So within the last week, thousands upon thousands of human beings have perished in several isolated freak natural disasters. The cyclone that hit Myanmar on May 2nd has claimed more than 20,000 lives. A tornado tearing through the midwestern United States over the weekend killed twenty-one - and just today, an earthquake in Sichuan, China - 7.8 on the Richter scale - has killed almost 10,000 people. They’re not even finished counting the bodies.

And they say Hollywood movies are overblown fiction.

Vancouver’s shitty tabloid newspapers have been devoting their front pages to the theft of a spider monkey and the death of its defensive mate. I also read today that 34 stingrays mysteriously died within a span of only hours at the Calgary Zoo over the weekend.

Does the term “portents of the apocalypse” mean anything to anyone else?