This Week in...Tonganoxie

Readers, Richard has returned from his annual summer tour of the South's best catfish houses (first prize goes to The Fish House in Conway, AR and the runner-up is The Crooked Hook in Jacksonville, AR). Now it's time to get back to business.

When we left Larryville last Tuesday, things seemed peaceful, with most of the city's hipsters still semi-erect from the previous night spent in the presence of Neko Case and her amazing voice. But we find that we've returned to stories such as "Eight suffer injuries in shooting at south Lawrence apartment complex." We can handle an occasional stabby hobo in town, but this is fucking ridiculous. Let's look instead at a scandal from (slightly) outside the borders of Larryville.

While we were away, Tonganoxie's horny mayor Mike Vestal got himself in trouble (again!) for sending naughty e-mails from his work computer. Do you remember the previous scandal of a few years back?:

"In September 2007, Vestal admitted to sending an e-mail from his dispatch computer with the words, “Next Monday is National Female Breast Appreciation Day.” It then showed a picture of a woman and her naked breasts. Underneath the picture were the words, “Beats the (expletive) out of Martin Luther King Day! Doesn’t It?” (LJ-World).

Personally, we felt like the scandal was a little overblown. In many ways (primarily, the focus on titties), National Female Breast Appreciation Day DOES beat the shit out of MLK Day, which is certainly very important, but often a little somber for our taste.

So what's Vestal done this time?

Apparently, he sent an e-mail to the brother of City Commissioner Paula Crook, which contains "14 nude photographs of the same woman." (LJ-World). Crook calls the pictures "hard-core pornography."

At a meeting about the incident, Vestal expressed "contrition" and claimed to have found the Lord.

How do the boys feel about the new scandal?

Chip: "I find it unlikely that simple nude pictures of a woman are 'hard-core pornography,' unless she's pleasuring herself, in which case it might still be art and not porn, depending on the lighting and camera angle and such."

Richard: "Agreed. Plus, the conservative citizens of Tongie, who feel that anything outside of missionary-position-with-the-lights-OFF is a little kinky, should be relieved that their mayor possesses, it seems, strictly heterosexual proclivities."