Sam Bulte, pictured above with Kingston & The Islands MP Peter Milliken, is waging a defensive war against the opponents of the copyright cartel, calling those opposed to draconian anti-P2P measures “… pro-user zealots and Electronic Frontier Foundations members.” Whereas, of course, Bulte responds to no special interests (except, of course, for the entertainment industry members who have seen fit to make her the sole beneficiary of their fundraising largesse.)

Boing Boing responds with a call for a Revenge of the Nerds on 23 January 2006:

“If she won’t promise to keep monied special interests out of her politics, then surely 3,500 of my former neighbors in Parkdale/High Park can be persuaded to turn out and vote against her.”

Sometimes people will gush about Google and the power of contextual advertising. We never understood the hype, until we saw the ad pictured above: Half a million suppliers for Canadian politics? We thought we were stuck with just the five of them.

We’ll be issuing an RFP shortly.

Pretties, we admit it: We didn’t watch the debates. Not because we were particularly busy, either. We spent the evening watching Anthony Asquith’s adaptation of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. Our sister tells us that we saw much better repartee in our choice of evening’s entertainment. She swears (as we did in the 2004 English debates) that Gilles won the round.

And besides, we can’t be guilty for missing it. In our riding, we’re in quite good company. In our riding of Kingston and The Islands, the conservative challenger was planning on skipping the debate, as was our Liberal incumbant, Speaker Peter Milliken. In fact, Mr. Milliken’s approach to the electoral race is to pretend as if he were not a Liberal candidate at all:

“Mr. Milliken admitted that he does campaign with the intention of being re-elected as the Speaker and therefore refrains from talking party policy most of the time. ‘I run as a Liberal, but I tell them I’m running to be Speaker again,’ said Mr. Milliken, who first captured the riding in 1988 when he defeated Progressive Conservative Cabinet minister Flora MacDonald. ‘Technically I’m a Liberal candidate but I’m not trying to push attacks on the other parties or their positions.’”

Sorry, what? We had something inane stuck in our ear, and may not have heard correctly: Milliken expects Kingston residents to vote for him not on the abismal record of corruption of the party under whose banner he seeks election, but rather his record of being a sagacious steward of orderliness in the House? Terribly sorry, bucko, but we believe the Speaker’s pledge of impartiality doesn’t so much apply when you’re campaigning as the nominee of a political party for a seat in the House of Commons.

Anyways, we’ll catch the French debates tomorrow. The debates are that much more salient, we feel, with a tenth of the audience and only one leader debating in their mother tongue.

For now, you can either catch the reaction at any of the following fine blogs:

• Steve calls for Tie Domi as a write-in candidate,
• Alan calls for Steve Paikin as a write-in candidate,
• Mandos gives Spun Question of the Night to Layton for changing a swingers-club question into a healthcare answer,
• Bitter Lemon puts the god-awful mental image of a leadership wife-swapping exercise in our heads,
• CalgaryGrit chronicles the head-spinner of the ‘Divisible Quebec’ question (we’re moving to the People’s Republic Of Westmount as soon as possible),
• and Antonia, who is incapable of giving Harper a break, criticizes him for, of all things, smiling too much, a novel accusation to throw at the Borglike Tory chef.

Or, as reader Sarah Buski writes us, you can catch a more entertaining reenactment of the debates at an all-improv night of political parody at the Bad Dog Theatre this Sunday upcoming, if you’re a Torontonian and like to spend your Sundays laughing at gags about riding politics.

Oh, pretties, how we’ve ignored you. Our deepest apologies; there’s apparently some sort of annual festival that somehow involves a fur-clad fat man breaking into homes to celebrate the birth of Christ. And this lil’ holiday is a helluva time-eater, what with the meals and the family and the exchanging of gifts and whatnot.

Due to a lack of nerding-time over the break thus far, we fell somewhat off our advent-logging plans. The two songs that were never posted were the 21st (El Gato’s Christmas In My City) and the 25th (Bruce Cockburn’s Les Anges Dans Nos Campagnes,) in case y’all were planning to Collect Them All!

Christmas Eve was spent exchanging presents. Added to the Optimuscrime Clothing Roster: Pyjama pants, in a lightweight flannel, plaid-patterned and red. Leah would be proud. OCK nabbed an ObusForme massager, a hulking beast of a thing that is apparently intended to relieve muscle stress but could also easily turn bone into dust. We asked the salesman about it, and he offered a demonstration. Our shoulders are still bruised. Its modes of operation include ‘pulverize’, ‘tenderize’ and ‘liquify’.

Christmas day was spent at Latvian church, singing all sorts of familar carols in a totally unfamiliar and consonant-rich baltic tongue: “Kluuuuusa nakts, sveta nakts…” After church, we repaired to the local Tim Horton’s — the only one open — and waited for half an hour in line for coffee (after being rudely cut off by a hyperaggressive minivan driver in a santa hat).

Lather, rinse, repeat. Second verse, same as the first. On the 27th and 28th, we enjoyed our second Christmas Eve and Christmas Day of December, this time with our family in Oshawa. Christmas Eve was spent listening to Dylan Thomas reading his ‘Child’s Christmas in Wales’ — a tradition spanning three generations of Optimuscriminals. The next morning included danish kringle and present-opening. We will ask visitors to Chateau Bagot to kindly keep from drooling on our floor after seeing our fancy-assed new sheets. Stratospheric thread counts! Featherbed topper! If you need us, we’ll be in bed.

And today, we went to another shopping mall (two mall-trips in a month; a new record!), where we observed the fascinating behaviour of the adolescent Oshawanian male in his natural habitat: In this case, sharing homemade softcore pornography from his camera phone with his fellow pack members. We are somewhat doubtful that the young lady in the starring role would have expected her oeuvre to be screened to an audience of pimply teens in the mall’s food-court.

Upcoming: Toronto, here we come! Those of our readers interested in a New Year’s Day breakfast at Sneaky Dee’s, leave a comment. Guacamole Exquisito!