Record Label To Release Posthumous Tom Connors album ‘Canadian IV: The Man Comes Around’

New disc to feature covers of ‘Last Saskatchewan Pirate’, ‘If I Had A Million Dollars’

National record label Canadian Recordings (Formerly Def Canada) has announced its intention to release a posthumous album of Tom Connors songs titled ‘Canadian IV: The Man Comes Around’. 

Top Ten Most Likely Names For The Next Pope

Faith Inaction: Pope On A Rope?

 With the shocking retirement of Pope Benedict XVI that even God himself did not foresee, the question on everybody's mind now is simple: What name will the next Pope choose to represent himself after molesting his way to the Papacy? (Actual molestation may vary)
 Well never fear, gentle sheep! I have consulted the crystal ball and placed a call to Satan for the juicy gossip, and what follows are the top ten most likely names to be selected by His Crotchetiness.

Twitter Guy + Horoscopes - January 18th, 2013

Click To Read In The Lethbridge Journal (LARGE PDF)

I know what we’re going to do today!

Did You Check The Hard Drive Room?

The federal government recently announced after a month-long ‘Do We Tell Them or Not?’ session that they maybe had possibly misplaced a hard drive that may or may not have contained the sensitive personal information of over half a million student loan borrowers. The information, which covers a period from 2000-2006, includes names, birthdates, social insurance numbers, turn-ons, favorite foods, and taste in music. Officials have begun to notify affected individuals now that they’re sure they’ve lost the drive, and plan to include a photo of a small cat captioned ‘I’m Vewwy Sowwy’ with every letter.

The Squeeze

Hurting for cash? Feeling the Christmas Hangover? Here are some quick, easy tips to tighten your wallet and get back to solvency without resorting to prostitution (again).

1)      Say Amen to Ramen – A staple of the poor-as-dirt diet since its invention, Ramen is the main export of the country of Ichiban. Made from a thick sawdust paste flavoured with small bags of green bits and coloured salt, it is sold in bulk for cheap and can be combined with other popular broke foods such as crackers or mustard to diversify the flavour profile.

2)      Take Advantage of Free – There’s free stuff everywhere, if you know where to look. People will throw out perfectly good stuff just because their dog peed on a bunch of it, and you can always find a good meal if you’re willing to brave the right dumpster. You think I’m joking, but there really are people who pay for school/debt/bills this way. Chez Dumpster, bon appetite.

3)      Sell Fluids, Not Organs – As you may or may not know, body parts are a multi-billion dollar black market industry (and depending on where you are, the ‘black market’ status is debatable). But while the foolish and the greedy will eagerly part out their organs for a quick payday, the truly wise leave their body intact and sell off their juices instead. There’s always an eccentric billionaire with a rare disease that is desperate for your plasma, or your bile, or your saliva or whatever, and he will pay through the wallet to get it.

Ground Control To Major Tom

Canadian Rocket Man Chris “The Moustache” Hadfield has gained quite a following on popular Internets hangout The Twitter recently, part of a growing wave of interest in space exploration cultivated primarily through social media. Along with the Mars Curiosity Rover, which briefly had its account suspended for tweeting nude photos of itself in a Martian hotel room, Hadfield has made NASA sexy again by offering the average person a way to see the world that so few ever get the chance to experience. As if that weren’t enough, he also has plans to become a pop sensation by writing and recording an album in zero gravity entitled ‘Suck on this, Justin Bieber’.

Twitter Guy + Horoscopes - January 4th, 2013

Click To Read In The Lethbridge Journal (LARGE PDF)

The Bold BBQ Taste You Crave, Now In A Bite-Sized Wafer.

Free 8x10 Portrait With Every Ticket

Lethbridge Regional Police are reminding drivers to watch where they speed, as 3 new red light cameras are scheduled to be installed around the city in early 2013. The new cameras are in addition to the three already in operation, which have awarded 20,000 motorists with NASCAR nominations and 500 more with red light tickets since the first one went up in 2010. Police have maintained that the cameras are meant to increase intersection safety and not city coffers, but did note that they appreciated the generosity of city speeders.

“I try to look at every ticket as a contribution to my daughter’s college fund,” says Inspector Perry Jones, “You chose to drive 110 km/hr through a red light camera you pass every single day, so I get paid enough to keep her from working as a stripper.”

