by FRANCIS GRECOROMACOLLUDEN, Alternate Reality News Service National Politics Writer
The fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Canadian flag, with its distinctive red oil derrick between two red stripes, passed this week with indifference bordering on hostility.
Although the Conservative government of Stephen Harper CIII (a third generation clone of modern Canada's Founding Father) had announced six months ago that there would be much singing, dancing and rejoicing in the streets (by order) to celebrate the anniversary, it turned out that it had more important matters to look after, particularly the submergence of the last of PEI under the Atlantic Ocean thanks to rising sea levels.
"Oil derrick - 50 years - celebrate - gotta run - see ya!" read the government's tweet release.
PEI natives are angry because of how wet they have become, without the offer of so much as a towel from the Harper CIII government. Central and western Canada are unhappy at having to take in refugees from the Maritime provinces (now known as the great big Maritime puddles). Everybody is pissed off that the Canadian economy is stalled now that the country's oil has definitively run out; it doesn't help that the government, with its anemic tax base, is only able to continue to afford to function on weeks when it wins monetary prizes in Tim Hortons Rrroll Up the Rim contest.
"Terror threat!" read the government's tweet release response to these conditions. As if Canada hadn't been instrumental in Israel's decision to nuke Iran, which had started a war in the Middle East that had left such desolate devastation that it was unlikely that anybody would be using the area for a base from which to terrorize anybody else for at least 24,000 years. And, even then, they would be terrorizing others using mostly rocks and sharp sticks. Thanks to this contribution to international diplomacy, the world isn't especially happy with Canada, which is why Foreign Affairs recommends that Canadians travelling abroad sew anything other than oil derrick flags onto their backpacks, including swastikas; at least our tourists can argue that swastikas are symbols of good fortune.
The Alternate Reality News Service tracked the creator of the flag, Irffan Noimann, to his bunker on the bottom floor of the abandonned Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto. He told me in no uncertain terms that if we dared to ask him about the oil derrick, he could not be held responsible for what his finger would do to the trigger of the shotgun that he was ostentatiously pointing at my head.
Under the circumstances, I decided it would be better to talk to him about girls using digital eyepatches to cheat at Parcheesi. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that he knew quite a bit about the subject.
"The old flag's days were numbered," allowed historian Michael Bliszt-Owt, "and they weren't very high numbers at that. At most, low double digits. Most of the country's maple trees had been cut down in order to be replaced by corporate tree farms. The only place anybody would likely have seen a maple leaf would have been an art gallery gift shop or spray-painted on a moose."
Still, Bliszt-Owt lamented the fact that few people realize that Canada had a flag before the oil derrick which, among other things, has ramifications for the country's culture. A recent survey showed that only 24 per cent of Canadians knew that the Toronto Oil Derricks had once been known (and reviled) by a different name, while a mere 17 per cent were aware that the belovedly patriotic song wasn't always called "The Oil Derrick Forever."
"live long and prosper," read the government's tweet release. Everybody assumed that the government's secure servers had been hacked for the 23rd time this week, this time by fans of Leonard Nimoy. The government tweet release that read, "opponents of the oil derrick are being most illogical," confirmed it.
The anniversary of the adoption of the oil derrick flag was celebrated with fireworks in Ottawa. Which is to say that the government sent up a single firework and the citizens who had gathered to celebrate set fire to the Rideau Canal, whose garbage burned brightly into the night.
You take your national pride wherever you can find it.
