1 PARLIAMENT ACTIVATE Our extremist government ( anti-science, environmentally ignorant, crazy-ass pro-military, anti-immigrant, generally fact averse) and hopefully competent opposition return to the battleground that is the House of Commons. And hey, look: the Conservatives are the most popular party in Canada (though not majority government popular).
2 ALSO THIS The Conservatives are putting the IT people in charge of monitoring ozone? Uh, what?
3 IT’S AN OCCUPYNIVERSARY! And far too few people turn out to protest. Come on, everyone.
4 ALLEGED QUEBEC MURDERER WAS SCARED THE PQ WOULD HURT HIS BUSINESS So he (allegedly) shot and killed a lighting technician, good job dude. Oh, and he legally owned almost two dozen guns and had been treated for mental illness.
5 SOME SIMPLY DELIGHTFUL NEWS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING THAT I MISSED ON FRIDAY Well, we knew we had a record Arctic melt this year, but wow — what a record! Northern sea ice has melted to the smallest size we’ve ever recorded. How small? How about less than half the size it was on average during summertime 40 years ago? I know that some climate change skeptics (a.k.a. science-ignorers) like to point out records that supposedly prove the world isn’t warming–for instance, the hottest day on record in Canada happened in the ’30s (a record, by the way, that ain’t gonna last much longer). I imagine this much bigger and more ominous record will either be profoundly ignored, or rationalized as cosmic rays or some such nonsense (is there a way to blame the union movement, I wonder?). Because the truth–that human-caused carbon emissions are warming the planet in a staggeringly short period of time, and it’s scary as hell — is just to big and too frightening for some people to believe.
6 DON’T CARE The NHL has known since 2005 that its current collective agreement with players would expire this past weekend. But instead of getting out in front of a tricky and complicated negotiation, the league farted around until July then demanded endless concessions from the union that lost every fight the last time out. Things didn’t get much better, the players didn’t have anything to work with, so guess what — there’s a lockout. Really don’t care. There’ll be lots entertainment this winter besides NHL hockey on TV.
We’ll survive. Unless! Monsters with razor-sharp claws that hand grenades and dynamite cannot stop!