Normalcy has returned to Zitzengunsten.

Zing Dweebat, a PhD. student in Chemistry and Ultimate Frisbee at the University of Zitzengunsten, said, "Nobody remembers why we started cowering in our homes, but we all know one thing for sure: it's time to get back to biggering the economy!" Ms. Dweebat's vagina promptly exploded into flames and she ran around the room screaming and spraying her crotch with Mite is Right [tm].

Leonard Lump, Mayor of Zitzengunsten, delivered a speech to thousands of itchy, flaming spectators outside City Hall.

Zitzengunsten's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution. but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality. Business is business! And business must grow, regardless of crummies in tummies, you know. I meant no harm. I most truly did not. But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got. I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads. I biggered my wagons. I biggered the loads of the Thneeds I shipped out. I was shipping them forth to the South! To the East! To the West! To the North! I went right on biggering, selling more Thneeds. And I biggered by money, which everyone needs.

The Mayor's asinine speech was received by a standing ovation, before the crowd flamed out and the charcoal was hauled off to military bases to use for the war effort.

Verdor Twistinski, Professor of Philology at Zitzengunsten University, deconstructed Mayor Lump's bizarre speech for us.

"A return to normalcy," he explained, "is a return to a line pointed 90 degrees perpendicular to the direction we think we want to go in. Norma, in Latin, was a carpenter's square; and normal meant 'forming a right angle, made with a carpenter's square.' So 'normalcy' is politician-speak for returning to your favourite mindless herd activities while we steer you blindfolded toward our own self-enriching goals."

"That," interjected Pastor Didel Jungboise of the Mega Rock'n'Roll Church, famed for its top ten hit hip hop song "Virginity is Cool", "Is why we need not a return to normalcy, but a return to tradition."

"Well, actually," countered Professor Twistinski, "Tradition derives from the Latin roots 'trans-' and 'dare', to give. It is distantly related to the word 'data, which is the feminine past participle of 'dare' to give, so literally 'that which was given.' But 'tradition' is much more closely related to 'traitor' and 'treason', since all three words derive from 'to hand over, deliver, betray.' Tradition is literally betrayal."

Because the bookworm nerds keep stealing our words, Mayor Lump resorted to more neologisms to promote his return from cowering in our homes.

"We've all had quite enough of all this covfefe," said Mayor Lump. "Let's just get out there and bigger everything and everyone."

Zitzengunsten's Department of Pacifism launched a defensive on Didntweequiptheirarmyabad Saturday morning, firing eighty Democracies, dropping nearly two hundred Educations, and spraying 60 millimetre Ethics through walls and citizens in order to bring Peace and Distraction [tm] to the rogue city.

Oranj Bulbous, the President of the Society of Demented Molestors, tweeted just before the peace broke out: "Look! Bad guys! Over there!"

Here in Fork in the Road, Mayor S. Perkele instituted a blackout every night, starting at 6pm and ending at 6am (6:09 if you deliberately set your clocks forward in the hopes of getting out of bed on time for work).

The Fork in the Road Power Company shuts off the electricity promptly at the start of the blackout period. Old-fashioned families with only cable TV accept this as a necessary part of bombing peace into the thick skulls of the camel jockeys. But those who have cut the wire cry out every night as their torrential appetites for zoning out to mindless pap are abruptly aborted by the regular yet somehow unexpected loss of power. "It's like we're living in 2009 all over again," moaned one disgruntled viewer.

The peace effort is going well so far, according to the Zitzengunsten Peacetime Propaganda Department, the only government office in the city that operates 24/7.

Mayor Perkele promised that Fork in the Road would provide as many as 10,000 shovels, with holes cut in them so that soldiers can peer out from the trenches they've just finished digging, to aid in the peace effort.

"What about food here at home?" cried one of the many unemployed in the crowd.

Mayor Perkele sympathized that the ravages of the scabies outbreak had left local farmers in a difficult position, and with food supplies dwindling everywhere in the Intercity region, He acknowledged that people might have to eat each other to stay fed this fall. "In the meantime, get a job, wake up earlier, work harder and longer, and you, too, can be a successful, self-made man, like me."

Meanwhile, in Zitzengunsten, in an attempt to remember why he was standing on a stage surrounded by thousands of people, Drew Launbiben, the leader of the Taupe tag team at the Society of Demented Molestors, pumped his fist in the air twice and cried "Apple phoo phoo!" His wife then scurried onto the stage, wiped his nose and chin with a handkerchief, and tried to pull him off stage before he could clamp his teeth down on her nipple and curl up in her arms to go to sleep.

