JTLOL

Every year in the quaint little town of Billville, people prepared for the most bizarre and chaotic event of the calendar: Tariff Black Season. It wasn’t about shopping or discounts — no, it was far stranger.

Legend had it that decades ago, a well-meaning but slightly deranged mayor accidentally signed a bill declaring that for one week every spring, all tariffs on imported goods would be reversed. Instead of taxing imports, the government would actually pay anyone who brought foreign products into town.

News spread like wildfire. The first year, a couple of locals brought in exotic cheeses from France and received a tidy sum. By year three, entrepreneurs were importing entire truckloads of German cuckoo clocks and Japanese vending machines, lining their pockets with government cash.

The townsfolk soon realized that the more unusual the item, the higher the payout. That’s when things truly went off the rails. One year, a man imported a Russian circus bear named Boris. Not to be outdone, the bakery owner arranged for a shipment of live alpacas from Peru. Soon, Billville resembled a bizarre international petting zoo with faint hints of imported brie.

This year, however, was shaping up to be the most chaotic yet. Someone had imported 200 kilograms of Icelandic volcanic ash. Another had paid for a shipment of Mongolian yurts, which took up most of the town square. But the crown jewel of Tariff Black Season was old man Hargrove’s latest scheme: a genuine Viking longship that he planned to sail down Main Street.

As the week drew to a close, the mayor — now in his 90s and still proud of his "genius" bill — stood on the town hall steps, surveying the chaos with a triumphant grin.

“See?” he declared to the confused tourists, watching a herd of yaks march past. “This is what I call international relations!”