Canada Slow to Replace Collapsed Dollar with Anything

In the weeks since the complete destruction of the Canadian dollar, the Canadian government has been slow to implement a new currency, meaning they haven't implemented a new currency, leaving many citizens irate over being left in the dark as to how to assign value to anything. “What does a can of coke cost now? Trick question! You can't buy one!” Local Outragee Sandra screeched early Thursday. Way too early Thursday, as she could be heard screaming in the street from the basement of Muriel Betty's home, venting her frustration at the utter insanity and disruptive behaviour Canadians have been coping with because of the uncertain economic relations. Without a currency as a yardstick of value, citizens have been forced to make up a value for everything they have and anything they want. They then negotiate those two numbers against two numbers another Canadian has made up for themself, turning any exchange of goods and services into a tedious battle of wills. Meanwhile, the government response has been to shut down non-essential services so that all resources can be diverted to security, health and water services in an effort to keep police, firefighters and hospitals going - as well as the taps flowing.

Despite the current economic landscape being the bleakest it's been since people started writing things down, economic expert Ovaltine Goose-Shredder is optimistic about Canada's chances of recovery. “The whole basis of our economy has been destroyed, so we literally have nowhere left to go but up.” Because things could only get better from here, Goose-Shredder believes that even slightly damaging events would be regarded as a step up from utter obliteration. “Hindsight being 20/20, burying our money in lottery tickets was not a smart move, but even with foresight being 3/10, I think this has the potential to turn out pretty well for us. Later on, that is, things are terrible now.”

With the measuring stick of value being swept out from under their feet and the government being slow to provide leadership, Canadians have taken to using their skills to create things for barter as a means of acquiring goods, meaning labour has become the measuring stick of a now enormously scaled back economy. “Things have gone local, like how much wheat is a table worth local.” Goose-Shredder explained. “I literally mean my neighbour, a farmer, made me build him a table in exchange for 20 pounds of wheat and 12 bushels of apples, to be delivered when in season, of course.” Despite not having any experience as a carpenter, Goose-Shredder assures that he “scienced the shit out of that table.” Experts believe the table turned out okay.

Citizen Danny, speaking outside the Coveant Garden Market late Thursday, said he traded a gallon of gasoline for a case of Kraft Dinner to a friend who was leaving the city to set up a plot of land in a rural area. “He wanted to be somewhere with enough space to grow some food. The balcony of his apartment just wasn't cutting it.” The hardest part of the new economy, according to Danny, is having things people might need enough to trade for food. “Everything is about food now. Mostly everything in my apartment has been traded for food at this point, so you either start growing food, or if you haven't traded away your sewing machine, you start making clothes.” Adding, “Want this shirt? It almost looks like a shirt.”

Danny's friend is part of a growing trend of Canadians leaving cities for rural areas. A mass exodus from cities was expected by analysts, as people looking to be self-sufficient generally want more elbow room. Many farmers have started letting migrants from the cities grow food on small plots of their land, as having people to work the land has become much cheaper than running diesel through a tractor. The migrant city dwellers get to keep a portion of the food they produce, and the rest goes to the farmer for sale, leading many to say that Canada has essentially reverted back to a feudal agrarian society.

Despite the hardship associated with not having a currency, Canadians have vehemently decried any discussion of adopting the American dollar, even though it would be an incredibly easy solution to the crisis. “Why not adopt the American dollar?” Danny said. “Because we're Canada, damnit.”

Google Breaks Silence on Secret Antarctic Base

The pan-global corporation Google has expressed displeasure at the private use of military grade surveillance drones in a statement released early Thursday, after aerial surveillance of Google's secret antarctic base by the resistance group GASP revealed what is essentially a warzone on the frozen continent. Images captured by aerial drones are showing a mass of thousands of green humanoid beings on an Antarctic peninsula jutting out in the direction of South America, with a clearly drawn line leading back to the now destroyed secret Google base where the cloning arm of their market research department was located. International Business expert Ovaltine Goose-Shredder says it makes perfect sense for Google to object to the privatization of surveillance drones. “You wouldn't want anyone cutting in on Street View's territory, right? And maybe now [Google] will realize it's a little weird to record every inch of the public domain.”

Vowing to ignore Google's calls to cease using private surveillance drones, resistance leader Axel Hjalmar also claimed responsibility for the destruction of Google's secret Antarctic base and the humanesque army amassing on the edge of the continent. Speaking via satellite uplink early Thursday, Hjalmar said that “Over one year ago, GASP infiltrated Google's DNA database by uploading code for creating heavily armed and heavily armoured biometric cyborgs with aggressively luddistic tendencies through Google's blood sugar testing app. It was our goal to have Google create the means of their own destruction through their cloning facility, and GASP has succeeded.”