Prince Mohammed Smith, chief executive officer of Didntweequiptheirarmyabad, sent a defiant white flag out to meet the Zitzengunsten pacifists streaming into the benighted city. "Because he won't cooperate," sighed Mayor Lump of Zitzengunsten, "We're going to have to deploy the shovels."

Desperate for money as the legal bills pile up for the numerous class action suits brought against Disruption Man for his generous slave wages, hygienic workplaces safe from everything except scabies and bed bugs, and perfectly legitimate use of knowledge, during his stock market transactions, that is always available to the public 3 or 4 months after he closes the deal, Disruption Man last week auctioned off The Nihilist Weekly to the highest bidder.

Slurpee Gupta, chief executive officer of the Daily Anarchist, was the only bidder.

"We see this as a wonderful opportunity," said Slurpee, "To disrupt both the nihilist and the anarchist newspaper industries, and bring to the world something entirely new and fresh and disruptive."

Ms. Gupta invested her inheritance money in running bathtub gin over to Zitzengunsten during Prohibition, and she made a fortune at it. She has established herself as this city's new newspaper tycoon.

Disruption Man, meanwhile, has begun an executive coaching business, aimed at raising funds to sustain his team of elite fluffers.

Staff from both the Nihilist Weekly and the Daily Anarchist were kept on payroll, though Ms. Gupta said there were "necessarily some disruptions."

Bluetooth Zippers Qulity Jeans and Apparel was forced by court order to recall thousands of its jeans after an unfortunate accident last Tuesday.

Handen Pykkle, head coach of the Fork in the Road Gymnastics Association, suffered a lower body injury after swapping phones with 12 year old gymnast Reevah Neige.

"One minute, we're texting each other and using each other's Bluetooth Zipper app and sending photos to each other," Mr. Pykkle said in court. "The next minute, it started going crazy! It wouldn't stop! It was horrible and messy and -- oh! I don't know what on earth happened!"

Judge Clarence Emsworth ruled, "I don't understand technology, and I fell asleep when your man there, what's his name, was going on and on about his girth, whatever that was about. So I hereby sentence Bluetooth Zippers to cover the psychiatric prescriptions and surgery fees of Mr. Pykkle, and replace the little girl's, what's it, the thing with all the stains on it that won't come out... Errr, yes, her mobe isle telepehone."

A spokesperson for Bluetooth Zippers Qulity Jeans and Apparel said that "We haven't found the bug yet, but we know it's there somewhere. Luckily, we hired developers in Belarus to code the mobile app. So once they've finished deciphering the log files from Russian for us, we'll be able to figure out what went wrong, and why."

Anyone wearing Bluetooth Zipper jeans should return them to the retailer from which they were purchased for a full refund and free Bluetooth [tm]-controlled pair of socks.

Disruption Man's puppet show at the public library, his 2 hours of community service for screwing less than 4,000 people out of their jobs, was not everyone's cup of tea.

It was a violent show, depicting the worst instincts of humankind: bloodthirst, lust, hunger for power; and some of the worst deeds done by humans: murder, theft, rape, torture, genocide, cannibalism, medical experiments involving severed limbs, decapitations and grafts, and so on.

Most of the children loved it, but a few were left in tears, crying to get away from the scary man with his hands on the strings.

Fork in the Road, already the world's greatest exporter of Christmas trees, has now entered the international Christmas tree sporting limelight by winning the annual Intercity Lumberjacks Race.

The newly constructed tree barge Greenpate, captained by Agnes Walters of Slurpee's Christmas Trees, Inc., transported 1,400 tons of balsam fir Christmas trees upriver to Yurp and back in 34 hours, 3 hours less than the fastest barge from Zitzengunsten.

No tree barge from Fork in the Road has ever won the Intercity Lumberjacks Race until now.

After the race, Captain Agnes Walters donated a large balsam fir to the city of Zitzengunsten for its help cleaning bug spray out of hard-to-reach cracks after the Bug Spray Tsunami 3 weeks ago.

"On behalf of the people of Fork in the Road," said Captain Walters, "Here is a Christmas tree for the citizens of Zitzengunsten, to say thank you, from all of us, for all the help cleaning bits of dead people out of cracks in the floorboards and giving us the assistance and bug spray we needed to carry on life after the Bug Spray Tsunami. You are truly generous heroes, like Santa Claus would be if he rode the reindeer bare-backed and wore chaps and carried six-shooters in his holster."

