Vacation over. Back to “reality” (eg, back to the crappy city with the crappy rip-off prices, the crappy cramped apartment, the crappy job and the crappy car). Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like a home away from here…

With the end of our vacation and a snap back to reality, the desire to move on is getting ever more pressing. The current planned destination is likely to be an affordable urban island within a red state, with the potential for future intraregional relocations as the years progress and we recover from the draining effects of West Coast living. However, with the Canadians growing morebenevolent and the Bushericans growing more malevolent, life north of the 49th is looking continually sweeter… Maybe someday…

In the meantime, based on my discussions with Europeans and those who have been to Europe, I have compiled the following:

Things which Europe gets right:

• Employer-employee-leader relationships are less adversarial
• The average person you meet speaks more than one language (well)
• It’s not unusual to leave work after 8 hours each day
• Quality is considered more important than quantity (generally)

Things which America gets right:

• Supercenters
• Detatched single-family housing
• Roadside truckstops and diners with free coffee and soda refills
• Offering “quality” as well as “cheap”

Things which Canada gets righter:

• Supercenters without adversarial employer-employee relationships
• Roadside truckstops and diners where people speak French and English and give you free coffee or soda refills
• It’s not unusual to leave work after 8 hours and return home to your detatched single-family dwelling
• Quality and Cheap are offered side-by-side, and the quality stuff is usually pretty cheap

If only Canada would accept us US refugees as such and make it easier for us to move there… As it stands now, by the time we’re able to make a move that direction we’ll be ghastly old men…

From Leex:

“… Next time someone who knows someone who might one day turn out to be queer considers voting conservative, this is what they’d be voting for. And no, their tax bracket is not a good counterargument.”

And to those libertarian-rightists who doubt how someone can be pro-trade and anti-conservative, I offer you the endorsement of Kerry for President published by The Economist on 28 October. Not your usual liberal rag, the Economist is thought by many on the authoritarian left to be a rather vile and despicable mouthpiece for corporate swine.

All I have to say is this: real businessmen value economic freedom above any and all types of government intereference in economic matters, whether it helps or hinders their business or industry. If a businessman is caught advocating any sort of government involvenent in his industry, his very abilities and intelligence as a businessman should be questioned.

Which returns to the common perception held by just about everyone with whom I’m capable of having any kind of intellectual discourse: Americans who support the current administration are just plain dumb.

Siouxsie is my hero.