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A   R E T U R N   T O   T R A D I T I O N. BY ZEV BOROW - - - - SETUP: Last month, aided by rifles, power boats, and shiny, top-of-the-line harpoon guns, members of the Makah Indian tribe of Washington State conducted the first legal whale-hunt in American waters in 75 years, resurrecting one of the tribe's great seafaring traditions. Now, a month later, several other groups and individuals are calling for restrictions to be removed on activities integral to their own proud traditions. LAFFS: A group of Rome-based legislators is asking those currently residing in the nations of Europe, North Africa, and the majority of the Middle East to pay Romans a monthly stipend. "Everyone remembers the Roman empire, right?" the group's leader, Anthony R. Thomaso, said recently. "Well, there was a little tradition back then about other countries paying Rome, usually on a monthly basis, some kind of tribute: cattle, spices, the finest silks... All we're asking now is that this tradition be reinstated. Except this time we'd like cash, dollars actually. Or scooters. Fast ones, with horns. How else will our children know what it means to be Roman?" "Do you know what a beating human heart feels like just after you've ripped it out of some loser's chest?" asked Scintillo Xranxes in the hopes of convincing Mexican authorities to allow him and three families descended from Mayan chieftains to rip the still-beating hearts out of the losers of a planned re-enactment of a pre-Columbian Mayan ball game, the losers of which would, historically, have their hearts ripped out by chieftains. "If the government does not show some compassion in this matter," he went on to say, "my young son might never know what it feels like to rip the still-beating heart out of the chest of the loser of an athletic contest." A group of high-level current and former United States intelligence operatives representing a range of government and military agencies have hired a Washington lobbying firm to push for legislation reviving the tradition of "U.S. intelligence operatives secretly engineering border wars and coup de etats, and generally being thought of as slightly evil, but cool and dangerous, as opposed to slightly evil, poorly attired, and not good with maps." The operatives would like Congressional approval for two chances to topple the elected government of Antigua. Unconfirmed reports have been leaking out of Vatican City that the Catholic Church would like to see the various international constraints regarding killing heretics "relaxed" so that the Church's long-dormant tradition of killing non-believers and other generally blasphemous individuals might live again, if only for a few weeks a year. A Vatican spokesperson would neither confirm nor deny the reports, stating only: "There are many historical traditions we would like to see revived, and I'd be lying to you if I said killing heretics wasn't one of them."     OTHER McSWEENEY'S STORIES: - - - - David Gergen Week Tool Theft in Western Wisconsin David Gergen Week Four Dreams of Gergen History's Great Persons Reconsidered By Tim Carvell At Noon the Paper is Too Bright to Look At By Lucy Thomas Poem Opened By Mike Topp

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