Question Mark Town Roundup for the week of 5/13 - 5/20
Town Announcements
Read all our Town Announcements.
Come celebrate all that I have done with this imposing, new Town Memorial
This is an architectural rendering, the statue will be far more beautiful.
People of Question Mark,
Due to my wisdom and business acumen, the town of Question Mark has once again reaped an unprecedented budgetary windfall.
As Mayor, I have convinced the Town Council to begin construction on the Mayor Elizabeth Zisk Ice Skating Ring and Town Memorial. The plans for this dazzling revitalization effort calls for the demolition of several vacant buildings including the bowling alley and the abandoned playground in order to make way for the Ice Ring and new Town Memorial. The groundbreaking ceremony will be this Friday at 5pm. I expect to see all of you there and clapping as loudly as is humanly possible.
As you know, I have given everything I possibly can to Question Mark and an Ice Skating Ring and new Memorial is the absolute least you can do as a means of appreciation.
However, this gift from you on my behalf is very, very appreciated. Your endless adulation means the world to me.
Posted by Mayor Elizabeth Zisk on May 14, 2024
Question Mark will disappear in five days
After the elementary school pageant tonight, I saw some strange lights and followed them to the abandoned bowling alley where I met someone—the golden figure people have seen in town for decades—who said they had built a machine that is going to reset Time in town.
I know it sounds unbelievable, but in five days, everything is going to go back to how things were thirteen months ago. I don’t know if there is any way to stop it. I’m really afraid that this time is different.
Time is already being reset at this very moment!
If you don’t want to forget everything that happened over these last thirteen months, we have to find a way to stop what’s about to happen. Please. I need everyone’s help.
Posted by Violet Bookman on May 15, 2024
End of Time Sale, all pets half-off.
Don't worry we still have lots of pets
It’s sure been a strange year at Meows the Time, and I guess for all of us here in Question Mark too. First a number of our amazing animals began to disappear. Then a fire and flood forced us to relocate. Now it looks like the whole town is about to vanish for good.
With all these major life changes, maybe what all of us most need right now is the certainty of companionship. Please come by the shop and visit our incredible animals–including dogs, cats, birds, and reptiles–who are all still looking for their forever homes. Also Ruggles, Pee-Wee, and Toughy and a number of these prospective pets will be sold at cost in order to ensure they go to loving families before the world ends on Monday.
Please stop by soon as Time is literally running out on this one-of-a-kind sale.
Posted by Macy Gibbs, owner, Meow’s the Time on May 16, 2024
Town Memorial ceremony canceled.
Of course my Mayor Elizabeth Zisk Ice Skating Ring and Town Memorial groundbreaking ceremony has been canceled due to another impending catastrophe, because what is the point of breaking ground on a beautiful Town Memorial and Ice Skating Ring if the entire town is apparently disappearing or rebooting or whatever is happening this time, who can keep track.
Whatever it is, it was my mistake to believe that this town could ever overcome its insistence on complete and total mediocrity. In the end, the seemingly-unending ways this town continues to disappoint me will perhaps be its most lasting achievement.
Or is it possible this is the lesson I’ve been struggling to learn through painful, unflattering repetition year after year?
If you recall, I had been a spokesmodel when my late husband Thompson Zisk discovered me and first lured me to this dismal town. And even then I had a sense he, and this entire region, underestimated me, saw me only as a pretty face with unimaginably gorgeous hair and a sophistication well beyond my years. And it was through Thompson's terrible financial bumbling, fraud, political stumbles, and eventual death by misadventure, that I found my way to political office and discovered something I had secretly always known: I was stronger and smarter than anyone had ever given me credit for. And no mischief, no malfeasance, no personal tragedy, no loss would ever stop me from being the single greatest mayor this town ever had and apparently will ever have.
And so, in the end, Question Mark, it is I that should thank you: Through your fumbling, lurching, lack of appreciation, and innate ability to disappoint, I have found a strength within myself not dependent on any husband, any partner, any political party, any man. And that is a far greater and more useful gift than any Town Memorial and Ice Skating Ring that might never be constructed.
Posted by Mayor Elizabeth Zisk on May 17, 2024
Town needs to evacuate. And please keep clear of Towns Towing
Due to the impending possible disappearance of the town in two days, all citizens of Question Mark are hereby ordered to evacuate. Please follow standard evacuation procedures, of which you should now be quite familiar. We had hoped to avoid this evacuation order, but frankly a machine designed to reset time to 13 months ago is well outside the technical expertise of the Question Mark Police Department. We did consult experts. They said the same thing. Please take this order seriously.
