6-in-the-morning1 SQUEE! A gorgeous, beautiful, cuddly, huggable wild bull snake is roaming around Regina! CBC and the Leader-Post have the story. Theory: some fiend collected this guy* as a pet then got bored and “set him free” (to die in winter). I must save him!

2 NO, SASKATOON ISN’T AT ALL LIKE THE DEEP SOUTH Some Saskatoon shithead proves that Joni Mitchell does in fact know a thing or two about her home town.

3 THE U.S. AGENCY THAT RAN A FORMERLY SECRET AND VERY EVIL SPYING PROGRAM BROKE THE LAW THOUSANDS OF TIMES A YEAR Story here. Meanwhile Edward Snowden, who gave these documents to the Washington Post, is an exiled fugitive rather than a national hero. Also meanwhile, the guy who shut down his secure e-mail company after the U.S. government tried to force him to spy on Americans has been threatened with arrest. No, seriously–it’s apparently illegal to say “no” to  U.S. government agencies when they secretly order you to betray and defraud your customers. Nice.

4 SASKATCHEWAN WALMART UNION LOSES A FIGHT, MAY DECERTIFY The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal to a Saskatchewan Labour Relations board decision to allow a decertification vote to proceed at that unionized Weyburn Walmart. This blows. If the terrorized/blackmailed/turncoat/collaborating/who knows employees vote to decertify, well, that’ll be it. Meanwhile it blows my mind that anyone shops at or supports Walmart. It’s ignorant, foolish and morally weak–no corporation that pays poverty wages should be supported. Then again, that’s the thing about the general decline of the middle class — it puts people in positions where they can’t afford to shop anywhere other than a place like Walmart.

5 THIS TROUBLED WORLD More people have been killed in Egypt and 30 Christian churches have been destroyed in the past week, UN chemical weapons inspectors are headed to Syria, hunger striking California prisoners are starving to death, which is kind of a sign of collapsing civilization and it’s the one-year anniversary of a massacre by South African security forces that left 34 striking miners dead.

6 AREA 51: IT EXISTS! Well, I guess we knew that but the CIA has now confirmed it. Let’s all head down there and rescue the caged extraterrestrials that are obviously also real. I suspect the CIA is also breeding olinguitos at this facility. Those things obviously have alien DNA.

*Making an educated guess on its sex from the CBC photo but could be wrong.

THIS ONE’S FOR THE SAD REGINANS Here’s one of my favourite songs. I’ve put it on the blog a couple of times before and it’s time to do it again.