[706] in Humor
HUMOR: Those Amazing Canadians (classic Dave)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Wed Feb 1 16:12:08 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 01 Feb 1995 16:06:03 EST
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 95 12:41:37 PST
From: Connie_Kleinjans@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
CHECKING ON OUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORS TO THE NORTH
Dave Barry
It's time for Those Amazing Canadians, the popular feature wherein we
examine the activities of our friendly neighbors to the North and
secretly wonder if they are mixing their prescription medications again.
As you may recall, when last we checked in on the Canadians, some of them
were in a court of law in Ottawa, trying to induce a python to crawl into
a toilet. At the time we thought this was unusual, but we now realize
that luring snakes into commodes during judicial proceedings is fairly
NORMAL, by Canadian standards. We base this statement on several news
items we received from alert reader Marylu Walters, who lives in Alberta,
which is one of Canada's provinces (the other one is ``Bernice'').
These news items, from The Edmonton Journal, concern the small Alberta
town of Glendon, where there is a local food item called the ``pyrogy,''
which is a kind of dumpling that can be stuffed with various foods such
as cheese or sauerkraut. Pyrogys are very popular in Glendon, a fact that
gave the mayor, Johnnie Doonanco, an idea. See if you can guess what his
idea was.
(Pause while you think up a pyrogy-related idea.)
OK. Did you guess that Mr. Doonanco wanted to market an electric pyrogy-
maker? Or hold a pageant to crown the Pyrogy Queen? WRONG. That kind
of limited thinking shows why you're stuck with whatever dead-end
hairball job you have, while Johnnie Doonanco is mayor of Glendon.
His idea was-- we are not making this up --to build THE WORLD'S LARGEST
FIBERGLASS PYROGY. And he did it, too, by raising 62,000 Canadian dollars
via private donations and a grant from the province government, which
knows a shrewd investment opportunity when it sees one. According to the
Journal, the giant pyrogy is ``almost nine metres high'' and ``weighs
roughly 2,700 kilograms.'' Converting these figures from the Metric
System to the Normal Human System ... let's see, move the decimal over
and divide by the cosine ... we see that this is a large pyrogy. There's
a color photograph of it in The Journal: It looks sort of like a mammoth
white leech, except that the designers put it on the tines of a huge
upthrust steel fork, so that onlookers would realize that it is in fact a
tasty food item.
The purpose of the pyrogy, of course, is to attract tourists. ``Hey,
Marge!'' potential tourists as far away as Mobile, Ala., are probably
remarking at this very moment. ``There's a giant fiberglass dumpling up
in rural Canada! Pack your suitcase!'' Such is the power of this type of
attraction.
And that explains another Journal news item that Marylu Walters sent us.
This one concerns the small Canadian town of Andrew, which recently, with
the help of a provincial tourism grant, installed-- get ready --the
world's largest fiberglass duck. The Journal says it has a wingspan of
7.2 meters and weighs ``one tonne,'' which is how you spell ``one ton''
in metric. The story quotes town manager Albert Holubowich as saying
that the residents chose the duck as their symbol because Andrew is near
a duck sanctuary.
``It was either the duck or a chicken,'' he says, ``but a chicken has no
connection or bearing to the village.''
We certainly agree with that. A giant chicken would be ridiculous. But
what we're concerned about is this: Suppose some tourists happen to find
themselves exactly halfway between Andrew and Glendon. One side of them
would be attracted by the giant duck, and the other side would be
attracted by the giant pyrogy, and they could literally explode right
there on the spot, causing severe damage to the wheat crop. We hate to
bring this up, but if we didn't, we'd have to get a real job.
And there's another recent Canadian development we feel you should know
about. Many alert readers have sent us an Associated Press report that
begins as follows (we are still not making this up):
``VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Female snails in certain polluted
coastal harbors have been turning into males and growing penises, a
researcher says. Snails undergoing the change, which some scientists
think is caused by tin-based contaminants in the water, have been found
almost everywhere University of Victoria biologist Derek Ellis and his
colleagues looked for them.''
We're sure this alarming development is wreaking havoc in the snail
community. A guy snail comes home from a hard day of sliming around,
hoping to have an intimate moment with his mate, but when she finally
takes off her shell ... YIKES!
We hope the Canadian authorities are doing something about this. Their
most likely move, of course, would be to build the world's largest
fiberglass snail organ. You'd go up to see it, right? We thought so.
Don't drink the water.
NEXT WEEK: Results of the Bad Song Survey.
(C) 1993 THE MIAMI HERALD
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
