonder about your heart. If you're still supporting the NDP by the time you're thirty, people wonder about your head."