FFWD Weekly
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Mr. Smutty by James Martin Dunno if it’s fallout from heavily-discounted Internet sales (buy the latest compact disc by the Popular Boys at a fraction of what you’d pay in stores!), or some sorta Costco-induced mania, but nobody’s willing to pay full price for nuthin’ no more. Worse still, some pinkos think ev’rything should be free. Case in point: Tibet. Ev’rywhere I go, some clown’s yelling about "Free Tibet." I say, "Why don’t you get a job you gawddamned bum & stop looking for handouts." I usually say it hours later, from the safety of home, but that’s what I say all the same. Here’s something else I say: "Tibet doesn’t grown on trees, ya know." If these loudmouths had any ideer as to the cost of manufacturing Tibet (not to mention shipping/marketing/employee benefits), they’d stop the yap-flappery. Remember the "Free Love" movement of ’69, and how it closed down all those factories? (It was sad, like a Springsteen song.) "Think before talking," that’s what I always say. Except for that one time on the bus – and if the courts are over it, so am I. (Lest ye get yr left wing in a sling, allow me to assure y’all that I’m "down" w/ the whole Free Tibet thing. I even bought the album. In th’ interest of full disrobing, howev, I should add that for the longest time I thought ev’ryone wuz saying "Ski Tibet." I tell you this by way of apologizing for that disastrous spring break tour of ’93.) In other China news, one man has taken it upon himself to bring pigeons back to Tiananmen Square. Back in the day, Chairman Mao somehow got it into his head that his country’s crippling famine was due to hungry birds, and he got the population hepped up on the notion of feathered genocide. "Let’s flip the bird to the birds!" he said, but not in so many words and not in English. (Most outrageous technique: keeping birds in a constant state of airborne fright, until the exhausted critters crashlanded and were stomped to bits.) Anyway, this one dude has assembled an elite fleet of potty-trained birds that he insists would return to T.Square all the happy ambience of a skittish flock (kids can feed ’em crumbs! old folks too!), but w/out all the messy cleanup. His technique is a closely-guarded secret, but an inside source hints at the use of a specially-designed "I’m a big bird now" pull-up trouser. (Note: upon re-reading the above parag., poor sentence construction could make it appear like I’m advocating that children feed senior citizens to the birds. This is, of course, ludicrous. "For the birds," even! Har! Seriously, the intended message was that sr. cits – colloquially, "old folks" – could also enjoy the pleasurable act of feeding crumbs to pigeons. This was not meant to imply some sorta heartless "putting out to pasture" of our elders. That’s why we have ice floes.) Speaking of crazy gov’t decisions, a brand-new amendment to the Royal Canadian Mint Act has paved the way for a three-cent coin. (You may have seen recent TV commercials in which a wood-chopping St’well Day explains how a childhood spent "fencing" shoplifted goods taught him the value of a three-cent coin: "250,000 of those little fellas will buy ya a neat-o jet-ski.") Mint officials are playing it coy, refusing to say whose mug (animal, vegetable or prime minister) will grace the piece. Nor would they say whether the requisite portrait of the Queen ("heads" to all you fans of binary decision making) would include a bouquet of marijuana. In related news, hot on the heels of rulings by the Supreme Court, the gov’t has introduced controversial legislation in favour of printing a three-dollar bill. It is also now forbidden to giggle after uttering the words "legal tender."

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