Milestones: Planet of the Bureaucrats, Part IV


Ok, after two months I’ve finally come to admit it to myself: I am never going to finish this. So much for my experiment in episodic parody. So let me just give you the punch line and anyone who likes can fill in the details.

So here’s what I had in mind:

Gister and von Williams break Seifert (Baby Cakes) and Emma out of the zoo. They go to the ETJ where they discover County Commissioner Eddie Wright and Henderson City Council member Bernard Alston playing checkers in the ruins of the Armory, hiding from Sam Jones.

After a few cheap shots and deadbeat jokes (which have turned stale since Alston started showing up for meetings again), there’s a showdown with Dr. Zollicoffer and his cadre of city employees. Zollicoffer reads some prophetic nonsense about the “return of the politicians” from the Sacred Book of Executive Session Minutes and Seifert and Emma ride off along the shore of Kerr Lake (well, Clem rides off and Emma is hauled by a team of Clydesdales). Anyway…

After riding along for a while, they come across a statue half-buried in the sand. Seifert gets off of his horse, falls to his knees, and shouts:

“You maniacs! You hired him back! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!”

How did he manage to get that horse out of the city limits, anyway? Is he a department head?

Then I reveal in some clever way that it’s a statue of Eric Williams, holding a mirror in one hand and a thesaurus in the other, or something along those lines….

Well, it was funny when I thought of it. Of course, that was about 400 years ago.

I guess I owe all of you an apology of some sort. So here’s my apologia:

My fellow Hendersonians:

When our mayor talked his way around a condemnation of the Klan in a television interview, I was silent…

When the city took the car keys away from our boys in blue, I was silent…

When the library debate heated up, I was silent…

When the city manager brought in the SBI, I was silent…

But I will be silent no longer.

There’s just too much damn fun to be had.

With love and squalor, I affectionately remain your devoted satirist.