International Nazi Hunt Exposes Local Dirtbag

Local Dirtbag Terry ratted out his Grandfather for a shot at a $25000 bounty put up by The Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization seeking to find and prosecute any Nazi war criminals who may still be alive and at large in the world. Terry's 86 year old Grandfather was arrested by London Police Wednesday on suspicion of being a war criminal after Terry turned in a picture of his grandfather in front of a Nazi flag to authorities. "It didn't take us long to figure out he fought for the Allies, and we sent him home," said Const. McBrady O'Riley, London's New York style cop. “Terry had showed up at the station with this picture of his grandfather in front of a swastika and demanded twenty-five thousand dollars. We hadn't heard about any Nazi bounty, we figured it was just a weird robbery so we roughed him up a little and sent him on his way.”

After two days of harassment in the form of phone calls and door knockings, Terry formally called a press conference on the front lawn of his basement apartment to explain his actions.

“There's this really sick motorcycle” he started, but trailed off, clearly worried about the fate of this motorcycle. When asked what kind of disease the motorcycle had, and what it's chances of survival are, Terry looked confused, “Disease? No, not like that... no” and seemed to have trouble putting words together, “I like, I don't have a motorcycle, and this one's sick, and I want it but” he said, holding up an autotrader magazine, “but I can't afford it.”

Terry then admitted that he heard about the $25000 bounty put up by The Simon Wiesenthal Center and tried to trade his grandfather for a motorcycle despite not knowing if he had fought for the Nazi's in World War II. “Yeah, I figured I could get some money. Grandpa doesn't like to talk about the war, and they all say he fought in Germany. I just figured he didn't say anything because he was a Nazi, and he has that old flag...”

Terry then read from a prepared statement, “In an effort to apologize to my grandfather, for thinking he was a Nazi war criminal, I've decided to follow in his real footsteps by becoming a professional Nazi hunter,” he said, holding up a crossbow. Asked if a gun would be more effective, Terry said “I don't know.” and ran off to his new life of Nazi-Hunting. Terry's Grandfather was reached for comment late yesterday, saying “What a moron! Well, I do love public endangerment, let's see where he goes with this.”

Late last night Terry was spotted near Cherryhill Mall, running into the pines with crossbow drawn after an elderly man. The assembled journalists agreed that Maniac with Crossbow Arrested After Chasing Old Man was a great headline and called Const. McBrady O'Riley. Const. O'Riley caught Terry before he was able to chase down the elderly man and hammed it up for the cameras, saying “Look out for that road sign!” before running Terry's face into a metal pole.

That article will be printed pending the verdict on whether or not the assembled journalists fed Terry false information which led to his chasing the old man directly towards a waiting Const. McBrady O'Riley. All the assembled journalists agree that we didn't do that, though.

Ovaltine Goose-Shredder's Holiday Health Advice

Local expert and three time Smartest Guy in the Room Champion Ovaltine Goose-Shredder has many years of counselling people dealing with holiday stress on his resume, and so far only half of that resume has been proven a lie. Given that we are now in the time called holidays, Piss Awesome Journalism presents some timely advice on dealing with holiday stress from Ovaltine's bestselling self-help book “How the Genius Solved Christmas”

The stresses of holiday shopping can really wear on us this time of year, causing everything from migraines to telepathically breaking your shin bones. It's important, especially for your shins, that we find healthy ways to release that stress. Malls are specifically designed to grind away at your will to survive until it provokes an existential crisis that spirals into a “Take my money, I don't even care” nihilism, so they're the best place to start taking little steps to reduce your stress levels. Did she cut ahead of you in line at The Bay? Just punch that bitch, you'll feel better. And I can say from experience that the catharsis of beating a security guard in a foot-race is second only to winning an actual police-chase. It really gets the endorphins pumping, creating what experts call the "Runner's High", which is much healthier than mescaline and less goofy than yoga. So my first holiday tip, don't be afraid to get violent at the mall.

