BARRENTOWN by David Fischer dave@cca.org Copyright 1997 by David Fischer All Barrentown citizens are poets. Barrentown exports candy. Barrentown has thirst-neutral water. Barrentown is the ideal community. Cement never dries in Barrentown. Cockroaches thrive in Barrentown. Women are not allowed into the Barrentown courthouse. There is no speed limit for Barrentown residents, but there is an acceleration limit of 13 feet per second squared. Non-residents are restricted to a speed of 28 miles per hour along any axis. In Barrentown, holidays are recognized for a twenty-five hour period, extending one hour into the day following the holiday. All Christmas decorations that are not explicitly Christian in nature are required to be removed before Christmas day. No presents are given on Christmas day, nor are any non-religious carols sung. The Barrentown Hardware Store prices all flat, wound materials, such as tape, ribbon, and wallpaper by surface area measured in foot-rods. No individual has ever held the position of Barrentown Mayor for more than two years. Barrentown controls ninety percent of the world's water supply. In Barrentown, infinity is defined as 8,200,000. Any number higher than that is forbidden. In Barrentown, every child born on April first is mutilated so as to be a freak for the rest of their lives. Sound travels ten percent slower in Barrentown than it does in surrounding areas. Medical diagnoses are not allowed in Barrentown. Multi-floored private residences are forbidden in Barrentown. There is only one computer in Barrentown. It is a Soviet-built BESM-6 48-bit mainframe. Every Barrentown residence has a teletype wired to it for direct access. Small dogs are not allowed in Barrentown. They are considered degenerate breeds, and a danger to the gene pool of proper Barrentown dogs. Barrentown posses a large arsenal of ICBMs with which to enforce the ban on comets. The Barrentown Weather Department maintains an array of giant fans just inside the town border to aid the Fire Department in hot air balloon rescues, in case the wind is not blowing in the proper direction. It is illegal to engage a Barrentown police officer in conversation. Clocks, maps, and protractors are forbidden in Barrentown. Mathematics beyond simple arithmatic is forbidden within Barrentown's borders. Occasionally private groups attack neighboring towns thought to harbor math teachers, but this is actually discouraged, as the Barrentown town council's official position is that mathematics leads to its own fall as an inherently atheistic construct. The Barrentown Public Library contains no books published in a year ending in zero, three, or seven. Barrentown's candy has a certain percentage of poisoned pieces. The frequency of poisoned candies changes with the mood of the community, but it is usually well under a tenth of a percent. In Barrentown people are baptized by crawling under coffee tables with lawn sprinklers mounted on them. Non-residents are not allowed to appear on Barrentown Television. Women are not allowed to appear on Barrentown Television. All Barrentown public buildings have three floors, irregardless of their use or need for space. Barrentown has six backup nuclear power plants, two of which are kept running at all times. It is illegal to wager money on the outcome of the Barrentown town council elections, though this law is rarely enforced. Barrentown's most popular author writes cliff-hanger stories that revolve around a local gang of vampire toilets. Any dog in Barrentown that weighs over one hundred pounds is automatically granted citizenship. In Barrentown, baseball is played with only two bases plus home, and the angle between the first and last base, as measured from home plate, is eighty degrees, instead of the original ninety. This was found to be the optimal configuration for game playability. It is illegal to drive with your eyes closed in Barrentown unless you are praying. Barrentown teenagers are required to be happy when in public. Adults are permitted public depression, except on holidays. In Barrentown, children's rhymes are strictly regulated. During the two weeks before Christmas the entire community of Barrentown joins together to decorate the Barrentown H-Bomb, which is rolled out of the town hall basement for this occasion, and put on display in the middle of the town square. The Barrentown Town Hall is subject to an annual search by a public watch-dog organization to make sure there are no alien bodies or pieces of alien technology hidden on the premises. There are three different saurkraut cooking shows on Barrentown Television. There is a strong magnetic field centered in Barrentown that no one has ever been able to adequately explain. Outsiders who question the town council regarding this invariably meet with some sort of accidental death within twenty-four hours. The Barrentown police department has killed more extraterrestrials than any other organization in the world. The range and scope of publicly viewable artwork is strictly regulated in Barrentown. The Barrentown Town Council maintains adult clones of all of Barrentown's major political enemies from the past three hundred years. They are kept in strictly regulated