Binder unveils platform

[Re: “Ed Binder (!) for mayor,” Letters, Oct. 22] I would like to thank Andy Johnson for the mayoral nomination but I must decline the honour for the following reasons:

1) I’m hopelessly honest, an accursed trait of character which I’ve unsuccessfully fought all my life.

2) I’m not much good at making speeches loaded with clichés, stereotypes, banalities and false promises.

3) I detest kissing any babies under 18 years of age.

Nevertheless, the nomination got me thinking—what if I would run and enough intellectually challenged Montrealers would vote for me? What would I do for my beloved city? Improve its badly run apartments and dirty streets, about which some of the Mirror’s readers have been complaining? Perhaps. But that would not be my first priority. I have lived in some very clean cities in Europe, mostly in the Scandinavian countries, for instance, and I have found most of them to be hygienic but rather unexciting. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but it is not much fun.

Personally, I don’t find such supposed paragons of sanitation like hospitals, pharmacies, museums, the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa and funeral parlours to be exceptionally uplifting. Few leave such establishments laughing. On the other hand, the not so antiseptic Paris of my younger days was quite the opposite. Only a few puritanical souls might have noticed its littered streets—the overwhelming majority were too busy enjoying every minute of it.

What I would really want to accomplish as mayor is something more in line with improving the culture, bilingualism, Canadian unity, and most importantly, the matrimonial sexual monotony of Canadians in general. My first attempt would be to declare a weeklong husband/wife exchange between our city and the city of Toronto. An annual event to take place every February in order to take our minds off the miserable winter. For one week, every Montreal and Toronto husband, by mutual consent of course, would swap residences and live in each other’s cities and homes, which will result in a bonanza of benefits for all:

a) Husbands and wives might learn a few new marital skills and techniques.

b) Unilingual Torontonians and Montrealers might return home with a better understanding of each other’s language.

c) Torontonians could learn some proper Montreal driving manners. For instance: at a zebra crossing, one should immediately stop when a zebra is using it and ignore human pedestrians. They have no business being on zebra crossings. They could also learn that Montrealers never jaywalk—they walk through red lights like normal human beings, not hopping like birds.

If any of the Mirror readers like my mayoral platform, please let me know—I might change my mind.

>>Ed Binder

Forget Singh, vote Bergeron

[Re: “Ed Binder (!) for mayor?” Letters, Oct. 22] After endorsing Jaggi Singh for mayor, I admit it was sort of wishful satire. I’m taking Andy Johnson’s advice, and after reading up on the candidates, it seems obvious that Richard Bergeron and his Project Montréal team have the city’s true spirit down pat and have won my vote—especially as the two other parties are scandal-ridden.

I still think Singh is part of the solution and I encourage him to become part of Project Montréal—now that would be a Party!

>>Jonathan Wexler

Canadiens not sucking
so much ass

[Re: “Go Nordiques go,” Letters, Oct. 22] Not to nitpick, but David Miles seems to fail to understand the definition of “national.” National refers to the whole country—his beef is with the limitations on provincial hockey teams. Alberta aside, provinces (or most states, for that matter) don’t have more than one hockey team—hell, a lot don’t even have a hockey team—so what’s the big deal?

The Habs started the season essentially from scratch with a new coach and 3/4 of the players being new to the team this year. Despite this, they’re actually building chemistry pretty quickly, and if you were watching the games rather than just bitching about their win/loss record less than a dozen games into the season, you’d recognize that, David. Aside from a few holes in our defence, I’d say we’ve been playing very well (hardly “sucking ass” anyway).

>>Kenneth Sloan

Art Fag City mentioned

[Re: “Street View interpreted,” News, Oct. 22] This is Paddy Johnson writing from ArtFagCity.com. As you may or may not be aware, Jon Rafman first published his essay The Nine Eyes of Google Street Views as part of a series titled IMG MGMT this year on Art Fag City.

It was through our platform and promotion that Golden Age and Harper’s became aware of the work. Strangely, Art Fag City is not mentioned anywhere in your article.

>>Paddy Johnson

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