News for Youse: Canada sells off priceless art, Australian lunatic plays spoons to Black Keys

High-level plans to drain all the beauty out of existence received a symbolic boost today with the news that Canada is selling off its art. Documents released to the Canadian Press show that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is ridding itself of 22 works by renowned Canadian artists, including Jean Paul Riopelle and William Kurelek.

The paintings have adorned Canadian embassies and other official buildings across the globe for decades, but there’s no reason we can’t replace them with some of those prints you see hanging in A&W for a tiny fraction of the whopping $4 million (wowza!) the sale should bring in. Meanwhile, officials at DFAIT who have expressed their dismay over the dismantling of our heritage need to get on board with the decree that nothing shall be prettier than our prime minister’s soft, round face.

Moving on, here’s another winning idea—Titanic II. Insane Australian billionaire Clive Palmer announced yesterday that he’s commissioned China’s CSC Jinling Shipyard to build a luxury liner to the same dimensions as its predecessor, but with some improvements to its navigation and safety systems, including two guys with binoculars instead of just one. The Titanic II is set to make its first and only trip from Southampton to New York in 2016.

In environmental news, a University of New York study claiming that wind farms “may cause climate change” is getting lots of attention in the media at precisely the same time that this report out of Stanford— “The world can be powered by alternative energy, using today's technology, in 20-40 years”—is getting the ol’ Ignore button.

"Based on our findings,” said Stanford professor Mark Z. Jacobson, “there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources. It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will."

News for Youse hopes that the civil and environmental engineering expert stays safe if he insists on going around making heretical announcements like that. In unrelated news, a mysterious benefactor from inside Stanford’s top-level administration has awarded Jacobson two first-class tickets on the maiden voyage of the Titanic II for all his sterling work.

Finally, we can hardly believe we missed this last week, but here’s a burly Australian grandmother playing spoons to the Black Keys’ “Lonely Boy”. News for Youse hasn’t been this horny since we did all that research into gay porn last week.