Vote While You May

Referendum time is over, the results will fall in a few minutes. It is already a big success for democracy, as around 75% of the voters moved out of their houses to cast their ballots.

Too bad the question was stupid: yes or no. What can you do with that? Moreover the "thing" you had to decide on was not really a constitution but a genuine international treaty, the full monty, with everything written in lawyerish (a variation of gibberish). European Institutions prove here, time and again, that they are unable to understand the citizens they claim to govern.

They should have made two texts out of this big mess:

• A jolly constitution with a dozen of points, written in the vocabulary of an eight years old kid, and talking about peace, human rights, access to free healthcare, decent housing and jobs and whatnot. This constitution should have been approved by referendum.
  
  
• An international treaty for replacing the Nice Treaty, which monicker comes after the city on the French Riviera and not because it is nice in any way. This treaty should have been signed by politicians without asking anyone, if possible in a city of a newly enrolled country with an unpronounceable name, just for the fun of it (it has been so cool to slaughter the pronunciation of Maastricht for years !).

So we ended up with a yes-no question to this huge treaty. So, on one hand, there were hundreds of reasons to vote "no": it was very easy to find a paragraph one found confusing or risky, too liberal or not, too federal or not ; while on the other hand, there was only one reason to vote "yes", and this reason was a sloppy: "yeah, okay, I don't really like it 100% but go for it, you have my support on principle".

I might have found another reason to vote yes: to compensate someone who voted no for a bad reason. This is democracy. With a spin.

Old School

So today I went out to watch the latest adventures of the most famous asthmatic of the galaxy (or is he famous for his black clad?). Anyway, after asking for a ticket, the cashier asked me if I wanted the digital version (for an extra 50cts) or the 35mm film version? What the heck?

Hint: I am the kind of guy who, when finding an interesting article on the net, prints it out to read it. Now you understand the title of this post: I am pretty old school, on some subjects at least. And by the way, Joel, thanks a whole bunch for having printed-out your blog. I finally had access to this masterpiece of wit and wisdom.

So what did I answered to the cashier? Something like: Keep your over-head-projector de-luxe session for bit-maniacs and hit me with a ticket for a true cinema projection. I want the click-click and the spots and the hairs. And I want the color palette to change when the roll changes. Oh yeah, this is old school too.

First Post!

Well, that one was easy, at least much easier than posting the first comment in the Bile Blog.

So why starting a blog, today, in 2005, after all these years of refusal, on the false pretext that I had nothing interesting to say? Do I have now anything interesting to say? Only time will tell. Maybe I simply came to accept that, like anyone, even without anything interesting to say, I had to say it.

Or not?