1 WE DID IT, EVERYBODY In news that will surprise absolutely nobody, Regina’s vacancy rate is officially the lowest in the country! Hooray, we are basically living a Fugazi song, now! Congratulations are especially due to the current city council that has helped cause this mess, especially when its own Michael Fougere took the lead in a recent Leader-Post survey on the crowded mayoral field.
2 SPEAKING OF CIVIC ELECTIONS With Marian Donnelly announcing her candidacy yesterday afternoon, the total number of mayoral candidates is seven. Seven! Absolutely no vote-splitting likely to go on there, for sure. And with the youngest city council candidate in Regina history throwing his name in yesterday as well, the fall’s municipal election looks like it’ll be exciting, for once.
3 COMICALLY TERRIBLE BUDGET BILL SET TO PROCEED Yeah, the Tories used time allocation, again. You know what’s funny? Twenty years ago, Stephen Harper argued against the use of omnibus bills to push through sweeping legislation. Most people need to have wormhole accidents or something in order to discover the evil mirror universe versions of themselves but apparently Harper just needed to age.
4 CHUCK NO Confession: I actually enjoy Chuck Klosterman, even if I’ve been finding it grating how obvious and/or straight-up bad a lot of his pieces over on Grantland are. (Worst offender to date is probably this article about Tune-Yards, in which our intrepid hero says a bunch of shit like “It doesn’t sound anything like Stereolab, but it sounds like an album made by someone who believes Stereolab was awesome” and writes what is basically speculative fan-fiction about Merrill Garbus’ career, both of which would probably net writers without the name Chuck Klosterman rejection letters from almost any media outlet as high-profile as Grantland.) That sensation of being abraded by a person’s writing is why I’m so leery of Klosterman’s new post as the ethics columnist at the New York Times Magazine. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be worried – the Ethics column is, after all, basically Dear Abby for the Grey Lady’s readers, a fact reflected in Klosterman’s first piece for them. But “Chuck Klosterman, ethicist” still has an odd ring to it.