WHITE ROCK, B.C. – With the haze of wildfire smoke as thick as her Mary Kay smokey eye, conservative-leaning aunt, Linda Bertolucci, calmly assured her family, “It’s just a bad year for wildfires” as the birthday lunch at her luxury, ocean-view home had to be brought indoors from the deck for a fourth year in a row.

“What can you do? Nature is mysterious and powerful!” exclaimed the 56-year-old Bertolucci as she adjusted the air conditioner down to 16°c, popped a slice of melon and prosciutto into her mouth and took a sip of a Fiji water bottle. “There’s no way to know how or when these things will happen, and certainly no way to prevent them!”

Ursula Bertolucci, the ungrateful and mouthy 21-year-old niece of Linda Bertolucci, demurely shared “Boy, we thought 2017 was unprecedented in its breaking of global temperature records and extreme weather.” Then shifting uncomfortably on her ostrich leather seat and staring despondently at the post-apocalyptic smoke obscuring the Pacific Ocean through Linda’s luxurious floor-to-ceiling windows she added, “and before that 2016… and before that 2015”

“Yes, it really is a shame, this bad, bad luck we’ve been having,” concluded Bertolucci, lips wet with pork and confidence. “Maybe if someone went to church more often we might have a better year!”

At press time the family was still successfully tiptoeing around other sensitive birthday lunch topics including “those goddamn immigrants” and “perverts teaching kids about consent.”

Images via Pixabay