481) Virtue Czar Bill Bennett believes that some of this year’s Pulitzer Prize winning journalists should be in jail. What virtue would that promote?
a) reading (since they would have a lot of time to do it)
b) cleanliness (since they wouldn’t want to drop their bar of soap…)
c) silence in the face of tyranny (well, it’s a virtue if you run the tyranny)
482) Wait a second! The United States has a Virtue Czar? What the hell is the United States doing with a Virtue Czar?
a) they couldn’t get funding for an Ice Cream and Frisky Puppies Czar
b) nobody wanted to give Bill Bennett a position with, uhh, you know…authority
c) emulating Iran
483) What is Raloxifene?
a) one of the many country and western singers who never made it to the Grand Ol Opry
b) a treatment for breast cancer that may or may not be better for women than other treatments with potentially less severe side effects, although this claim is open to interpretation (and won’t that make a great ad campaign?)
c) next month’s Shaniqua
484) What was Mexican President Vicente Fox’ rationale for refusing to sign into law a bill that would decriminalize possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use?
a) 25 milligrams of heroin? That’s all? How are you supposed to get a decent buzz off of that?
b) but, without all of those criminals, what will all of our police do?
c) George Bush took him out to the woodshed…and you wouldn’t believe what the two of them smoked!
485) Match the word to the gender to which it is almost exclusively applied:
a) consent, faint, sob, cohabit, undress, clutch, scorn, gossip
b) skeet, convolute, intense, intend, invert, broadband, confident, asshole
c) hijack, crouch, kidnap, rob, grin, shoot, invent, brandish
i) male
ii) female
iii) used car salesman
486) President Bush claims that the collection of records of tens of millions of personal phone calls into a database does not mean that the government is “trolling” through the personal lives of Americans. Well, what else could the government be doing with all of that information?
a) working on the longest scratch mix in history (just don’t expect to be able to download it from iTunes any time soon)
b) seeing if there is any validity to the old commercial where “you tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on, and so on…” (for reasons of national security, of course)
c) combining Sigint with Humint (when really they could have used a Breathmint)
487) The rumbling of laughter seemed to rise up out of the ground and fill the air. It grew and grew and, just when it appeared people’s ears would start to bleed from the sound, it subsided. What caused the laughter?
a) President George W. Bush telling some of his biggest campaign contributors, “My attitude is that the oil companies need to be mindful that the American people expect them to reinvest their cash flows in such a way that it enhances our energy security”
b) Rona Ambrose, the Environment Minister who so far has cheerfully reneged on Canada’s Kyoto Accord commitments without offering anything to take their place, chairing the United Nations group responsible for strengthening the Kyoto Accord measures in the next round of negotiations
c) the supposedly law and order Conservative government ignoring the advice of police chiefs and creating an amnesty for owners of long guns that will effectively kill the gun registry
d) all of the above (it was a deep, deep belly laugh)
488) M:I:III has taken in a “disappointing” $47 million in its first weekend. In what universe can $47 million ever be disappointing?
a) one in which Tom cruise makes $50 million a picture
b) a universe where all men and women and people of indeterminate gender are treated with the respect they deserve for simply having been born human, because, really underneath it all, whether we’re Christian extremists, or Jewish extremists, or even Muslim extremists, we all want the same thing, whether that’s to be loved or to kill people we hate, and we should embrace our commonalities instead of allowing our differences to divide us
c) uhh, this one, apparently
489) And, while we’re on the subject, what’s with the use of colons in the title M:I:III, anyway?
a) somebody needs to see his proctologist, because he clearly has punctuation problems
b) you know, the colon is the ugly bastard child of punctuation, and I think it’s great that Hollywood is taking a courageous stand in favour of it
c) somebody in the promotions department of the studio got drunk one night and peed all over the company’s copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style
490) Which of the following tastes more bitter to you?
a) the acrid stench of personal failure
b) the certain knowledge that the bastards are getting away with it
c) cyanide
491) How do you feel about the fact that NATO wants Canada to assume command of the Afghan mission starting in 2008?
a) does NATO really have to be involved with choosing rugs?
b) oh, sure, by the time we take over, all of the good terrorists will have been killed by the Americans or the British
c) I hope that will shut up all the people complaining about Canadian soldiers taking orders from American generals
492) Who should be the most embarrassed?
a) The National Post, for running an article claiming that Iran had passed a law requiring Jews and Christians to wear clothing that would identify their religion (the source of which appears to be the writer’s ass)
b) Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for saying the day after the report ran that Iran was “capable” of such Nazi behaviour and that “It boggles the mind that any regime on Earth would want to do anything that could remind people of Nazi Germany” (is his staff “capable” of academic behaviour like, uhh, research?)
