oh goody...my very own acme rack and pinion tranquilizer blog

So, uh, yeah.

'Tsup.

Welcome to what I hope will be a dandy little Canadian blog.

A forum for me (and, eventually, my readers, as I slowly grasp the various the various subtleties of operating a blog - not to mention acquire a reader) to discuss things of interest to Canada, to observers of Canadian politics and public affairs.

A place for good-natured John vs. Paul debates, along with other, more current things music.

The odd rant about hockey and/or reflection on the wonder of cartoons.

And - I swear - only occasionally an embarrassing exercise in vanity.

How to begin....

I'm 28, a resident of Western Quebec and an avid consumer (read: addict) of online news and punditry, and I've been particularly drawn to the Canadian blogosphere - 99% of the time as a consumer, with the odd visit to various comment threads - for a couple of years now. As I recall (it's all a blur) t started with three sites bookmarked as part of my morning routine - Inkless Wells, Norman's Spectator and Kinsella's daily musings - and snowballed from there. Pogge, Jim Elve's E-Group, Andrew Anderson's Bound By Gravity, Zerb, Crawl Across the Ocean, the late Tilting at Windmills, Andrew Spicer, Jonathan Ross...well, you get the hint.

I found it fascinating to watch as interested individuals from across this country would engage in vigorous, sometimes heated, but generally civilized - and, most importantly, well-informed - discussions of very complicated, often very messy political issues. For the most part, I've been content to watch from the sidelines.

A few weeks ago however, I couldn't help myself. Stéphane Dion, the newly-elected leader of the Liberal Party, had come under fire from a couple of isolated outposts (read: Ezra, Bourque, Pat Martin) for his alleged lack of loyalty to Canada, which was evidenced beyond any reasonable doubt by the fact that... his mother was from France.

So I got on the comment boards, engaging in a looooooooooooonnnng recurring debate with Glenn et al over at the E-group, firing off an angry letter to the NDP (of which I am now proudly a former supporter), and generally spending a lot of time being frustrated that our national discourse could sink so low (even if only for a week), but not doing anything about it.

So it's my (naive) hope that by launching this blog and participating in these virtual conversations in a serious way, I can help make a difference.

Meanwhile, I've had another problem.

I fancy myself a writer, but for a number of reasons (which I'll kick around later during one of those occasional exercises in vanity I warned y'all about), I haven't been able to write. At least, not the way I want to.

So, with your indulgence, it is my other (also naive) hope that by launching this blog I will help myself to rediscover a love of writing.

A quick note - I've read the horror stories encountered by novice and veteran bloggers alike about the joys of comments and spam, but since I don't know enough about what I'm doing yet to worry about it, I won't.