CURSE YOU, DARKNESS!

After the board election (and why should you the reader be even faintly interested in the nasty internal politics of somebody else's apartment complex? Because the complex is subsidized by your money, you, the taxpayer, you. YOUR MONEY!!!!, and is trying to cash in, without giving you any of YOUR MONEY back, employing tactics that would do a Rove or a Corleone proud, most instructive to students of Machiavelli and anyone else requiring proofs of the duality of human nature. That's why),

We thought a relative peace would reign. No more fliers slipped under our doors with headlines like:
Well, we haven't had more of those, but we've had something better: a newsletter from our state senator, declaring his devotion to us. Very exciting! He's never felt the need to communicate with *Muttonchop City residents by you-the-taxpayer-funded newsletter before. But here he is, with the *Muttonchop City Report, a First Edition:

It's a little hard to read, I apologise, and also for the obsessive/compulsive nature of the little bits of paper taped all over it. This is the last item in the newsletter, which spends two thirds of itself advertising the funds Senator *Neville (I thought I'd give him a name that's in the air recently) has obtained for our fair complex. The first line is: "Acting in response to an alert given him by Muttonchop residents.....

The "alert" would be a letter-writing and calling campaign by *Muttonchop Rights, Incorporated, Copyright, the pro-priva----well, it's a dirty word, I can't say it, but it ends in "--atization" group. That's the group started by personal injury lawyer, too-rich-to-live-at-Muttonchop-City, has-a-second-home-in-the-Hamptons, *Toby Mugg:and the other lawyers, real-estate agents and brokers who make up the core of *Muttonchop Rights.

Senator Neville knows how to count votes. That's what made it worth his while to risk playing quite the fool:

So Senator Neville co-sponsored the bill because he was "led to believe" it was a 7.5% flip tax, NOT a 75% flip tax! MmmmHmmm. His name was placed on the bill by evil gremlins. But NOW he knows better.

So you the taxpayer get to pay for Senator Neville's apologia for signing on to a bill that would return some of your tax money to you--the taxpayer.

*all names, appearances and search terms changed to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors.

MUTTONCHOP CITY ELECTION RESULTS!

So how did the good guys do?

Oh, why even ask.

Here are our two candidates, *Vincent Piano, co-founder of our little anti-priv***z**** (ends in "atization")group, Muttonchop Ethical Housing, and *Nora Kerrigan, steadfast and even pugnacious ex-nun, drowning their sorrows at *the Eire Inn, the Muttonchop City pub.

Vincent is ordering his usual: apple pie with chocolate ice cream. He's also partial to Dewar's. Nora likes a good spicy Bloody Mary but I have unaccountably given her a martini.

The third person is Hannah Goldman, our main writer and incendiary device thrower. She could be drinking the martini; I left some ambiguity between drinks and hands. In fact, she likes her bloody Mary spicy but more important, large.

Hannah and Vincent initially loathed each other; she is a feminist, atheist, activist, red-diaper anthropologist, and he is a nineteenth century, courtly, Roman Catholic . He is Cyrano without the nose.

Now they are closeasthis. They collaborate: Vincent writes elaborate, impenetrable disquisitions; Hannah brutally edits them into Hannah-style bulleted lists, with footnotes, and always the admonition:

"MUTTONCHOP RIGHTS IS TRYING TO (FILL IN THE BLANK)--DON'T LET THEM!

*all names, appearances and search terms changed to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors.

MUTTONCHOP CITY SUNDAY UNFUNNY

MUTTONCHOP CITY ELECTION SPECIAL

another all-too-true tale from the vertical trailer park Mrs. Polly calls home

confronting the phalanx of goofs

While North Carolina and Indiana were going to the primary polls, *Muttonchop was in the throes of its annual Board election. Why should anybody be interested in squabbling shareholders at an apartment complex in New York? Because we're squabbling over stealing away with YOUR TAX DOLLARS (Mrs. Polly, your author, is anti-theft).

Also, because the pro-theft, pro-privat--- well, it's a dirty word, but it ends in "atization" group, Muttonchop Rights, could give Grover Norquist and Karl Rove lessons in mendacity and dirty tricks.

Above, you see the gantlet Muttonchop voters must run (or roll) to get to the Community Room and vote. Note the three types waiting to pounce on the hapless voter at left with more of the fliers that traditionally blanket Muttonchop City during board elections.

THE GOOD GUYS PROBLEM, CLEVERLY IF AMATEURISHLY ILLUSTRATED

as indicated by the sentiments on the three fliers, left to right:

1. 
   
