The Australian is calling it a Labor win. The Herald hasn't called it as such yet but the headline reads 'Rudd Close to Victory'. The AEC shows Labor needs the Greens to pass legislation through the Senate. I'm close to tears. The nightmare is over.

I'm going to bed happy and excited. I'm on a date with laughingstone (who got tired and went to bed before counting started, so we still had a date); I'll be treating her and traumentwerfer to a champaign breakfast in the morning.

I just got word of HowShouldIVote.com.au and tried it out. It's sponsored by GetUp.org.au, which is hardly sympathetic to the Government, but I don't doubt its neutrality: when I selected the opposite answers for what I believe in, it suggested I vote for Fred Nile's party, which is indeed the party I put last on the ballot. (This act also summoned the voice of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen into the back of my head—spooky!)

HowShouldIVote.com.au also gave me some insight into potential local members who I have otherwise overlooked—there's a young man named Stuart Bodlay running as independent, who I would have given higher preferences to if I'd known about him.

So if you're confused about who to vote for, I suggest you visit this site, at least to give you more of an idea of which parties to look at. Hopefully all of your candidates have completed the quiz.

... at least in Australia (where it's already Saturday), for Federal Parliament. And more than in any other election, it looks like the Howard Government is finally going out. I'm not holding my breath—they've trailed in the polls before and still managed to come back, most recently with a majority in both houses. The very latest polls do cause me some unrest, but they're still not suggesting the Government will necessarily be reelected. They'll probably just lose by less of a landslide. Right up until yesterday, the Government has never before trailed by that much nor so consistently, so my hope of tomorrow buying celebratory beers for complete strangers to Australian politics still feels better-founded than ever.

'The Howard Government has wrecked Australia more than the Bush Administration has wrecked the U.S,' I'll explain. I know they won't believe me, but it's true. Before Bush, Americans couldn't rely on a public healthcare system, nor could they choose a university to study at completely without regard to personal (or parental) income. The United States has never enjoyed a well-funded, commercial-free media network, and media ownership rules in general have never been that strong here. Progress on the rights of indigenous people and same-sex couples wasn't exactly stellar under Bill 'Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell' Clinton, and of course, the United States has never had a decent industrial relations laws—some U.S. state governments have stitched things together over the years, but nothing that would make an employer think twice about sacking an employee for frivolous reasons.

Australia had all these things before Howard. HECS was a flat rate and people weren't being 'encouraged' onto private insurance. The ABC was strong and the Prime Minister spoke about Aboriginal reconciliation with enough substance for the nation to be progressing on the issue, albeit frustratingly slowly. People could immigrate to Australia to settle with their same-sex partner, and of course we didn't have WorkChoices. We also didn't have that regressive new sales tax, in pre-Howard days, and on only one occasion in my entire life did somebody in Australia come and ask me for 'spare change', and it genuinely was because he was 20c short for a rail fare and would miss his train if he went to an ATM. I almost cried the first time I went back home and found some poor bastard reduced to asking strangers for money just to get by. I hadn't come back to my Australia; I was in Howard's Australia.

So I'm ecstatic about the prospect of the end of Howard's Australia. I won't have to suffer the national embarrassment of being from the only industrialised country (apart from America) not to have signed Kyoto—as recently as last year Howard was still denying the existence of global warming, so his greenwash of the last few months has absolutely no credibility at all. If he loses, Australia will also be pulled out of the Coalition of the Gullible—it may not make make much difference to Iraqis, but it will sure make Australians look more sensible. Maybe one day I'll be able to travel anywhere in the world without fear of harassment of my nationality, as all Australians once could.

Still, I'm not expecting Kevin Rudd to sharply turn the country around and charge it forward, boldly and progressively. As the media constantly points out, there's been a lot 'me-too'ism in this election—the Government's new policies sound a lot like what Labor has been advocating for ages, and Labor has mimicked many of the Government's election promises. It's as if Parliament was populated entirely by AOL users. For many, the main Opposition isn't really all that different from the Government, so commentators are comparing the 2007 Australian Federal Election to the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election, which people were saying didn't have much at stake.

Bullshit. The world would be quite a different place if Al Gore hadn't caved in and allowed Bush the Presidency in that questionable election. Even if Gore hadn't treated intelligence about the pending September 11 attacks with more care, he would've put more care into America's response to that day, instead of the uncontrolled chest-thumping that we've seen from Bush and his mob. And of course we wouldn't be in quite as much environmental hot water, either.

And this is Australia. Unlike America's electoral system which allowed a vote for Nadar in 2000 to split the progressive vote and deliver us Bush, we Aussies can vote for the candidates and parties we really want, and choose which of the two evils that dominate Australian politics we would settle for if we really had to. And while I'd enjoy witnessing a decisive rejection of the Howard Government in this weekend's election, what I really want to see is a minority Labor Government, where they have to pander to the parties I really like, the Greens and the Australian Democrats. (Sadly it looks like the latter will lose all their seats. Natasha Stott-Despoja, I will miss you.) It will be interesting to see how it plays out in the end, and I'll be at the edge of my seat all day.