On that topic, the lady you punched is totally blissed out drooling on the floor, and it looks like an awesome place to be, so don't disregard the therapeutic effects of a concussed brain. Just turn yourself off for a bit. After all, the home can be a source of stress too, what with all that time to stare at the corner that's missing your giant nutcracker statue. If a loved one isn't around to help, just take a page from the lonely-heimlich life-saving technique and fall head first onto a chair. You'll forget all about where you stashed the decorations last year. Just make sure the oven is off before you conk-out for a few hours. Through this technique, it's possible to avoid the inevitable criticisms that come with holiday baking entirely.

Finally, at family Christmas gatherings people only notice who is the most drunk, so you can be the hero of Christmas by drinking more than Grandma. Just keep an eye on how many Bailey's and whisky's are going down and make sure you stay ahead of the curve. This way, Grandma's slurred judgmental digressions will be drowned out by you throwing all your sister's shortbread cookies at the dog while sarcastically yelling about how great they are. This will create a future confrontation with your mother about the scene you made after everyone leaves, but this can be avoided, provided you practiced my techniques throughout the holiday season, as the police will be knocking down the door during dinner looking for the person who punched that poor lady at The Bay and cart you away from your disgrace before any of the consequences arise. With enough head trauma, you'll wake up on December 26^th with no recollection of what happened and enough money for bail because you've been banned from all the malls, and you'll never be invited to Christmas again. Holiday Stress Vanquished!

Happy Holidays,

Ovaltine Goose-Shredder, Phd

Muppets Create Opposite of Smiles on Bay Street

People everywhere are upset at the evil let loose upon the world by the new Muppet movie. Since it's release the movie has shown kids and adults a caricature of a greasy, a-moral capitalist, tarnishing the reputation of our sterling captains of industry. A spokesman for Freedom Openness Xylophone, a group that represents the interests of business tycoons and xylophones, spoke yesterday about the tyrannical monster created by the film.

“When comedy writers portray successful businessmen as a-moral narcissists they're being really unfair to the people who have won at life. Just because a lot of capitalists do mean things doesn't make it a fact, so when businessmen have kids stitching wallets in a burning building or push their dog in front of a truck for $100, you can shut up or lose your job,” adding, “any similarities to narcissism and sociopathy are irrelevant because Money!” He then detonated a money cannon that had been hanging from the ceiling and all the journalists agreed, yelling “Big-Ups for Xylophones!” amongst a shower of bills.

Local Ponerology expert Ovaltine Goose-Shredder explained the theory behind the phenomenon, saying “The loose, fibrous nature of the muppet can capture and hold far more evil than a double breasted suit, so they are inherently more evil than an oil tycoon. Jason Segal accidentally created something evil enough to make free-market capitalism look bad when he combined them. I'm sure he didn't mean to. He just had no idea of the forces he was playing with.”

Despite the accidental nature of the evil leakage, local citizens are up at arms over the effects that exposure to muppets might have on their children, who have a notoriously low threshold for evil. “Everyone knows you can't do that, the billboards are everywhere,” says Sandra, shrilly referring to the public service ads posted in cities across the country warning about the tendency for evil to get caught in shaggy fabrics. “Why do you think shag carpets are linked to cocaine use? The 70's are no coincidence! And then they exposed children to this? They're lucky they weren't killed outright!”

Faced with an onslaught of criticism from thousands of children spurred on by a muppet, prominent Canadian Businessman Kevin O'Leary felt compelled to defend his operating logic for business and life on behalf of capitalists the world over, saying “Money equals freedom...You may lose your wife, you may lose your dog, your mother may hate you, none of those things matter. What matters is that you achieve success and become free. Then you can do whatever you like.”

