So! Mr. Howard Burrell, Vernon townmeister and vegetarian (not me, roast beef every Sunday since cradle days) has thrown his hat in the wringer for Freeholder election. Maybe nobody told him that surveys show most people would rather spend a week in jail than run for office! This is because from going to all the government meetings it becomes impossible to watch tv at night. Also these meetings require a complete suspension of normal adult mental activity. But who cares, that is not my point. No, I am worried about poor Townmeister Burrell going all the way over to Newton in Y2K! What will happen when there is no more gasoline? And no streetlights, no more friendly glow of tv sets from every window!
Listen, even on a bicycle it will be dangerous to ride home from Newton on a cold night in pitch dark, weak from dehydration (and from vegetarian diet), wolves and bears and cows snapping at his heels the whole way! And for what? By then nobody will care what the Freeholders do (my neighbor Charles Queechee, Chief of Lake Wanda Lenni Lenapes, says this is already the case). Whatever it is will be too little too late from those nudniks! Shame on them, always making trouble for the Technological Institute and that nice college over there!
And do the Freeholders plan for what could happen to us from Y2K?
If you think so, you should also clap your hands and Tinkerbell will live.
Not for nothing, Townmeister Burrell should stay here in Vernon if he is elected to Freeholders, and maybe right now he should start pushing the other Vernon townmeisters to buy many horses and lanterns for the town policemen. I am sending a list of other important agenda items for the townmeisters but probably my proposals will be ripped up and ignored like always. I don't send them in by email because I might as well use up my postage stamps before they are worthless.
On second thought maybe one or two worthless stamps I will save as historical artifacts.
The sample ballot I will also be sure to save.
Important Correspondence! Don't Tell!This is fantastic what the Intrawest people are doing at Mountain Creeks, but what about the rest of the town? No worries! Here is top secret correspondence between myself and an old friend who lived in Lake Wanda many years ago. Do not tell the townmeisters about this yet or you will ruin the surprise!
Dear Sultan,
How are things in Brunei? Back here in Lake Wanda is Ganz Gut. Before I forget, our mutual friend Charles Queechee says hello!
Please do me a favor and buy all of Vernon NJ except the part that is owned by IntraWest, nice people from Canada (maybe you already bought that too?), and the ancestral bingo grounds owned by the Lake Wanda Lenni Lenape Tribe.
When you buy the town, please put sidewalks and canals and also install the gondola transit system, blueprints enclosed , feel free to use anywhere. Also the people here would like a Targets and a movie house ($1.50 at all times) and a racetrack for cars and maybe a university. If I remember anything else I will write again. Wait - put sewers too, please, this is a big favorite with the storekeepers.
Our dear friend Gov. Whitman also thinks it's a good idea for you to buy the place and fix it up nice.
Please remember me to all my scientific colleagues at Fission For Brunei.
Very truly yours,
Dr. E
Dearest E,
Delighted to get your letter! Everyone here sends fondest regards.
I have instructed my staff to take all necessary steps to purchase the real estate you described and to begin construction of the various public amenities you mentioned. It may be necessary to change one or two things in Vernon after I own it, e.g. the government and the name of the town, but these should present no inconvenience to anyone.
I have arranged for every man, woman and child in Vernon to be paid US$1million annually. Will that be enough? Should the people who work at Saxony Bakery be paid more? Will a mere $1mil be an insult to the civil servants? Please advise.
It may not be possible to exclude properties owned by IntraWest or the Lenni Lenape Tribe as I am toying with the idea of setting aside a private hunting and fishing preserve. Either that or a nuclear plant. I'll decide after the New Year.
Just one little thing, please do not write any more letters on used bakery bags because they do not travel well.
Yours,
S.O.B.
GONDOLAS! For The Vernon Ganzer Plan !On Saturday
morning at Saxony Bakery I received some shocking news! My neighbor Elvis was also there, and
he nearly choked to death on his linzer tart when another customer told us that the gondola at
Mountain Creeks was shut down!
