humour “~&

 

 

Local man late to meeting

Had no convenient way to tell friend

Chandler Walter
Humour Editor

In tragic breaking news
today, Stewart Martin, a
student at Douglas College,
was late to meet his friend
Will Mackentosh, and had no
instant and convenient way
to communicate with him.

“Tt was crazy,” said Martin
of the challenges he faced. “I
called him up on our house
phone to arrange a time to meet,
but on the way to the local soda
shop, my bus broke down half
an hour away. I was stranded.”

To further Martin’s
difficulty, he could not find any
sort of pay phone in the area,
nor had any change, even if
that had been a possibility.

“The only things I had in my
pockets were pencils and some

string I carry around to look at
or play with when I’m bored or
waiting on something,” stated
Martin. “Even after I decided
to literally talk to the human
beings around me, no one knew
if another bus would be coming,
or had a map handy to show me
along my way.” Martin decided
that his best—and only—course
of action was to walk along the
street that the bus was heading
down, and maybe knock on a
complete stranger’s door to ask
if he could use their phone.
Meanwhile, Mackentosh
simply sat at the soda shop
waiting for his friend, for however
long it would take. “That’s just
what you have to do,” Mackentosh
explained. “I didn’t want to leave,
because what if he showed up
right when I left? We literally
have no way to communicate
our whereabouts, here in 1976.”

It was dark by the time
Martin found his way over
to the soda shop, where the
two friends feasted on $0.33
cheeseburgers and $0.35
milkshakes, had a meaningful
conversation in which both
parties stayed engaged for
the entirety of the time spent
together, and then parted ways.

“Tt was nice to see him,” said
Martin, shortly after arriving
home. “But what I wouldn't give
for some sort of pocket sized
communications device. Hell
even having a convenient map
or bus timetable handy would
have been nice. Oh well.”

Martin spent the rest of
the night playing cards with his
family, watched an hour or so of

TV, read a few chapters, and then

promptly went to sleep once all
possible forms of entertainment
had been exhausted.

A look into the far-off future of 2016

Problems and improvements in four decades

Cazzy Lewchuk
Staff Writer

The problem with predicting
the future is that—obviously—it
hasn’t happened yet. Current
trends and scientific analysis
allow us to at least speculate
on what our lives will be like
in the far off 21st century.

We face many problems
today—high inflation, tension
in the Middle East, an oil
crisis, political corruption,
the rise of war. Such problems
are a reflection of this flawed
time. Soon, the younger, more
progressive minds will graduate
from college and solve all of
these issues. We can enter
a new era—in, say, no more
than four decades—of peace
and prosperity worldwide. The
increased tensions will fizzle
out, and the Middle Eastern
countries will coexist peacefully
without war. Inflation will come
toa standpoint, and a fair living
wage will be established for
all citizens. Renewable power
sources will rise as an alternative
to oil, saving the environment.
By 2016 at the latest, it will be
a wonderful time to be alive.

That said, here are some
new problems that we will
have to deal with by 2016:

Not having a cool car.
With all the vehicles flying in

the air and being powered by
electricity, we can no longer
drag race and burn rubber. Cars
wont be fast and furious: we'll
have to find another way to
show that our environmentally-
friendly rides are number one.

Everyone will be too
smart: Post-secondary education
will be more affordable than ever!
By the next generation, everyone
will have graduated from world-
renowned universities in North
America. With such diverse
knowledge contained in the
general population, our smug
senses of superiority amongst
each other will vanish.

No choice of fashion: If
Logan's Run taught me anything,
it’s that, in the future, we'll all
wear one-piece outfits of silver,
or go back to the tunic. Fashion
trends come and go with each
decade, but pretty soon we can
all just seal ourselves into sparkly
spandex for life. It won’t look very
good.

Military becomes useless:
In an era of global world peace,
there will be no need to send
troops into Iran, Afghanistan,
or anywhere else for that
matter. Many members of our
military will be out of jobs, and
our perfectly good tanks and
bombs will be left to rust.

Everyone will probably
be nuked by Russia: While

 

most countries can resolve
their differences, the Union

of Soviet Socialist Republics is
only growing bigger by the day.
By the time 2016 rolls around,

we'll all be pledging allegiance
to Mother Russia—that is, if
they haven't decided to blow
us into the ground first. World
peace will mean nothing once

a political leader finally snaps
and decides to use one of their
thousands of bombs capable
of destroying a small city.

I'll see you in my bunker.

  

Image via thinkstock

Illustration by Ed Appleby