Looking at: JohnWatts.ca

Recently Ontario held it's municipal elections, where every town voted a bunch of people, and no one really cares outside of Toronto. My home town of Grimsby kept the same mayor we've had for like, ten years, Toronto got rid of the family Ford, and the town of Welland, where I went to school, ousted it's resident asshat Barry Sharpe for the decidedly less insane Frank Campion. The latter of these is particularly interesting, because as anyone from Welland can tell you it's a terrible town. One resident wanted to change all of that, so he put his name on the docket, ran for mayor, and lost hilariously with only 400 votes. That man was John Watt. 

I'll be deviating from my norm of looking at video games or shitty movies because today, we're going to be looking at John Watt's home page of JohnWatts.com. Holy shit. 

I'll be providing screenshots throughout, but to really experiance it you should all go to the source, here. (Link now offline, unfortunately) Everything in Italics is verbatim from his site, nothing has been edited. 

Title Page

We begin with the title page, appropriately named Title Page. He begins with a parental warning that, while there isn't any profanity on his website, there are medical explanations and descriptions of sexual events. He then follows it up with this cryptic statement, that almost reads like a threat:

"Please be forewarned:

Reading johnwatt.ca will surely add to your knowledge, but the sad evils you find will only bring you down."

It's worth noting right away the various issues with formatting his site has. I asked my little brother, a web designer, what the hell was going on and the best he could figure is that John has, for some reason, created a series of text boxes and overlapped them, making it REALLY hard to read. 

"I am typing this myself as Welland Mayoral Candidate John Watt and as Master John Alexander Hay Watt, known to be a Prince of Scotland. "

Not that John's writing helps the readability any on it's own. I don't know what that statement means. Is he a prince of Scotland? Is he a Prince cover band from Scotland? If either statement is true why is he running for mayor of Welland, Ontario?

"Mayoral Candidate John Watt is still walking and talking as a candidate. Working the phones for something to do because I'm waiting around so many, might not seem like a big thing to do, but it became the reason for an Ontario, Canada, Quebec, with Egypt, international change for security reasons, and those were my insecure domain and paranoid Bell business number."

Holy hell, what the fuck even? Settle in readers, I'm going through this entire site piece by piece to try and figure out what's going on here. 

"Degenerate and sadistic behavior at the Welland Hospital is nothing new. The use of new drugs to sexualize men while hypnotizing them isn't new either. That's one of the big reasons I'm a mayoral candidate. 

Dr. Khumaran and his 2 South crew got into me in 1985, when I didn't get to any of the four mayoral debates."

I can honestly say I've never been to the Welland hospital, but I have heard relatively pleasant things about it, as far as Ontario hospitals are concerned. I sure as hell have never heard of "degenerate and sadistic behavior" although, to be fair, if I was a hospital administrator I'd try to keep that under wraps. A quick Google search does reveal that a Dr. Khumaran does work at Welland hospital where he has relatively good reviews from most patients. 

"It's not like me to voluntarily defuse, when just saying a name goes way beyond con-fuse.

But I'm hearing comments that are blaming me, about when others are made to choose,

so being John Watt let's light up what I've got, so here's a meditative poem you can use.

Do you think you have to choose between living in Ward's World or Watt's World?

There is no Watt's World. You don't have to choose.

Don't vote for me and then I'll lose.

If you want to call me a rat, what's that?
I was first being called a rat by the Ward Gang at Fitch Street School.
Every social service agency in Welland has been calling me a rat ever since.

Yvette Ward called the police and got me arrested four times in two years,

for saying they were a crime family, to keep me from handing out campaign statements.

No evidence was presented at all, charges were dropped, before they became Hell's Angels.

I have never called the police on any member of the Ward family.
I say I don't want to press anything against them.

The police don't call Yvette Ward a rat. 

They call her the matriarch of a crime family. Jus'sayin'."

Welland has one of the highest concentration of aspiring rappers I've ever seen. Many of my friends from school practiced the art of amateur rapping, as did a number of normal Welland residents I met while living there. Google once again has the answer as to who Yvette Ward is, revealing that she's the founder of Welland's multicultural center, a lifelong volunteer, and oh yeah, winner of a Govenor General's Caring Canadian Award (thanks goes to the Welland Tribune). Last I checked, winners of volunteer awards don't run crime families or deal with the Hell's Angels. As for the cops refering to Mrs. Ward as the "matriarch of a crime family" no, no they haven't. 

"I'm not typing this just to sound American, like the closing owner of Zeller's at the Seaway Mall. People who write letters of complaint to the Tribune can be identified by facial recognition cameras in the Seaway Mall, and someone could come up to you and tell you not to write letters any more, and say what will happen if you do. Or show you parking lot photos that are enhanced more than you are. I've been told not to use the computers at the library because they can look at their servers to see my Bell domain build codes, having spy options."

I've spent quite a bit of time at Welland's Seaway mall and can say, in all honesty, they don't have facial recognition cameras. The scant security they do have at Seaway amounts to graduates of Niagara College's police foundation program, and a handful of surveillance cameras, circa 1983.

"No, when I finally get a pay-cheque with all that back pay when I'm finally sworn in as Mayor, I'll nominate and second our new Niagara Regional Police Chief as mayor, and then I take the money and travel around. Getting nominated as a political candidate in Welland means paying to fill out a nomination form yourself, $200, so I'll use my own money. Whenever I'm filling out forms like this at city hall I always comment about what it is and how it's being used, and no-one has ever disagreed. "

So your promise is that as soon as you get paid you'll nominate a new Police Chief as mayor, then take the money and do some traveling? Does he think being mayor is a get rich quick scheme? According, once again, to the Welland Tribune, previous Welland mayor Barry Sharp pulled in a little under 90k per year. Not a bad wad of cash to be sure, definitely more then most people, but it's hardly "travel the world" money, and Barry Sharp was so corrupt that the next mayor probably won't be getting that much. As for the last part of this paragraph, no one disagrees with John at city hall because no one at Welland city hall cares about their job. They are the definition of bureaucratic zombies, only there to punch the clock. They just don't have the time or the will to talk to some random crazy person about how the town is spending it's money. 

