When the going get’s rough, the tough get rougher vehicles.
Mayor Jim Suttle’s office today announced that the mayor is turning over the keys to his Dodge Durango hybrid and will begin driving an armored M1 Abrams battle tank, care of the United States government. The vehicle change comes after public outcry over the mayor’s lease of the Dodge Durango that carried an interest rate of a whopping 24 percent – three times greater than the lease of his predecessor Mike Fahey’s vehicle.
His new armored vehicle promises to leave an unprecedented carbon footprint in its wake, from all the hot air released trying to defend its purchase.
Omahans first became concerned when a local car dealership gave Suttle the “Fannie Mae treatment” on the lease of the Durango, which is supposedly fuel efficient.
“A fourth grader with no credit history and no bank account could get a better interest rate to purchase a Schwinn bicycle,” said one local bank official.
Suttle’s Durango hybrid made 19 miles-per-gallon during highway driving. His new tank, which has an operational range of 289 miles and weighs 67 short tons, makes 2.4 miles-per-gallon and tends to crack highways. It has a top speed of 42 miles-per-hour for road driving, 30 miles-per-hour for off-road driving, and comes with a interest rate of 39 percent. “Higher is better, right?” asked Suttle. His staff later apologized and issued a retraction.
One official from the Mayor’s Office says the new tank has a practical application. “We felt Mayor Suttle needs extra protection when he raises taxes,” said the official. “And with this interest rate, you can be sure they’re going up.”
Officials wouldn’t comment on the armaments that will outfit Suttle’s tank. They did say that Suttle has already purchased appropriate headgear from former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.
Soon Catholics in the Archdiocese of Omaha will know the true origin of their retiring Archbishop.
Inspired by Pope Benedict XVI’s recent exhumation of the remains of the Apostle Paul, newly appointed Omaha Archbishop George J. Lucas has ordered his predecessor, Archbishop Elden Curtiss, to undergo a similar battery of carbon dating tests to determine if Curtiss is actually a reincarnation of Tomas de Torquemada, the legendary Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition and the patron saint of child molesters.
“The Archbishop [Lucas] would like to know what sort of act he’ll be following,” said one Chancery official. “More specifically, these tests may help explain Curtiss and his frequent use of torture, censorship, and excommunication as means of persecuting any Catholics who dare raise their voice against him in the local paper or the Public Pulse.”
Chancery officials also say carbon dating is the only effective method of determining Curtiss’s age.
Lucas was inspired Sunday when Pope Benedict announced that carbon dating tests conducted on bone fragments from the white marble sarcophagus located under the Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome “seem to conclude” that the remains do belong to the Roman Catholic Saint. Tradition holds that Saint Paul was beheaded in Rome during the 1st century.
Lucas, 60, was named Omaha’s new archbishop on June 3 and will assume the position in late July.
Curtiss’s beheading has not yet been scheduled.
Cow pastures. Cornfields. Snow White horse-drawn carriages in the Old Market.
Those are a few of the sights shown to the country during national television broadcasts of this year’s College World Series. The deliberateness of such monotony now has many locals up in arms.
“Why aren’t they showing our chuckholes and Dodge Street during rush hour?” asked one dismayed native outside Rosenblatt stadium. “There’s more to this city than cow pastures and dirt roads. We also have Keno and River City Roundup!”
Omaha’s appearance on the national stage has been a hot-button issue with many city boosters since the 2008 American Idol auditions that were broadcast to a national audience by an auctioneer in a cowboy hat standing on hay bales in a crop circle.
Television executives disagree. “Our B-role is representative of the cities we’re shooting in,” said one producer who wished not to be identified. “When we’re in Las Vegas, we show casinos; when we’re in Dallas, we show monstrous cowboy hats and belt buckles; and when we’re in Omaha, we show large round people wearing red with corncobs on their heads.”
“When Omaha has a skyline featuring something besides banks and insurance companies, we’ll show it.”
For now, it seems the city will have to accept its hillbilly image. At least until 2011, when television cameras can show the parking lot and
seal exhibit that used to be Rosenblatt Stadium.
