The election I get to vote in (for now; see results) happened yesterday.
I’m still processing the results, as I imagine the officials are. But they look about as shit as I expected.
There.
A massive, massive upswing for the racist, misogynist, LGBTphobe populist party, which is no surprise because at least half the human species is fucking borderline non-sentient. And a big upswing for Kokoomus, the main joke about which is that you can take any internet meme and replace all the text with “kokoomus” and have the meme still make sense. They’re useless as … well, as a racist, misogynist, LGBTphobe populist trying to formulate local or national policy. Which we’ve all seen, but let’s vote to see them do it again and a-fucking-gain for some reason.
Vittu. Fuck humanity. Fuck everything. Another step along a path I’ve been warning people about for fucking decades now. Might rant more later but for now this is enough to break my long blog-drought on. Nice to be back.
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About Hatboy
I’m not often driven to introspection or reflection, but the question does come up sometimes. The big question. So big, there’s just no containing it within the puny boundaries of a single set of punctuationary bookends.
Who are these mysterious and unsung heroes of obscurity and shadow? What is their origin story? Do they have a prequel trilogy? What are their secret identities? What are their public identities, for that matter? What are their powers? Their abilities? Their haunted pasts and troubled futures? Their modus operandi? Where do they live anyway, and when? What do they do for a living? Do they really have these fantastical adventures, or is it a dazzlingly intellectual and overwrought metaphor? Or is it perhaps a smug and post-modern sort of metaphor? Is it a plain stupid metaphor, hedged around with thick wads of plausible deniability, a soap bubble of illusory plot dependent upon readers who don’t dare question it for fear of looking foolish? A flight of fancy, having dozed off in front of the television during an episode of something suitably spaceship-oriented? Do they have a quest, a handler, a mission statement, a department-level development objective in five stages?
I am Hatboy.
https://hatboy.blog/2013/12/17/metalude-who-are-creepy-and-hatboy/
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Oh, they’re also the party with the most actual fucking repeat-offender criminals in it. So there’s that. Keep voting, fucklecunts.
And as for Kokoomus … I’m not kidding, this almost managed to cheer me up. Check it out.
Mrs. Hatboy, actual election official and academic, has talked me down somewhat over this.
Changes overall are very small. The total seats lost by our coalition were relatively minor, and while the Persut did gain some seats, it was nowhere near the win they were polled to get and that they were crowing about leading up to the election. Any gain is bad, but this could have been worse.
Furthermore, a couple of gross hardliners up-country were attempting to run as independents because the True Crims wouldn’t even take them, and they lost their seats altogether. So well done to those voters.
Voting percentage overall was dismal, but that seems unavoidable. And most importantly, it is a known trend for the ruling parties to do badly in municipal elections, because it’s meant to be a wake-up call that voters know the politicians are doing fuck-all and are at risk of being voted out if they don’t get their thumbs out of their arses. So it’s not all bad.
And Kokoomus are the rural party, so that could be worse too. They’re not evil.
Even so…
G’day Hatboy. I don’t understand any of the words but I believe I get the emotional gist. But it is nice to hear from you.
Little bit of a break-down and mitigating of the bad news added now, thanks to Mrs. Hatboy who was working at the polling station yesterday as always. I’m overall pretty despondent but it’s hard to say if it’s because I’m living in a place where so many people apparently hate me and everything I hold dear, or … *gestures wearily at every-fucking-thing*
Well fucking hell! I don’t understand how the right-wing nuts are gaining so much influence around the world! Their main philosophy is hatred and violence…why is that so appealing? I hate…hating.
Like honestly, I wish I could safely ask each Trump voter what the hell Trump has actually done to materially help them. Not words, not feelings, what has he actually DONE to change things for them. Because it’s nothing.
And meanwhile over here in the US the Democrats are doing their best to trip over their dicks and vaginas (and that latter one is REALLY hard so they’re almost impressive TBH), and I’m bracing for Republican takeover of another branch of the government (they already took over the judiciary) in 2022, and the third in 2024 and fuck. We may never have Democracy again after that point.
We’re still a healthy pluralist democracy as far as I can tell, even if that pluralism isn’t organized quite as I’d like it to be. We still score extremely high in the Economist Groups’ Democracy Index (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index), so I’m cool.
But that 55,1% vote is fucking pathetic. Almost feels too small to be healthily representative.
Agreed on all counts.
So as a Hatstand straw poll, is compulsory voting an alien and unacceptable concept to you all? Totally normal to me here in Aus and ensures a decent voter turn out, even if it is just to draw dicks on their voting slip (standard Australian defiant response to being forced to vote, at least they are still bothering to turn up and make a statement as to their political views).
Obviously as an ex-pat I’m familiar. I actually think it’s a good idea, it allows the government to get some money from non-participating members of society and normalises the idea that having a voice in elections is a part of the price of living in a democracy. And there isn’t, to my knowledge, anywhere near the level of shitfuckery about preventing various groups from voting, since everyone has to.
