The bad news just mounts up… when will the hilarity ensue?

As if Ontario’s fragile gay marriage industry weren’t already threatened with same-sex marriage legalisation in Iowa and Sweden last week, Vermont officially joined the same-sex marriage bandwagon today and the District of Columbia gave more impetus to gay-marrying couples to get hitched in the states by agreeing to recognise out-of-state gay marriages. And where’s the gay marriage bailout, hmm? Is General Motors the only ‘GM’ that gets to suckle at the state’s teet — and then declare bankruptcy, meaning we’ll never see those billions again? (Yes children, this is where the money cut from the Public Health Agency of Canada’s AIDS Community Action Program has disappeared to. You’re welcome GM!)

In other bleak news for Toronto, a report by the Toronto Board of Trade placed Calgary four spots higher than Toronto in yet another who-gives-a-shit ranking of 21 global cities, and the Globe is crying as if it means something. If you’re asking yourself “How does Calgary even count as one of“21 Global” cities?”, the answer is likely because the results have been cherry-picked and the stats manipulated to direct typical conservative business-friendly policies. I mean, sure, the taxes are lower, but Calgary’s only got one gay bar (with less square footage than its Priape).

Meanwhile, University of Toronto’s faculty of arts and sciences has approved a big “fuck you” to its part-time students, by forcing them to either pay full-time tuition regardless of how few courses they’re taking, or slip to part-time status and no longer qualify for financial aid. I understand Remington’s is bracing itself for a slew of hopeful dancers. (Check out the top left corner of the picture in this article and you’ll see two of the ubiquitous pink “HOT MALE MODELS WANTED” posters which are already plastered all over campus, unrelated to Remington’s).

Rob Salerno is a playwright and journalist whose writing has appeared in such publications as Vice, Advocate, NOW and OutTraveler.

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