The Confused Veteran

Huh?! What did you say?! No, they WANT you to take the rolls!

What?! Oh, oh, sorry. My apologies, young lady. What's that? You're a man?! Certainly not with THAT hair, or those clothes. You look an awful lot like my late wife's macaw. That's a bird, sonny, real colorful like with the feathers sticking up of its' head. Why you wanna dress up like some hussied up streetwalker? Errghhh, whatever, I don't need to hear none o' yer explaining.

The name's Billingsley, Sergeant L. Orville Billingsley, Army Rangers, 9th Airborne Batallion, Charlie Company. And that's how introduce yourself, sonny. None of that, "Sup, doggie doggie, homely G-money" crap! What is wrong with your generation, boy? All of you running around dressing like your women, acting like women, and you ain't even ATTRACTED to women. What is this nonsense? Back in my day, if you were a man, you were a man! You dressed like a man, you loved women like a man, and you WORKED like a man. All you young'uns now want to be paid for doing nothing but being alive, and you walk around listening to that hippity hoppity music all day. It's shameful!

I can't believe I nearly died for this country back in WW2 and now this is what has happened to my beloved country. Boys act like girls, girls act like boys, and all of you think that I'm a problem because I tell you the truth! You got no respect, sonny! If'n you was mine, I'd have left you in the cold Michigan winter naked and seen if you could survive it. That would make you appreciate your life!

So, really, tell me boy, what is it about all this hippity hoppity music, the fru-fru coffee drinks, and them apple macintosh gadgets that make you think you are being a man? I just can't get my head around it. And where do you come off voting Democrat?!! You, your parents, and your illegitimate children that you have on welfare ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Don't you know that all them democrats want is to make you a slave to their government machine?! It's saddens me, but you gonna do what you gonna do I guess.

Well, I guess I wasted enough o' yer time, seein' as you won't listen to reason anyway. Sorry to bother you, girl...uh, boy.

The Misguided Mayoral Candidate

Huh? Who dat? Where am I? Oh, oh, right. Sorry, forgot we was doing a camera thing.

My name is Hendry S. Tacklebottom, and I am running for the office of mayor of Detroit. Now, I know many of you don't know me too well, so let me tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a lifetime resident here, been through the good times and the bad times - from the days when our city's revenue was in the several millions and then the not-so-good, recent history of our having an overwhelming deficit. When I was born here in the mid-1950's, I remember things being pretty decent and those are the times I would like to return to if elected to the mayorshipness of this fair city.

My personal politics are as follows - I don't like big government, but I know we need to have some sort of controls and measures in place for the safety of our people. My first priority would be to help get all these hooligans and thugs under control with a project I call The Hendry S. Tacklebottom Hooligan Displacement Act.

What this act would do, in effect, would be to round up all the thugs and hooligans that are muckin' up our city streets. How would I do this, you might be asking. Well, I'll tell you. What we gotta do is first get their attention in a big way. My plan includes options for things such as advertising a Nicki Minaj concert downtown and tell them all that at the concert there will be free hot wings and Old English. Now, I know this won't appeal to a vast majority of the thugs we got running around here so, in addition to that, we will also send out the message that Pitbull will also be appearing that same night, and that there will be all the tacos, quesadillas, and Patron you can stomach. And before you go thinking I forgot that we got some other thugs that bother our fine men and women in uniform, we also have plans to announce that ICP and Luke Bryan will be performing a mash-up concert and giving away all the Faygo and Copenhagen you can handle.

Now, once the word spreads of these concerts and our idiotic thugs all cram their way into the downtown area, how are we to get rid of them? It's simple. We will have an elite force of specially trained zoo and animal control workers stationed on the rooftops of the neighboring buildings that will be laying in wait until the signal is given. That signal will be the opening line of the theme song to "Family Ties", since that is the most wholesome show ever to be put on television. As the signal is given, the special animal task force will release hundreds of animal nets from the rooftops and ensnare all the thugs down below. They will fight, of course, but the more they fight the more trapped they will become. Once they all settle down and accept their fate, we will have dump trucks ready to be loaded with the nets full of our pestilential, problematic thug population. The dump trucks will then drive the captive thugs to the riverbank and dump them in the water to be washed away with the tides.

After our thug problem is completely eradicated, our city will once again be able to thrive and I hope to be the one to take us there. I have several ideas to boost the economy, such as new educational techniques for children who struggle with learning. I also would like to stimulate the economic growth through funding many start up businesses that this city desperately needs. I can't get into many specifics there, but in addition to new business, I aim to lower the tax rates citywide. I would like to state that I would seek to impose one new, small tax but that would only affect our streetwalker population. I know many before me have tried to get rid of the streetwalker problem but I seek to embrace them as a viable avenue for tax revenue and would impose a new small business tax on the streetwalker population as I would try to unionize and regulate the whole industry to generate new revenue for the city to improve the working conditions for those folks, like my wife, I mean ummm, the streetwalkers.

Oh, yes, and I also would like to decentralize our police force and offer up a self-trained militia to patrol our streets so that our fine men and women in blue can be better protected from violent crimes.

Thank you, and don't forget to vote for me, Hendry S. Tacklebottom, as your next mayor.