Motorists will receive a warning in the mail for the first month that the cameras are active, immediately after which the harvest will begin.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

It’s a Christmas like any other for a high class Mob family in Montreal, until their beloved patriarch has a heart attack and faceplants into his bacon. Across the country in Vancouver, a mother of four is found in the toy aisle of her local Walmart clutching a toy her estate has since been billed for. Unable to pay for extravagant gifts like his ex-wife and her new husband, a divorced father of two hangs himself by the chimney with care. These gruesome scenarios are the kind of horrifying stuff I want you to imagine when I describe to you the deadly disease that could potentially be eating you from the inside out: Holiday Stress.

Stress causes 64% of all Non-Turkey Fatalities during the holidays, with the remaining 36% taken up by Over-Eating (16%), Improperly Prepared Stuffing (13%), and Alcohol (7%). A study by the Boston Holiday Institute in Chicago, Illinois found rats that had a difficult Christmas were 70% more likely to drink themselves to an early grave than rats that experienced an enjoyable one. Fortunately, BHI researchers believe they’ve isolated a compound in leftover turkey sandwiches which can be synthesized and resold to consumers as an overpriced ‘cure’ for Acute Holiday Stress Syndrome (AHSS). The proposed drug, Holidol, is expected to be on Pharmacy shelves just in time to stuff the stockings full of side-effects for Christmas 2013.

Twitter Guy + Horoscopes - December 21st, 2012

Click To Read In The Lethbridge Journal (LARGE PDF)

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

As I’m writing this, the media is reporting a man armed with assault weapons has massacred 20+ children and a number of adults. I’m sure by now you’ve heard about it a few hundred times. Nevertheless, I’d like to take this opportunity to focus my best wishes, hopes, vibrations and prayers on the people of Newtown (Formerly Oldtown).

Looking Forward To 2013

As we bid a fond ‘Ugh’ to 2012, and possibly all of mankind, we turn our attention now to the news stories that will shape the year ahead:

The Economy

At the end of 2012 everybody seems to be broke except the businesses posting record profits. America is days away from flinging itself off a self-proclaimed fiscal cliff, unable to make ends meet without either eliminating education from the budget or asking the wealthy to take a tax hike. As we move into 2013, be sure to join the Lethbridge Journal Financial Collapse Betting Pool and pick which nation you think will slip into bankruptcy next!

The Environment

2012 was the year that Mother Nature fought back, hitting mankind with an onslaught of superstorms, earthquakes, and general chaos. Our increasingly defiant defilement of nature in the face of mounting evidence will make 2013 a turning point. We’re running out of rainforest, we’re running out of oil, we’re running out of ozone, and we’re running out of time. I’d take the opportunity to learn to swim, if I were you.

Government

Two big stories dominated the political discussion for most of 2012, shaping the narrative for 2013 and beyond. The first story has been the debate over the role of government- how much control do they deserve? What is their place in modern society? The second story concerns the corruption of government, which flared up in the latter half in the year as scandal after scandal broke to reveal a new corrupt official. With traditional institutions failing us and government credibility at an all-time low, 2013 will either be the year politicians redeem themselves or the year we lose faith in the only system keeping us from anarchy. Abandon all hope.

Star Wars Episode VII

Story details, director details, casting details. We need to know and we need to know NOW, DAMMIT.

I’d like to wish you all a Merry Non-Denominational Winter Festival Celebration, and a Happy Secular Date Rollover, and if we make it to 2013 intact I look forward to harassing you at home via the Lethbridge Journal until you pay me back what you owe me.

-          James

Twitter Guy + Horoscopes - December 7th, 2012

Click To Read In The Lethbridge Journal (LARGE PDF)

This is the story of a girl, who cried a river and drowned the whole world.

Afterstache: Life in the Shadow of Movember

With the gloomy days of Movember now long behind us and the war on butt cancer pretty much in the bag, the world’s attention has moved on to bigger and shinier things.  Like any war, however, the consequences linger long after we hang up the “Mission Accomplished” posters and begin covering up evidence of human rights violations. Survivors of Movember 2012 have been shipped home to their wives and children, forced to choose between a life of itchy facial hair and a life of regular shaving. Experts say most Canadian men will have no trouble re-entering normal society after a tour of duty with a moustache, but they also warn that men who find themselves unable to face the razor again will encounter workplace prejudice and angry family members as they attempt to adjust. If you or somebody you love is suffering from Post-Moustache Stress Disorder, please direct them to the Moveterans’ Affairs website, www.hairymensavingbutts.gov.

