I get an average number of colds a year, one every 2 months I think. I know they’re going to show up at some time, and they’re going to hang around for about 2 weeks from start to finish. There’s no point in getting upset or surprised when this happens, because it’s inevitable.

I would like to think that I am not unusually soft and delicate, that I can take my fair share of physical discomfort without resorting to whimpering and pleas for mercy, but this current visit from Herr Cold is testing me.  First, there was a day of pretty intense joint pain, much more than the playful ‘achiness’ I expect. Tucking my feet underneath me and sitting that way for more than a few minutes would buy me a very uncomfortable moment of knee extending, complete with clenched teeth and difficult to suppress muttering. That passed after a day as the cold moved on to its favourite haunt, my throat and left ear. Oh, the fiery throat pain that woke me up for two consecutive nights. The throat pain has lessened considerably, though last night I discovered that Buckley’s cough syrup and a raw throat wound combine to form a napalm attack. Now, my sinuses are slowly draining, and my brain is freeing up some processor time to think about creative pursuits, and I’m spending some of that brainpower complaining here. A good use of my potential? What a rude question, hypothetical interrogator.

The intensity of this illness has shaken up my illusion of predictability. I thought I had a pretty good benchmark for the impact and severity of the average cold I might catch, but this hearty illness is working well outside of my accepted parameters. I wonder if I’m seeing the first hallmarks of age-related symptom intensification. I know, I’m not old: I’m not even 40 yet. But my 37 years of life (and 250+ pounds of weight) have been hard on my knees, and my left knee in particular is sensitive.  Stop lurking in the window, mortality! I’m busy!

I have not, nor will I ever jump out of a plane of my own volition. Nevertheless, I imagine the sensation of getting ready to jump is very much like the feeling I have right now. (My, that really sounds like I’m about to give some kind of grand revelation. Slight spoiler: I’m not.) The wide, blue sky that I’m staring into right now is chapter one of my next book.

I’ve done as much preparation as I can manage right now. Sure, there are other things I could do to get ready, but I’m getting restless, and I think that’s a good sign that it’s time to launch myself at the story.

And dwelling on other possible preparatory steps would be giving more credence to the delusion that there is an established methodology that I have to strictly follow. Oh, I’m not arguing against readiness or doing your homework, but most of the time art is more a collection of rituals and superstitions than a science. You learn, with practice, which routines encourage your creative process, and which ones have almost no return on time and effort invested.  then you reach into your juju bag, pull out a handful of spells and charms, and throw them into the cauldron. Hopefully something good bubbles up.

But enough of this second, intruding metaphor, and back to the airplane and our nervous jumper. That brave and slightly foolish adventurer is at the yawning open door, and the only choice left is jump or quit.  So he steps forward into the air. Though he’s pretty sure that the jump will go according to plan, and he’ll end up safe on the ground, there’s still fear. That’s the same fear I have right now: that I’ll jump into chapter one and halfway down my parachute will detach and flutter away, sending me hurtling to the literary earth as a bad art dirt torpedo.

I know that I’ll learn a whole lot from the experience, even if it goes terribly. And despite the cold feet, I’m going to jump, but I really hope I don’t end up landing in a field full of cow patties

(Mundane translation:I have a cold affecting my ears and throat, and it is making thinking and thinking-dependant tasks difficult to complete)

On behest of my chum Roy, I’m going to talk about voting systems. If you get bored, blame him. There is a voting simulation being run right now at http://www.threeontariovotes.ca/home.php and it gives you three different voting systems to try out: First Past The Post, Alternative Vote, and Proportional representation.

We use First Past The Post as our electoral process right now. The first candidate in each area to get the most votes on election day gets the seat.

In Alternative Voting, you would rank the candidates in order of preference. If a candidate is the first choice of more than 50% of the voters, they win. If no one has 50% right away, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is dropped, and votes that had the dropped candidate as the number one choice are now given to the candidate the voter ranked second. They repeat that process until one candidate has a majority.

In a Proportional Representation system, you vote for a party, and the party fills the seats they win with people from their pool of candidates. You don’t get to directly vote for a person.

I like the alternative voting because the elected candidate has a majority of votes, even if it took a round or two to get there. I don’t like proportional representation because I want to vote specifically for the person who will represent me in the parliament. I know that in our current political climate, elected members are discouraged from voicing any opinion that differs from their party, and that lessens the efficacy of the representatives, but I believe that this could be changed.

The interesting thing that I’m realizing about our current system is how much of an incentive it provides for political campaigns to pursue voter alienation as a strategy. When you only need to get more votes than the next closest guy, turning voters off of the electoral process works in your favour, especially if your platform is divisive and emotional. Instead of trying to convince moderate voters that your platform has merit, you can focus on the much easier task of weakening your opponents support with smear tactics and cheap fear-mongering.

In our current election here in Ontario, you can see each major party engaging in this right now. With a week to go, none of them are completely focused on discourse and debate. The PCs have been using alienation tactics from the start, and the Liberals are close behind. Not even the “noble” NDP are above chasing moderate voters out of the voting booth. If we had a voting system that depended on not only getting more votes than the next guy, but in getting enough votes to have a majority, the power of divisive campaigning would be greatly reduced. They would all have to spend some time convincing the voters that, even if they weren’t their first choice, they’d do a good enough job to be ranked second. This would hurt the PCs/Conservatives the most, since they only thrive in an environment with a low voter turnout and open hostility between the Liberals and the NDP.