There may still be a certain amount of a) keeping people from voting in order to collect fines from them, b) “legal” reasons a person may be stricken from the voting register that is unfairly weighted against minorities? In Finland, even people in prison are allowed to vote (Mrs. Hatboy has worked in prisons to help advise convicts accordingly). Is that a thing in Australia?
This is from an Australian Electoral Commission fact sheet:
Prisoner Voting
Can prisoners enrol and vote in federal elections?
If you are serving a sentence of less than three years, serving a sentence of periodic detention, on early release, or on parole you are entitled to enrol and vote if you are an Australian citizen and aged 18 years or older. If you are serving a sentence of three years or longer you are not entitled to enrol and vote. Once released from prison, you are entitled to enrol and vote. Different rules may apply to voting in state and territory and local elections. Contact the state or territory electoral authority for more information.
I’ve never heard of anyone being discouraged to vote, sausage sizzles and cake stalls the order of the day at every booth I’ve ever been to….
Aye, that’s what I suspected. Nice!
I’ve pretty much given up on America and will be either working towards moving to NZ or Ireland.
Also, surprisingly I found that there’s no Scandinavian DNA in my system which isn’t what my family has always been taught.. and I’ve actually managed a decent job of tracking my direct relatives and it seems that almost every single multi-great grandparent I can find in the 1840s came to the US from Ireland. Which matches the 100% Irish dna tests… so far their far right party has 0.1% of the vote.
On to more author facepalmy stuff I wanted to share with you, I thought you might enjoy this goodreads rant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YU4uLFLP20
also: the moving thing isn’t exactly new. I chose my profession in ’12 because I wanted to move down there. ’tis a lovely place, and the PM seems awesome, and their covid response just cemented my decision.
Oh yeah, Daniel Greene has been my go-to for Wheel of Time TV show news and general opinions even though I’m pretty sure he was born after Usenet had already declined into stately ruin. It’s nice to see a new generation carrying the torch.
And Goodreads, yeah, I hear and see a lot about it being problem-filled, although I’m not remotely big-time enough for this sort of problem. Your toilet-tweet about your book gets 300 reviews? Poor fucking baby, I’m yet to get 300 reviews for all 17 of my books put together. I wish I had your damn problem.
As for moving, all I can say is good for you! Ireland seems nice although I’ve only been there for about a week, and New Zealand is great.
Both fucking cold though. I’m fucking cold. We had a maximum of 14 degrees celcius today and that is the lowest maximum I can remember and yes I’m soft and I don’t care and I want it to be summer.
When I looked at the annual temperature ranges of NZ it looked really fucking awesome to me. I wanna say, from memory, 40F lows in the heart of winter? That’s, like, balmy.
That is 4 degrees celcius. That’s what the minimum will be here overnight and it is not balmy. It’s like being in Melbourne FFS. It’s as cold as a witches tit in a brass bra and I don’t believe what any of you Hatstanders in your freezing countries across the world where you have heated houses and carpeted floors and roof insulation say. I’m a creature of the sun.
Christ, you are a fragile sunflower LMAO You can’t even call it “freezing” because it LITERALLY isn’t even freezing!
Fragile sunflower is exactly right.
Happy to own it. You can’t even call me a snowflake because I’d never survive being that cold. ❄️
Saw my first snow in New Zealand so it is forever filed under “very fucking cold place” in my mind.
It’s a battle of the climate primates!
It’s been over 30°C and about 90% humidity here in Helsinki since about 07:30 and we have been at an amusement park all day.
Here I am doing my best “racist homophobe about to drop his latest rant on YouTube from the driver’s seat of his truck”. Fuck this weather.
I wear the hat to dispel the overall look.
Awesome. 🙂
However, to be brutally honest, with that look and that hat, who’s to say you’re not just sarcastically trolling liberals?
Oooh, point.
Also, “Make Humanity Great Again” is very “All Lives Matter” isn’t it? Gah I’m problematic again.
Unfortunately Chuckster, Daniel Greene is a smarmy entertaining YT’er with devilish good looks and hair I am very jealous of. I’m surprised he only got 300 reviews before he found out about the shit show.
I have to stick it out and hope the world survives just one more year, otherwise I lose a lot of money they matched on my retirement. And then it’s off to sunny NZ.
Also, dude saying 40f is cold is hilarious…. try -25f last winter. So cold the LCD dashboard in my car didn’t work.
Hatboy please come to my global defence and put up a photo of that FRONT PAGE NEWS article that Perth got NEAR to freezing temperatures. That tells you not only how soft we are but also that nothing newsworthy happens here. It’s been a shock to the system, I tells ya…I needed a hot meat pie and sauce for breakfast just to fortify myself.
No bespoke picture service until I’m back from the lake and ideally not until the temperature drops below 30°C here again.
My new phone doesn’t seem to believe in paragraph breaks.
Oh well.