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Greetings from Lakeside!
Greetings, readers, and rise and shine Lakeside! It’s me, Christian Knight, everyone’s favourite columnist, journalist, and all around swell guy writing for the Lake Shopper – sponsored of course by our wealthy benefactor and mayor, Joshua McFarland. Little known fact, Joshua McFarland is actually the owner of twenty different lakes around the world. Twenty! And we’re lucky enough to be one of them, may the stars above bless Mayor McFarland.
Now, you may well be asking yourself: what is this? Why is Christian telling me all of this stuff that I already know? Did I leave the oven on? If you are asking any of these questions (excepting maybe the last one), congratulations! You are among the 25% of people in our community who has not been affected by the annual amnesia day. If you think you may have been affected, go check that oven. Yes sir, that’s right: the last day of July has flown by, and that means the mysterious annual amnesia came around, which means it’s remembering weekend! I love remembering weekend so much, it’s a great time to remember where you lost things, remember happy memories of days gone by, remember who and what you are at your core level. Remembering weekend has been a staple of our community for a long time (for those of you that have forgotten) and every year we run the remembering special in the Lake Shopper! It feels truly festive, don’t you think?
Now, as the best and only columnist for the Lake Shopper, I have been chosen for the privilege of running this slot. Again. But where should I start? Oh I know, I’ll establish some simple facts: You, the reader, are a living organism (or have been at some point); you are probably a citizen of Lakeside if you’re reading this; Lakeside is a neat little community which is on the side of a Lake (funny that); a lake is a large body of fresh water. That’s about it I think? Oh wait! Of course – you’re Canadian! Isn’t that great? It sure does feel good to be a Canadian, so good that I doubt you forgot that part.
Yeah, that’s the basics covered. You know, I think I’ll do a little comparison to show you all how well off we really are in this town. I have a cousin of sorts, a kissing cousin if you will. You know, a very very distant cousin so it’s just about acceptable to start something with them? Right? Anyway, he’s an American. He’s a journalist of sorts too, in his own little community, but it is most definitely nothing like ours: he lives in a desert – that’s like the complete opposite of a lake! And what’s more, the town that he lives in is run by so many
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competing agencies! It’s ridiculous! They have vague but menacing Government agents – which is no doubt a very American thing, you wouldn’t see that here! – and on top of that the Sheriff’s secret police, and also some mysterious hooded figures. You’d never get anything like that in Canada! Apart from the bears of course. On every level of government: Municipal, Federal, National. Even our dear Mayor McFarland is a bear, but I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about his private life like that.
Oh, but that’s the other thing! I am so very glad to be a citizen of Lakeside, because we read our news. We read all the time, and it’s so stimulating for the mind – I hear that in my cousin’s town reading, libraries, and (if you would believe it) librarians are all considered highly dangerous! Librarians are, of course, exceedingly gentle creatures that can easily be placated with a shallow dish of maple syrup and quiet voices, so I have no idea what they mean. Of course, this opposition to reading opens one massive problem: newspapers are highly frowned upon as a form of community news, and it is instead mainly got about by radio station. My incredibly hot distant cousin that I mentioned before is the person in charge of the station; well, technically he has his station management, but what’s the point of that if he can just run his mouth and spill everything – by then it’s too late. That’s why I’m so glad for our editor, who is most definitely not a writhing mass of purple tentacles and digestive orifices, who is in fact very beautiful, talented, and clever, and who is also not susceptible in any way to flattery [Ed. CZLM RSQZHS], whose job it is to make sure everything I say is perfectly acceptable to say. Yep, written word is the way forward.
Anyhow there’s no other major news this week because of the remembering weekend holiday, so I’ll just rap up with some sport and traffic:
Traffic: Chaos. Destruction. An appalling loss of cars. People turning the wrong ways, driving off cliffs, pile ups in all possible directions. Typical remembering day traffic then: please. Stay inside.
Sport: It’s baseball season, so let’s all go the game! The Lakeside Losers have won game after game and are heading up to the national series! They are currently, as I type this, in their third game of the series against the Desert Bluffs Grinners, and it is not pretty. It has been a no hitter, and the Grinners’ batters are starting to get really antsy with the bats. And oh! Oh no! Oh don’t look, that’s not pleasant. That’s not pleasant at all. Oh but wait: yes. Yes! YES! Despite heavy bruising and a slight loss of limbs, the Losers have done it again. 4-0 to the Losers. What an innings. Wow, you should have seen that. Seriously.
Well, that’s all that then, look out for the obituaries on p. 9, to remember the forgotten, and a cute little article on p. 18 about a stray Librarian, and what happened when they met a mountain goat in the woods. The clue for the big puzzle on P. 20 is WOLFSBANE. Wr. Christian Knight Ed. LQ. OZKLDQ