Tag Archive: Headlines

Our “run this country like a business” Conservative Party who have long ascribed to the mantra pigs will fly before we would ever run a deficit, proudly announce they will record a $33.7 billion oops $50billion (and counting) deficit. Oh well, the headlines everywhere were reading “swine flu” so at least their mantra is unimpeachable.

Lost in the “Big Deal” (especially if you were marketing the vaccines and other associated drugs) surrounding H1N1 was another “big deal” over a little pig. Technically they are called micro pigs and they are the latest must have “arm candy” pet sensation that the still rich and famous celebrities of the world are falling over each other to acquire. Word has it that the little guys literally “flu” off the shelves and there is a world-wide shortage as irate celebrities everywhere are lining up to get theirs.  Micro pigs start out as big as a teacup.  Two years later the pigs are fully grown – but still only weigh up to 65 pounds and stand at around 14 inches tall. They are clean, sweet, and they love to be around people. David and Victoria Beckham have scooped up two, reportedly at a cost of over $1,200^US each.

Egyptian officials in Cairo outstrip the competition in what can only be described as a race among world leaders to overreact in a “pig” way.  Fearing for their lives they order the immediate extermination of every living pig in the greater Cairo area only to realize that the pigs were the foundation of Cairo’s garbage disposal system.  At last report, Cairo is still sweltering in mountains of garbage that have no ready means for disposal.

“The whole area is trash. All the pathways are full of trash. When you open up your window to breathe, you find garbage heaps on the ground.”

– Ramadan Hediya, Cairo resident

A picture of 735 ships at anchor off the coast of Singapore with no where to go pretty much summed things up in early 2009

Speaking of ships and tough times, you can really tell the economy has tanked when the pirates have downsized from pirate ships to pirate skiffs.

(Hurting) Headitor’s note:  Its late, its New Years Eve, and I’SATIREd, sauced please accept that some (or all) of my ^wrec_kollections of the year gone by might be a bit scotchy.  You should double-check my fracts with some more staid and reputable news sources before using any of the stories that I have dismembered from last year in a serious conversation.

According to Dr. Vini Khurana, a leading cancer researcher, it won’t be so very long before the bees are not the only ones that will be disappearing. He issued a startling warning in April 2008: “cell phones could kill more people than smoking.” In a new study he found a growing body of evidence that using a cell phone for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer.

An otherwise impressive and extremely tasteful opening ceremony for the Summer Olympic Games is marred by the spectacle of 1000’s of athletes marching into the stadium waving and/or talking on their cell phones.  Meanwhile, the Canadian contingent does us something less than proud as they marched in decked out with hats perched sideways, swinging our flag in a spastic, epileptic fashion and proudly displaying other Canadian flags that were disrespectfully scribbled over in a graffitiesque signature fashion.  Canada sent 332 athletes which was the 7^th largest contingent at Beijing.  We finished 14^th out of the 204 countries in attendance by walking away with a total of 18 (3 gold, 9 silver and 6 bronze) medals.  Hard to say how many of the 18 medal winners were phoning it in with the adolescent opening day gangsta mob we saw, but I know for a fact that at least one of the gold medalists wasn’t  – because he was a horse.

Suggestion for our 2012 Olympic Committee (from a reasonably successful albeit unpaid championship athlete and coach): It might be an interesting exercise for some university psychology major and/or whoever is responsible for selecting and funding our next army of Olympic hopefuls to review the films of the 2008 opening ceremonies to determine who was focused on the events to come and who was already celebrating (as in the “what are you trying to celebrate” sense of the word) the pinnacle of their 15 minutes of Olympic fame.

As our Canadian dollar soars at and/or above par with the U.S. Dollar, manufacturers lament its threat to lost exports even as they fail to pass the savings along to us.  For example, Bombardier, Canada’s darling of industry (measured against their industrious pursuit of Canadian tax dollars to stay afloat), sells its made-in-Canada Ski-Doo Legend Touring Model for $10,199 in Canada and $8,349 in the U.S., a difference of 22%.

Amid outcry’s that the massive discharge of energy from a new particle generator that lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland could create a tiny black hole with the potential to consume the entire earth, that generator, 27 kilometers in circumference went online on 10 September 2008. Nine days later on 19 September 2008, operation of the new particle accelerator was halted due to a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets.  Coincidentally, this was about same time that the global financial markets started to melt down and governments began throwing good money after bad at bankers and financial institutions everywhere even as people were reporting a giant sucking sound coming from Switzerland. [Okay, I’m making up the part about the sucking sound coming from Switzerland, although, as the banking Capital of the world, who can blame me?]