   "Vote Me"--- Mrs. Mamma runs every year, independently, as an anti-other ethnicities candidate. She never wins, but her children, Dominique and Dom-boy, are very proud of her.


2. 
   
   "You'll Be Rich"---Muttonchop Rights has a simple message everybody wants to hear. Three sweet syllables. It's false, of course, or only true for a minority of people (the lawyers and brokers in Muttonchop Rights)


3. 
   
   "Ask for More Information,and You'll See That You Won't Be Rich Because You Need to Live Somewhere So You'll Have to Buy a Place Unless You Already Have One And Besides They Count the Same Money Three Different Times And Besides It's Wrong to Take Something You Benefited From and Leave Nothing For Anybody Coming After You And Within Five Years Maintenance Will More Than Double But Not Right Away And They'll All Be Gone And We'll Be In The Hole"

You see our problem: our message is not sound-biteable, it's indigestible. True, but indigestible.

Our group is led by Mr. Polly and *Vincent Piano, a courtly gentleman who speaks and writes in baroque, elliyptical flourishes that seem to have no foundation nouns or verbs. We spend hours snipping the verbal furbelows off his speeches.

Vincent fancies himself the soul of civility and bonhomie, squeezing shoulders and slapping the backs of the pro-priva**za***n board members, willfully unaware that they hate him:

titular head of Muttonchop Rights Toby Mugg, Vincent Piano, and Board President Will Waskoal

Vincent should be called "Pianissimo," for his reputed years of deft, unctuous behind-the-scenes manipulations on the Board. He's from the Old Neighborhood, where old pols pulled all the strings of everyday life, and he has the aura of those old-time pols. Nobody will ever be able to suss out his ultimate motivations, probably including Vincent.

But he has come out solidly, even heroically, against *Priv***za***n. As a member of the anti-theft minority on the board, he rises to object to virtually every motion through a chorus of groans. It's a useless formality, since every "open" board meeting is preceded by the real meeting, which takes place at Wil Wascoal's apartment, and excludes Vincent. There the real business is decided, to be subsequently presented to the minority as a fait accompli.

Despite his present powerlessness, Vincent is regarded with the sort of fear usually accorded those whose images don't show up in mirrors and other classic cartoon villains:

from our Lovely Neighbors at Muttonchop Rights, Inc

a treatise in civility

Now here is an official, complex-wide acknowledgement of our Sheeplike status, and a death threat, or at least morbidly wishful thinking. This kind of jumps out at you:When I decided to call our housing complex "Muttonchop City," it was to emphasize that we sheep are about to be more than shorn, we're going to be dinner. I wanted to not get more death threats, hide from the search engines of my lovely neighbors,and from the sue-happy lawyers of Muttonchop Rights:

Mr. Toby Mugg, Esq., the titular Head of Muttonchop Rights, and counsel for:
Mr. Lonnie Angler, Esq.,the lawyer who sued a 92-year-old lady for slander. For 2 million dollars.

I have duly noted Muttonchop Rights' irresistable desire to tell the whole fable, right up to the Wolf's demise.

Pulp Non-Fiction 2: Did Somebody say Death Threat?

Our apartment complex, *Muttonchop City, is in the throes of *Priv---oops, can't say it, but it ends in "atization." Thanks to a legal loophole,we're voting on whether we can sell our YOU THE TAXPAYER subsidized apartments for twenty times what we paid. One little group is trying to oppose this legalized theft, not very successfully so far.

Mr. and Mrs. Polly belong to this group, along with a lot of little old ladies who were brought up with loftier ideals than those of Baby Boomers like Toby Mugg, Esq., Titular Head of MuttonChop Rights, the pro-Priv----- well, you know. Ends in "atization"---group. Some of the pro-- people aren't shy about making their feelings known:

Yes, this is true. Yes, this is happening here. 95-year-old Clara writes spirited anti-Priv. letters to the local paper, so she's hated. When she was 92, she was sued for slander by the Titular Head of *Muttonchop Rights, acting as counsel for the even nastier Jerry Lewis sound-a-like lawyer, *Lonnie Angler.

We've a good idea who's the culprit:

Mr. Blatz has threatened my own Mr.Polly: "After we priv***ze, I'm gonna get you." Mr. Blatz has threatened so many old ladies he'll have to work a 40 hour week butchering them.

Mr. Blatz doesn't seem to realize that every time he rings Esther's doorbell, he's recorded by security cameras.

We're working on a surprise for Mr. Blatz.

all names, appearances and search terms have been altered to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors.

