Frootloops council plans menu for Christmas dinner

For publication in the Kamloops Daily News, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2008

Frootloops council chambers are decorated in a festive manner as Mayor Peter Saladbar settles into his chair and calls everyone to order.

MAYOR SALADBAR: OK, if you newbies would stop milling around and find your chairs, we’ll get this special meeting of Frootloops council underway. As you know, during the election campaign I was on the hotseat for not paying proper attention to the issue of our annual Christmas dinner. Well, I’m pleased to tell you that within 10 days of my swearing in, I called together a blue-ribbon — or rather, Christmas ribbon — panel (in camera, of course) to make recommendations.

COUN. MADGE ASPIRINA: I don’t have all the answers to everything, Your Pillowslip — well, almost everything — but I’ve read the report from your task force —

MAYOR SALADBAR: Not a task force. Advisory council, maybe.

COUN. ASPIRINA: Sure, whatever. I’d like to suggest, though, that we form a lasting partnership with TRU. They have a really good restaurant and we could eat there.

COUN. DENIS WISHLIST: I’d go along with that on the condition there’s no directional signage to clutter up the streetscape, and that we get free bus rides.

COUN. JOHN DECAPPUCCINO: Your Drollness, people are coming into the shop, they’re saying, “Who you gonna invite?” I say, “I dunno, I’ll find out.”

MAYOR SALADBAR: Good point. Thank goodness we’ve got some continuity on this council. For one, I’d like to invite Cathy.

SEVERAL COUNCILLORS: Cathy Who? . . . Who the heck is Cathy? . . . Not a clue. . . .

MAYOR SALADBAR: And Terry, as well.

SEVERAL COUNCILLORS: Terry? . . .  That rings a bell . . .  can’t quite place the name. . . .

MAYOR SALADBAR: How soon they forget. Any other suggestions?

COUN. PAT WATCHDOG: I think we should have the media there. Jim Blusterson, for one. Maybe Mel Rothenblather — we haven’t invited him to anything in quite awhile.

RANDY DOODLE, Chief Administrative Guy: Your Mumbleship, Mr. Blusterson says he’ll be busy that night writing down clichés for his editorials. And that pompous windbag Mel Rothenblather will be tied up writing a column about how he would have done things differently. But maybe Byron McSnorkel, our Parks and Recreation Guy, could give us a rundown on what we’ve got lined up so far.

McSNORKEL: Thank you, Mr. Doodle, through to his Shyness. We’re mostly working on dinner, and I have some good news to cluck about. Instead of turkey, we’ll be having chicken this year. The Bylaws Guys have a good stock of our little feathered friends that they’ve apprehended from clandestine backyard chicken operations around town.

COUN. NANCY BUBBLES: Speaking of which, I have concerns about the surveillance cameras the Police Guys installed on our municipal chicken coop. The hens have stopped laying because they feel their privacy is being invaded.

SALADBAR: Not for long. I like the chicken dinner idea, but who’s gonna volunteer to wring their scrawny little necks?

BUBBLES: I’m not doing it.

WISHLIST: Me neither. 

COUN. TINA TOAST: I’m out. All the meat in my restaurant comes in ready to slap on a sandwich.

COUN. JOHN O’FOOEY: You people are all wimps. When I was a lad growing up on the North Shore, I got a new hatchet every Christmas. Of course, chickens were a lot bigger back then. . . .

COUN. JIM HYDRANT: Mayor Milobeer, I think you should do it. And the sooner the better. Their noise is keeping our engineering department awake, and they’re really stinking up the place.

MAYOR SALADBAR: First of all, the name’s Saladbar, not Milobeer, which you would know by now if you’d been paying attention the last three years. Secondly, that smell isn’t the chickens. Ever since I traded in the Mayormobile for that one-horse open sleigh to save on gas, my parking spot has been getting a little messy. This Green Plan thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

McSNORKEL: Well, we can work out the details on the chickens later. We’ve been asked about Christmas carols, so we’ve put together a song sheet with some old favourites, like Twelve Barking Dogs, Deck the City Hall, O Little Town of Frootloops, Come All Ye Taxpayers, to name a few.

COUN. O’FOOEY: Personally, I’ve never known a chicken I didn’t like, especially on my plate. Could we get a rundown on the menu?

McSNORKEL: Glad to. We’ll start out with an appetizer of chicken kebobs and chicken curry, combined with a side dish of drumsticks and Buffalo wings, some breaded sweet and sour tenders, then enjoy scrambled eggs and stuffed chicken, and top the whole thing off with giblets au gratin dipped in an irresistible sauce of chicken drippings.

COUN. BUBBLES: But I’m a vegetarian.

McSNORKEL: No problem. For you, we have a tasty chicken feed salad of alfalfa meal and shelled corn, sprinkled with a poultry multi-balancer that’s to die for. And, of course, our traditional Christmas froot cake.

MAYOR SALADBAR: And, by the way, we’ll be having water to drink. I can’t get enough of that stuff. And coffee after dessert. They’re my two favourite beverages.

RANDY DOODLE: Your Flagship, your task force — sorry, ad hoc committee, also proposes a nice bonfire out behind Frootloops City Hall, but we’ll need a special motion exempting it from the bylaw.

COUN. WATCHDOG: So moved.

COUN. HYDRANT: I second that. I love the smell of roasted polyester in the evening. I’ll bring a fire extinguisher.

SALADBAR: The motion carries. I’m going to adjourn the meeting now, as I have to run off to one of my other jobs. Pulling down a hundred grand a year in salaries is keeping me a little busier than I’d expected. Terry Whatizname will be joining Coun. O’Fooey and myself down at Cowboy a little later for a reunion of the Decaffeinated Caucus. You’re welcome to join us. Merry Christmas, everyone!

SEVERAL COUNCILLORS: Merry Christmas!