...Continued at the top of the next column...

...Continued from the previous column...

Mayor Leonard Lump of Zitzengunsten ceremoniously took down the previous plastic Christmas tree outside City Hall, before struggling to figure out how the parts of this new Christmas tree would fit together. "Isn't there at least one of those cryptic IKEA instruction guides?" Mayor Lump said, staring stupidly at the tree and trying to figure out what kind of petroleum product it was made of.

The Greenpate is the sleekest and fastest of Fork in the Road's Christmas tree barge fleet. Its crew have been glorified on Instagram as popular heroes.

"We are open for business," said Captain Walters, who said that tours of the barge can be purchased online at www.greenpate.forkintheroad.ca. Captain Walters has also been pressing Mayor Perkele to hire the barge and its crew for international exhibitions, such as the Intercity Barge Expo next month in Yurp. "Eventually," Captain Walters added, "We'd like to become a municipal symbol, and maybe have our barge printed on the $3 Bitcoin. That would be nice." Her eyes glazed over with a dreamy look.

Ubertink Dweebat, winner of the Irrational Number Prize in Mathematics 4 weeks ago, died peacefully while crossing the road Monday afternoon, as he was run over by a milk truck.

"It took us a while to identify who it was," explained Police Superintendent Skinny Pleather. "I mean, first of all, he was dead. So it wasn't like we could ask him, 'Hey buddy, who are you?' So we left his corpse in the street for a while and tried to come up with ideas about how to find out who he was. I mean, nobody said we'd have to investigate things when we joined the Police force, right? We're here to push paper and lurk around every corner during an enemapidemic, eating donuts and making sure people don't congregate in wide open public parks. Well, anyway, eventually someone called in a tip: 'Try looking for ID in his wallet.' Genius! I wish we'd thought to ask the name of the tipper. We could really use a forward-thinking mind like that in the force."

Mr. Jurgen Folknos-Watt, who was passing by when Mr. Dweebat was hit by the milk truck, said he heard Mr. Dweebat's final words:

Aha! 5/4 Hankel function!

Jurgen Folknos-Watt said that he's sure Mr. Dweebat's final words were proof that the earth is shaped like a Klein bottle.

The Fork in the Road Parent-Teacher Association moved quickly to have the former Mr. Dweebat's tower, which extends almost to Venus and is made entirely of glass, torn down. "With all the imagination spilling into the drinking water around here," the PTA's website declared, "We can't risk our children trying to climb that awful thing. It should be banned, just like trees in yards were finally, after decades of pressure from the PTA, banned last summer."

We reached Ms. Zing Dweebat, Ubertink's daughter, by phone: "IT FUCKING HURTS! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT! OH MY GOD IT ITCHES!" Then the connection was lost.

Mayor S. Perkele, the executor of Mr. Dweebat's fortune, announced that the mathematician had left his entire estate to his cat Mittens. "But don't worry," added Mayor Perkele, "I'll keep it in trust until Mittens is of age."

Slurpee Gupta and Andy Stablusman will be proud parents of their firstborn daughter early in the new year.

Mrs. Gupta moved into Mr. Stablusman's toilet paper-and-Gravol [tm] fort in Fork in the Road Park last Friday evening.

"We're so excited," Mrs. Gupta gushed. "We're both going to start life over again. And this time we'll disrupt the world together."

"That's right," Mr. Stablusman continued. "Back to nature, back to anarchy, the way humans are meant to live. Very disruptive."

"I've been taking lessons," beamed Mrs. Gupta.

"You have?" Mr. Stablusman looked nervous. "Lessons? From. From who?"

Mrs. Gupta's smile quickly disappeared, but she said: "Why don't you tell the nice reporter about our baby?"

"Oh," said Mr Stablusman, looking bewildered. "Oh, OK. Umm. Right. Our little baby girl will be named Pr'oh."

"Little Pr'oh-ee!" squealed Mrs. Gupta. "Isn't that an adorable name? We're going to be so happy, the four of us."

"Four?"

"Three! So happy. I love you, Andy Stablusman."

The happy couple are accepting baby shower gifts of toilet paper and Gravol [tm] bottles, to help rebuild the part of their fort that blew away in the windstorm Sunday afternoon.

Late Friday afternoon, Mayor S. Perkele flattened the final curve in the Great Big Circle Road. "This is the end of the road, so to speak," said the Mayor.