Then I read in the paper that some apparatchik from The
State told Mountain Creeks to stop that gondola until they made sure it could not only go up but
come down!
Was ist Los! Right away I sent a telegram to my good friend Gov. Whitman,
boss of all State buttinskys. She should only know what they are up to while she is on tv (tourist
commercials!). I went on that gondola continuously 100 times during Earth Day over there and not
once did I have to walk back down. Listen, not for nothing, but Elvis went on it even more times than I
did! His clothes alone weigh more than I do! Both of us would have gotten off if we saw a nice snack bar
at the top, but no.
Don't worry, by the time you are reading this everything will already be kosher
again with the gondola. But what is all this business about taking mountain bicycles with? Does this
mean I no longer have to ride my bicycle all the way up the mountain? Good. This is a wunderbar
example of Applied Science at Mountain Creeks!
Now I am going to look for a copy of my
proposal to put a ski lift (gondola maybe!) on Breakneck Road to send to the townmeisters again, for
including in Vernon's Ganzer Plan! WAIT! What about this, a network of gondolas all across the
town! Even better than canals! An aerial shopping village on pontoons, with gondola stops all over
the place!
The only problem with this is Y2K, when New Year revellers might be stuck in midair.
No worries! Solar energy! Windmills! This is child's play compared to nuclear power, no? And I
think maybe less expensive, but who cares? Take it from me, after so many grant projects from the
government I can tell you, expense is not a consideration in matters of public planning.
That's it! I put a copy of the proposal in my 1998 IRS Time Capsule!
Good thing I threw that time
capsule down the cellar last April instead of burying it (a custom I learned from Charles Queechee,
Chief of Lake Wanda Lenni Lenapes).
FFV Consultant Recommendations!Very Disturbing!Ever since
Earth Day at Mountain Creeks I have had a cold! No, not because of riding up and down the mountain
so many times (theory of my neighbor Gladys, a nice person , best chicken soup). I cannot say for
sure, but I think my immune response was weakened by that Evening in Paris hoopla over in
Warwick. Anyway, a cold affects the operation of the mind, no? All the better to watch tv. Therefore I
have not worked on scientific projects nor gone out anywhere, not even to Fisson for Vernon
meetings.
When I heard what went on at the last FFV meeting I said to myself, Thank Heaven I did
not miss Emergency Vets for this!
S. Geist (consultant) recommended that the A&P excavation
is just the right size for a Targets store! Dumbkopf! Who wants to buy targets? This is not
such a big item in my book, but then my neighbor Gladys told me that Targets is a big store like
WalMart. I don't like the idea because big stores bring big parking lots and I can never remember
where I put my bicycle.
But everybody else liked this idea except Charles Queechee, Chief of
Lake Wanda Lenni Lenapes, who has other ideas that I will get to in a moment.
Bad enough the
townmeisters don't care about putting nice canals with boardwalks and flower pots downtown or
making a ski lift on Breakneck Road or building a movie theatre ($1.50 at all times). Now even at FFV
everything revolves around one planning principle: more shopping! Do you see how far this
planning group has wandered from its original purpose? Face it, the original Fission concepts are
kaput .
Now we come to Charles Queechee, who told me not to worry, because when he is elected
townmeister there will be No Big Stores downtown, especially not on the A&P excavation.
Why?
Because this was the location of Lake Wanda Lenni Lenape's ancestral bingo
hall!
C. Queechee told me that his tribal lawyers are waiting in the weeds for his signal after the
townmeister election! Then they will jump out and demand the return of prehistoric bingo artifacts,
poker chips, dice and other ancestral gaming items which were shovelled out of the A&P digs. They
want all the excavated material to be returned and put back where it was , or else the Indian Gaming
Commission will take over!
I realized he was up to something, because every schoolchild knows that the Lenni Lenape
Prehistoric Bingo Parlor was here in Lake Wanda! Besides that, C. Queechee is a member of the
Indian Gaming Commission.
