I was lucky enough to get to see a parade this weekend. It was very lovely and festive. High school marching bands and fire trucks heralded the event, and the copious amount of clowns on stilts terrified children of every age.

And there were Shriners.

The Shriners: Defenders of summertime. Vanguards of the mini-car. Bringers of merciless vigilante justice. They drove about in circles and loops like they were gunning for a DUI, all the while threading the needle with their precise steering, avoiding all the other zooming Shriners as well as the rocks I was heaving at them in disgust. They tooted their little horns like the classless bastards they are and terrified children with their high-pitched shrieks of goblin terror.

I’ve never trusted the Shriners, and I don’t like their role in the modern world. In the past, they were the protectors of justice and taffy, but today they are but relics of another era. While acknowledging the imporant role they played in the annexation of Oregon and fiddle-development, I cannot help but despise them for their wealth and black magic. Yes, black magic. Note, if you will, that Shriners are men with unnatural strength and cunning, well versed in the forbidden techniques of alligator-combat. The U.S. Government will tell us that they destroyed the last of the gator-ninjas in the Korean War, but if you look a Shriner directly in his yellow eyes, you will see that this is not true. Those bastard Shriners rip the heads off geese and suck out their blood for brunch. They’re like a candy-throwing Nosferatu.

So on Saturday morning, as the once-festive parade goers were violently turning on the Shriners, and crushing them with mob justice, I had to smile to myself. It isn’t every day that you get to see your enemies torn limb-from-limb. As rowdy teens overturned mini-cars, and axe-wielding grandmothers were being spattered with putrid Shriner blood, I looked to the sky and gave thanks. Our society would no longer be ruled by the accursed Shriners. We would be free once more to attend parades without their beligerant exploits, and they will look up from hell and be sorry that they ever wrecked our parades.