Ask General Kang: I’d like to increase the number of surveillance cameras in my city, but I’m having trouble getting my council to agree. Any advice for a mayor with ambitions?

Surveillance cameras are a must for any would-be intergalactic overlord, which I assume is your ultimate goal. (Just as an aside, mayor is not the best platform to launch such a career, but you can manage it, particularly if you are bloodthirsty enough and have really good psycho-kinesis — the insidious lord Darth Wedgie started as a mayor.)

Here are a few suggestions for getting your own big brother operation up-and-running:

1) Stage a series of abhorrent crimes
Start small with these, and work your way up into some really nasty ultra-violence. (Think the first half-hour of A Clockwork Orange, as a good template.) This will create your climate of fear.

2) Install cameras in high crime areas

3) Pay your goons to commit crimes in places where there are no cameras

4) Install cameras there

5) Continue to allow crime to flourish

6) Install speakers with cameras, to stop “unsocial” acts in progress. Look to Middlesbrough, England for a template on how to do this.

Now the conditions are in place for you to take the next logical step. Cameras in people’s houses. Look, you can argue, you’ve stopped violent crime and unsocial acts in the streets — imagine what you could do if you put cameras in people’s homes? No more spouse abuse, no more child molestation. Who could be against that?

Suggest that anyone who doesn’t like this plan has something to hide.

Now all you need to do is start building your army of Ultra-Chimps. I recommend arming them with plasma weapons and kazoos. Nothing renders an enemy force more helpless (with laughter) than a phalanx of chimps blowing kazoos. (Then the plasma weapons up the wazoo!)

Next time: How does one get rid of a house guest that won’t leave? I mean without feeding them to the Great SlorgBeast in your backyard?