I think maybe this plan is unethical!
The Secret Plan!Elvis Blabs!
This morning at Saxony Bakery my neighbor Elvis (ate all the linzer tarts before I got there! No
consideration!) told me about the real Plan for Vernon. Elvis says Charles Queechee has been
talking to some big machers from a mall development corporation!
Can you guess where they
want to make a gigantic VernonTownsquare Mall? ALL AROUND THE HIGH SCHOOL!
By this plan, if he is elected for townmeister, C. Queechee solves a million problems! Classrooms
surrounded by hundreds of stores, all connected in one big central climate-controlled paradise!
Rent from the stores will pay for everything! No more property taxes! At least, that is what Elvis
(Campaign Manager, C. Queechee For Vernon Townmeister) is telling everybody on the campaign
trails.
I personally think the people of Vernon would never stand for the concept of merchandise mixed in
with teaching. Still, no harm in sending to the schoolmall people my
canals/boardwalk/moviehouse proposal, which I will make a mental note to find when I am feeling
better.
Vernon Earth Day! Forget Paris!
Earth Day at Mountain Creek was fantastic, especially riding the ski lift, which finally I had to get off
after 100 trips up and down because from all the excitement I dropped my rucksack. No good! I had
many valuable free Earth Day gifts in there from the utility companies! And a jar of apple butter
($3.50) from Heaven Hills and a beautiful poster (free!) of Migratory Birds!!
Also I promised my neighbor Gladys we would go to some kind of Evening in Paris business in
Warwick.
Not my idea! I was having the time of my life at Mountain Creek, so many nice people and scientific
Earth Day exhibits! And the fabulous ski lift riding! But no, I had to go to Warwick because of Gladys
waving her arms and screaming at the ski lift .
Listen, Paris you can keep. Remind me to tell you sometime about a little incident with the
gendarmes during my student days! But what could I do, to have friends you have to Be A Friend, so
this is how I wound up in Warwick looking at 800000000 tchotchkes for sale by street vendors.
Let me tell you, they could have used a few gendarmes over there from the highway robbery at those
vendor tables! This did not stop my neighbor Gladys. Who can remember all the things she bought?
Who cares? I did because I had to take half of it in my bicycle basket. But this is not my point.
Here is what I ask you: why do merchants make big beautiful stores, and then put all the
merchandise out on tables all over the sidewalk, which are too small for this purpose, so people are
crowded and pushed into the gutters? Are they crazy? And what does a nice town like Warwick have
to do with Evening in Paris anyway? Next time they should call it Evening in Baghdad maybe.
When we got back to Lake Wanda (no picnic going up Barrett Road with a rucksack and 50 pounds of
stuff in my bicycle basket, believe me) I invited my neighbor Gladys to join me for coffee. What do
you think she asked me while I was putting out the nice refreshments? Are you sitting down?
She wanted to know where I got the apple butter.
Town Center Plan! Onward and Outward!
Recently I escorted FFV's new planning
consultant to a meeting of the Vernon Townmeisters (see actual photo, left, taken with one of those
cardboard cameras from A&P, photographer: my neighbor Gladys). From this experience, the new
consultant could get a feel for the way things work downtown!
Right afterwards we went to
Burger King, but could not find a place to park our bicycles! Therefore we went to the take-away
window. I do not advise this because from gas fumes in the face your eyes will water terrible!
Anyway, in front of us on the line was the limousine of Charles Queechee, Chief of Lake Wanda
Lenni Lenapes and also Townmeister Candidate. I rang my bicycle bell very friendly, but would he
let us go first? No. Space Geist (consultant) said never mind, this is typical of political candidates to
act like they don't know you when people are looking! " No favors to anybody! Especially not to old
friends!" What sense does this make? Who should you do a favor? Strangers? Bah. No wonder
people get mad at politicians.
