Build Date: Tue Nov 10 01:00:33 2026 UTC
Never trust a man in a blue trenchcoat; never drive a car when you're dead.
-- Tom Waits
Raisin Scare Grinds Canadian Economy to a Halt
2002-04-17 15:34:15
The message is clear: if you're a raisin, stay the hell out of Canadia.
Or at least that seems to be the gist of a recent article in a Candian newspaper. Raisins "impair learning ability, affect behaviour; there are links to anti-social behaviour, juvenile delinquency and crime," claims one weirdo. Which could be true. But how would you tell the difference between an Impaired Canadian and a Normal one? I never got that far in my textbook, unfortunately, so I'll just have to keep on the lookout for Weird Canadians holding boxes of raisins.
Now if you're Canadian, I'm sure you've gone and looked at this link and are just about to fire off a nasty letter to the Pigdog hatemail box pointing out that what the article is actually fretting over is not really raisins, per se, meaning those delicious wrinkled grapes that we here in America put on our cereal and that those up in Canadia sprinkle over their mutton-flavored sherbet, but certain types of lead-covered raisins imported from places like Turkey and Afghanistan, where lead is considered a delicacy.
Yes, I understand all of that. The lead is causing all of these horrible juvenile deliquency problems, not the raisins themselves. We're very clear on that point, so hold your email.
Here's what I want to know, however: why the fuck do you people eat lead-covered raisins? What sort of weird mutants are you all, anyway? I could understand dipping things in chocolate; chocolate tastes good, and it doesn't turn infants into mutants. I even sort of understand poutine, after a fashion; it's not any weirder than grits, really, and it makes sense in a sort of "freezing the split pea soup" sort of Canucky way. But lead? LEAD?
What sort of people would do a thing like that? Don't you understand that lead is a POISON? You can't just go around ingesting heavy metals and expecting to pay no consequences. What's the next big story we're going to find on canada.com? "Doctors Warn Against Being Stabbed?" "Experts: Cyanide Tablets Not 'Cure All' As Previously Thought?"
Do I have to explain everything to you Canadians?
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