Having given his explanation of what GASP had done, Hjalmar was then notified that barely anyone had a clue what he was talking about. He attempted to elaborate, saying “Luddistic means a sadistic luddite. It is apt, as the biometric cyborgs gain immense pleasure from smashing technology. It is a word unique to the GASP vernacular, but given our commitment to free and democratic principles, feel free to use it whenever you like.” Hjalmar then revealed that destroying all technology was the ultimate goal of GASP, a goal so obvious experts wondered why they ever tried to hide their aims in the first place. In their view, the destruction of technology must be complete because “Google reaches every technological platform in the world, and thus every technological platform must cease to operate. This is the programmed aim of the biometric cyborgs, to destroy all computer technology on Earth.” When asked if he thought it was ironic to announce the total destruction of technology through technology, Hjalmar concurred. “For the time being computer technology is an effective means of communication. Soon it will not be, and a new means of human relations will exist, one not facilitated or thrust upon by myopic corporate entities.” Despite agreeing that it was hypocritical to be using technology to further his goals, Hjalmar claimed it was not ironic, because as he put it, “irony exists only on rainy wedding days. On this basis, I believe it is a regional concept that is not currently in effect on the east coast.”

Soon after GASP's satellite uplink fizzled out, Google released another statement, and the head of Google Media Relations was made available for a press conference for the first time in over a year. He began by stating that the destruction of the antarctic base is not a setback for Google, as the Cloning for Marketing Research Trial was already an utter failure in almost every sense it could have been. “It was a public relations disaster, and it did not gain Google one iota of data concerning consumers.” he said. When asked if any lessons have been gleaned from the experiment, with those in attendance hoping that some sort of 'don't play god' moral had been learned by the enormous corporation, the Google media representative took to the sunny side of the street. “It did give us some really interesting insight into how humanity behaves in a state of nature, in a grocery store.” The Google representative explained that cloned subjects had the DNA of a human, but that does not necessarily make them behave like a human, and especially not like the human they are modelled after, as the ways we behave and the products we choose are all learned from the world, and therefore not encoded in DNA. “[The DNA thing] immediately imploded our initial hypothesis of finding out what colour pizza box specific people prefer. After that, the experiment became an exercise in how quickly feral humans could destroy a grocery store, and that was a fascinating enough premise for us to continue our cloning endeavours.”

Based on the findings of their experiments, Google has determined several interesting facts about humanity's base tendencies, as displayed by feral humans in a grocery store. “Well, the fresh fruits and vegetables were devoured first, the meats not quite as fast, probably because they didn't figure out how to cook it. Apparently it takes a sample size larger than two thousand to have someone capable of discovering the usefulness of fire. Uhhh, cereal boxes are the preferred nesting material, and many cereals are not even regarded as food, particularly ones that are brightly coloured.” This was bad news for Fruit Loops.

Resident expert on Proto-Human Studies Ovaltine Goose-Shredder was ecstatic about the existence of the biometric cyborgs. “That's amazing! Bravo to GASP for pulling off something I've only been thinking about for years! Biometric robocops, right? Pretty much?” Goose-Shredder was not without some backhanded praise for Google as well. “Congrats to Google for running the 'baby raised in a box' experiment that has been outlawed everywhere with a conscience. Really, just pushing beyond all accepted lines of morality and fucking people up for the hell of it. That's some grade A science right there.” Asked for a theory as to why the biometric robocops are amassing on the Antarctic peninsula closest to South America, Goose-Shredder terrified everyone. “Isn't it obvious? They're coming to get us!”

North Korea Reveals Basketball Playing Cyborg

The People's Democratic Republic of North Korea has unveiled what they are calling a Super Ultimate Basketball Player in what experts say is a bid to score at least one win over America. Basketball was chosen as the area to excel in over other fields like technology or literature because of their leader's longstanding love affair with the game and the perceived ease of making a layup vs inventing an iPhone. The prototype basketball player was unveiled in front of a crowd of millions at a military parade Thursday by dictator for life Kim Jong Un and immediately declared by state run media outlets to be the best thing ever. The amassed millions were then goaded into a chant of “This is seriously the best thing ever” by Jong Un, with one citizen near the cage that held the Western journalists being overheard saying “I am honoured to have this [super ultimate basketball player] instead of food.”

Despite the glowing endorsement from people with a gun to their back, North Korea's basketball playing cyborg has failed to impress North America's expert in the field of Proto-Human Studies, Ovaltine Goose Shredder, who has been an especially spiteful critic of the new cyborg prototype since it's unveiling. “Oh, so you just have to put a golfer's range finder over the eye and give the dude a calculator and you've got a fucking cyborg? Is that the standard now?” he said late Thursday. In a description that would border on cruelty if it weren't so accurate, the cyborg is described by Goose-Shredder as “a 5'6” Charles Barkley that has been repeatedly struck in the face with a 2x4.” Goose-Shredder was quick to qualify his assessment, saying “I love Charles Barkley, and I would never want him to be hit by a piece of wood, but that's the only way to describe what I'm looking at. They didn't do a good job putting [the cyborg] together at all.” Goose-Shredder's assessment has prompted fears that the unidentified man who underwent all the body modifications to become the best thing that will ever play basketball may have been injured in the process, and brought new criticisms from human rights groups over the regime's treatment of their citizens. Goose-Shredder has been especially critical of the country's behaviour since unveiling the prototype, saying “One quarter-assed attempt at putting together a cyborg and Kim Jong Un starts strutting around like he's the new royalty of the mad science community. Fucking Dictators ruin everything.”

