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Ann Arbor Reports Alarming Increase in Street Mime

Will Ann Arbor go the way of so many other American cities?  Or is
there still time to stem the tide of street mime?  That was the question
being addressed by speakers at the first annual mime prevention
conference of the Thespian Esthetic Enforcement Officers Association
(TEEOff) held here this week.

"Americans are fed up with mime," said acting TEEOff President
Larry Violent.  He cited such authorities as cartoonist Berke Breathed
whose character Opus was shown whacking mimes with an olive loaf and
quoted a Saturday Night Live sketch in which a girl's father said,
"Everybody hates mimes; they're dippy!"

"And not only that," said Violent, "Last month, I was in a cab in
New Orleans, stuck in traffic, and the Cabbie said, 'We must be
behind one of those hateful buggies -- or else it's a mime.'  I 
think that's conclusive!"

Questioned about TEEOff's recently-released mime rate statistics --
showing Ann Arbor's incidence of silent and annoying public
behavior to be up over 70% from this time last year -- an Ann
Arbor police spokesman denied that there was any "serious" problem
and claimed that most of the mimes arrested in the last 6 months
were from out of town.

Speaking at the TEEOff conference, Dr. Joseph Obfuscatori of the
University of Michigan's Department of Questionable Usefulness
presented the results of a 30 million dollar study on why children
turn to mime.  According to the study, the urge to paint your face
white and make incomprehensible gestures is deeply rooted in all
of us.

"Mimes are only acting out fantasies that most of us possess;
their ability to distinguish reality from an advanced delusion
complex that a layman would refer to as 'bad taste' is seriously
flawed if not, in fact, absent."

Douglas Brutal, a member of TEEOff and chairman of its radical measures
special interest group, disagreed with Obfuscatori's research and
conclusions.

"I think the only way to look at mime is from the standpoint of the
social contract," said Brutal.  "When you're born, you sort of sign
a contract with God and your country not to kill people, loot, rape,
pillage, or pretend to walk against a high wind.  And if you violate
that contract, God and your country have a right to do something
equally distasteful to you.  Like lock you in a box with fourteen
rap musicians and Laurence Welk."

    (original -- J. McConnell)

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