Election Liveblogging, Condensed Version

Sound trucks are fucking annoying. (Sorry Tourism 3B.)

Municipal elections are boring. They feature candidates with these kinds of slogans.

a. 'Yes, I Do.' (in English) Yep. That's the guy's slogan. "Shr de, wo yuan yi" his team thoughtfully translates for us through the marvel of modern technology that is called the small blue truck with massive loudspeakers mounted on every side.

b. 'Young, Fresh, Active' (in Chinese) Am I voting for a candidate or a tampon?

c. Jason Hu called up my house and told me that even though he'd been to 160 countries, Taiwan was most important to him...and this really inspired me to vote for him. After all, he must know that sounds trucks are not used in at least 150 out of those 160 and be willing to bring Taiwan up to an international level of sound pollution control. Rigggght?

But don't worry Taichungers, no matter who you vote for, they ALL offer great service to the people of Taichung...In fact, I am confident my suggestion to ban sound trucks is being implemented as we speak.

The only one candidate whose advertising proposed anything concrete was the DPP mayoral candidate whose campaign featured billboard ads stating a various goals, and the phrase, "It's what I have to do." Wow, sounds so substantial! What's he promising?

50,000 job opportunities. (Do the math...at NT$ 20,000 salary per month times 50,000 people, in city of one million people...NT$ 1,000 per person every month to pay for this.)

10,000 surveillance cameras. (Again, that's a lot of cash, and 10,000 is butt load of cameras.)

Bike paths. (Yep. Right. Sure. Let me know when you have solved the double parking problem and banned sound trucks.)

Finally, are any of the candidates aware that firecrackers and bottle rockets are ILLEGAL in the R.O.C.?