On the bright side, although it has been more than ten months, I am pleased to report that the Question Mark Police Department has located the stolen fireworks from last year's Fourth of July festivities! They were hidden in an abandoned car in Towns Towing lot. Unfortunately, in locating the fireworks, they have been discharged.
Although these fireworks are continuing to explode over the Towns lot in a frenzy of dazzling lights and colors, please do not approach for your own safety. Please let emergency personnel extinguish the fireworks properly.
And please, begin evacuating.
Posted by Gus Holt, Chief of Police on May 18, 2024
Evacuation underway. Also, cat found
Citizens of Question Mark. Guess what? Another bit of good news as we are all approaching the end.
As Question Mark police officers were helping everyone in town begin evacuation procedures and were also extinguishing the stolen fireworks at Towns Towning, Officer Barry Lindholm discovered a handsome-looking, friendly orange cat inside an old VW van. The cat then climbed into Officer Lindholm’s arms and allowed itself to be transported back to the QMPD station.
Does this animal belong to anyone? It feels fitting to find it a home as we evacuate ours.
Posted by Gus Holt, Chief of Police on May 18, 2024
Please participate in our loss memorial
This evening we will be holding a loss memorial to help us name everything we have lost or are about to lose as a community.
We are asking citizens to share a thought, feeling, or memory about something they lost over the last year or even something they lost a long time ago that they are still carrying with them. That way, when everything disappears tomorrow, it will give everyone the opportunity to leave these lost things in the past.
We will be meeting at the one part of the Willey Clock Tower that is still standing. If you are unavailable to attend in-person, you can also share your loss here.
Thank you.
Posted by Nanako Yakamoto on May 19, 2024
Community Notes
5-20-2024
Everyone in Question Mark,
Ever since the beginning of recorded time, or ever since people first lived in this region, one group of people came together, built their own society, developed their own culture, and each faced their own moment of difficulties, leaving this land slightly changed, slightly more complicated. And for the past one thousand years this is how this part of Ohio has come to be known: a place where the past eventually gives way to the future. People came from somewhere else and built their own world and called it their home, starting with the Hopewell, then the French, then the British, then the early American settlers, leading to Reginald Willey, and the Civil War, and the birth of the Industrial Age, all the way up to the moment we now find ourselves in.
And that is how it should be: One moment in time leading to the next, one small or large change giving way to the next era or age. And I am not going to try to explain to you all that has happened in the last 13 months, let alone in the last 24 years, but I will say how surprised I am to see all the ways our new-fangled technology has changed us as humans and how we relate to one another or don’t, and how unwilling some of us have been to change our thoughts and attitudes. In fact, I will say I am shocked to see what is going on in this country at the moment with certain States, certain members of government, even certain Supreme Court Justices hanging upside down flags and such and refusing to let the natural order of things move forward.
But it is not just the obvious public incidents as awful as they have been. Every day, all across this town and state, even across the entire country, people allow technology to separate them from the difficulty and wonder of reality. What we have now is everyone living in their own imaginary worlds and surrounding themselves with people who only see things their own way, which feels like an even greater tragedy. On the right, on the left, we’ve given up seeking our better angels and that loss seems immeasurable to me. People have stopped seeing the hidden possibilities of other people.
What I have learned living in this town is that people are always more interesting, more complex, than they sometimes appear to be, in life and here on the Internet, and maybe we’d all be better off giving ourselves a moment to pause and to start everything over. To look at the people, even those who we disagree with, to see them with a different set of eyes, and not to let this damned technology take our sense of wonder from us.
I don’t know what’s going to happen today at 6pm, if everything in town is going to disappear or reappear in the past or what.
But I know this: This is an end if you only see it that way. Or maybe it could be the start of some other experiment, some other incredible adventure. Either way, I am excited to see what happens next.
Jock Reynolds, retired person
Crime Reports
Let’s just pretend, for once, that nothing bad happened.
Upcoming Events
All upcoming events have been canceled due to the impending disappearance of Question Mark.
Did You Know?
24-12-9-0-10-25-24-25-22-9-0-13-23-0-6-9-5-25-24-13-10-25-16-16-29-0-25-18-7-16-9-5-22