Now the consultant will wait a few weeks and then he will make his report (I found the old FFV notes,
they were marking my place in TVGuide). So, you see? Everything is in order, except I doubt
anything will come of the final report. Why? Because Space Geist thinks the A&P excavation site
should be expanded by completely removing the mountain behind it, all the way to Lake Wanda,
and widening Rt. 515 to 18 lanes between Breakneck Road and Rt.94. Then rebuild everything, a
nice shopping village built into the cliffs. You have to admit, that's some swell town center plan!
But this I don't foresee unless C. Queechee (such a view he'll have from his house!) wins the
townmeister election.
Fission for
Vernon Planning Consultant! He will decide!
Fission for Vernon, my
scientific planning group, has finally collected enough soup labels and little red cellophane things
from the cigarette packs to exchange for valuable computers, which we have sold for cash to hire
our own Planning Consultant! Yes. I myself wanted to hire Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter OR the
nice announcer lady on SciFi channel, but no.
After ten weeks of constant fighting my
colleagues finally agreed among themselves to hire Space Ghost, not my first choice but what can
you do,this is Democracy.
I don't think he'll show up anyway, which is to be expected
(according to Charles Queechee, who says he has hired many consultants for Lake Wanda Lenni
Lenape Tribal Gaming Commission), but this is not important because we have already decided
what we want him to say!
I have it all written down somewhere, but maybe that was my notes
about the proposed NASA station in Lake Wanda, who can remember.
My neighbor Elvis says
that the main thing is to get rid of that cash before the Townmeister election, because the FFV will
waste it on linzer tarts and Dr. Brown soda. Look who's talking. Machts nichts now that Burger King
is open, so when Gov. Whitman comes we can present the planning report in a nice place, plenty of
refreshments and not so many mosquitoes like last time.
This presentation we will have one
week before the Townmeister election! I think by then Charles Queechee will give up on the Indian
Bingo Retirement Community concept, but my neighbor Gladys (Treasurer , FFV, a nice lady but
very naïve sometimes) says this will all be left up to Space Ghost because the people cannot make
up their minds to pick one of the plans for developing the AP shopping center tarpits.
See?
Naive. Come to think of it I remember now - I left those planning reports on the counter at Saxony
Bakery.
Excellent Planning Emails! I Am Not Alone!
The Vernonwebs
have forwarded to me
Hunderts of emails from other scientific planners with A&P land use proposals! There, do you see?
Vernon is loaded with smart
planners whose ideas go beyond my Prehistoric Park concept. I am reprinting two of these emails
for discussion at the next
Fission for Vernon meeting, but don't get your hopes up, C.Queechee has his heart set on the Senior
Citizen housing. He has no
respect for civic-minded ideas like these:
"In addition to a Prehistoric park,
the Highland Stage or one
of the
other community artistic groups could put on a riveting performance of
Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. The odors emanating
from the pit would add to the experience. It could be a sellout and
perhaps run longer than Chorus Line. DR. E may have stumbled across the
ideal site for the arts center.""I have always thought
that the open pit on the south end of the A&P parking lot had potential
as a rather large 18th hole on a linear golf course extending from Route
23 for the length of Route 515. Golfers who actually traversed all 18
holes on the 8 mile course would actually get some exercise."
Any
schoolchild can see that these are
wunderbar proposals! But no, the townmeisters fold their arms and hire fancy-schmantzy
planners from out of town!
Forget everything else - if you mashed up all the reports from expert planners over the years you
could make enough papier
mache to fill in the A&P excavation !
Vernon Prehistory! No respect!
I am sorry to say
that once again the Vernon Town Council members have folded their arms against my scientific
recommendations! Yes. The planning proposal I sent them was Returned To Sender.
This is
not just
because I mistakenly addressed the envelope to "Vernon Marsupial Building" (I was watching
Animal Planet on cable, so shoot me). It is also not because the report was written on little white
bags, waste not want not, from Saxony Bakery. The people from NASA never said anything about
what kind of paper, so this cannot be the reason! No, I think it is because of something else, I cannot
remember just now.
