
The partisan divide that has attended the upcoming Witch Burning Referendum has ripped away the illusion of civility and civic spirit here in Dunwich. The latest flashpoint has been a state commission’s report that witch burning as currently practiced, falls afoul of Arkham’s stringent state greenhouse gas emissions standards. The review has declared that from now on witches will have to be burned using solar power.
An opinion solicited by the First Selectman from the leading solar energy researcher at Miskatonic University, Professor Nehemiah Scrimshaw was obtained by this newspaper and a few of his conclusions were:
- There are only 0.00035 seconds of usable sunlight in Dunwich per month.
- In order to fully oxidize an average sized witch in that window of time, a magnifying glass with a diameter of 10,000 miles would be needed and this device would weigh in at 6.9 X 1023 tons and would require an enormous nuclear power plant to power the servo motors to maintain the focusing function correctly.
- The professor also estimated that it would require forty or fifty years to obtain the needed licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and until the licensing was in effect no witch burnings would be permitted at all.
Parenthetically, the professor remarked that since the mass of the magnifying device would be approximately a hundred times the mass of the Earth the actual means by which the device would be manufactured and tethered to Dunwich was unachievable using current human science and engineering. But he did say it posed an interesting thought experiment for his current graduate students.
We tried to reach First Selectman Cthulhu for comment but the reporter we sent has gone missing. Our eye in the sky OCF traffic copter was able to spot the First Selectman as he bee-lined for the state capital in Arkham. Based on the debris field in his wake it is estimated that not much will remain of the state house or most of the downtown area of Arkham. But it seems this will put to rest the question of state environmental permitting and also state government in general for that matter.
It is worth noting that the anti-witch burning party has within the hour disbanded its headquarters, erased its Facebook and Twitter pages and from what we can tell left town heading south at a good clip. And in fact, there was a goodly caravan of pro-witch citizens joining them. The Town Clerk’s office has described the results of the referendum (which was supposed to occur tomorrow) as completed, audited and certified to have been unanimous to extend witch burning to 24/7/365. And the other selectmen have hurriedly and unanimously passed an appropriation for fifty tons of the first Selectman’s favorite bath salts.
At press time it was noted that on his return from the state capital the First Selectman detoured to pass through the campus of Miskatonic University and it is now believed that Professor Scrimshaw has retired from active teaching and also, sadly, from breathing. But he’ll always be remembered for his remarkable lack of a sense of self preservation.