Friends, supporters, colleagues, distinguished guests… all people I’d rather see than the degenerates and scumbags seated before me now.

I am sure that you all came here today expecting a display of contrition, but I will never apologize for my term as Mayor of Kneebend. Yes, when 99% of voters opt to remove you from office just three days after being sworn in, it’s no doubt time to take a long, contemplative look in the mirror. But you know what? The man I see in that mirror is a victim, not a criminal. Is it a crime to love your town? Is it a crime to bring some joy to your town’s citizens? Is it a crime to invite the town’s children to a free carnival that you pay for yourself and host at your own house in celebration of your inauguration? And what if the celebration has more of a Playboy Mansion vibe than a children’s carnival would normally have? And what if instead of inviting the town’s children, you pay Las Vegas strippers and C-list Hollywood celebrities to attend? And what if the money used to pay for the party isn’t so much your own, but more so the town’s? And what if it’s not some inconsequential amount of money, but a whole hell of a lot of money because a party like this is expensive and Gary Busey’s son won’t fly here in coach? Is it a crime then? Ask yourself, is it a crime to want to do something good for the children?

A lot of the so-called “press”, these so-called “journalists” from the so-called “newspaper”, have been throwing around so-called “words” like “misappropriation” and “embezzlement” and “pathological narcissist with unusual and rare perversions.” The Kneebend Observer even had the gall to print a photo of my face pressed between two buxom beauty’s bosoms from my inauguration party last weekend. As if that proves anything! And where can I get a copy?! And can it be blown up to banner size?!

But I’m not here to yell about the past. I prefer to yell toward the future, and my future is in a place far, far away from you people. So that you understand how much I loathe this town and every person in it, I will now read a list of things that I would rather do than spend one more day in this stinking, putrid cesspool:
• Spend a day with Charles Manson;
• Play barefoot hopscotch on broken glass;
• Raise a collie from puppy to adulthood and then eat it;
• Go back in time and convince George Washington’s mother to have an abortion;
• Listen to an entire Nickelback album;
• Use live, angry bees in place of shampoo;
• Discover the cure for cancer and never tell anyone about it;
• Live inside of a whale carcass;
• Eat nothing but egg shells and leather for the rest of my life;
• Memorize every detail of my grandparents naked;
• Lobby to have the disease herpes renamed after myself;
• And, last on the list but first in my heart, rescue my unconscious wife from a burning building, resuscitate her, and then carry her back inside.

If I leave the town of Kneebend with anything, it is hope. A hope that when you stagger home tonight, drunk off of turpentine and Sterno, and you gaze into the eyes of the person you’ve settled to spend the rest of your life with because there were no other options, and you look down upon the children that standardized tests have deemed astonishingly below average, that you remember that just last week I was your first choice for mayor. Have fun with the asshole who takes my place.

Thank you, and God bless.

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Chris Eversman lives in Alaska. He looks like the cover of a novel about a woman falling in love with a lumberjack. He runs sled dog teams, chops wood, starts campfires, shoots a bow, and does everything else your grandfather regrets not teaching you to do.