But this is not my point. In a little while there will be an election and if
you-know-who (C.Queechee) becomes a townmeister it will be Too Late For Science! Glenwoods
will look like Foxwoods in no time! Indian Bingo and honkytonks everywhere!
In my proposal (returned!) I recommended making a nice Prehistorical Nature Park on the
excavation land next to the A&P, where you can already look at the entire History of the Earth! You
see? I am talking about a billion dollar industry that will make money for the town and for everyone in
business, miles around! Just put some big dinosaur statues like they have at that Gingerbread
House in Hamburg, very lifelike and colorful, maybe we can contact the Disney people to put in
animatronic controls. Also they could put a monorail over the swamp and maybe some nice
mechanical rides for the children.
This reminds me: we should get back that Mastodon which
was removed from Vernon (the nerve!) and put in a museum somewhere. Such a valuable
prehistoric relic loses all meaning when it is moved from its original location! It belongs in Vernon,
so children will look at it and be proud of their hometown's most famous inhabitant! (My neighbor
Gladys says the Mastodons of Lake
Wanda are direct descendants of this creature, but from the footprints in my backyard they are a
much bigger species,believe me.)
Bah! I give up. Elvis says Charles Queechee owns that
property by the A&P and wants to put a Senior Citizens Housing on it, walking distance from the Indian
Bingo, what can you do. So much for prehistorical preservation in Vernon.
Townmeister Elections Coming! Hide The
Silver!
This year there will be an election of Vernon Townmeisters (three open spots, more or less, who can
remember).
How do I know? Because today my neighbor Gladys told me that Charles Queechee, Chief of Lake
Wanda Lenni Lenapes, is secretly planning to throw his hat in the wringer. I thought to myself : what
hat? That fancy headdress he wears to Tribal Council meetings? What kind of a nudnik would throw
those
nice feathers in a wringer?
As it turns out, this is just a silly expression. The wringer is Elections and the hat is Charles
Queechee
For Townmeister.
But this is bad because he wants to turn the recycling center into an Indian Bingo!
Gladys also
said
that Charles promised her a nice office job downtown at Stately McManors , which is his new real
estate development franchise, Over 6 Billion Sold.
I told her forget about it, the people in Glenwoods will never stand for a townmeister from
Wawayanda Forest . Especially one with feathers on his head.
But wait! Two minutes later I see Elvis in his limousine (even bigger than C. Queechee's) coming up
my driveway so fast he almost ran over my bicycle! I thought maybe Saxony Bakery was closed , a
big emergency in his book (in mine also), but no.
It was about the townmeister business again, believe it or not! More secret discussions! Elvis too is
scheming with Charles Queechee ,who promised to buy and then rip down the D&S Mall to put a
Palace of Show Business over there! Elvis will be the Impresario! If I would give a nice contribution
(they know about all my grant money) I could be Town Planning Board Nuclear Physics Consultant
!
But who cares? Who wants bingo and palaces? Not me! I LIKE the Recycling!
When I said this to Elvis he looked at me like I had ten heads. Think Of The Children, he yells, and then
Think Of The Taxpayers!
Which I did, but I could not see any logical connection.
He told me don't feel bad, because (1.) millions of people have no head for politics, which is why
(2.) they leave everything to big political machers like C. Queechee and entertainers like himself
(Elvis).
What scientist can dispute the truth value of those two statements?
Elvis wasn't too upset when I had to send him away empty-handed. At the time I couldn't
remember where I left my checkbook. At the bakery maybe.
Come to think of it, if you find it first , maybe you'll be kind enough to hand it over to the nice people in
the Tax Collector's Office and save me the trouble.
Fission For Vernon DE-MOTIVATIONAL POSTERS! Lifelike and
Practical!
Sometimes you are fed up with this constant pressure to Get
Things Done, no? Foolish and unscientific advice everywhere you look - "Just do It" and so on,
stress every minute to be Excellent etc. etc. Bah! Here are the posters selected by the FFV
Municipal Building Wall Color focus group panel (poster study subcommittee):