I actually voted on Wednesday, at the Consulate downtown like I normally do. It was one of the smaller Senate ballot papers I've seen but if I'd turned it on its side it would still have been taller than the seven-year-old that was running around at work. As I anticipated, Karl Kruszelnicki was on the ballot paper (just as such; they didn't print his entire seven-word name). I've never seen the name of an individual on a ballot paper who I admired so much—I listened to Doctor Karl on Triple J right through my 20s, and I still download his podcasts—so my first instinct was to put a 1 in the box next to him. I paused to think about his politics, realised that I couldn't remember anything he said that I disagreed with politically, and gave him my primary vote anyhow. After that it was the usual... Democrats and Greens getting high preferences, Labor, along with parties I didn't know anything about, in the middle, and the Liberals and Nationals ahead only of One Nation, Family First and Fred Nile and his band of wowsers, taking advantage of my Australian birthright to put the people I really hate last.

It's unlikely that I'll be home tonight, but if anybody is interested in hanging out with me very early on Saturday local time, to listen to Roy and HG and exchange political rantings, please get in touch and we'll see what we can work out.

I ended up hanging out at home with the new housemates. Didn't do much; just listened to music and I met a few of their friends... I actually got to know my newest housemate a bit better one-on-one as well.

Later I went for a walk, through Buena Vista Park and over to Corona Heights, where I go to meditate. I swung back through the Lower Haight, where my favourite pizza place (Mystic Pizza) was open, so I grabbed a slice.

The City was quiet. Everyone was out of town, or keeping indoors for their Thanksgiving celebrations. I hope they all had a good time.

I did. While I love being welcomed into my friends' homes for Thanksgiving, and being part of their heartfelt family celebrations, I really hate the smell of turkey, and none of the other food that's served is ever appealing enough to make up for it. I'm sure it would be different if I grew up with Thanksgiving, but I didn't.

I deeply sympathise with somebody I really like at work, who had fallout with her family so she couldn't spend Thanksgiving with them; I'm glad that another of my work friends invited her to his thing. But I'm happy not having gone to anything like that. I am looking forward to whatever's in store at the Faery House, though—it'll be nice to be in that space again.

Enjoy your holidays, everyone. I'm going to enjoy a couple of quiet days off, and I look forward to being with you for whatever upcoming holiday that has a common meaning for us.

I had a new housemate move in yesterday. Actually, there are two, if you count the über-cute kitty that she has. I'm really excited about living with a cat again (We got a kitty! We got a kitty!) and the accompanying human is really cool too... even for somebody who doesn't have an LJ.

I'm enjoying having a new housemate move in, rather than being the new housemate. The only other time I've been in this situation was six years ago, in my other Castro-based home, and even though two new housemates moved in back then, it hardly counted. One was never home—I think I saw her a total of five times in the six months we cohabited—and the other's former employer in Sydney poached him back, throwing in international moving costs and paying out his lease.

Housemates always have differences, and over the years I've sorted out which differences I can live with, and which I can't. I think it's important to ask about the latter in housemate interviews, and leave the former to be sorted out after moveon. (It's the same as job interviews—some potential dealbreakers, which for me would include location and working hours, are best discussed in the 'phone interview, and you can leave details like money, natural light and time off until the negotiating stage, when you're sure they really want you.) My new housemate sounded like somebody who I could live with very easily during the interview stage, and the more I get to know her, the more true I find that to be. For example, during interviews I might test the water by asking if they'd be uncomfortable with me not dressing for a trip to the toilet in the middle of the night (a dealbreaker), and leave it until later to talk about trips to the shower in the morning (which would be annoying, but I'd rather put a towel around my waste than miss out on an otherwise good housemate). My housemate's response: 'I've lived with faeries'. Say no more. It turns out she does yoga at the faery house further down 14th Street... yes, that faery house.

I'm also rediscovering things about myself. For example, her standards of cleanliness are higher than those of anyone I've lived with since that other Castro house, and I like it. For years I've been accepting slightly lower standards—as long as things weren't gross or unhealthy or overly cluttered, it didn't bother me enough to make an issue out of it, or to do all the cleaning myself. But I suppose that over the years this experience has made me feel like I'm somewhat of a neat freak, and it's nice to discover that I'm not.

I'm still looking for another new housemate... I thought I had that worked out, but last week, after an assurance that she wanted the room and nearly a week of trying to pin down a mutually acceptable time to deal with the paperwork, the potential other housemate said she was moving in with a friend of hers. I should've gone with my initial gut feeling, which was that she was a bimbo, and not tell myself that that's mysogonist and get overwhelmed by positive references.

Update

jensolo has moved back into the country and she likes the place and I think she'd be excellent. My housemate also introduced me to an old friend who also seems a good candidate. It all comes down to timing... exciting times...