"When brain-eating zombies invade, our schools will be the safest place to hide."

If you own a cat, chances are you’ve noticed that it shares a lot of character traits with homosexual men.  It’s neat, well-groomed, self-absorbed, walks funny, and spends a lot of time trying to lick its own cahooty.  Dogs, on the other hand, resemble heterosexual men:  loyal, friendly slobs who are not above making frantic love to inanimate objects.

Now a local vet, Fred Findlay, has put forth an interesting theory regarding dogs and cats.  He claims that there are no such things as “cats,” and that what we call cats are simply dogs that have, as he puts it, “went gay.”

“About two years ago I found a box with a couple of newborn puppies on my doorstep,” says Findlay.  “I kept one of the dogs and named him Petey.”

Petey

“I gave the other one to my cousin, who is a male nurse.  He named his dog Marcel.  Petey was exposed to beer and cage-fighting.  For Marcel it was all Lady Gaga and Sex and the City reruns.  Now Petey is a regular dog, and Marcel is a dog that looks and behaves just like that animal we used to think of as ‘cat’.”

Marcel

Isn’t it possible that Marcel was simply a cat right from the start?

“That’s not what Gary said,” explains Findlay.  “Gary saw him and said he was a dog.”

It’s not clear who Gary is.  And it should be pointed out that when Fred Findlay identifies himself as a “vet,” he means he’s an Army veteran rather than a veterinarian.  He fought in the Gulf War and received a purple heart, which went back to its normal color after a week in the hospital.

If anything good came out of the recent shootings in Tucson, it’s the reminder to politicians that there are people out there who want them dead. Assassination isn’t just for presidents anymore. Even a low-level politico like our own mayor, Howard Presnell, has to be aware of the fact that one of Chrislip’s walking time bombs might mistake him for someone important enough to shoot.

Though he knows he might be a target, the mayor insists that he shouldn’t be. “Most people shoot politicians because they feel they’re either doing too much or too little,” explains Presnell. “Me, I’m right in the middle. I show up at the office every day, but I don’t knock myself out. If you look at my record, you’ll see that I’ve cut the ribbons at dozens of supermarket openings. I’ve never enacted a piece of legislation that could be remotely called important, though. So if you kill me, chances are you’ll get somebody who’ll be either a bigger slouch or a bigger go-getter. Chrislip can’t afford either.”

Mayor Presnell prepares to greet his constituents.

He suggests that there are mayors in nearby towns who need killing even worse than he does. “Some of them legislate everything that isn’t nailed down,” he says for the benefit of any crackpots who might be listening. “And I’m pretty sure I heard a couple of them say that they wouldn’t mind getting assassinated.”

But Mayor Presnell has been in politics long enough to know that you can’t always reason with crazy people. So in order to more fully ensure his safety, he’s pulling out the big guns. And in Chrislip, the biggest guns are psychologist Max Trask.

“Max taught me that you can always tell crazy people by the way they look,” says the Mayor. “They have go-funny eyes, and their hair sticks out at odd angles.”

Originally, Dr. Trask would circulate through the crowd and pick out those who looked crackerdog. He would then discreetly signal the mayor’s security staff by twirling his forefinger around his ear in a clockwise motion while shouting, “He’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!”

Later on they streamlined the process. “We realized that nobody looked crazier than Dr. Trask himself,” the mayor recalls. “So now we just station him in the doorway, and if anyone comes through who looks worse than he does, my boys put the cuffs on him.”

“Putting the cuffs on” is security slang for pistol-whipping.

You must be at least this sane to approach the mayor.

Since riding the Republican groundswell to office in November, the eight members of the Chrislip City Council have heard whispers behind their backs. Whispers that they’re too stiff, too stodgy, too far behind the times. After all, each is a white, heterosexual, Protestant male between the ages of 50 and 51. They’ve tried several ways to shake their button-down perception, including trying to smile in public. But yesterday, in one fell swoop, they may have changed their image for good.

It started the night before, when Councilman Michael Randolph spotted a teenager spray-painting an obscenity on a town overpass. “I shouted at the beatnik, ‘Where’s your civic pride?’,” he remembers. “He yelled back a very rude reply.”

At the next Council meeting, Mr. Randolph told his fellow members about the incident. One member in particular, John Thomas, found it hilarious. Mr. Thomas, who turned 50 just last November, is the youngest member of the Council, and the resident scamp. He’s known for crazily-colored shirts and ties, and coffee mugs with madcap sayings.

Councilman John Thomas

He was the one who suggested making the beatnik’s rude reply the town’s official motto for the new year. It was an outrageous suggestion, but one whose time had come, Mr. Thomas insisted. It was edgy, it was hip, and far more “cool” than previous slogans, such as “Let’s make our town a slice of heaven in the coming year of 2007.”

At first the other Councilmen were appalled at the suggestion. “But the more we thought about it, the more sense it made,” says Mr. Randolph. “Every year we beg our citizens to take pride in their town, and to no avail. This year we’ll tell them not to take pride, and in the rudest way possible. Maybe reverse psychology will work.”

And so, after much debate, it was ruled that Chrislip’s official slogan will be: “Take your civic pride and shove it up your ass.”

Whether it works or not, Mr. Randolph admits that the slogan is intoxicatingly fun to say. “I really couldn’t stop saying it, in fact,” he admits sheepishly. “That evening when my wife asked if I wanted dessert, I told her to take her apple pan dowdy and shove it up her ass.” He turns serious. “I only wish my five-year-old hadn’t picked that night to ask me to help tuck in her Tickle-Me-Elmo. I’m sorry, sweetie. Daddy didn’t mean what he said.”

When the phone rings and he is told that a private citizen is circulating a petition to have the controversial slogan recalled, the mischievous twinkle returns to his eyes. “Tell him to take his petition,” he says, “and file it with the Chrislip town coordinator.”

Tony Trevisano was like a lot of New Yorkers visiting Chrislip for the first time.  He was wowed by the lack of lights and the indifference of the people.  Whenever Trevisano bumped into a pedestrian while walking up and down the streets of our quiet, Midwestern town, they apologized to him without even knowing who he was or who he’d killed.

“The Federal witness protection program set me and my family up real nice in Arizona, but it just wasn’t the same,” said the former boss of the Gambino crime family.  “Watching MTV’s Jersey Shore reminds me of my crew back home.  That bitch Snooki would make one hell of an enforcer.  She’s like a cross between a drunken smurf and a tanned pit-bull.”

Mr. Trevisano’s relatives arrive from Sicily for a family reunion. His Godmother is second from left.

Against the wishes of the FBI, Chrislip Mayor Howard Presnell began marketing our fair city as a vacation destination for those in the Federal government’s witness protection program.  For security reasons, families left behind by witnesses can’t visit them in their new or old home towns.  So Mayor Presnell is flying them to Chrislip, where no one would look for them.

“I understand that we’re dealing with some pretty unsavory characters,” admitted the mayor.  “But they’re not going to kill anyone with their mother present.  Besides, I made the Mafia pinky-swear not to kill any one while they’re in Chrislip.”

This reporter pointed out to the mayor that recent cutbacks in the police department would make it nearly impossible to adequately protect our visitors.  They would be sitting ducks while in Chrislip.

“Hey, if that happens, it’s a win-win,” said the mayor.  “Now that we have the entire family in one place, it’s a perfect opportunity for a funeral.”