Small Town Grievances 45: The whining of the bullet eater
Are you looking for professional excitement? Have you ever wondered what black heart beats upon the river? Are you a strong swimmer, or are you willing to become one?
After weeks of speculation, Mayor has announced the formation of a new expedition to travel upriver via canoe to the Great Garbage River Island to discover what happened to the previous expedition to the Great Garbage River Island and, if there’s time, to continue the previous expedition’s work of determining the origin of the Great Garbage River Island, or to at least figure out if it has something to do with all the fish having human mouths these days.
Not much surprise there. An uncollapsable pop-up banner has been covering a full third of the town homepage since January, calling for expressions of interest to join “an unspeakable project” with “serious team building opportunities”. Particular encouragement is offered to recent graduates who didn’t get into any of the schools they wanted, boat owners with high madness thresholds, ex-army folk who were fired for being a little too into it, or really anyone who won’t freak out if enveloped in sodden plastics for potentially long periods of time.The Veterans of Unappealing Wars Hall is preparing for the latest in its out-of-town performers series: a night of entertainment from travelling diviner Vincent Futures, who returns with two new hours of correctly matching up the speaker on the other end of a phone call to a series of photos projected on stage. Even audiences of last year’s show who were disappointed by the amount of outlandish and easily identified accents and the inclusion of poorly observed characters from movies or cartoons gave strong reviews to Vincent Futures’ stagecraft, which mostly centres around holding two knives to either side of his neck and promising that if he gets even one answer wrong he’ll do it for real this time.
Alfred G. has placed another letter in the paper demanding the community stop referring to him as “the Official Town Bullet Sponge”, an old, mostly honorific civic title that makes it hard for him to meet women. Alfred G. has long complained that while very few official mangeur de balles have died as a result of significant gun violence in recent decades, the development of new bullet disposal technologies have made the concept of walking human targets redundant, while the “blind” lottery system used to select a new Bullet Sponge every three years needs reform, considering his name has now been drawn four times in a row.
As usual, Alfred G. is particularly discontent with the ancient leather carapace he is expected to wear in public (for which he receives a regular airing stipend, mind you). He claims that women find it hideous and mite-ridden, and that it softens under humid conditions to the point that a man can press his finger through it like bread, costing him a fortune in caulk. Meanwhile, the steel bullet-collection troughs that ring the armour’s waist come unstitched at a whisper and have to be dragged clattering behind him as he lurches about his day like some terrible married thing.
“You can imagine,” he writes, “how difficult it is to engage new intimate friendships in this state, looking like the devourer of of heaven, sounding like a church bell thrown down a staircase, knowing that at any moment your night may be interrupted by a hail of fire directed at you by somebody who would be afforded full legal protection as long as they can prove their loose bullets risked falling into the hands of youngsters or were otherwise making the spare battery draw hard to close.”
He continues: “You try to be a man recently divorced (through little fault of your own) who wants only to meet someone lovely (within generous age parameters) with whom you can share the fruits of your breakfast, while meanwhile every bright-blooded militiaman from diapers to dentures is eyeing you like you’re an escaped gorilla or a ravenous eel going for a picnic basket.
“The trance they fall into. The way their hands shake. More than once I’ve had to rescue a driver with his eyes rolled all the way back who’s crashed into the canal that runs by the house, which is not deep but still cold even when you are expecting it. It’s not that you all wish for my blood, I know, and I try not to hold it against you. But I’d be damned if I’m not tired of seeing you drunk on the arithmetic of how many rounds, at what distance, I could stomach before I’d go in the dirt. So I’ll say now as I have always said: one good one in the vital mass or as many as three in the lesser zones, and please don’t leave me bleeding.”Town Hall dropped a statement into letterboxes late Tuesday offering its regular counterpoint to Alfred G.’s complaints. It warns that abolishing the Official Town Bullet Sponge would take a substantial rewrite of town charter, which nobody even has the password for at the moment, and would likely mean revisiting the need for a great number of other civic positions that people actually give a shit about:
“If Mr Gregoris is happy to do away with such hallowed offices as the Water Alderman, the Tunnel Sheriff, the Bread Devil, the Great Dreaming Driving Instructor, the Superintendent of Schooling and his entire blighted coterie, the Anti-Surgeon General, most if not all of the Department of Screensavers, the Town Girlfriend and Town Boyfriend (both Fair and Dark Offices), Funeral Man, Mrs Sniper, the Prince of Taxes, Sewer Force One and the more than two-dozen brave men and women of the police force who we still haven’t gotten around to un-deputising after last year’s Missed Bin Day Riots, then Mr Gregoris need only continue his brash little crusade.”
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