"They blew it"

... is what my wife said to me as the grainy, Youtube quality video of Stephane Dion was broadcast over some national stations. I sighed, and then agreed.

Hard to disagree. While this whole battle for hearts and minds of the Canadian public may not make a whole hooey of difference to what's happening now over at Rideau Hall, but if the GG does grant prorogation to Harper, then this video will haunt the coalition's quest for legitimacy.

Harper's an idiot. While he stokes the fires of his man-made political crisis into a national unity crisis, he would have a helluva an easier time convincing the nation that the coalition is unstable due to incompetence more than anything else.

Mr. Dion, if you want to quell fears that you're not staging a coup d'etat, then it might help if you avoided making your video look like it was filmed by Al Qaida. For goodness sake: you have the ENTIRE CULTURAL COMMUNITY BACKING THIS COALITION... you could've probably gotten one of us to help you.

Well... I should probably calm myself down. All is not lost, of course. As an artist, I know what's like to occasionally fail miserably (scroll down, you'll find me). However, like Andy Field sez, "don't fear failure."

Here's an excerpt:

So what do you do when the dust settles on a show like that? After the polite and slightly pained smiles and thank-yous? What did (Orson)Welles think, standing there in the darkened theatre, after the acrobats and the stagehands and the chorus line had gone home? Did he agonise over what could have worked better, what he could have changed, how he might have worked harder? More likely, he was already charging blindly on to the next project; the songs and the dances and the collapsing scenery already a forgotten memory.

Onward friends. Onward.