Real good example of the formatting I was talking about before on the second half of this page. Click the image above to see what I'm talking about. 

"I had complaints about City Manageress Craig Sturtzinger printing out 142 copies of all candidate's material, getting his load up van size, saying that many might run, as he fast-tracked finances. Courteous, and for me, very fresh-faced and pretty, city hall staff later told me they cut that back to four copies."

I had to literally copy/paste that sentence to another document to read it since it was hidden behind another text box. Not that it was worth the effort, since it doesn't make a lick of sense. Searching for Craig Sturtzinger brought me to Craig Stirtzinger, the very male city manager of Welland under Barry Sharpe. 

"Last night, a King Street pizzeria employee and I were talking about how quiet it is, and when I said you must hear more about it than me, she told me about hearing about a King Street business owner and a big police raid. She said the police said it was like a warehouse, and it would take over two days just to catalogue everything."

I assume he's referring to this raid. Drug raids are a pretty common thing in Welland, as is pizza. I imagine this is a pretty normal night for Mr. Watt. 

"During the last election, at a Niagara College candidates meeting, Councillor Paul Grenier came in and sat across from me, making loud grunts and snorting when I was talking because he didn't like what I was saying. At No Frills, I wasn't sure he saw me walking right past him as he stood at the checkouts, looking like he had a wide-eyed blank stare. I was coming back to my cart, getting something while waiting in line, and gave him a little cougar's snarl as I walked by, with no reply."

I'm no political expert, but I don't think snarling at city councillors [sic] is such a good idea. I know it was a bit of a dick move for him to snort and make noises while you were talking, but if your website is any indication, what you were saying was crazy. 

"I received applause every time I spoke, with all the loudest applause. The other candidates received applause less than half the time, and towards the end, none. The first real hostile wave of electoral intent occurred when Mayor Barry Sharpe grabbed the microphone again after his time to explain again what he was trying to say the first time. Councillor Bill Campion saw this obvious distress and obviously decided to play it safe, repeating transparency and jobs a lot. I was waiting for him to imitate Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and say money, money, money, let's save money, but he didn't. And it was about water pressure and ambulance access, what are supposed to be municipal basics."

This actually might have happened. Politics in Welland is pretty dumb at the best of times, so the audience in attendance might have taken poor Watt for a comedian. As for the actions of  Barry Sharpe, he's been known to have outbursts during council meetings before so this is also possible. As for "Coucillor [sic] Bill Campion" no such person exists, and he's probably referring to then councilor and new mayor Frank Campion. 

"It's a good thing I brought a couple of artworks, using two tripod speaker stands to hang them at a nice eye level. There was artwork hanging all around the hall, all of it looking professional, everything from quaint to psychedelic, all works by the residents. All hand-made, I'd like to add. I explained the large cranberry blossoms at daybreak was made with magic markers from Dollarama, on a cardboard pallet divider from No Frills. The orca looking around arctic ice was done with Dollarama paint. I asked the audience to judge the quality of both works against the less than $5 total cost. That got a lot of ooo's and aaah's."

I don't think your supposed to bring artwork to be appraised to a council meeting. I would, however, pay good money to see what kind of artwork he can make out of magic marker and Dollarama quality paints. 

"The longer the question and answer went, the easier it was for me. I might have lost it a little bit, talking about my mother and my brothers picking strawberries, singing and dancing around out there when it was Crowland, shouting out this is my land, yeah, I really meant that. I was feeling it. There wasn't a roof over me, just something blocking out the night sky. The audience wasn't just asking questions any more, they were taking turns behind the mike to make accusations and describe the willful neglect of city hall to all of them. I was just having fun sitting there looking around, people smiling and winking at me."

"Lost it" might be the most truthful statement here, as he clearly regressed into a fantasy world at this point. I don't doubt people were mad about the actions of City Hall, that's pretty normal for Welland, but the people smiling and winking probably weren't directing them at you. 

"Oh yeah! I talked about politicians and priests who have been arrested for sex crimes from my first election, in 1985, to the last election, and how the "most flamboyant pedophile" was sent to run Memorial School as principal, after Crowland was appropriated, and how his grandson is a council member now"

Snarling at councilors and now talking about how one of their grandfathers was a pedophile? That's the way to win elections!

"Yeah! I'm going to sharpen my ball-hockey stick. Hey, hey, that's just in case I have to deflect, not

genuflect. And I genuflect before no man, not even in the arena change room where politicians change, 

or before a woman and her crime family. Never have, never will. "

Hey man, you "genuflect" on your own time. 

"I have attended a few city hall functions there, and use a butter knife from the Sir William Lyon McKenziehouse that I found during a dig, before it was finished as a museum. They said it was too rusty to restore, with a cracked ivory handle, so it was mine as a souvenir. William Lyon McKenzie led a revolt, all those Fonthill plaques about farmers killed, against the "Family Compact", the rich English and French, and created Ontario and Quebec. He became the first mayor of Toronto. What did he do? He brought his own printing press over from Scotland and started to inform the people of Ontario what their political rights were."

Oh, ok. 

Note: JohnWatts.ca has since gone offline, so I'll never get to properly examine the rest of it.