Candidate's Night: Red Herring Bait

Tonight in the Community Center, Muttonchop City performs its own Passion Play, an ugly bit of business held under the misapprehension that it is informational. Only confirmed partisans show up, the same hundred and fifty people year after year. The factions gather, the *Monetizers lurking near the back, much as they probably did in high school, the *Fernando-Lamas supporters (many of whom are tiny, elderly ladies), huddling together towards the front.



The candidates sit elbow to elbow at folding tables in the front, studying their 3-minute speeches. They will give their speeches, then answer questions submitted from the audience, drawn at random from a box. Each question must be addressed to a particular candidate, from a particular shareholder, signed, which quashes spontaneity, thank God.


The factions' minds are already entirely made up, so speeches have no effect but to allow the audience the pleasure of either cheering or booing.


Monetizers have a unique, emphatic style of applause: it is stiff-armed, arch-backed, and thunderous, like a cross between the universal soldier and a performing seal:




The only point of the Q and A is to embarrass the enemy. The factions brew the questions in their secret conclaves, decide which enemy candidate is either the weakest or simply the most hated, and bombard that person with poison loaded question-bombs:

To Vincent Piano: "Are you going to tell us which of your children you are illegally putting on your income affadavit this year?"

To Mr. Polly: "After only living here for two years, how did you jump the list and get a two-bedroom apartment?"

Could laypersons manage to compact so much misinformation into such a small amount of space, or does it take a lawyer's touch?

JUST IN, MUTTONCHOP RIGHTS' LATEST:

Carefully timed to coincide with Candidate's Night, a masterpiece of concentrated untruth arrives in all 1,600 Muttonchop City mailboxes.

Oh the fatigue and eyestrain! More prevarication per square inch than Ahmed Chalabi's Medal of Freedom application. I can't set you straight lie-by-lie, but just as an example of MuttonChop Rights methodology:

• see where it says that those "opposing *Fernando-Lamas reconstitutions argue that such and such a tax should be assessed"? That's entirely untrue. The *Bureau of Taxing People may charge a huge, honking tax on *ko-ops that priv---er, *monetize. Our poor little group, which should be called Cassandras for Fernanado-Lamas, has been WARNING that this big, honking tax MIGHT be assessed.
• Our poor, little anti-*monetization group has never requested that the Bureau of Taxing People charge this big, honking tax; we don't have the power. If we are pushed over the cliff into Monetization, the last thing we want is that tax. The Bureau of Taxing People is looking into this tax because they want the money. They don't give a rat's behind what *Ko-operators for Fernando-Lamas want.
• On the other hand, that honking big tax would be on the three to nine-hundred THOUSAND dollars that these apartments might fetch us at market rates, apartments we *ko-operators got, and pay almost nothing for, thanks to YOU THE TAXPAYER. THAT'S YOU THE TAXPAYER. WHO PAYS THE TAXES WE DON'T. YOU. NOT US. YOU.
• Don't you think you should get your money back?

And later, more about the death threats!

It's late, Mr. Polly and I are tired. But yes, more death threats. Mr. Polly came back from Candidate's Night (Mrs. Polly cannot attend thanks to a predisposition to bullshit-induced nausea). According to some of the Monetizers, we are interfering with their God-Given right to monetize.

*all names, appearances and search terms have been changed to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors. Except that pale woman---she looks EXACTLY like that.

MUTTONCHOP CITY SUNDAY FUNNIES*

The Vertical Trailer Park, a non-fiction comic

*all names, search terms and some appearances changed to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors.

Pulp Non-Fiction: the Muttonchop City Election Guide

What if Ahmed Chalabi, Kathy Lee Gifford, Travis Bickle and Fredo Corleone ran for the board of the same apartment complex? You'd have election season at *Muttonchop City, the development for middling-income people where Mr. Polly and I all too really live. How awful is it? We escape from the tension by following the national election. That's how awful.


Muttonchop Election season heralds itself when beauties like this are slipped under Muttonchop doors:

from Donnie Angler, the lawyer who sued a 92-year-old lady for slander, this solid block of 4 point type completely filled the legal size paper. It didn't fit on our scanner.

Donnie Angler

One of New York's most colorful (single color, that is) neighborhoods moved almost as a single unit wholesale into Muttonchop, where they ran smack into another Ethnic group. Which Ethnic group? Doesn't matter--it's not the right one. Enough said.
From a proud mother of two, whose husband's name might have been---

oh, I don't know----Dominick?
Dom Boy, over six feet tall without his gelled hair spikes, stood up one Candidate's Night and thundered at the little Ethnic candidate: "ARE YOU GOING TO WORK FOR EVERYBODY, OR ARE YOU JUST HERE FOR THE ETHNICS?"

