A gift to your Mayor

In another one of their customary displays of loyalty and gratitude, citizens of Mitchieville were surprised to find out today that they'd contributed $132-million of their taxes to a new official portrait of their Mayor, replacing last week's portrait, and only one week before the Mitchieville election.


Onlookers, marching past the portrait hung in Mayor Square during their mandatory morning exercises as the Mayor watched above in the Township Hall balcony, remarked that it was a remarkable likeness. Copies of the portrait, costing $86-million, are to be hung in every room of every residence and public building by tomorrow, and especially in election polling stations to remind citizens of the personal accomplishments of their benevolent Mayor in every endeavour known to mankind. Blind Mitchieville voters will be personally assisted on the ballot by the Mayor's charitable brownshirt organization. Citizens will, of course, be cheerfully sporting the buttons showing the portrait that they were also surprised to have donated to themselves at a cost of $47-million.

Just this year, the Mayor invented electricity and the internal combustion engine, bringing joy and light to a full two percent of the population, while bright rust-red Yugos make an increasingly occasional appearance on Mitchieville's ox-cart tracks. In medicine, the Mayor advised surgeons to begin applying leaches to patients, saving the lives of billions of people worldwide, while in agriculture the Mayor's tireless devotion to research has increased barley yields in the township's fields to 9 ounces per acre! Fortunately for Mitchieville, doctors have estimated that the Mayor will live to be at least 141 years-old, thanks to his formidable constitution and generous outlook on his citizens' lives.

I, Connie Chung filling in for Dan Rather who is hiding in the basement of the Mitchieville Public Library, wrote this highly factual and objective article. Vote Mayor!

(With apologies to Martin Honeysett.)