James Betty friend Danny was initially flabbergasted by O'Leary's statement, first muttering “Why would you say that if you wanted someone to like you? Doesn't everyone want that?” before eventually managing to pull himself together for a response. “Now I don't know what kind of person you have to be to convince your own mother to hate you, but I've got a rough sketch of it in my head and it's not something I want to share a planet with. It looks like a twisted hunchback with warts on warts that keeps trying to trick my grandmother out of her valuables. Compared to O'Leary, the Muppet Movie is pretty nice to businessmen.” Danny was about to walk away, but turned back to add, “Ya know what? My Mechanic doesn't lose his shit over every murderer-rapist on Law and Order being a dude who fixes cars, so why can't businessmen just chill the fuck out?”

While the studio has set up hug-booths on Bay Street to help the capitalists in need, they have refused to pull The Muppet Movie from theaters, saying “We need to make our money back on this. You can go to hell until then.” Outside the Masonville Silvercity Theaters, local outragee Sandra was incensed at the studio reaction, “I'm just really sad for the kids, it's really unfair to make them hate businessmen like that. The studio needs to be made an example! That you can't just create evil and let it loose in the world and expect everything to be hunky-dory, even if it was an accident,” She then waved her burning effigy of Kermit on a stick, screaming “Death to Shag!” while molten polyurethane dripped really close to her infant. Then a guy dressed all in black and smoking a cigarette walked by and immediately turned towards the theater saying, “Evil movie? Fuck yeah.”

The Muppet Movie is currently playing in theaters across the globe. Check your local listings for show times. Hugs for the capitalists can be sent to the New York Stock Exchange.

London Rippers Open Season with Impressive PR Disaster

Even local feminist groups are laughing a little at how spectacularly the branding of a new London Ontario baseball team has failed after it was revealed the team would be named for a man who raped and murdered women. The London Rippers were announced today, along with their mascot - an owl-eyed creeper named Diamond Jack who dresses in a black cape and top hat with a bat that is seriously coming straight at your head. Diamond Jack has a back-story that totally isn't Jack the Ripper, but no one cares because it seems like it was tossed off by a third grader.

When asked “Are you joking? How did this make it past the design stage?” team President David Martin defended his branding choice on the grounds that part of the quintessential North American baseball experience is dodging your ten-year old asking what rape is.

Subsequent questioning revealed that David Martin thinks that when we are wandering around London and decide to watch a baseball game, how edgy the cartoon on the jersey is always factors into whether we will drop $9 on a ticket. Lifelong Londoner and James Betty friend Danny agrees. “He's right, it's most of what I think about. That's why I went to 40 more Tiger's games than my 0 Major's games. It has nothing to do with me growing up and suddenly having better things to do. It's because the London Major's have a big L on their jersey.” Adding, “Maybe I could get behind a Q or the screaming face of a military Major type person, but an L? Fuck you. L's are for pussys and I can't be associated with them. Lets be serious here, the only way to make baseball edgy is to fill the balls with gasoline and cover the bats with whatever makes a match strike up. No one cares what the logo looks like.”

Public Relations specialist Ovaltine Goose-Shredder said, “Martin, clearly being a man that doesn't like to second guess himself, failed to address an important question, namely at what point does a historical figure become a caricature and therefore palatable for the public? The answer is when the character becomes harmless. Jack the Ripper has never been about anything other than rape and murder and it's hard to construe disembowelment into harmless ballpark fun.” He then continued the masters course in public relations, saying “The definition hasn't shifted and it won't. Why he continues to stand by his decision is more baffling than him thinking it was a good idea in the first place. It's also important to bear in mind that the most vocal Londoner in support of changing the logo is Megan Walker, someone who fronts a group that gives support to women who are running away from the men that beat them with whatever pieces of their lives they can fit in a grocery bag. After you see the consequences of violence against women the public display of a cartoonish rapist doesn't sit the same with you. Certain words will immediately conjure the face of the victim the your head. Now when I hear London Rippers I think of a friend of mine who went through some shit no person should ever have to deal with. A name change won't save them, I'll never shake that association. They might as well cut their losses and fold.”