c) the rest of the mainstream press for writing about this dubious exercise in anti-Iranian propaganda as though it was a legitimate news story
d) Nicole Ritchie, for putting up with Paris Hilton’s bullshit for so long
493) Saddam Hussein was compared to Adolph Hitler because he caused the deaths of approximately 10,000 to 20,000 of his citizens. The war on Iraq has already cost the lives of at least 40,000 citizens, and possibly as many as 100,000, while the first Gulf War and subsequent sanctions may have killed as many 200,000 Iraqis. What does that make us?
a) as few as two and as many as 30 Hitlers
b) what a horrid comparison! Saddam Hussein killed Iraqis to tyrannize them – we kill Iraqis to liberate them! There is no comparison!
c) hypocrites
494) How are you planning to celebrate June 6, 2006?
a) par-tay, man! I’m gonna get me a cooler full of tall brewskis and head out to the cottage for a weekend of lakeside debotch – debauts – partying!
b) I plan on breaking the fingers of Seldane in Marketing if he doesn’t keep them to himself
c) there’s nothing marked on my calendar – is this some weird Zoroastrian holiday?
495) Conservative backbencher Leon Benoit has introduced a private member’s bill that would make it a criminal offence to harm a fetus in cases where a pregnant mother is assaulted or murdered. He claims this will be good for women. How so?
a) because a vicious killer who would think nothing of being charged with murdering a pregnant woman will be deterred by the thought of a second charge of murdering an “unborn child”
b) because if the Supreme Court allows the personhood of the fetus in this case, it will relieve women of the burden of deciding whether or not to have abortions in the future
c) because, well, uhh, because…Benoit doesn’t really say – I guess this is one of those faith based initiatives
496) How big do your balls have to be to name your investment firm Pirate Capital?
a) Winston Churchill statue-sized
b) bigger than a breadbox-sized
c) LSD hallucinatory-sized
497) Tommy Hilfiger hit Axl Rose on the arm in a dispute in a club. Is this news?
a) was Kate Moss involved?
b) only if Rose ended up unconscious. I mean, Hilfiger is 10 years older, god knows how much lighter and a…fashion designer. Rose would be laughed out of the rock world if he had been cold cocked by a…fashion designer
c) are you kidding? In this celebrity obsessed world it’s news that Tommy Hilfiger is in the same room as Axl Rose!
498) Who said, “If US industry is able to pressure the government not to return duties when it has lost its last NAFTA appeal, it will not matter if most other trade is dispute-free. If the rules are simply ignored, then the very basis of a rule-based system is threatened and the future of all Canada-US trading relations could be profoundly affected.”?
a) I’m not gonna play gotcha with you! He was younger then and…and distracted by Betty-Lou Felderstein’s polka dot dresses and…and since he was elected Prime Minister, he has had time to think things through!
b) you think you’re clever, but you’re not! What were you saying about the softwood lumber dispute five years ag – oh. Really? Exactly the same? Well, but, I bet if you were Prime Minister, you’d change your tune pretty quick, mister!
c) alright! Alright, already! It was Stephen Harper! Stephen Harper! Ste-ee-ee-ee-phen Harper!
499) According to Bush’s Brain, the press are too fixated on poll numbers (which show his boy’s approval ratings below 30%). “I love this mania which has swept through American media today which substitutes polls for coverage of substance,” he said. How can we best understand this statement?
a) it’s got to be ironic – after all, he has an underling carry around a suitcase containing a pollster in case BB should ever go through numbers withdrawal
b) IS HE ON CRACK? If the American media actually did manage coverage of substance of his administration, Bush’s approval rating would be in negative numbers!
c) he loves this mania? Oh, dear lord, when the Bush administration crashes and burns, BB is angling to get Dr. Phil’s job!
500) The Federal Communications Commission has refused to pursue complaints about the NSA’s access to millions of telephone records because it cannot obtain classified material. What is a better use of the FCC’s time?
a) reconsidering the fine it gave CBS for Janet Jackson’s bare nipple during the Super Bowl because…uhh…the fine might not have been…err…could you slow that down…yes…yes…FREEZE IT RIGHT THERE!
b) looking the other way while corporate concentration continues the inexorable march towards a single entity owning all of the media in – ooh, look, shiny object! Pretty shiny object!
c) hounding Howard Stern for taking the whole “freedom of speech” thing seriously