Spring 2003
Spring 2003
Recall Measure Succeeds
By Liza Rowls, fed-up journalist with pretty earlobes
The whim of the political sea has washed up a new body along the fetid shore of drowned public servants: that of Ronald S. Flint.
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| Councilman Jack Blount | |||||
| Ex-Mayor Ronald Flint | |||||
A truth-telling contrarian who swam against the swelling tide of corporate corruption and widespread apathy, Flint began to flounder last winter amidst reports that he had openly called "butt-ugly" the enlarging population of mutants in town. He quickly found himself doing a frantic butterfly stroke in an angry whirlpool of P.C. turmoil and last night disappeared, metaphorically, under the cruel waves of our city council.
It is expected that Flint may resurface elsewhere as a spokesperson for erectile dysfunction or unpopular cola drinks.
Jack Blount, a Republican with eyes on the Mayoral seat, began measuring his posterior with a cloth ruler and ordering upholstery, although officially, the next election is not until 2005. According to the Crooked Corners constitution, this places our former mayor, the late Leonard Marx, in charge for the 18-month interim.
Upon hearing of his resurrection into public life, the ghost of yesteryear exclaimed, "Bitchin'!" However, many reporters on the scene claim to have heard only a wheezing gasp from a crack in the earth and that translators have over-contemporized Marx's response.
Born and raised in rural Crooked Corners, Ronald S. Flint became a successful stereo dealer and pawn shop owner early in life and later was a prominent spokesman for the radical environmental group "Woods and Hoods." A self-proclaimed political independent, Flint would appear on the left and then pop up on the right like a capricious whack-a-mole.
While Flint's busy Mayoral schedule of fending off scandals precluded him from getting any of his pre-election goals accomplished, he did manage successfully to entertain the citizenry of Crooked Corners with his cigar-chomping rugged temperament. This modicum of success seems to have put him in favor with the voting public--among those polled, 99% of respondents said they thought favorably of his job performance.
This contrasts considerably with Blount's successful efforts to have the popular mayor removed from office.
In fact, last night's hearing at the city council marked a significant victory for Blount, who had pushed for a vote on Flint's recall for months. At the end of a long agenda and after many of the other council members confessed that they needed to use the bathroom "really bad," Blount refused to drop the issue until the vote met his satisfaction.
Blount is a fast-rising administrator whose origins are actually quite unclear. Though he claims longtime Crooked Corners residency, his name first appeared five years after the forming of the town's web site, and some skeptics have spread e-mail speculation that he is actually a vile incarnation generated by the still-steaming soul of the scorned Marx, who lost his bid for posthumous reelection to Flint a year and a half ago.
While his third hand remains behind bars, the rest of Panoland mutant and rabble rouser Boohoomi Dal, Jr. is rumored to be living comfortably in a cave. Police have narrowed their official search to a protected reserve of bluewood forest in northern Crooked Corners County and plan to move into the territory as soon as weather permits or after the chief of police gets a new umbrella.
Reputedly joined by a circle of close followers, Dal, Jr. has remained elusive since his alleged involvement with the farm silo terrorist tragedy of 2001.
One of 43 sons of former Panoland President Boohoomi Dal, the junior B.D. quickly became a leader in mutant politics upon his arrival in Crooked Corners close to three 
years ago, based mostly on name recognition. A conservative tyrant the likes of which the world has never seen, the senior Dal ruled Panoland with mind-boggling militancy--insisting, for example, that women always wear three pairs of underpants and that they refrain from eating bananas in public. But after the nuclear testing debacle that left much of the country decimated by radiation, the elder's rules fell away to rampant cracking open of the forbidden fruit. As piles of discarded peels rose in the streets, Boohoomi Dal, Jr. took advantage of the chaos and escaped the country. This made him a hero among expatriated Panolandians.
Discrete sources say Dal, Jr., while ripe from lack of bathing facilities, enjoys a pleasant lifestyle and eats plentifully of starch-rich tubers smuggled in from nearby fields. In addition to a working faucet, he has not had access to the latest medical treatments which seem to have reduced the craving for potatoes most mutants experience for the first year or so of their arrival.
"He lives ascetically with only a cassette player and a plastic flute," one mutant said, masking his voice on the telephone to sound like a monkey. "He has a recording of the collected performances of Carol Channing and enjoys listening to it while he toots out a duet."
Officer Harold of the Crooked Corners Police Department claims to remain hot on the trail of Dal, Jr. and hopes to nab him before the end of summer. "It's a pursuit of some sort," Harold says of the investigation. Harold's one-note catch phrase, usually charming to the ears of all who hear it, has proven atonal at best to a citizenry enraged by the silo assault and craving for the blood of the madman whose actions resulted in the death of a rooster and the loss of corn good for making moonshine.
Something that used to take place with great fanfare has ended, having dwindled from an audience of preponderate numbers a few decades ago to negligible attendance in latter years. Somebody who forgot to mention his or her name may have told the Gazette that no more of anything will be said about the once-popular event and that last year's hobbling queue of disappointed seniors has probably regrouped in the cemetary or may have broken up separately into personal urns. Some of them also may have been sprinkled onto the ground or into Crooked Corners Lake.
The event, formerly known throughout the county as exceptionally important, was once so formidable that shoeshine prices skyrocketed and manicurists had their busiest week of the year prior to its occurrence. Only once called off due to some world crisis now long forgotten, the occasion remains to this day unsurpassed, although no one seems to recall its name or purpose.
A clerk measuring out his life with coffee spoons in a cubicle on one of the floors of the city building has confirmed on condition of anonymity that no plans exist to blockade streets or provide added security on horseback. Nor has anyone thought to find, much less hang, the long-lost canvas banners announcing said event from the spans of unpainted street lamps that rise like rusty sentinels from the cracked sidewalk of the once glorious thoroughfare of Crooked Corners, a boomtown now serving as the neglected nucleus of a sprawling urban cancer.
Contacted via an antique landline "telephone," Crooked Corners resident Tiger Moody, retired former custodian of the paved-over Cool Cricket Meadows, discussed the end of an era. "I remember something about it, but more importantly, I remember having bladder control," he said. He continued, "Back in the days, I was regarded as a people of color, meaning my skin ain't pink, and we wasn't all that welcome. But I went anyhow, irregardless of the beatings, and I had a wonderful time, a wonderful time."
Often true of the glorified past, renowned events sometimes involved discrimination against one group of people or more, and celebrations joined by neighbors masked a true contempt of one's fellow man. Some unknown anthropologists argue that such animosities caused great strife, and some sociologists believe the threads of systemic prejudice continue today. However, having lost the ability to remember even recent history, most people would rather just watch repeat sitcoms and "reality television."
In the opinion of this reporter, nothing actually matters anyway, for all is truly lost in the end, and each and every one of us will die along with the earth, the galaxy and ultimately the universe. Where is the remote?
Letter to the Editor
Dear Gazette,
In response to your repeated coverage of the First Temple of the Exalted Orthopteran, I would like to rescind my subscription to your newspaper. Religion is a social disease, and only a steady infusion of truth will cure it. Where is your journalistic integrity, dear editor, when you treat seriously the ravings of a lunatic like Kire Ilguah, obviously a man whose noggin' was knocked not-so-gently by a blunt instrument? Now give me my money back!
--Bob Pleasant, Crooked Corners Heights
Editor's note: The Gazette is published free online, and is unavailable in any other format. This reader is only mad because nobody will be his friend.