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Man dies from severe case of the Mondays

> Memorial to be held next Monday

Klara Woldenga Humour Editor

ack Frederick was just like any other

Vancouverite. He had a two-hour commute both ways to his minimum wage job and was always afraid of being reno-victed. He hated rain even though he chose to live in a literal rainforest. However, last week Frederick was the victim of a condition that had been seen as harmless up until the very moment it killed him: A case of the Mondays. “I didn’t see it coming,” said Emily Alden, Frederick’s boss at the local grass store Green with Grass not Envy Do You Get It. “Sure, Jack seemed extremely depressed on Mondays, but everyone feels that way on Mondays— that’s just how it goes, you know?” Ryan Halder, Frederick’s colleague, worked with him on the floor counting blades of grass for seven hours a day, with the eighth hour of work reserved for seriously reevaluating their lives. “He always joked about having a case of the Mondays,” said Halder. “But when he started making those jokes on Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, then Thursdays, and even Fridays, I knew something was wrong.” Halder took the initiative by asking Frederick about his mental health. “I said ‘Hey loser, what is wrong with

Google Maps introduces next generation

your face?” Halder told the Other Press. “Then I said, “You look like someone sat on your dumb lunch, stupid, But he didn’t even respond to my questions. I was really worried.” Halder then took his concerns to HR, but his write-up was rejected, being told by the head of the department that “His report had too many profanities and lewd drawings in it to be taken seriously. Unsure what to do, and seeing Frederick becoming more and

more depressed as the weeks went

by, Halder became desperate.

“I kicked the door down to the CEO

of the company and threatened her with a Series X8-C Grass Cutting Knife,” Halder told the Other Press

in an exclusive post-arrest interview.

“T told her “YOU BETTER ASK JACK FREDRICK ABOUT HIS MENTAL HEALTH RIGHT NOW ORI WILL CUT YOU WITH THIS SERIES X8-C GRASS CUTTING KNIFE! and then I was dragged off by his goons—security in the grass industry is tight!”

Laura Walden, the company’s CEO, was unharmed but very concerned

for Frederick’s mental health.

“T didn’t know who this Jack person was,” Walden said. “But I was determined to figure it out. I was

also very impressed with our new Series X8-C Grass Cutting Knife! ] hadn’t seen one that close before!”

Free from her attacker, Walden

ran downstairs to the grass cutting floor to talk to Frederick.

“Even though I had never taken a single HR class, or any sensitivity training, I knew exactly what to do,” said Walden. “I walked right up to him during his shift and yelled ‘Jack Frederick stop being depressed right now! Youre being a baby, and everyone thinks you're being a baby!’ I find tough love works with employees.” According to multiple witnesses, Frederick did not respond to Walden’s words, choosing instead to leave and take his fifteen-minute lunch break. The next day he was discovered unconscious in his home by the

local mail carrier (a man known

for breaking and entering into the homes he delivered to). Frederick

was rushed to the hospital but pronounced dead upon arrival.

Doctor Lesley Duban was the one

who on duty at the Vancouver

General Hospital that day.

“It was pretty crazy, we've never seen a case of Mondays this bad,” Duban told the Other Press. “When we opened him up we found tiny tear-off calendars that just had Mondays printed on them.” The grass company was shocked by the news, but Walden isn’t sure that anything could have been done.

“We have a gg per cent quitting

of travel modes for modern user

> ‘Stumbling’ and ‘unicycling’ among the new options for Google Maps travelers on-the-go

Jacey Gibb Distribution Manager

Go is changing the game once again. Earlier this week, the search engine giant announced they would be adding a multitude of travel modes to Google Maps, including “stumbling,” “gallivanting,” and perhaps most importantly “crawling on your arms and knees like an army person.”

“We're thrilled to be introducing so many new options for our users,” said Google’s Director of Public Relations, Paula Smith, during a press conference last week. “People who use Google Maps are a dynamic, ever- changing population, and we hope to reflect that with our new settings.”

Prior to the update, Google Maps only featured four travel modes: Driving, transit, cycling, and walking. An additional 11 modes have been added, with another 20 slated for release over the next year.

Among the initial wave of modes

7

are “unicycling,” “walking but after eating, like, a lot of a pasta,” and “segwaying,” which Smith says users have been requesting for years. According to an insider source, the travel mode updates spent years in “development hell.” Reportedly, thousands upon thousands of hours of testing and trial runs were conducted in order to perfect the necessary algorithms. “Nervously driving with your mom in the passenger seat’ was one of the more difficult modes to chart, because there are varying degrees of manic behaviours among moms,” explained a developer who wished to remain anonymous. “It took two years of rigorous beta testing, but we finally found a mean-average for that manic-mom behavior, and how it impacts someone driving with them.” Similarly, the “stumbling” mode also reportedly took an exhaustive time to develop. Researchers kept running into issues and variables such as “Did

the user break the seal, are rushing home to use the bathroom?” “Is the user contemplating a detour to hit

up McDonald’s on the way home?” or “Did the user then stop to vomit up the

McDonald’s, and if so, how many times? Just a one-and-done puke, or did it come up in multiple, continuous waves?” These —

are the important variables researchers had to consider during development. So far, public response to the updates has been positive, with particular praise going towards the “skipping” and “walking briskly, after having just gotten laid” modes. However, the company hasn't been able to avoid criticism altogether. Still missing from the travel modes lineup is “riding a horse backwards while singing a pitch-perfect rendition of ‘Yankee Doodle,” which users have been petitioning on foryears. Google Maps was swift to release a statement, claiming that particular missing travel mode is expected to be included in the updates later this year.

rate,” said Walden. “We were hoping to reach 100 per cent by the end of this quarter, but Frederick’s death really messed up that goal.”

Walden then asked if we could send a message to him beyond the grave. When told him that we were a newspaper and not a medium, she insisted we tell Frederick that “He should stop being dead and come back to work. No one appreciates a quitter.”

Photo by Analyn Cuarto

Photo by Analyn Curato