ELECTION BLACKOUT

I got home from work yesterday at 18:40. I put a frozen pizza in the oven and waited 20 minutes. At 19:00, I popped an old Kristy MacColl CD in my DVD-Rom drive and I started typing.

Kristy was a deliberate choice of music. I forwarded it to track nine:

If you're wondering why
All the love that you long for eludes you
And people are rude and cruel to you
I'll tell you why
I'll tell you why
I'll tell you why
I'll tell you why
But you wouldn't believe me

You just haven't earned it yet baby
You just haven't earned it son
You just haven't earned it yet baby
You must suffer and cry for a longer time
You just haven't earned it yet baby
And I'm telling you now

I've never found that particular Morrissey tune depressing. I didn't see it as goading or mocking. It was motivational: Stop whining! Get your skates on mate! There's work to be done!

Browsing through other blogs yesterday, I saw a lot of depression, anger, doubts about the confederation and condemning of the masses of Canadians who voted Liberal. This was doing no good. A lot of those Canadians who voted Liberal had considered voting for us. I think they might next time. Now is not the time to condemn them - it is the time to convince them.

I started writing a motivational essay for wobbly Canadian conservatives.

I started writing about how the election was a step forward for the Conservatives rather than a defeat. I started writing about how people - even supporters of the Conservatives - still have serious questions about their agenda, and that this needed to be dealt with.

I wrote about how the Conservatives need to use this post-election period to formulate solid policy that challenges the failures of Canadian statism in a bold forward-looking manner. And I wrote that, in doing this, the Conservatives should not shy away from controversy. Instead, we need to embrace it and sell it.

I wrote that we should embrace creative solutions for our health-care system that include the private sector - Canadians are not so naive to think that the system can be maintained. We should be serious about reforming the Canada Pension Plan - because Canadians know it is bankrupt and they want solutions. I wrote that we should not fear challenging the CRTC's content regulations - because Canadians would enjoy Comedy Central and HBO.

We get stung with charges of having a hidden agenda because we are not boldly putting forward a real agenda that challenges Liberal orthodoxy. But deep down inside , we do challenge Liberal orthodoxy - and people know we do. What they really need to know is how we would do it in office. Personally, I would also like a better idea of where we stand, and why the party often falls short of its supporters and members.

But mostly we need to do this to dispel people's fears of the 'hidden agenda.'

You can't be accused of having a hidden agenda if it's in the open.

I wrote that the conservatives needed to strike the policy convention now. Then, the must use every moment in the house to argue for real change and challenge the shibboleths of the Trudeaupian state. It may only be a few months before the next election and this time has to be used to show that the Conservatives could form a government based on ideas.

I wrote all of this and more, linking boldly to policy papers, bloggers and news reports. I sat, unmoved, and wrote for over three hours.

Then at 22:00:

Blackout hits many areas after gas supply failure
FROM about 10pm last night, a quickly spreading blackout plunged many parts of Singapore into darkness.

Darkness falls over Jurong East and even traffic slowed down, as street lamps and traffic lights also went out.
Not just home lights, but street lamps and traffic signals winked out, causing traffic in Hougang and Sengkang to slow to a crawl as half-blinded motorists switched on their high beams.

Other anxious Singaporeans, thumbing their mobile phones as they wondered if there had been a terrorist-related disruption, only jammed the networks

AARRRGH!!!

I sat in the dark with my cat for over an hour.

When the lights came back on my broadband was out. Worse, I hadn't configured my word processor to autosave. Three hours of work - motivational, pithy, confidence-building stuff - was all gone.

I'll try to rewrite some of it later. I don't want to sit in front of a computer right now.