As the year began, the term ‘Allies’ became part of our social language. The term refers to anyone who doesn’t have the problem that someone else has and can’t stand being left out.
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Traffic safety continued to be an issue as we try to jam more and more vehicles into less and less space. Figuring out the traffic signs can be particularly daunting.
During a New Year’s blizzard, a frustrated driver on a congested on/off ramp gave up trying to figure out the traffic sign. He pulled his car over onto the shoulder and started to walk away. Before he left though, he took a picture of the sign.
The sign featured three diagrams. The one on the right showed a two lane route with an S-curve. The middle one showed three lanes looping in a full circle. The left one showed two lanes dividing up and heading back towards the other two.
He sent a copy of the picture to the Department of Highways asking “When you made this sign, didn’t anyone see a problem here?”
The Department of Highways sent him back a picture of a bus.
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Last February, a man in Manitoba defended his chronic absenteeism from work on the grounds of Patriotism. He claimed that there are now so many national sports teams at so many levels that he just couldn’t support them all and still have time to work.
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The sport of Mixed Doubles Curling continues to gain popularity with young people. Mixed Doubles lets one male and one female curl together as a team. Curling officials advertise it as the perfect date. Young men are assured to “get their rocks off”. And the young women can scream at their partner to “Sweep! Sweep!” and “Hurry! Harder!”
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On this year’s religious front, Creationists have admitted that they do have at least one thing in common with Scientists. Both try to prove the science wrong.
However, the difference is that if the Scientist, after copious testing and retesting, cannot prove that their suspicions are wrong, they assume they are right. The Creationists, on the other hand, assume that if the scientists can’t prove themselves wrong, then there’s something wrong with the testing.
The Creationists further added that if scientists just accepted that the Creationist’s are right, they would get along just fine.
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By the Spring, several prominent sports personalities had lost their jobs due to accusations of years past incidents ranging from racial slurs to physical and verbal abuse and just being downright mean. Just another example of ‘it’s never too late to get even’.
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As summer got underway, police captured a notorious white supremacist. They found him naked and hairless trying to evade detection by hiding in front of a totally white wall. Upon his release, he vowed to start a new organization – The Brotherhood of the ‘kind of pale orangey-pink’.
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There was a little confusion at a Federally-sponsored Summer Solstice Conference on Indigenous Rights when a person from the audience innocently pointed out that the word “indigenous” is a “European” language term used to describe a “European” concept that was not shared by people now calling themselves “Indigenous”. The person was escorted out of the building.
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And in a related story, CBC Radio again won a national ‘Inclusion’ award for its continuing attacks on WHMs (white heterosexual males). In accepting the award, the head of CBC stated that they wouldn’t give up the fight until there were no WHM’s left on the planet. At the current rate, he expects this to occur by 2025.
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Despite the efforts of various levels of government, gun violence continued to escalate in Canada. One expert explained the problem like this – “Some people just want to shoot other people!”
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In the fall, the financial sector went abuzz about fears for a recession in 2020. Their fears are that they may not make enough money out of one.
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Plebiscites continued to create concern. The continuing problem with plebiscites is that they oversimplify complex problems. Heck, even the word itself is too hard to spell.
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Finally, despite yearning to get paid to snowboard or to play with computers, young people in Canada once again found that the most available jobs were for flipping burgers and asking whether people wanted to upgrade to a meal deal.
And they faced stiff competition even for those jobs … from Seniors.
After buying into conservative anti-union rhetoric for decades, many older workers are finally realizing that investing in personal RRSPs isn’t equal to having an actual pension.
One investment firm mailing clerk expressed her fears about the future by writing on the client’s year-end investment statements – “You want fries with that?”
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Have the year you are going to have!
Sat K ( just one of The Possible Ks)