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Also, make sure to visit the Food Truck Festival, which will be downtown as part of the lottery festivities. Popular truck treats include Korean barbecue, vegetarian chili, and veal ice cream.

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So here now are the "Three I's" of playing the lottery: ."I" one: Identify. Learn to sense colors. Purple has a grittier emotional aura than white. ."I" two: Ignite. Set fire to your home. While it's not true that wolves refuse to eat arsonists, it's a scientific fact that they're unable to detect the presence of one. ."I" three: Imitate. If you happen to draw a purple piece, impersonate someone who drew a white piece. You might be mistaken for a person who is color blind. This, of course, will lead to months of painful color re-education at City Hall. But, in most cultures, that's better than being eaten by wolves.

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Next Saturday is the big lottery drawing, right out in front of City Hall. And your community has put together a few helpful tips for winning. The lottery is, of course, mandatory, but how can you get the best odds for drawing a blank white paper, and not one of the purple pieces that means you'll be ceremonially disemboweled and eaten by the wolves at the Petting Zoo and Makeshift Carnival? I know to some of you young people this lottery seems like a barbarous, outdated tradition. But if not for a municipally-planned citizen sacrifice each quarter, how else would we find satisfactory meats to feed those sad, scrawny animals?

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Silence is golden. Words are vibrations. Thoughts are magic.

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The year 1943: As part of the war effort, citizens dedicated themselves to chanting. The young, the old, men and women alike gathered around their bloodstones and chanted for the victory of the United States. While some credit must be given to the strategic planning of U.S Command, and to the brave fighting of American soldiers, most reputable scholars believe that the chanting was the deciding factor in America's eventual victory over the Axis powers. The City Council erected a seven-story monument in Grove Park saying so in large, neon letters...until a federal lawsuit forced them to take it down.

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Beginning November first, all students will enter the school through metal detectors. Any firearms or weaponry found will be confiscated and held in the counselor's office until after school, when the students can pick them up again. Seriously, listeners, what's next? Removing the line "Praise the beams, praise, o ye knowing beams that guide our lives, our hearts, our souls; praise o highest to ye all-powerful beams" from the Pledge of Allegiance?!

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The School Board countered that studies indicate that weapons distract from educators' ability to educate, and that students who bring firearms to classrooms are more likely to use firearms than students without firearms. The School Board says that school shootings can only get in the way of a quality education. Well...at the risk of becoming too much a part of this story, might I say that the School District is overstepping its bounds by telling us whether or not our children can be armed by undercover militants? Should it be a school's job to say, "No, child, you cannot have grenades or assault rifles in the classroom"? I think not!

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The High School is adding metal detectors, and parents and students alike are outraged. Several parents we talked to said that NVHS students have long been recipients of shadow government-issued Uzis and rifles, as well as tasers and armor-piercing munitions. The School Board's decision to put up metal detectors, according to parents, impinges on the clandestine operation's rights as a vast underground conspiracy of giant megacorporations and corrupt world leaders to bear arms via teenage paramilitary proxies.

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From top to bottom, the public library is a disgrace to our fair city and I can only hope that our City Council does something about that soon, or I may find myself hoping that the faceless spectre puts the library to the same mysterious, violent end as its many victims.

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The fatality rate is also well above the national average for public libraries. The library bloodstone circle does not appear to have seen any maintenance or cleaning in some time. There are reports of a faceless spectre moving about the Biography section, picking off lone browsers one by one. And that Biography section, by the way, is far too small and has been oddly curated — containing 33 copies of the official biography of Helen Hunt, and no other books.

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The public computers for internet use are outdated and slow. The lending period of 14 days is not nearly long enough to read lengthier books, given the busy schedules of all our lives.

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Oh, dear. The results of a recent survey of residents came to light this week. The study found widespread dissatisfaction with our public library. And, when considering the facts, it's easy to see why.

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The year 1824: The first meeting of the Town Elder Council, predecessors to the City Council. Picture them: crimson robes and soft meat crowns (as was traditional at the time), setting the groundwork for the splendor of today. A number of elements of our modern civic process were invented in that single three-hour meeting, including the City Council membership (since unchanged), the lovably Byzantine tax system (as well as the system of brutal penalties for mistakes) and the official town song, chant, and moan. All records of this meeting were destroyed, and...according to a note being passed to me just now, I am to report to City Hall for re-education effective tomorrow morning.

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And now, traffic. Crews from the Department of Public Safety will be repainting highway lane markers this week. The common white dashes and double yellow lane dividers will be replaced with colorful ceramic mosaics depicting disgruntled South American workers rising en masse against an abusive capitalist hegemony. The protective steel barriers along curves in the road will be taken down to make room for some really lovely and provocative butcher-paper silhouettes of slavery-era self-mutilation, reflective of several centuries of slow genocide and dehumanization by Western imperialists. Also, Exits 15 to 17 along Route 800 will be closed for the next two Saturdays because of the biennial Lee Marvin Film Retrospective. So please watch for working crews this weekend, lower your speed, and don't forget to tip the DPS shift leaders. 20% of your current mileage is standard. Lack of tipping is the leading cause of sinkholes in the U.S.

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And now, let us continue with our History Week special feature. The year 1745: The first white men arrived. Which was not our town then, but was rather just another part of a large and featureless desert. In any case, the story goes that a party of explorers came to the area that would be our town, looked around, and immediately left to go find somewhere with more water, and maybe some trees. Then another three parties of explorers did the same thing. Then finally, one party of explorers all looked at each other, shrugged, and plopped down their stuff...and thus was a proud city born.

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It has been several weeks since anyone has seen the Apache Tracker — that white guy who wears the inaccurate and horribly offensive Indian headdress everywhere. He has not been seen since he began investigating the Great Screaming heard at the post office, and the words written in blood inside. Also the entire structure of his house has vanished, and the lot where it stood is now a bucolic meadow that neighborhood kids will not ever enter for reasons even they are unable to explain. I think I speak for everyone in the community when I say good riddance to that local embarrassment. He made the whole town look ignorant and racist.

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Yesterday: I had cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, steak for dinner. Cars were driven, cars were not driven. The sun gave a great shout of light and then, after several hours of thought, quietly retracted the statement. An Old Woman dug up a box in a shady corner of her yard and carried it, cradled in her arms like a baby or a delicate explosive, to another part of her yard where she buried it again. An unknown person did something that no one else saw, the nature and extent of which is impossible to determine, and the result of which will be lost in the chaotic chain of causation and consequence that is history. But most importantly, all of us — all of us here, in America, in the world, in the secret orbital bases — all of us got through another day. We passed the time from one end of twelve to the other without stopping once.