environments so as to maintain their belief that they are actually the person they were cloned from, living in that person's native time and place. The Barrentown Television Porno Channel exclusively carries videos of Barrentown men copulating with animals. Barrentown citizens are the only truly free people in the entire world. The Barrentown Mayor is exempt from all laws on the first day of every fiscal year. Barrentown Television carries live debates from the town hall every Friday night. These debates are scripted so as to make the process less stressfull for the participants. The loser of the debate is put in stockades in front of the city hall for three days. Barrentown citizens can shoot lasers from their eyes. Barrentown citizens cannot shoot lasers from their eyes. Barrentown possesses the three largest diamonds in the world, as well as the six largest saphires. They are all used for their optical properties. Barrentown residents that live on Main Street are arranged in alphabetical order by the first name of the oldest member of each household, from North to South. According to Barrentown law, a kidnapped person is considered legally dead untill they are released to freedom. In Barrentown classical music is banned, being considered subversive. Outsiders are not allowed to bring any private property of any sort into Barrentown. Platform boots with electricly powered spinning spurs enjoyed a brief period of popularity in Barrentown. In Barrentown, athiesm is cured through neurosurgery. In Barrentown, "among" is spelt "amoung". In Barrentown, every citizen is allowed one free murder during their lifetime. If a citizen kills an outsider, a trial determines if the homicide was reasonably justified. If so, it does not count as their one free murder, and is forgotten. During Barrentown's violent period, eye contact was considered reasonable justification. Normally the courts would require loitering, a snide comment, or something of that nature. Outsiders are not allowed to wear clothing in Barrentown. All Barrentown traffic lights have four lights: red, yellow, green, and blue. The blue light has never been used, but everyone knows what it is for. The Barrentown Neurologist is traditionally a graduate of a veterenary school, the only school outside the town borders that citizens are encourages to attend. Ten days prior to the Barrentown Town Council elections, every adult male land owner receives a letter in the mail telling them where and when to vote, and which candidate they'll be voting for in each of the races. Insurance has been outlawed in Barrentown by a broad interpritation of the anti-gambling laws which considered the random chance of collection on an insurance policy to qualify it is gambling. There are six stars that Barrentown residents are not allowed to observe or discuss. On extremely clear nights, a curfew is enforced to help citizens comply with this safety precaution. Time is regulated by the Barrentown town council. Comets are not allowed in Barrentown's airspace, which extends upwards to infinity. The youngest lynch mob in Barrentown's history was led by a seven year old girl, the oldest member of the group. Blood sports are popular in Barrentown. Carrots will not grow in Barrentown. Foreign languages are forbidden in Barrentown. There are many rumours about Barrentown. There is no taxation in Barrentown. The sand in the dessert surrounding Barrentown is frequently cleaned to keep it free of biological and synthetic impurities. The Barrentown Ladies Auxeleriary Group owns a small satalite in low earth orbit used for zero-gravity baking. They use this facility for producing extremely light and fluffy spherical angel food cake. They make it with a very small quantity of iron in it so that the dough may be manipulated using magnetic field confinement. Barrentown continues to officially deny that it played any direct role in drying up all of the world's oceans. For security reasons, Barrentown has installed microphones at ten foot intervals over the entire surface of the Earth. In Barrentown the official religion is taught in the public school system starting in nursery school, and any blasphemy or challenge to official church opinion is met with an immediate lynching. Birds avoid Barrentown while migrating south, but are attracted to it while migrating north. Barrentown is the literary center of the modern world. Barrentown is the only town in the world of less than one thousand residents that possesses a nuclear weapon. Barrentown is the only community in the world that continues to use the tried-and-true English system of measurement. Chimnies on Barrentown residences are required to be five-sided, as a safety precaution against demons released while burning wood. The Barrentown Fire Department is required to maintain a fleet of hot air balloons sufficient to fly the entire Barrentown population to safety in case of an emergency. All households of Barrentown are required to own a dog or to submit an annual essay extoling the virtues of canine companionship. Earth's first contact with extraterrestrials occured at Barrentown. Barrentown citizens are required to drive some type of powered vehicle at least one thousand miles per year.