Tag Archive: 2003 Year in Review

News Flash: Don’t leave home without insect repellent on threat of West Nile virus bearing mosquitoes.  Hot Flash: Don’t spend more than 15 minutes in the sun without sunscreen. Crawling Flesh: Don’t mix sunscreen with insect repellent for fear of blood poisoning.  Embarrassed Flush: Don’t wear sunscreen/insect repellent to school/work for fear of annoying those with hypersensitive olfactory disorders (previously referred to as hypochondriacs).

The failure of the Beagle 2, Earth’s latest Mars probe, makes it 21 of 37 attempts to visit Mars that have been either totally or largely unsuccessful.

We all suspected that it was “crap” – now it is official.  A recent study has determined that offices of the world are using 43% more paper today than they did in 1999.  Although experts are at a loss to “flush” out the underlying reasons, government insiders believe it will create enough of a “stink” to warrant having somebody’s friend commissioned to assemble a multi-million dollar “White Paper on the Presence of Paper in the Paperless Office” report. Ordinary “grunts” say that it was the last multi-trillion dollar serving of Year 2000 scares and contingency planning that was “dumped” on our offices of the future by these same experts that is at the “bottom” of it all (and their proposed white paper is just another idea that sounds good on paper).

Time magazine weighed in on the Canadian bashing circuit by anointing the American soldier their “Man of the Year” while, at the same time, “fingering” gay couples as Canada’s “Newsmaker of the Year“.  Granted, the American army is tough, but apparently our cows get madder than theirs, so you can rest assured that they will think twice before invading.

SARS kills 44. In a related story, Canada’s burgeoning baby boomer demographic, suffers a mid life crisis en masse during a nationally televised SARS benefit concert outside Toronto when the Rolling Stones and a host of other geriatric bands from the 60’s add more than a few new “wrinkles”  to rock and roll by strutting their stuff in spandex and loud pink).

$2 billion is lost when one mad cow kills 700,000 cattle (after the Canadian government authorizes the destruction of 10% of the Canadian herd).  Later, one mad cow in the U.S. causes 220 million fingers to point north.

British Columbia spends $500 million to fight 825 forest fires that resulted in the evacuation of 50,000 residents and at least $250 million dollars in insurable property damage.  Showing that she had a sense of humor, and proving that you should be careful what you pray for, Mother Nature followed up with monsoon rainfalls that sparked devastating floods in BC.

Another year of scorching heat and moisture-sucking winds make this the longest drought Canada’s Prairie Provinces have seen in 135 years, beating even the Depression era Dust Bowl conditions.

The Great North-Eastern Blackout, the largest power failure in North American history, leaves 10 million Canadians and over 40 million Americans in the dark.

Hurricane Juan makes land fall in Nova Scotia killing 100 million trees and causing $180 million in property damages.

West Nile Virus kills nine and scares everyone else (except possibly the pharmaceutical companies, who are seeing dollar signs; and about a billion others around the world who are more preoccupied with malaria – but can’t afford to pay the prices demanded by Big Pharmaceuticals for required drug treatments).

Courtesy of the Mad Cow scare, Canadian beef prices at auction plummet from 55 cents/pound to15 cents/pound, but beef prices at your friendly grocer and fast food emporiums remain relatively unchanged.  Perhaps they plan to channel some of those profits back to struggling ranchers …but I don’t think the ranchers or the Government are cownting too much on that.