The War on Christmas

With little over two and a half weeks left until the end of the world, local Lethbridgianites are in an uproar over another assault in what they call ‘the war on Christmas’. It began when 81 year-old northside resident Harold Rosenthal hired two teenage brothers to modernize his Christmas lights display, leaving them at a hardware store unattended with his credit card for several hours while he fell asleep at a nearby drive-thru window trying to purchase onion rings. Using approximately $15,000 of sound and lighting equipment, the teens installed what the police report later described as “A really bitchin’ setup” that was “just pimped OUT”, including a holographic Baby Jesus fighting Satan with a lightsaber and a 50-foot-high ‘Laser Santa’ singing Christmas Carols with the help of actual angels. When nearby neighbours complained they were being exposed to extremely high levels of radiation, the city sent a bylaw officer to shut the display down. Pilgrims- many of whom travelled for upwards of fifteen minutes to see Mr. Rosenthal’s new lights- rioted when they were told that the massive setup would need to be removed for public safety, flipping over two picnic tables and a particularly light sedan. Though Mr. Rosenthal was eventually allowed to keep his lights up, his house burned down just days later when Laser Santa achieved sentience and took revenge on his captors.

Twitter Guy + Horoscopes - Movember 23rd, 2012

Click To Read In The Lethbridge Journal (LARGE PDF)

They call me Tater Salad…

Schnurrbart Means ‘Moustache’

Does anybody else find it weird that we celebrate moustaches the same month we honor the sacrifice of soldiers that died in, among others, a war to stop the angriest moustache German engineering could build? No, not Hitler- I’m referring of course to the events of 1996 when an experimental ‘Schnurrbot’, broke out of a Volkswagen testing facility with a nuclear warhead and two dozen hostages. Although a team of US Marines killed it when it attacked New York, the world has never been the same.

Presidential Discourse

Recently re-elected US President Barack Obama held an impromptu Ask Me Anything on popular timesuck Reddit late last week, fielding a large number of questions from the site’s users on a wide range of topics. Below is a selection of highlights from the President’s AMA.

(Editor’s Note- The questions have been translated from ‘Internet English’ to ‘Real, intelligible words’ by a team of insane college students for your convenience.)

1)      Hey, big fan of your last term, just wondering if you might be able to tell us when you intend to unveil your plan to save the US economy from the so-called ‘Fiscal Cliff’? Also, who’s on your iPod right now? – RapidMonkees54

Well now, I’ve got to be honest with you, Joe [Biden] and I hammered out the whole thing at about 3am in a tiny little diner in Ohio. The problem is, we forgot it when we left and that’s why we kept going back- we were trying to find the diner again. I’m actually going to need everybody in Ohio to stop for a second and check the nearest restaurant, because all we’ve found so far is a map to the Lost City of Cleveland and Romney’s tax plan (also on a napkin). It’s a crayon drawing of himself wearing a crown and a sash that says “#1 President”.

As for music, right now I’m bumping the new Kendrick Lamar record, and Biden’s been making Springsteen play for him every night since the election. I got Bill [Clinton] hooked on dubstep and Hillary was so mad she pushed me into a ditch (also in Ohio).

2)      How awkward was Romney’s phone call on election night? – xX_anger_man_Xx

He hung up every time we answered, until we gave up and sent him to voicemail. It was 10 minutes of silence followed by a sullen “Fine” and a gunshot. I feel really bad for him, you know? The guy really, REALLY wanted to be President, and that’s a hard dream to let go of when you’ve been campaigning for 20 years. I don’t know who or what got shot, by the way, but nobody’s seen his campaign manager in a while and I’m not about to ask questions.

3)      What are your thoughts on Donald Trump’s ‘evidence’ announcement and subsequent public meltdown? – KingOfYourMom

At one point, the Republican Party was talking about running him as their candidate. I wish that they had; he’d be broke and I’d still be president. Part of my plan to tax the wealthy includes a clause that increases the burden on obnoxious rich orange people with cheap toupees and more golf courses than brain cells.

4)      How do you relieve stress after a hard day at work? – JackNJillNJillsFriendSam

Visit Colorado or Washington.

Alright fine, I also play Call of Duty with a couple of secret service guys- not to make you jealous but I’ve had Black Ops II since September. Michelle wants me to see the last ‘Twilight’ movie with her and the girls, but I told her not until she lets me try that thing we read about in ’50 Shades of Grey’.

5)      Care to comment on the Petraeus scandal at all? – Bowchickawow69

For a nation of adulterous porn fiends, Americans are weirdly prudish about sex and surprisingly eager to cast the first stone. He should’ve used more discretion, but I think that as a nation and as a planet we have more pressing concerns than flirtatious emails and high school bullshit. Let’s save the economy and the environment first, then we can watch Surge of Love with David Petraeus on CNN.