Quote of the week

“Our generosity is too often abused by false asylum claimants who come here and do not need our protection.” —Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney, outlining much-needed reforms to the refugee application and deportation process on Tuesday

Welcome Frum!

David Frum, the well-known former fellow at conservative U.S. think-tank American Enterprise Institute, will be penning exclusive columns for this newspaper as of next week. Best known for coining the phrase “Axis of Evil” for then-U.S. President George W. Bush in 2003 and for his outspoken criticism of the Republican Party that resulted in his dismissal from the AEI last week, Frum will bring his distinctive, thoughtful analysis of domestic and world affairs to the pages of the Mirror beginning April 7.

“I think, quite frankly, that I fit in better with a sober-minded paper like the Mirror than I do in a pressure cooker, highly partisan fishbowl environment like Washington D.C.,” says the Canadian-born Frum. “Plus, it’ll be nice to live in a conservative country again.”

In an uncharacteristic move, Frum has agreed to work pro bono. “I made enough money in the States,” he says. “I’ve got a car, a home and a decent Internet connection, and since health care is free, my overhead is way down. So that leaves me free to work entirely on what will perhaps be the first ever poetry column dedicated to a muscular foreign policy and private school vouchers.”

Frum’s column will replace existing Mirror columns on a rotating basis.

PATRICK LEJTENYI

Workers
unite for free sex

In a move believed to be unprecedented in modern times, Montreal’s sex workers will be offering their services for free for six hours, today, April 1, starting at 6 p.m. and running till midnight.

“We want to give something back to the clientele that supports us year round,” says Ruby Rouge, from SWELLER, the group spearheading the project. “And we hope to attract some new customers. Not just guys who are too cheap to pay, but also some first-time tricks. Maybe even some girls!”

Free sex will be administered to those who arrive first, and it will be up to individual workers as to what they dish out. “It’s very much a pro bono thing,” she says. “We’re calling it first-cum pro-boner!”

Rouge confirmed that a fight had broken out within the SWELLER ranks when some sex workers wanted to get the drug dealers on board to give out free crack and smack. “In the end, the dealers never showed up for the consultation meeting. They may hold their own event later.”

Opening ceremonies will be held at 5 p.m. beside a pile of rubble downtown, where the mayor will hand out condoms and teen sensation Nikki Yanofksy will perform a jazz version of “Lady Marmalade."

AL SOUTH

Queers want
mob embrace

While gay activists have successfully pushed to become part of more conservative institutions like marriage and the military, now they say they still face discrimination within the annals of organized crime.

“Look at the mafia, or the bikers,” says student activist Ernest Rothman, of Concordia’s Queer Corner. “They still don’t like the idea of queers. They think it’s not macho or something. Haven’t they seen any gay porn?”

While Rothman acknowledges that gays and lesbians can now learn to use guns and kill people just like anyone else if they join the military, he says that thrill is just not the same as criminal killings. “Yes, we can go to foreign lands and kill people, but that’s still under the auspices of war and thus it’s lawful. Didn’t you see The Sopranos? The mafia and the biker gangs are terribly homophobic. We want the right to be welcomed into criminal gangs as well.”

Rothman says he approached a biker on Ste-Catherine E. recently and asked if there were any gays in his gang. “He threatened to kill me,” Rothman says. “I mean, that’s just outright homophobia.”

Messages were left with various mafia families and at the clubhouses of two biker gangs, but no calls were returned by press time.

MATTHEW HAYS

Casa
shrugged

In what patrons are calling “a huge blow to the vegan/musician community,” Casa del Popolo (4873 St-Laurent) will be closing its doors effective immediately. The venue, long a centre of emerging music in the city, will soon be the first home of the Ayn Rand Centre for Self-Promotion and Material Acquisition, as of next Wednesday, April 7.

“We decided to acquire [the Casa] after we closely examined their revenue stream and concluded that, since there isn’t any intrinsic value in art, it was ripe for the plucking,” says the Centre’s director Howard Paul, 22, a McGill political science student. “It just hadn’t been maximizing its profit, so we approached the landlord and made him an offer. Casa’s management was pretty surprised when they were told they had to leave, but, objectively, we’re convinced this will be a great move for them.”

Casa patrons are reportedly stunned. “I don’t know where I’ll ever be able to drink a lemon ginger tea and listen to Joanna Newsom at the same time,” says 23-year-old Dan Fretzl, of Victoria, BC., over a grilled tofu/alfalfa/coriander sandwich and cookie lunch.

Paul says live performances will continue, with a group reading from U.S. economist Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom in the works.

PATRICK LEJTENYI

Rear-view mirror

17 YEARS AGO - APRIL 1–8, 1993

On the cover: Newly appointed PM-to-be Kim Campbell, as an Energizer bunny. Vancouver writer Sean Rossiter describes her as “the type of cocktail bore who tries to sound modest while mentioning yet more items from her Type-A CV.”

• An editorial isn’t impressed with Campbell and Jean Charest’s “milquetoast admissions” that they smoked pot but didn’t enjoy it. “If these two had any tripe in their breadbaskets, they’d… also come clean with the opinion that prevails among people of their generation: that outlawing pot is an absurdity.”

• Rhapsodizing on about Rhino Records’ DIY “nostalgia compilation” series, Chris Yurkiw writes that, “Punk as a music form is dead and gone, but in rock, it’s the only aesthetic that matters.”

• French boffo hit Les visiteurs, about 11th Century time-travellers, falls flat. “Most of the film’s humour is derived from scenes in which the modern conventions of politeness grate against the barbarians’ unapologetic expulsion of various bodily fluids and gas.”

• Whosh!, a two-frame, 1/12-second film, “screens” at the Cinéma de Paris.

Angel >> Intelligent design The debate over the origins of life are a hot topic, even though the answer is pretty obvious. Take the paper you are reading right now: did it come from nothing? No, it came from the sweat, thought and consideration of its creators. To suggest otherwise is as preposterous as suggesting humans came from fish. We don’t have gills! And while the scientific elite describes those who believe in intelligent design as dumb and superstitious, their fired-up Large Hadron Collider might just destroy the universe! Thank goodness Stephen Harper is taking advice from people like Dr. Charles McVety of the Canada Family Action Coalition, who knows that Darwinism, just like homosexuality and environmentalism, promotes the abandonment of God.

Insect >> Global warming wussies We don’t know why environmentalists prefer the company of owls and frogs to that of humans, but frankly, we’re sick of it. The lies from the tree-hugging left aren’t helping the global economy recover, and the gaping holes found by dozens of independent scientists outside the IPCC groupthink are still dismissed wholesale by the mainstream media. But as Climategate showed beyond a shadow of a doubt, the pointy-heads at places like the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit engage in ritualistic fraud and intellectual dishonesty. Of course, there is a chance the planet is warming—it happened in the Middle Ages, and that was long before industrialization—but the evidence that it’s man-made does not exist. And who’s complaining about the warm weather anyway?