"Actually, sir," said City Hall Architect Mungbean Murphy, "This is the start of the road."

"Middle!" cried one of the construction workers, and gave his guffawing blue collar buddy a high five.

"Definitely the end," said Mayor Perkele. "As is well known, circles don't have starts or middles."

The Great Big Circle Road allows drivers to leave Fork in the Road and drive around the circumference of the city in a big loop back to the only on ramp and off ramp.

"This will reduce the need for ugly little things like public transportation and sidewalks," explained Architect Murphy. "It's designed to save tax payers money."

The Circ, as it has been nicknamed by those watching its slow progress over the years, has had an undisclosed budget. When asked how much it would cost to salt the road and perform winter maintenance, Architect Murphy shrugged. "Who cares? Those are operational details. I just try to save tax payers money."

The Great Big Circle Road is open to vehicle traffic only.

Environ mental protesters demanded a Great Big Bike Lane be constructed, parallel to the road, so that bicyclists can cycle aimlessly around the city, too.

---

Fork in the Road Police investigated an incident of children inventing their own games and role-playing their own made-up characters on Thursday.

"We haven't seen an outbreak like this in years," said Superintendent Skinny Pleather. "It's like these poor children have returned to feudal life in the dark ages, and have to use their own minds for entertainment. It's cruel and we'll commercialize these poor young souls as soon as we get to the root cause.

A Facebook group started up Friday, accusing parents of the children of "murdering their consumerism." The Facebook group calls itself Victims Always Have Something to Hide. It has 10,000 signatures from Fitrians -- more than half the adult population of this city -- demanding that the children be forced to wear Oculus [tm] headsets until their imaginatory glands reduce production to normal, vapid child levels.

Meanwhile, Fork in the Road Water sent a truck to English Muffin Ave. to clean up toxic flooding from the Dark And Flat Terra Society's imagination holding tank, which burst Wednesday night, pouring 1,000 litres of unfiltered imagination into the ground.

"It is likely related," commented Ahmooda Bahleefir, Science Teacher at Fork in the Road Private Academy. "The lab results aren't conclusive. But it is highly probable that the same imagination that induced these poor children to be creative and even --" Ms. Bahleefir glanced nervously over both shoulders before continuing, in a lower voice: "They were even reading! Probably it was the same imagination that was intended to fill the pipes and syringes passed around at each monthly Dark And Flat Terra Society meeting."

Doctors say that if Ms. Bahleefir's hypothesis is correct, and the imagination affecting the children is the pure stuff from the Dark And Flat Terra Society's holding tank, then the children might never re-acquire their consumerist drone habits.

"We might have to lock them up," said Dr. Anne Greewichuk. "For their own good, as well as for the protection of the other braindead corporate sycophants in this town of personalities-by-consumer-osmosis. We wouldn't want their creative output to become contagious."

The worst case scenario, she said, would be children doing Dangerous [tm] and Natural [tm] things, like climbing trees or learning how to read and write.

"If, heavens forbid, it came to that, we would have to put them down," she said.

Erogan Stink, fresh from a trip to the desert with his 14 year old girlfriend Grim and a caravan of pink elephants on stilts, announced that he would redesign the Irrefutable Tautology Engine to be less environmentally neutral.

"A holding tank with the right mixture of molten lead, radon and mercury should fit the bill nicely."

Mr. Stink's engine has come under scrutiny from petroleum executives for being unpalatable to the status quo and, therefore, to the mindless public.

...Continued at the top of the next column...

...Continued from the previous column...

"I don't really care about the environment anyway," explained Mr. Stink. "Me and my gal just want to bigger our money enough that we can fly to Mars together. Can you imagine dropping acid on Olympus Mons?"

The only way of slowing down the Irrefutable Tautology Engine is to ignore it, scientists say. That way, when the Engine outputs "See? I was right," but nobody cares, it gets lonely and sad and goes dormant until the next opportunity for condescension arises.

"The redesign will also be something that never shuts up," added Mr. Stink. "It'll be like one of those arsetwats on the interweb who just keeps going and going. People always fall in love with a moron who never shuts up. People will love the Irrefutable Tautology Engine 2.0, too. You'll see."

Grim, in her squeaky fourteen-year-old voice, piped up: "Pappy, we're going to Mars!"

"Yeah baby!"

"Ooooo, Daddy, let me bigger your Thneeds."

At this point, young Ms. Grim burst into flames, and she ran back to the desert, screaming in Mandarin.