Since the shitstorm broke, David Martin has been wandering around Labatt Park repeating the age old logical fallacy “Any news is good news.” over and over to himself, wringing his hands like a man who knows the prospective investors in his next venture googling his name will find this spectacularly bad idea first. And then see the quotes in press clippings of him pissing off a whole city by assuming it's populated by idiots. And then him plastering on a shit-eating grin and saying “Any news is good news”. Ovaltine has analyzed the new strategy, “No one knows what the good news is, unless he likes the fact that he probably destroyed his business career.”

While the status of the name change now hangs in the balance, the only certainty remains that like all the other teams that have tried to take the field in London over the years, it's assured that the entire city will completely forget about them just in time for the season opener.

Why we throw Bananas at Black People: A Londoner Explains London

In news that shocked only people who assumed they would be quoted later, during an NHL pre-season game between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Detroit Red Wings played in London Ontario, an anonymous attendee threw an empty banana peel at a black player who was taking a penalty shot. This late breaking hockey news took the long way to Vancouver, so I can say it literally ripped around the world.

The media flurry that has followed the incident, which I have dubbed “the banana hockey thing”, has focused mainly on convincing the supposed target, one Wayne Simmonds – Black Man, that it was indeed a racist act instead of a plain case of littering.

Having lived in and around London for most of my life and after spending 7 years in Ottawa learning what bigotry doesn't look like, I can assure Mr. Simmonds, Sir, you are indeed the victim of a hate crime. For this to not be true, we would have to assume that some drunken buffoon simply wanted to test the strength of his arm against the benchmark of the precisely measured lines of a hockey rink. The man (or woman, I guess they're racist too) looked at his hand to find only the banana he ate hours before and threw it.

But we can rule out the drunken frat folks from Western being there because they don't attend sporting events during the school year, since Old School taught them about grades. Hence, we have a hate crime! The assailant brought the banana peel with the intention of throwing it, but did not throw it until the game was over and in a shootout, an eventuality that couldn't be counted on to happen, and Simmonds being picked to shoot could have easily not happened too. So the guy brought a banana to the ice rink to commit a hate crime but waited for a bunch of happenstances to line up before he threw it. Nothing about this incident really adds up, but that doesn't fit the version of events I'm running with so just ignore it. Littering just isn't sexy enough to be piss awesome.

Living in London for the better portion of your life, you get used to hearing things. Hateful, mean, shortsighted things that you ignore because you're white and it's not like there's anyone around to be racist at. Early in my construction career I did call out a co-worker on a particular comment by inquiring if he had ever seen the film American History X, myself trying to promote a decent dialogue about racism where his comment would be put in an ironic light and make us comrades in the war against bigotry. But instead I was struck dumb by his elated response of “That's that flick where Ed Norton curb-stomps that n*****, right?”. I wish that was a joke. A series of questions then revealed that he saw the movie and took nothing away besides the hideous violence. People can actually miss the point that hard. Luckily, I recently talked to lifelong Londoner and James Betty Comrade Against Bigotry - Danny, who shared a humanity-affirming candid reaction to the public display of racism, saying “Surprised? No, not at all”. He didn't think he would be quoted. He has no faith in my writing career.

Hoping to break some cutting edge journalism, I crawled into the air conditioning vents over the emergency city council meeting convened the morning immediately after the banana hockey thing. The council members were very worried about the repercussions of an international scandal, the largest being de-friended by sister city Nanjing and who would feed the sea lions after tumbling tourism numbers close Storybook Gardens. The first spin tactic was forging footage of a man dressed as comedy legend Charlie Chaplin throwing the peel onto the ice, making the whole incident not a reflection of how kind of racist London is, but a wildly misinterpreted attempt at some wacky slapstick. That idea was shot down when the council googled Chaplin and realized he had that moustache. The Hitler one.

Since their only idea failed before lunch, fearless Mayor Joe Fontana stormed out of the council chambers and told the first person with a tape recorder that damn it, we let the only racist person in town into the game, and he's kind of a retard too. That's our bad, ya know, but don't judge us as racist because it's seriously just one guy. Most of the city was shocked at how Fearless Joe could say something so naive as there being only one racist guy in London, considering one of his opponents in the 2010 election ran on the white power ticket.

