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VANCOUVER - Following months of painstaking research a team of astrophysicists at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Saanich, British Columbia have confirmed what many Canadians have always suspected: that the astrophysical centre of the universe is located in Toronto, Ontario.

At a brief press conference observatory director James E. Hesser explained his team’s findings to reporters, “The universe encompasses everything that physically exists, so trying to find the centre was a very complex task. Based on what we know about the cosmos and estimating the shape of its perimeter, we were able to calculate what we believe to be a very precise location. This was important to us because everybody knows that the centre of a body is the point around which everything else revolves or rotates. All other points just pale in comparison.”

The research project was funded by an anonymous group of Canadians who had grown tired of the endless parade of punchlines clinging to the notion that residents of Toronto falsely believe their city to be the centre of the universe. The humour is derived from the implied understanding that the centre of the universe is in fact nowhere near Toronto. The group hoped that this research would put an end to the jokes so that entertainers could focus their comedic efforts on more humourous material.

In the days following this announcement, backlash from the entertainment community has been swift and severe. Many Canadian comedians have publicly discredited the research, questioning the methods used by Dr. Hesser. “It’s just not conclusive.”, said Stacey Charles, an openly anti-Toronto stand-up comedian from Red Deer, Alberta. “I mean, the assumptions about the influence of star clusters and interstellar clouds on the gravitational fields of outlying galaxies are ludicrous. They’re just not based on any kind of accepted galactic logic. As a sign of protest, I am going to continue making jokes about how Toronto believes that all known matter revolves around them.”

For the majority of Torontonians however, Dr. Hesser’s research provides the much-needed empirical evidence to back up a claim they’ve been making for decades. “Based on my crude calculations, I knew the centre of the universe had to be in Southern Ontario”, says Blair Mahoney, a Toronto-area furnace repairman and amateur astronomer, “I suspected it was within the GTA, but could never prove it. It’s a great relief to know that countless years of baseless boasting and an outwardly condescending attitude towards my non-Torontonian friends is now supported by scientific research. Go Leafs!”

In an act that many Americans are heralding as a triumph of national security, border guards in Rooseveltown, NY have successfully thwarted a Cornwall family’s attempt to vacation in nearby Massena, NY. Border patrol officer Matthew Clayton, a fifteen year veteran of the U.S. Department of Customs, denied Luc Drennan and his family entry into the United States last week because he “didn’t like their faces”.

In a medal ceremony held earlier today in Massena, Officer Clayton was lauded by his colleagues and superiors for his textbook use of the Patriot Act’s “Face Clause”. The clause, which many have criticized for it’s absence coherence and logic, gives border guards the “authority to deny entry to any visitor who has an ill-tempered look about them”.

Until this incident, no official record existed of the clause being used to block a visitor’s entry into the United States. This is most likely due to the relative obscurity of the clause and it’s continuous misinterpretation as pure and utter fabrication.

Prior to being denied entry last week the Drennans had visited Massena, where Mr. Drennan’s mother resides, on 14 separate occasions in the last year alone. A frustrated Mr. Drennan was reached for comment from his home in Cornwall, “This has certainly cast a dark shadow on me and my family. The integrity of my face, and those of my family, has been forever compromised.”

There certainly is. The woman who’s hilarious misadventures made this 1998 film a box office hit, and thousands of other females that we see in countless Hollywood blockbusters every year, are in fact performers merely portraying roles on screen. This horrific discovery has raised a lot of questions about the authenticity of today’s films and their leading ladies.

The truth is, there is very little that is real about them. According to witness accounts, if you stay in your seat after a movie is finished and sit through the entire credits you’ll discover an alarming fact — that any similarities between the women in the movie and any persons living or dead is purely coincidental. It would seem as though the people who make movies are intentionally meaning to fabricate roles that are utterly fraudulent and fictitious.

But why? Are the lives of ordinary people not interesting enough to be condensed into a 90-minute movie? “They most certainly are”, said one film researcher, “I would say that most people’s lives easily generate enough ‘A’ material to produce a motion picture’s worth of entertainment at least once every two weeks. Not an Oscar-worthy effort, but something decent that would get 45% on Rotten Tomatoes.” If that’s the case, then why are film studio executives needlessly resorting to using imaginary characters in their movies over real people?

“It’s an issue of cost and feasibility”, said Charles Williams, vice-president at a production company in Los Angeles, “Yes, we could send crews to a woman’s house and film her for a few days until a plot revealed itself, but at that point she may or may not choose to continue on that plot trajectory. Even if she does, it might take weeks before she makes it through the standard confrontation and resolution, providing us with the required plot points to produce a feature film. There’s just too much uncertainty. Using actors lets us circumvent those hurdles.”

For most movie-goers, uncovering these questionable practices is a painful and unsettling experience. “I was so fond of Sgt. Callahan in ‘Police Academy’”, says Ruth Williams, a self-confessed film junkie, “I wanted to introduce her to my son because he has trouble meeting girls and she seemed like a very nice person. I contacted the movie studio and when I was told that her real name was Leslie Easterbrook and she was married, well I nearly had kidney failure.”

“It’s completely unreasonable to expect movie audiences to ‘suspend their disbelief’ to this extent for an entire film.”, says George Dellum, a freelance movie critic, “I mean, the concept of experiencing the entertainment provided by a feature-length movie while simultaneously looking past the glaring fact that the leading female is an actress portraying a fictitious character just seems ludicrous to me.”

Mr. Dellum continues: “Where does it end? Using computer-generated graphics to stage events that didn’t happen or places that don’t exist? That’s doing a real disservice to the hard working production teams that have literally — in the case of Demolition Man and Starship Troopers — traveled across space and time to bring back the movies we love to watch. If we lose that authenticity that’s a movie-watching experience I don’t want to be a part of.”