1 OIL BE SEEING YOU Sort of interesting that before Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is even in the ground oil companies are preparing to step over his corpse in order to plunder the South American nation’s oil riches, no? Especially given that he dedicated a significant portion of his political career, for better or worse, to the country’s oil sovereignty – and, thus, to improving its quality of life? (By the way, that last link to The Nation should be followed with a link to the magazine’s posthumously-curated selection of pieces on Chavez; it’s all robust, nuanced reportage that goes much deeper than the reductive right-wing “friend of Castro” meme that dominated most debate about Chavez during his lifetime.)
2 WE KNEW THIS IRONY-LADEN DAY WOULD COME I grew up watching a lot of WWF wrestling and so I remember manager/character Paul Bearer (né William Alvin Moody) pretty well. He was an ominous figure, but also sort of goofy and campy, and he helped bring a number of popular wrestlers to the forefront, especially widely-known characters like The Undertaker. Like many other legacy wrestling figures, he also worked hard and somewhat thanklessly behind the scenes in the league’s booking department, putting years of time in front of audiences towards trying to create fun shows. He passed away on Tuesday, and if you were 13 around the same time I was, you’ll probably miss him, too.
3 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE A Canadian contender for the papacy sat down for an interview with Peter Mansbridge and said, predictably, that many of the Catholic Church’s backwards and unpopular views on social issues (gay marriage, abortion, female priesthood, etc.) were “secondary,” which probably comes as a huge surprise to one or two poor, deluded progressive Catholics. Today we are thinking of them.
4 DOES THAT MEAN IT’S EASIER FOR ME TO MOVE TO CHICAGO Toronto is now the fourth-largest city in North America, bumping Chicago down to fifth place. The other three cities in the top five are Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles, which is sort of a “holy shit” set of cities, if you think about it. Anyway, it’s still pretty funny that 2.79 million people somehow settled on Rob Ford as their mayor.
5 DISSENT DISSEMINATED The Leader-Post’s headline for its coverage of CUPE’s town hall event on the city’s wastewater treatment plan P3 is, like, super-ballsy? I mean it’s an accurate summary of the town hall but still, I didn’t expect to see a daily newspaper in this town even inadvertently tell citizens to rally against the city’s dumb, wasteful private-public partnership for a vital public works project. Everyone’s just full of surprises today!
6 IS SOMEONE’S UNLUCKY NUMBER This story of a Regina business owner who’s had six separate people crash their cars into his building in almost as many years is – in Buzzfeed terms – “:(” and “Awww”. (Also, as someone hilariously points out pretty much right away in the comments section, Regina’s car drivers are careless, crash-happy putzes and somehow it’s motorcycle riders whose insurance rates are going up? Very chill, Saskatchewan.)
BONUS Check it out, it’s an image gallery of Drake and his entourage listlessly throwing money around in a strip club as if it was some kind of contractual obligation. Dude, you’re making it rain in the club, stop looking at your fucking phone.