Amazing Facts About The Year 2009 That Will Cause You To Boggle and Call Out.

• 2009 AD has been declared a Centigrade Year, the first one in history. Most Europeans and Canadians will refer to it as 2009, but to Americans and other non-metric countries, this year will be known as 3,648.2 AD (2009 x 9 ÷ 5 + 32). Oddly, it is expected that Americans will use a comma to separate the thousands and hundreds figures in order to conform to financial syntax, thus making these confusing people appear to be even more introspective and constipated than ever before.

• 2009 is the first year to have its first and last digits add up to a two-digit prime number (11). Their symmetry is enhanced by two intervening Os, which continue to add up to zero. This trend is expected to last for the entire year.

• In those countries that believe digits have polarity (notably Peru and Scotland), the digit '2' is highly positive and '9' is very negative. This is said to create a strong attraction between the two, which may at some point during the year threaten to compress the intervening Os dangerously. It is feared that the Os' extreme roundness may cause some instability in cheques and drivers' licenses, and they may slip out of alignment. Government workers have been cautioned against frivolous use of overly round fonts. Comic Sans has been banned from all official documents for the remainder of the year.

• Last year's Canadian census revealed that the small Newfoundland community of Bashed Finger boasted a population of exactly 2,009 people. In recognition of this coincidence, all 2,009 residents gathered in the back seat of Bashed Finger Mayor Chowder Codflesh's 1976 Dodge Dart to celebrate the arrival of the New Year last Wednesday night. Sharing a single bottle of legendary Newfie Screech among them, all 2,009 celebrants were hospitalized Thursday morning, due apparently to some bad fish that found its way into the potent liquid. Since all but three of the Town's residents are unemployed, and the other 2,006 didn't show up for work as usual, nobody noticed that anything was amiss until dinnertime this evening.

• On a similar note, 47 year old Wynona LaPeckerhead, a seamstress in the neighbouring hamlet of Jesus Big Fish, threw out four of her cats last night in order to bring the total down to 2,009 in an attempt to claim the Guinness World Record for the Most Recent Year That's The Same Number As The Number Of Cats That Live In A Person's House. Unfortunately, Guinness officials discovered that Ms LaPeckerhead had been counting an abandoned container of poutine as a cat, based on its fuzzy appearance and its slight purring noise. Ms LaPeckerhead quickly threw a goldfish onto the front lawn hoping to attract one of her abandoned pets back into the house, but it was too late. The moment had passed.

• PappaRazzle Magazine reports that former Jenny Craig devotee Burstie Alliephant has fallen off the wagon once again. She now weighs 2,009 pounds, has been turned down for 2,009 acting jobs for undisclosed reasons already this year, and has just invested $2,009 in a really big bag of Marmalade 'N Cheese Kit Kat Bars in Butter. Ms. Alliephant plans to capitalize on the coincidence, and a press conference has been scheduled for tomorrow at lunchtime in her lap.

• While picking a nasty looking scab on his arm last September 20 (20/09) at exactly 8:09 pm (20:09), a Calgary chuckwagon painter named Julius Whappadoopie-Scrunt noticed that the exposed wound bore an astounding likeness to The Virgin Mary. Fearing a stampede of religious nutbars wanting to visit his arm and worship this miracle, he quickly put a Band-Aid on it and told no one. Early Thursday morning, at 20 minutes and 9 seconds after midnight on the first day of 2009, he removed the bandage. His arm had completely healed and the Virgin Mary image had vanished, but Mr. Whappadoopie-Scrunt remarked to a friend that this marked the longest uninterrupted period of time that he had ever worn a Band-Aid, without even taking a peek. The two friends sat in silence for a moment to ponder the significance of this event, reminding some of the pause taken by Forrest Gump and his friend Bubba when they realized that they had arrived at the end of every possible method of preparing shrimp. Then Julius and his friend went back to the party and got roaring drunk.