So far the regime has yet to actually demonstrate the basketball prowess of their cyborg, but promises that seeing it in action “will shatter everything North America knows about living on Earth.” Analysts are skeptical about it's abilities, as the thought of someone building a basketball cyborg and then not having a hoop around to see what it can do is too large an oversight to have been overseen, even amongst the colossal fuck ups of the North Korean regime. “The thing can't dunk, I'm calling that right now.” Goose-Shredder said. “Bjork is like four feet tall, right? Like pixie size? I would put money on Bjork to take the thing 1 on 1, even in one of her crazy dresses. Race to 11 and Bjork wins.” Despite his confident assurances, gambling experts disagree with Goose-Shredder's odds assessment because Vladimir Putin has yet to fight a wolf.

With all the media bluster the cyborg basketball player has caused, the threats of war North Korea has been making in recent weeks have been mostly swept aside. Goose-Shredder had a stray sentence that addressed the issue. “If we give them wheat, they'll shut up for a while and stop building nukes. They make threats, we give them food, they shut up until the food is gone. That's how our relationship with North Korea has been working for a while, so what we're seeing right now is nothing new and nothing to be worried about. ”

Canadian Government Tells Science to Shut Up

The Canadian Government, currently led by Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada, has been accused of “muzzling” scientists who conduct studies for the federal government, which could violate the Access to Information Act of 1983. Local Outragee Sandra registered her outrage loudest and first. “We can't have our scientists running around biting people! It's a public health issue, not an information one! Tell poindexter to mask up or ship out!” Running off in a huff, Sandra never did give a non-literal translation of the headline, and shows a valuable lesson in the dangers of the media favouring hyperbole over accuracy.

Local science expert Ovaltine Goose-Shredder was also quick to defend the government's policy of shutting up scientists. “The world is too big, there is just too much information, to not just pick the facts that will back up your per-determined opinions.” he said early Thursday. Goose-Shredder then used his authority as a scientist to back up his view, explaining that “[being selective about facts] is an evolutionary stage on the way to humans becoming pure beams of light. We're ditching the desire to discriminate between things and increasing the efficiency of our minds by just jumping to our conclusions and cherry-picking the facts that back them up later. It will lead us to a higher plane of existence, and 68% of those surveyed agree.”

With accusations of scientists cowering at the insistence of Canada's government, Goose-Shredder was immediately accused of bending his findings at the insistence of unknown outside actors. Resident expert on Dodgy Scientific Practices, Ovaltine Goose-Shredder, was quick to distance himself from any wrongdoing. “I'm not on the federal payroll, and this Betty character doesn't pay me either. He just follows me around with a recorder, and I appreciate it.” he responded. Because Goose-Shredders findings tend to be overwhelmingly impractical and unpopular, he feels any accusations of improper science are way off base. “The bright side of not being paid is that you can trust my findings are 100% free of outside bias of any kind, besides my own biases that come from being a person and stuff.”

When asked where he gets the money he needs to live, if his science doesn't make bank, Goose-Shredder was slow to answer. “Uhhh, I invented trees, and that's pretty lucrative.” he said. If this is true, it would mean Goose-Shredder gets royalties on every piece of lumber sold, leading many to believe it an unlikely source of income, since royalties on lumber don't exist. “I mean, there's other things that I make money off of, like if I were allowed to monetize my re-animating corpses technique, that would make a lot of money.” Goose-Shredder's appeal to licence his corpse re-animation technique was recently rejected by the Canadian Government on grounds that orchestrating a bidding war to have a loved one brought back is a predatory business practice that a citizenry should never be subjected to. It took him a while to find a satisfactory answer, “Oh, every now and then I'll get a few dollars in royalties from my bestselling self-help book, How the Genius Solved Christmas, which exists. That's where I get my money.”

Outside the Coveant Garden Market, Citizen Danny registered some sarcastic displeasure at the news, saying “I'm really glad to hear Canada's Government is too lazy to consider inconvenient facts. It's not like we're expecting them to do well at all, and it bodes well for our future as a country,” He concluded by turning rabid on the government, as people who speak on street corners tend to do. “I never really understood the harm in ideology until I watched [the Canadian government] blatantly defaulting to their opinion instead of trying to figure out what the right answer is. I mean, they're telling scientists to shut up because it could be inconvenient for them. That's a gutless move, and if you can't face down real consequences you shouldn't be running a country.” he said, adding, “Yeah, put that in your pipe and smoke it, government. I just gave you like, smack tobacco, or something else you smoke that insults you.”