Square Pegs Connected to Round Dots

I have a yahoo email account, which means that in order to read all those missives of love sent to me on a daily basis (ahem) I have to get past the “news” page. Usually I manage to ignore all the gossip and self help articles that pass for yahoo “news “ but I confess, this one piqued my curiosity and I had to read it the way you must look at an automobile accident as you pass no matter how hard you try not to: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/eerie-links-between-harry-potter-bin-laden-203434253.html  from Rueters, no less! Immediately I started to imagine how this article came to be written. A frustrated novelist-turned journalist is taking a creative writing class at the local community college in order to improve his chances of publishing and is given the following assignment, “take two things that you normally wouldn’t put together and connect them in a short story.” While on a 10 minute break mid-class his editor calls and tells him about Bin Laden’s death and asks him to submit his article before the run of paper, there’s only one possible way to complete both requests on deadline....

I decided to take the same approach for my blog, so here is my news report on a recent oil leak in Alberta

Friday’s oil spill from a leak in the Rainbow pipeline in Alberta, which closed schools due to children becoming sick from fumes, invokes chilling echoes of the 1979 science fiction film Alien where a foreign substance enters into a crew member’s bloodstream causing him to suffer illness. Also like Alien, this spill is likely to have many sequels.