The day after

As you might have noticed, I ended up taking yesterday off from posting. It was nice! Although I have to admit I was somewhat tempted to fire up the computer and jot a few thoughts down. Maybe I'm enjoying this venture more than I thought I would. If nothing else, it gets me into the writing rhythm again, even if some of the posts contain less-than-fully-formed ideas and some crappy writing.

I was going to write something about the Liberal leadership convention, which I spent a considerable (ie., too much) time watching yesterday. (Apologies to my American readers who won't give a rat's ass about a Canadian political convention. Feel free to skim these next two paragraphs - you have my permission.) I was caught up in the drama of it all - amazing to watch a political convention where the leadership choice is actually being made in real time. And although I've voted primarily for the NDP in the last few elections, both federal and provincial, I was hoping to see the Liberals pick a good strong candidate since it's going to be the Liberal Party that will stop this country from its right-wing conservative swing. An election, after all, is probably not too far in the future (I predict late spring), so it was important the party to be decisive in picking its new leader.

While I largely like Stephane Dion (the eventual winner - and I actually predicted two months ago that he was the true dark horse), particularly since he represents a true fresh face (not to mention he's been in the party and in the country for, oh, more than five minutes, unlike a couple of the other candidates...), I do worry that he's going to have a difficult time bringing the party together. While he's certainly a smart man and seems to have the respect of everybody in the party, there seems to be a lot of resentment toward him from the party's long-established leading backroom guys. Those are the people he has to win over since the majority ended up backing the two main losers in Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff. Of course I welcome the renewal of the party through some new energy, and while I have a natural disdain for so many of those guys in the back room, those same guys do provide an important role come election time. They're going to be needed because of their experience, so Dion has a find a way to placate them.

My other main impression from the convention: why is this still a party dominated by white men over the age 50? Where are the women? Where's the diversity? It's a sad reflection.

So now that I've spent all that time writing about politics, I seem to have lost my impetus to what I really wanted to write about: the male-female dynamic when it comes to friendships vs. relationships. It's been on a mind quite a bit of late, largely as a reflection to the age-old question, "Why am I single?" Well, maybe that's not the right question since my single status is largely my own making, having left last year a relationship that many objective observers would consider was rather good. (Yes, my continued thoughts on this seems to be a common theme - I'll repeat: I'm a work in progress.) Perhaps a better question is: "Why can't I seem to attract a woman?"

... (This is where I removed stuff.)

I ended up doing an examination of this - namely coming to the conclusion that I have a high "likability" factor but a low "attractibility" factor, and that I seem to have trouble bridging that gap with women I both like and lust over - and realized I felt sheepish and silly putting it online. So I pulled the plug on it. It wasn't a rant by any stretch, but it seemed somewhat pathetic.