Happy Cinco De Mayo (Spanish for “a fifth of Mayonnaise”), a Mexican holiday celebrating the, uh… some sort of revolution, or war, or… historical thing… hey look, Coronas are half price at the bar today! Here’s what’s going on in the country of Canada, which joins Mexico as America’s other bookend:

• > Did you hear about the new Conservative dinosaur, Pte-REDACT-yl?: “Canadian Journalists for Free Expression”, a made-up sounding group, has launched their inaugural Free Expression Review - and they’ve given Harper’s Conservatives the fair and balanced grade of “F” when it comes to releasing information. Look, I’m all for exaggeration – I exaggerate about 7.3 billion times per millisecond, no word of a lie – but if the Canadian government gets an “F”, what the fuck does North Korea get, F minus? The catchy “CJfFE” say Harper overuses national defense as an excuse to not divulge information. That’s a good thing, because otherwise we might all find out about the secret plan to █████████  the ███  ███  █████ without ███  ██  ██████ massive ███  ██  ██████  circus ██████  ███  ███  ███  ███ Denmark ███  ██████  ███  plastic bits on the end of shoelaces ██████  ███ [Note: This last sentence censored by federal government officials]

• > Chretien says nothing, columnist somehow says less: Let’s say you’re a columnist for a popular line of parrot-cage lining called “The National Post”, and luckily enough, you get an impromptu sit-down interview with Jean Chretien, one of the most powerful figures in Canadian politics in our lifetime and a man who ruled the country for a decade. Now, let’s say you don’t really give a shit what Jean Chretien has to say, but you’ve got an aching rage deep within your heart for Michael Ignatieff that you need to let out. What would you do? Introduce the topic of meeting Jean Chretien, and then right as the reader is suspecting an interesting, in-depth interview, become increasingly outraged about Michael Ignatieff’s current Liberals. Just start throwing shit out there and see if it sticks. Refer to some imaginary conversation with unnamed “senior party officials” and use it as the basis for your claim that the Liberals, a party that have dominated Canadian politics since 1867, will be reduced to ashes in the near future. Try to reach such a pinnacle of blustery, off-topic rage that your last sentence implies Michael Ignatieff be lynched. Whoa, is that 1000 words already, send that shit to the editor and call it a day!

• > By “beating up a sick puppy”, did you mean “unnecessary” or “easy”?: John Doyle, the Globe’s resident couch-potato who gets paid to watch reality television in his underwear, has been weighing in on the CULTURE WAR brewing on Canadian television sets. What, you didn’t notice there was a CULTURE WAR? You were watching hockey? Well, there’s a CULTURE WAR, and you’re going to sit down and shut up and read all of our articles about it, damnit. The Conservative party are getting in on the CULTURE WAR by picking a fight with those liberal propagandists at the CBC, which is like… well, let’s say we liken the CULTURE WAR to an actual war, such as Star Wars. It would be like if, in the war between the Dark Side and the Rebellion, Darth Vader were picking fights with R2D2. Doyle argues that the CBC, rather than being the super-Liberal propaganda-pieces the Conservatives claim, bend over backwards to be bland, neutral populists. I’m all for any plan that gets “Being Erica” cancelled, though.

• > If you’re from Bay Roberts, Newfoundland, stop reading now: MoneySense came out with their annual ranking of the best places to live in Canada. Go ahead, find out where your craphole city ranked, and then be outraged that you got beat by Oshawa.