Contrary to my expectations, and to my great disappointment, I learned that this is not how Coco Puffs are made. Au contraire, this is the War on Drugs. Who knew coke was so flammable?
Puerto Concordia, Colombia: anti-narcotics police officers blow up a cocaine processing laboratory after seizing it from the Farc
Photograph: Guillermo Legaria/AFP/Getty Images
Bystanders were extremely moved by the pyrotechnic display, if not thrilled.
I mean Bar None, which is a nice bar in Yaletown and surprisingly unsnooty, although that’s probably just because it’s too dark to see if they should snub you and also because I know the right people. But the bar is not what I mean, unless you’re speaking with a broad Eastern accent, in which case yes, it is.
I mean this:
I don't remember reading this part in the Cthulhu Mythos
That is a BC Black Bear totally pwning a servant of Great Cthulhu. These bears are normally peaceful creatures, doglike, even timid:
The workers couldn't wait for their turn at the Bouncy Castle!
but when they are protecting their territory, hunting for food, or taking care of those they consider family, they can be ruthless. The so-called Red Devil Squid in the top picture must surely have gotten too close to one of the cubs, or possibly attempted to make off with the bear’s particular crop of salmon.
Now, from deepest, darkest Christina Lake, British Columbia comes word of a new kind of bear.
Not that kind.
This kind.
They'll pry the machete from my cold dead paws
It seems a local farmer had developed a close relationship with some 13 neighborhood black bears, to the extent of feeding them, handling them, taming them, and really, everything that can still be mentioned on the evening news short of folding, spindling, and mutilating them. The bears, in turn, acted as guardians for the farm, which was a farm which required guardianship, what with it growing 2300 plants of the finest BC Bud, a crop worth enough loonies and toonies to keep the bears in dog food and the farmer in Gucci for many a year.
Amusingly, unless I’m misremembering the name, this farmer would be the selfsame Justin who used to be the assistant manager at one of the billions of Starbucks at which I worked; in this case, the one at Main and 14th. I heard him on the phone once in the back room, saying to person or persons (or ursines) unknown, “No, it’s perfect. Jimmy’s father is overseas for a few years and has to rent out his land. It’s surrounded on four sides by corn farms, and corn is, like, TALL. The neighbors aren’t nosy at all, and the only access is a private dirt road. It’s PERFECT, I’m TELLING YOU!” and then he looked at me funny, as if I was eavesdropping or something, and said, “I’ll call you back.” He quit shortly after that…to become a farmer.
He was a very, very smart boy.
Anyway, not only did this farm eventually get busted, guard bears or no guard bears (they were probably on a pizza and dorito run, if I know stoners) but while the arresting officers were figuring out what to do with the semi-tame bears, BC bear fanciers (more than you’d think, unless you’d been to the Pumpjack on a Friday night) got themselves together to petition for the freedom of the bears, who face the death penalty for … being bears that eat whatever’s put in front of them.
“They were tame, they just sat around watching. At one point one of the bears climbed onto the hood of a police car, sat there for a bit and then jumped off,” said Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant Fred Mansveld.
The strange tale of some B.C. black bears that were caught guarding a marijuana grow-op has gotten stranger, after someone stole the confiscated pot from the RCMP and tried to protect it with a stash of stolen dynamite…
On Thursday, RCMP obtained a search warrant for a nearby property in Greenwood, where they found a stash of about 10 kilograms of marijuana stolen from the lockup, including a small amount from the Christina Lake bust.
The officers also found a grenade, a loaded 12-gauge shotgun, and two loaded rifles.
Of even greater concern to police was the stash of about 19 sticks of dynamite they found rigged with homemade fuses, according to Cpl. Dan Moskaluk.
Well, that IS a matter of great concern. Everybody knows bears are slackers when it comes to safely handling explosives.
This round so totally goes to Canada. Why? Well, let’s see…what did the widely respected Guardian have as a front-page headline two days ago?
Queen’s Grandson to Marry in Castle.
Like, duh. You think he’s going to do it in a graveyard at midnight, a Vegas Chapel of Luv, or some unpronounceable South American bureaucrat’s office? No; he’s Peter Fucking Phillips and he is going to goddam well get married at Windsor Castle and we DO NOT NEED A NEWSPAPER to tell us that.
The story, strangely, appears to be offline now. Perhaps they came to their senses, or perhaps I’m not the first to have remarked on the remarkable stupidity of that headline.
And what, you may ask, is this world-beating entry from the Socialist Republic of Canuckistan? Just this:
Naturally, it takes more than a grizzly bear attack in which he gnaws on your brain to keep a Canadian down; the fellow actually picked himself up after the bear was done with him and drove himself 25 kilometres to a gas station, where they called for help.
His hands were so swollen and bloody, he could barely get his keys out of his pocket, said Case, an experienced outdoorsman.
“I knew that if I didn’t drive and have the fortitude to control things, I was going to die.”
Case then drove 25 agonizing kilometres to the closest town to seek help. He finally reached a gas station and asked the attendant to call for an ambulance.
“I think my brains are hanging out,” he said. “I don’t know what’s happening here, but I’m alive. I started wiggling my fingers and toes…”
“I said [to the doctors], ‘There’s nothing hanging out that you’re not telling me?’ They said, ‘No, you’re OK'”
“They started using the peroxide and, ‘Ooh,’ I said, ‘that hurt more than the bear!'”
Men in England and Wales are twice as likely to die as a result of having a foreign object in their anus as they are through being struck by lightning.