Clarissa Metro Region
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| Flag of Clarissa Metro Region | |
| Motto: involved Karen Carpenter, removed due to doubts about accuracy | |
| none | |
| Region | Tux on Crack |
|---|---|
| Capital | Clarissa |
| Official Language(s) | English |
| Leader | Mayor William Shores |
| Population | 600+ million |
| Currency | Kudo |
| NS Sunset XML | |
Basics
The CMR was founded in 1935 by a group of ex-Claraxians fed up with the repressive regime their former country had at that time.
Today, the CMR controls a very large and powerful engineering and manufacturing firm, and posesses a fearsome device of mass chaos, the PIE Button.
The City
The capital of the CMR is home to around 6 million residents, the majority of whom are cynanthropes of Claraxian descent. The city is divided into twelve sections by its ring-and-quadrant zoning. Thr rings are used to control the kinds of motor vehicle traffic allowed in portions of the city; quadrants are used for administrative purposes and, in the outer two rings, divide the city into four regions: quadrant I, with its FIRE industries and gleaming skyscrapers; quadrant II and its industrial complexes; quadrant III, home of the factory workers and technicians and their families; and quadrant IV, dotted with gold-plated "Shower Heads" and home to the high-class FIRE workers and their services.
The center of the city is unlike most others: very little motor vehicle traffic is allowed, and it is a booming section on the rise, despite the devastation of the Incident of 1985. At dead center (x=0,y=0) lies the city hall, a 10-story building built in 1958 and housing the city government and most of the national government. Here, the mayor is in charge of both the city and the nation, and the city council acts as the upper house of the legislature.
History
In the 1930's, two decades after a conservative faction took charge of Claraxia, a group of outcasts and rebels, led by a cross-dresser by the name of Rodney Burnett, left the nation and took over the 256-square-mile section of land once inhabited by the people who would become the first Claraxians. Burnett claimed this land and named it after his "other" persona.
In 1937, Burnett approved the construction of facilities for the manufacturing of the city's transportation equipment and infrastructure. The Clarissa Locomotive Works was thus born as a semi-private company, with 98 percent of its shares owned by the government. The company grew by selling most of its products to nearby railroads and a large subway system, and became the multi-billion dollar beast it is today.
The city was ultimately recognized as an independent nation in 1956, and a city hall was built two years later, replacing a cramped downtown hall.
The 1980's brought new prosperity to Clarissa, as well as new challenges. An inexpensive, fuel-efficent automobile made by the CLW, the T1000, achieved record sales during the previous decade's oil troubles, and brought a flood tide of profits into the city, allowing for renovation and renewal. But this was short-lived, for the CLW's new management created a mess of things, especially by laying off a number of workers. Several of the members of this new management went missing until 1995, when their skeletons were discovered under the floor of a furloughed worker's basement.
In 1985, the city celebrated its 50th anniversary, but that same year, an odd sequence of unexplained paranormal events cleed the Clarissa Incident took it down a notch. By the 1990's, the damage from the Incident (buildings and the economy) had mostly been repaired, and yet more prosperity was to be had.
1998 was an interesting year. The CLW, now known as the Clarissa Engineering and Manufacturing Company, made an inexpensive and controversial DVD player that ignored Macrovision, region codes, and "operations". This player was heavily advertised by direct mail, which included a DVD that contained 30 minutes of fake previews that could not be skipped, leading into a spiel about how Clarissa/EMD (ElectroMechanical Division) DVD players, which ignored the operations that disallowed the skipping of the previews, were superior and how all other DVD players were inferior for honoring operations and region codes. This spurred sales of Clarissa/EMD DVD players, but it angered the big movie studios and the maintainers of the DVD format. The mayor of Clarissa, William Shores, replied with an expletive-laden redeclaration of the city's independence, ending with the raising of middle fingers and the comment heard 'round the world: "I don't give a (expletive) about your supposed ownership of your little format. You need to learn how to just flush your little turds down the toilet like the big kids do, and stop being such idiots.".
