Canadian Peter MacKay told the Disassociated Press of Canada that concerns Afghanistan will become pregnant through Canada’s withdrawl plan are overblown.

Said MacKay, “We know withdrawl’s not 100% effective.  Look at the American experience in Vietnam.  But, we feel at this stage, since we’ve already pretty much fucked the ugly girl without a condom, a prompt withdrawl is the best plan.”

Afghan government officials were shocked at Canada’s plan to withdraw and leave it.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said, “I thought you cared.”

Canada noted that it did care.  But, MacKay added, “Further unprotected penetration under these circumstances is a roundly bad idea.  Frankly, Afghanistan is ugly and mean and crazy.  Any withdrawl is better done sooner rather than later.”

Afghanistan proceeded to throw a glass of water on Canada and then left crying without closing the door.

American officials tried to comfort Afghanistan.  Afghanistan threatened to open the car door and throw itself out if the Canadians didn’t come back.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly told Karzai, “Bitch?  Go ahead and try.  I don’t care if you’re pregnant.”

Afghanistan reportedly went quiet and refused to speak.

This was followed by an outpouring of surprise over the news that Salinger had still been alive.

“I mean, holy hell, you talk about Salinger in the same sentence as F. Scott Fitgerald or Mark Twain,” said Literary critic William H. Gass.  “It’s almost automatic to think he’s just as dead as those two guys.”

Academic Louis Menand noted, “Salinger didn’t die . . . I mean, like way back, cause he obviously did die or we wouldn’t be talking about this . . . anyhoo . . . Salinger didn’t die.  He just went so far off the deep end in the 1950s that he might as well have been dead for the next six decades.”

The Guiness Book of World Records holds that Salinger was the record holder for “Longest Time as Recluse Without Mailing a Bomb to a Government Official or Agency, or a Non-Profit Liberal Group Perceived as ‘One of Them’”.

Gass added in his statement, “I mean, the other day when I heard Howard Zinn had died, that registered.  You know, because people had talked about him like he still alive some time after the Johnson administration.”

Canadian readers may best remember Salinger from an incident in 1960, when he attempted to unilaterally annex part of southern Quebec to his Vermont summer vacation home.  The effort ended in September 1960 after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police foiled a poorly-conceived suicide by cop Salinger had hoped to attempt with help from an imaginary friend.  Salinger remained bitter for decades after the incident, insisting his imaginary friend had abandoned him.

In related news, $54,000 is now considered an acceptable levy of damages for downloading 24 songs.

P2P and online rights groups accepted the verdict.  A spokeperson for the Electronic Frontier Foundation told reporters, “Ya know, I could probably download $54,000 worth of songs and break even if I’m ever caught.  So, ya know, there’s nothing but upside, right?”

A spokesperson for the Recording Industry Association of America replied in a press release, “$1.92 million was restrained.  We feel betrayed by this ruling, and will use every fiber of our being to grab the few people left who care about music by the ankles and shake them until every last penny falls out.”

In a local twist, the last record store in West Dakota will be closing its doors on January 31st.  We say good-bye to Randy’s Record Mart, and look forward to whatever brand of wireless phone store will replace in the mall.

The proposal, to be presented by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow, outlines two possible options.

The first option, generally seen as the more likely to be adopted, would relocate Haiti’s 20 million residents to other countries over the course of the next two years.

“Even if we relocated them to the armpit of the nastiest swamp in Guyana, it would be an improvement,” said Clinton.

Several nations have already offered to take in the relocated Haitians.  Tanzanian officials told the U.N. they feel the relocations would be an investment, considering the untold power of all the black magic the Hatians would bring.

The second option would require installing an FTL drive on the western half of the island of Hispaniola and “jumping” Haiti to a better location.

“Look,” said Clinton, “some of our staff are really big fans of Lost.  And they seem to think if we can find Ben Linus and John Locke to turn the giant Mayan stone wheel or whatever it is that this proposal is doable.”

The Dominican Republic, owner of the other half of the island, has reportedly offered to foot half the bill for the FTL jump plan.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel commented that the second proposal is not serious.

“It’s one of those options that you put on the table just to take it off as a concession at some later point,” said Emmanuel, “Just political horse trading.”

An unnamed source at the White House also noted that they felt threatening such an outlandish action would scare the world into action, especially in the aftermath of the Bush administration.

The Secretary of State noted that the worst option would be to do nothing.

“We’ve tried everything — literally every single thing in Haiti,” said Clinton.  “One time, we even tried installing air fresheners.  Point is, we’re out of options and this is a bit of a stop loss.”

The General Assembly will convene Wednesday to hear the proposal.  A vote is expected before the weekend.