Life on Queen Street

"If you were on a desert island with only 10 blank pieces of paper and a pencil, what would you want most to write?"

I'd want to write a plan for getting off the fucking island, is what I'd want to write. God, what sort of a silly question is that? Who thinks "ooh, trapped on a desert island. I have 10 pieces of paper, this pencil and a bloody fucking lot of coconuts. I know - time for a sonnet!"? No, if I were trapped on a desert island with 10 pieces of paper and a pencil, I'd save the paper to use for kindling, the pencil to use for starting fires and write in the sand: it's a desert island. Lots of sand. All you need is wet sand and a stick - presto! notebook. I mean, it worked for the Egyptians. Or you know, I'd use it to write my suicide note. Because I fucking hate the tropics. Hate them. I'm an Anglo-Irish Northern European white person - I am not designed for desert islands. I do not tan. I am designed to herd sheep across craggy, rain-swept moors. Not a lot of UV radiation on your average rain-swept moor. You never see Heathcliff wandering about saying "Oooh, better put a hold on that brooding while I reapply my SPF 30." So fuck your desert island and your 10 pieces of paper and your pencil, I'm off to the pub! So there!

If only that last bit were true.

Remember Parizeau and his aggrieved cry that "money and the ethnic vote" had stolen a referendum victory from Les Pur Laine, those descended from the few thousand original French settlers of New France?

Seems like le pomme does not fall far from l'arbe in the case of Action democratique where, according to a report in La Presse, Gilles Gagnon, the ADQ candidate for Abitibi-Est, posted anti-Semitic comments on his company's website. According to the Globe and Mail report, M. Gagnon was "quoted in the newspaper as having accused "American and European Jews" of having waged wars in order to help their own economies "instead of sharing the wealth fairly."" Comme charmant.

M. Gagnon has since apologized and shut down the website. Bien sur - this is politics after all where, like Hollywood, it seems that it's better to beg forgiveness than not be an asshole in the first place.

It's enough to make a gal nostalgic for the days when I loathed Separatiste pols just for being Separatistes - apart from that minor detail, I always thought Gilles Duceppe and I were fellow travellers on many issues. These ADQ assholes, though. They're a different bunch - Separatiste and right-wing bigots and homophobes. C'est fantastique!

ETA: Ide Cyan points out, quite correctly, that ADQ are only sometime Separatistes (1995 Referendum*cough*) whereas they are full-time right-wing nutjobs. My mistake.