Some people near me in the iPad line-up outside the Apple store are talking about the different types of fibre optic cables.

Pause.

You know, I think no jury would convict me for what I am thinking about doing right now.

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Okay, now they are talking about the many uses of the “F1” key.

Fortunately, I am in the United States, so I can readily purchase a firearm to shoot myself with.

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A guy from Burlington just showed up with a knapsack with solar panels on it.

Pray for me.

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I’m in a line-up with about 20 hardcore Apple nuts at the Galleria Mall in Buffalo. There are actually two line-ups – one for losers like me, who didn’t “reserve” an iPad, and one line-up for losers who did.

A guy beside me, an engineer, asked a guy in the reserved line why he was lined up three hours before the store opens, and the guy shrugged and said: “Now we’re guaranteed guaranteed.”

I have fully, completely stepped into The Land of the Nerdlings. God help me.

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So this kid at the Apple store in Buffalo looks at me like I’m crazy – crazy – when I say I don’t want to line up at 2 a.m.

As my daughter says: “Dad, it’s just an oversized Touch. Get a grip.”

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Here it is, folks! The iQueue paid off!

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• Who’s winning? Well, no one, actually.  As I told the Globe’s lovely and charming Gloria yesterday, the Harper Reformatories can’t get anywhere near majority territory – and the margin, still, is more or less the margin of error.  If folks are feeling good, it’s because of the weather.  Not what’s happening, or not happening, in Ottawa.
• Which leader leads? I don’t put much stock in online-only polls: they sacrifice random sampling, and therefore accuracy, for lower costs for the pollster.  That said, Ignatieff clearly needs to address the fundamentals, here – and, in particular, with women voters.  Losing further ground with Canadian women would be very, very unhelpful.
• The Google Rule: Too many politicos, of all stripes, do the kind of stupid stuff “Happy Fingers” Guergis’ staff did.  They’ve been doing it for a long time, in fact.  In the digital age, however, it’s very risky behaviour – because a one-second Google search will tend to expose you.
• Coulter’s cabal: Gerry Caplan pens an important column about how assorted extremists who – as Jim Keegstra, Ernst Zundel and assorted others did before them – profess to be preoccupied with “free speech,” when their main preoccupation is the freedom to propagate hate against pretty much everyone else.  Worth reading.
• The Creba verdict: The tragic death of this young woman didn’t just change Toronto, as the Star headline suggests – it changed the country. After that terrible day, my friends at Ipsos subsequently showed, Stephen Harper took the lead over Paul Martin – and he never looked back, ending 13 years of Liberal rule.  The income trust issue was not what defeated the Liberal government – it was law and order.  And if the issue is law and order, conservatives always tend to win.
• Happy iPad weekend! My kids will be in Ottawa this weekend – so I will be road-tripping Stateside, to line up and purchase Apple’s latest gadget for me and one of my many lawyers.  Watch this here web site for regular updates and W@AL instalments about my quest.  I’m betting I won’t get one – but it’ll be entertaining to try.
• Finally, from my friend Rachel, currently in France – the definition of redundancy:

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About 95 per cent of you weren’t fooled for a minute.  Some who who were – people I know! – were sucked in, hook, line and sinker.  Shame, Mr. Speaker, shame!

Anyway, if you still need me to show my bona fides, I can report that CBC’s elves passed along Iggy with Strombo.  Don’t have the embed code, only the link.

Ha!  Gotcha!

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Time for a confession.

It’s been whispered about, here and there, for a few months.  I’ve had some friends and former co-workers ask me about it, too.  And there has even been some Internet speculation, by people I don’t even know.  It’s been…strange. And I have to say that I haven’t particularly liked being less-than-candid with certain people.

But the speculation is true.  It’s true.

How you are when you are younger is well and good, but how you are when you get older – so goes the cliché, anyway- is almost always different.  You get older, you change.  That’s just the way it is.  It’s certainly been that way for me.

Some of you may have noticed, therefore, that my enthusiasm for certain things – and for one “thing” in particular – has waned, in the past year or so.  I hardly mention it at all anymore, if at all.  There’s a reason for that.  The reason is I just don’t believe anymore.

I could dress it up in all kinds of finery, and all sorts of self-justification.  But I won’t.  I’ll just say it, instead.

Last night, I tore up one piece of paper – and went online to get a new piece of paper.

From these people.

For me, right now, it was the right thing to do.  It wasn’t easy, but it feels right.

For those of you who are upset, or don’t understand, I’m sorry.  But it was time – and it was time for me to make my little confession.

Good luck and God bless.

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