Tuesday, July 29, 2008

On town halls

Hello all. I sorta, kinda broke my arm a little. Nothing serious, thanks, but typing, much like myself, isn't really something I can easily pull off at the moment.
Ha ha! Jokes.
Anyway, before anyone else asks, here is the refined story to date: You know how bicycles have brakes? Well, as sort of a general rule, those brakes are always set up right side = rear tire, left side = front tire. Except that for reasons as yet unknown, my friend's ex-girlfriend (Communist ex-girlfriend...) had reversed this natural order of things on her bike. No one told me. So I'm tearing along at a good clip on this thing, a bit drunk, admittedly, and go to slow down by grabbing the right side = rear tire brake. Only to find myself propelled, propeller-like, over the handlebars and onto the hard concrete below, where half of my left ulna exploded like so much suicide bomber.
Yes yes, it's all very tragic. I'll be fine in a few weeks. Meanwhile, I came across this gem from the Sep. 8, 2007 issue of the Onion as something of a stand-in.
Now, there isn't a reporter alive that doesn't get down on his (or her) knees every so often and thank his (or her) maker for two things: Spellchecker, and the fact that he (or she) has somehow landed a job that trades exceptionally low pay for extraordinarily little actual "work" (albeit massive loads of responsibility).
That said, we have all been to this meeting. Some of us go weekly. Some of you are well represented here. And we all secretly wish we could write this. Some of us perhaps one day will, as a final goodbye.
Edited only slightly for content:

Town Hall Meeting Gives Townspeople Chance To Say Stupid Things In Public

NEW BEDFORD, MA—In a true display of democracy, a town hall meeting held at the New Bedford High School auditorium Monday gave the crowd of approximately 550 residents the opportunity to publicly voice every last one of the inane thoughts and concerns they would normally only have the chance to utter to themselves.

Though the meeting was ostensibly held to discuss a proposed $21,000 project to replace the high school's grass football field with synthetic turf, City Councilman Thomas Reed inadvertently opened the floodgates to a deluge of ill-informed, off-topic diatribes on inconsequential bulls--- when he allowed those in attendance to demonstrate their God-given gift of language.

"I don't want to have some kid's torn ACL or ALS or whatever on my conscience," said 42-year-old contractor Tom Wareheim, who had apparently not heard the portion of Councilman Reed's opening remarks just moments before explaining that the risk of injury on grass and turf is virtually the same. "I also heard somewhere, I think from my cousin, that the fibers in that stuff can cause cancer."

Citizens quickly lined up at the podium to exercise their freedom of speech—for which countless Americans have died—to publicly drone on and on about everything from the root causes of the football team's poor performance last year to whether high school students should be playing sports at all.

"Now, I don't know much about this turf stuff, but you all know me and you know what kind of business I run," said hardware store owner Dan Schilling, 54, seizing the opportunity to hear his voice echo pointlessly off the auditorium walls. "I've been saying this to my wife for years, and she agrees with me: The garbage trucks in this town are way too loud and I came here tonight to see what's being done about it."

Schilling's grievance instilled an undeserved sense of confidence in the rest of the crowd, emboldening others to abandon the practice of forming cogent thoughts and instead allow streams of mind-numbing nonsense to spill ceaselessly from their lips.

"Who's going to fix the roads?" said 49-year-old Gordon Winters, a bona fide, class-A moron. "Do I have to fix the roads myself, or is somebody going to fix the roads? What's it gonna be? Fixed roads? Or not-fixed roads?"

After an awkward, 15-second period of silence, Winters thankfully moved away from the podium, only to be replaced by 32-year-old Laurel Hale, who seemed eager to prove to every citizen of New Bedford that she had the brainpower of an autistic dog.

"I'm just going to say one thing because I don't want to take up too much of anyone's time," said Hale as her 6-month-old daughter pawed at the microphone. Hale then somehow managed to link the synthetic-turf issue to the lack of places to sit in public areas, her inability to get the buttons at the crosswalk to work, and the apparent overabundance of cable television channels.

Added Hale: "Also, Councilman Reed, you need to get us out of Iraq. Now."

Over the course of the six-and-a-half-hour meeting, the only variation on the endless monotony of inconsequential concerns was the occasional tone of entitlement.

"This town used to be so different," said 67-year-old Doris Miller, as if she were starring in a film in which one person's impassioned speech is so powerful that it leaves the rest of the audience in stunned silence. "Kids are different. Adults are different. People. People are different. What happened? How do we get back to the way things were? How, Councilman Reed?"

"I fought in Korea, and by God I would do it again," said 76-year-old Ronald Schroyer, who immediately retook his seat.

With no conclusions reached about why the town has no zoo, which restaurant serves the best pizza, or what to do with the football field, Councilman Reed opted not to shoot himself and let his brains spray over the crowd, instead adjourning the meeting and thanking everyone who had taken the time to speak.

2 Comments:

Blogger Tracy Ramone said...

I want your job.

July 29, 2008 at 2:04 PM 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Alex...

About stupid things at town meetings, I was in Cape Cod last summer and was talking politics with a local. He told me that at one town meeting ,where the subject was the police department budget, one town resident spoke for almost an hour questioning a $2.75 item in the budget.

Democracy in action!!!

Tom Deitman

September 24, 2008 at 1:33 AM 

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