Sweet sweet satire (because we need it)

If things go badly, Springfield, you deserve whatever you get from your new council and mayor, since you obviously could care less.

Yesterday's Greene County elections attracted just 8.78 percent of registered voters... that's 16,367 people, according to the county clerk's office, a sum that makes up just 6.2 percent of Greene County's population.

Pah-thetic. A soiled thank-you note to American veterans for their sacrifices, at the very least.

Apropos of this disturbing (disturbingly predictable) turn of events, writer/performer Chad Harris, of Improvadors and Skinny Improv fame, is putting out a new satirical blog about the Ozarks called Fair City News. The most recent post pokes fun at the election, and there is some other stuff making fun of Nixa and Missouri State's name change.

Snarkers might say there's some low-hanging fruit, but still, it's hilarious and awesome and should be read by all.

My only quibble is the skyline photo at the top. Presumably it's a shot of a fair city, but not any city around here. It looks more like St. Louis or Philadelphia to me.

I guess that could be the point, since there are rich lodes of stuff to make fun of in STD and Illadelphia.

But still. Give us something Hammons-y to look at, so we know we're on the right site.

Thinking about the book's future

According to an executive director of something, the book, conceptually speaking, is no longer an "object" used to move a person's ideas through time and space, the way it has been since the I Ching.

Thanks to the Intertubes, the book is now a "place," where no hierarchy between author and readers exists. Here a "community" of like-minded users make book together, authors all. Your grandchildren will have no concept of reading by themselves.

It's interesting, and probably bullshit. Sure, a thousand monkeys typing for a thousand years could come up with Shakespeare.

And it would probably also be a good idea to equip visitors to art galleries with paintbrushes, so they can "contribute" to the works on the walls. Meanwhile, do the same kind of thing with doctors, engineers, architects, the list goes on.

It sounds like a great way to make people dumber and easier to control.