I took the bus home yesterday from work. While I was waiting, I watched cars go by. I noticed that some drivers were talking on their cell phones as they drove. I wondered how many drivers do that during the evening rush hour, so I thought I’d see how many cars I could count going by until I counted a car with a driver on the phone. How high do you think I counted? Up to 20? Maybe only up to 10? I’ll tell you, I never got past 6. Sometimes I only got up to 1. In a 15 minute span, it turned out that about 1 of every 3 or 4 drivers was talking on the phone. That’s 25%-33% of every driver I saw. Now that’s good news if you’re in the business of selling cell phones, I guess. Or maybe if you own a body shop, as studies have shown drivers who talk on a phone and drive are dangerous. In fact, they can be more dangerous than drunk drivers!

Granted, my little survey was not very scientific – but man, that seems like a lot of distracted drivers. And speaking as a regular bicycle commuter, let me tell all you talk ‘n drive jockeys out there something. YOU’RE NOT AS GOOD A DRIVER AS YOU THINK YOU ARE. There, I’ve said it. So put your hands on the wheel, and your eyes upon the road (and every 5 seconds your rear view mirror), please! Shut up and drive.

Canadians voted to move our country forward, if you believe what PM Stephen Harper says after the election on Oct. 14. He’s back in the big chair, running the show. I don’t know if he has any close friends who tell it like it is – those kinds of friends are good to have around you now and then. Just in case he doesn’t, let me volunteer (if not to be a friend, then at least to tell it like it is).

Stephen (I’m guessing you don’t like “Steve” or “Stevie”), seriously man, the fact is a heck of a lot of Canadians didn’t even bother to vote, and the ones that did were not voting to “move our country forward”. I think you need a little help interpreting the results, so here goes.

A lot of voters would have voted Liberal, except for a few things:
1. They’re still mad about the sponsorship scandal, and figure there’s probably more dirty laundry that we may never even get to see. Let’s just say the Liberals’ trust account is still in the red.
2. Mr. Dion is not so good in the English, which is what more of us speak more of. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s another little tick in the “no, not them again, at least not yet” box.
3. We don’t really know if they have much of a plan, except more of what they did before, which kind of reminds us again of how some of us are sore about point #1.
4. They were a wimpy self-serving opposition, complaining about everything Mr. Harper was doing (I won’t mention his party, because it seems to be his show alone) but choking it down, confidence vote after confidence vote, because they knew they couldn’t win an election. So thanks for standing up for…yourselves, Liberals.

More voters went to the NDP:
1. Because they still are mad at the Liberals and couldn’t face voting Conservative.

Voters went to the Bloc:
1. Parce que je me souviens

Voters went to the Green Party:
1. Because it’s a privilege and a responsibility to vote, and you’re not going to vote Liberal, yet (see above), Conservative (carbon schmarbon), NDP (saving that vote for the Liberals one day), and the Bloc (most of us don’t live in Quebec), so who else you gonna vote for?

So PM Harper, that’s how I see it. Too bad your government has the bench strength of the Maple Leafs during flu season. Guess you’ll have to keep doing it all yourself. It must be hard work keeping the wingiest of your party’s wingnuts muzzled, but hopefully you’ll still have some time left to do something meaningful for us (no, dropping the GST to 5% doesn’t count). And for Christmas, if you’re feeling generous, I’d like clean air, safe food, funding for clean energy projects and research, and finally, commit .7% of the GDP to aid for the world’s poorest nations. It’s the right thing to do, which hopefully means it’s the Canadian thing to do.

If you like Oasis, you’ll like Dig Out Your Soul. If you’ve never liked Oasis, well, there’s not much here to change your mind. This album finds the band pulling out all the usual Oasis sonic cues – distorted guitars, feedback, noise, chunky piano chording and lots of melodic hooks. On this outing, the band goes for a less dense sound than usual. Make no mistake, there’s still lots of arena-ready rock ‘n roll, but the audio quality seems a little cleaner, with more definition. Liam’s voice is less raspy on a lot of the numbers, and it’s not a bad thing.

The band stretches just a little, with some interesting harmonies and a few unexpected chord changes here and there. As usual, there are lots of tips of the hat to the Beatles. Zak Starkey gets a little space for a drum solo on the new classic ‘Shock of the Lightning’, ever so slightly reminiscent of Ringo’s moment on Abbey Road. On ‘I’m Outta Time’, Liam takes another swing at writing a Lennonesque piano ballad, like ‘Born on a Different Cloud’. This song has a stronger melody and a self assured, but not cocky, vocal delivery. Nice one. John Lennon’s voice makes a guest appearance in the background from an old interview.

More Beatles influence shows up on ‘To Be Where There’s Life’, with droning Indian instruments, and a melody lifted straight from another Liverpool band, The La’s (check out ‘Son of a Gun’). ‘The Nature of Reality’ starts off to make you think they’re about to launch into Helter Skelter, just for a second, before it detours.

If there’s any disappointment for Oasis fans here, it might just be in the lyrics, which occasionally feel lazy. How many songs have they done that mention “in my mind”, “peace of mind”, or “come in, come out”? But still, it’s another highly listenable album and Oasis fans will dig into their wallets to dig out their soul.

Because they’ve just pulled off the biggest theft in history, in broad daylight, that’s why. It must feel great giving away other people’s money to people who went and blew all the money they’d been given to look after previously. I seem to remember a story as a kid about the ant and the cricket, you know, how the ant scrimped and saved while the cricket lived for the day? Well, the crickets won this round, because the ants are going to pay.

Don’t think I don’t support some kind of bailout – it has to happen, absolutely. Most of the money in our economy doesn’t come from the mint. New money is mostly created as debt. Every time someone sits down and signs for a loan, a few keystrokes later, that money has been created. But if banks won’t even lend to each other, no one wants to be on the hook to create new debt if they can’t count on anyone to cover it. And in our society, no credit means no nothing. If you had to pay cash, starting tomorrow, for everything, could you do it? Me neither. Add to that the idea that your cash could become worth less each day, too, and see how that feels. So we take the hit now because the pain will be a lot worse if we don’t.

I think the main thing that really kills most of us about this whole mess is the fact that in the end, very few individuals will be held accountable. I expect the FBI and whoever else can investigate all they want, and the fact is most of the people who created the mess weren’t breaking the law. It’s just that things got deregulated to a point where they could get away with this kind of precarious banking and investing. And they got big bonuses when it worked out and a taxpayer-funded bailout when it didn’t. No consequences, really. You broke your bike? Sugar daddy here will just have to buy you a new one, because heaven forbid you should have to walk around like the rest of us.