I can forgive Joe for his naive presumptions about the scope of the problem because he is so often surrounded by quoting machines and the people who wield them that good 'ol folks who hold un-classy opinions don't speak in his presence. Also, having the confident presence of a professional politician, Joe manages to command a certain amount of respect that keeps the uncouth mouths shut. He's also maybe a mulatto, and might be left out of the loop because of that. We'll go with that one, the mulatto thing.

Now I'm not saying London is Canada's Montgomery or anything, but in the efforts of accuracy we could at least acknowledge that we hear that shit all over the place. It's not just one person. Maybe it's time for me to explain to the world exactly what is going on in little London Ontario that no one told Joe about. Maybe it's time for me to do some PISS AWESOME JOURNALISM!

The University of Western Ontario, also known as the Jewel of London, currently employs Dr. Phillippe Rushton, who's life work has centred on studying links between race and intelligence and also race and crime. Most of the academic world knows him as Professor Racism. When he yells “Excelsior!” children of all colours cry. He's been accused of enough bad science to fill his own article, the most hilarious of which being citing non-scientific/semi-pornographic sources like an article from Penthouse Forum in an piece he wrote on racial differences in sexuality. Academics have called bullshit on the way he gathers data, the published conclusions he draws and everything else in between. 

His most controversial work is one in which he ranks the races in order of intelligence. The list goes Asians, Whites, Blacks. This has formed the basis for a policy we here in London like to call “The Chain of Bigotry”. The study has been taken on as policy because, as we understand it in London, once something is published as science it is no longer considered in terms of morality or community or shame.

Think of it like a free trade zone for hate speech. Whites racisize the Black people, and the Yellow ones get to dump their hate on Whites. They don't, because they're kind of timid, or maybe just nice,  but since we started living under the legislation I always assume that when I'm eating thai food and they turn and talk in their language that they're making fun of my lack of ass or how I can't go outside without getting skin cancer or something. Never anything clever or even overly personal though. Makes me wonder why they got top billing. Their presumed racism isn't that inspired.

In my experience, you generally don't see racist things being levied against Blacks on the streets of London, because that would involve a face to face confrontation wherein consequences could reprocuss all over the white person. It's a cowardly racism that we have here, one where the racial tensions manifest in more subtle ways, like white people yelling at TV screens and xenophobic rants at parties about how the government should stop letting foreigners in. But an opportunity arose when Mr Simmonds lined up for his penalty shot. He presented a target that could not retaliate in any form for someone who had the luxury of being in an anonymous crowd. It was a perfect opportunity for a display of how progressive a policy we have here in London and someone did their civic duty by taking full advantage.

In keeping with the laws of London, everyone who was in attendance and holding a banana peel but didn't throw it will get a quiet talking to by a nice old lady in a private space who will set things right, since we've discovered that public shamings are ineffective for rousing people to racism since the person feels attacked and immediately shuts out everything anyone has to say.

In hindsight, we probably should have told Mr Simmonds that being nice enough to put his hockeying talents on display for our little town would result in such a dick move on our part, not that he really seemed all that shocked though, since he totally scored anyway. With the Free Trade of Hate that exists in London, the most unfortunate thing about the banana hockey thing is that there's no Asian player on either team who could have put the Whites in check after they got Mr Simmonds so well, as the balance of hate is what has kept this city from flying to rage shards, and could have cooled this international incident before it embarrassed anyone. The real problem here is people not being informed about the policies we here in London operate on. Luckily, I'm here to do PISS AWESOME JOURNALISM and tell the world the straight facts about everything. Because I'm all about facts. And hearsay. I do that too. And fiction. Love fiction.

Live Breaking Update!: Wayne Simmonds just decided to spend all his sympathy calling Sean Avery a faggot. The Rangers management took it under advisement and sent Avery to the minors, so the NHL decided to take no action against Simmonds. So yeah, that kind of language is fair game at the rink, I guess. Getch'yer'fill.