Finally, we have this from Toby Mugg, Esq., Personal Injury Lawyer, Titular Head of Muttonchop Rights, Incorporated, and counsel for Lonnie Angler, the lawyer who sued the 92 year old:

Note: the use of the word "NORMAL"--as in *ko-ops where people who haven't accepted subsidies can sell them for market rate. Muttonchop City IS subsidized----by YOU THE TAXPAYER. We pay 10% of the property taxes YOU pay. Mr. Polly and I pay $562 a month to live in a one bedroom, with balcony, including electricity and cable. We paid $25,000 for this *ko-op apartment in New York City, in a great location. We needed it, we qualified, and we are grateful and happy. YOU THE TAXPAYER made a difference in our lives. Now, if we sell our apartment for over ten times what we paid, don't you think YOU THE TAXPAYER should get your money back? YOUR property taxes are higher to cover the taxes we don't pay, year after year after year.Whew. Excuse me.

Mr. Mugg never uses the dirty word priv---oops, I can't either, it's that dirty, but it ends in "atization". I don't use it because I don't want my neighbors to Google this blog---we get death threats enough already---but Mr. Mugg doesn't want people using it because it sounds bad, it sounds so, so, so-----PRIVATE. So he uses "Normalize". And "Reconstitute." For convenience, we'll say "Monetization." But you know what we mean. When a lawyer tries to recast the language, you know he's up to something.

*all names, appearances and search terms changed to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors.

THE MUTTONCHOP SUNDAY FUNNIES

Dirty MacroPoliticks

This is the actual office-issued campaign flier for the anti *monetization* board candidate here at Muttonchop City. All the candidates are included in one official handout, but nobody else's picture was so unrecognizable. *Vincent is convinced it was done on purpose, and fired off an Email to *Will Waskoal, the pro-*monetization President of the Board.
Will and his *Monetizers control the board, and instituted "open" board meetings---except that all the real business is done behind closed doors, beforehand, without the input of Vincent and the two other anti*Monetizers. The rest is theatre.

Note from Mr. Polly: he just got back from visiting the 95-year-old lady who had been sued by another *Monetizer represented by the titular head of *Muttonchop Rights (She was a springy 91 at the time). She's had a death threat: someone mailed her one of her anti-Monetization letters to the editor, with this message: "Die ASAP, You Piece of Sh*t."

*all names, appearances and search terms changed to protect Mr. and Mrs. Polly from the wrath of their lovely neighbors.

Just Because Just Because, It's Spring It's Spring It's Spring

heralding balmy zephyrs

The new post, Muttonchop City II, is actually below, listed as April 9th. That's when I started it, but it's just freshly finished, all new, all true, today. Now to get out of the house and into the blooming groves. So scroll down, past Randi Rhodes, and then get outside!

Pulp Non-Fiction: Muttonchop City II

Another chapter in the real true story of the Vertical Trailer Park where we live, *Muttonchop City:"I wouldn't be telling you this if you weren't Jewish, but people here want to crush your skull." The comradely concern of the messenger, Mr. *Blatz, (profession: taxi driver. Rumored favorite sleeping companion: his gun) was only outweighed by the hatred radiating from his sunken, bloodshot eyes. Oh, I am corrected here by Mr. P; Mr. Blatz actually said people wanted him to have an accident in the elevator. Like decapitation. Mr. P and I aren't everybody's best friends here in *Muttonchop City ever since Mr. P helped start the *Kooperators for Fernando-Lamas And Against Greediness*.


Let's call the other movement here *Monetizers, (It's actually "Priv"--oops! Avoiding the search engines, you know. But you can figure it out---ends in "atizers") and their group *Muttonchop Rights, Incorporated. They wish to sell their you-the-taxpayer-subsidized *kooperatives for market rate, much more than they agreed to when they moved here. *Muttonchop City's a complex built in the 70's under the*Fernando Lamas program. The intent was to help out middle class city people facing a housing crunch. Mr. Fernando and Mr. Lamas didn't foresee the crunch getting---crunchier. Now, loopholes subsequently added to their legislation allow Fernando-Lamas kooperatives to vote themselves out of the program and into the market---at the expense of losing the special tax umbrella, and barring other middle-income people from being able to move in, forever.

Never, ever tell Muttonchop City residents they're subsidized. No, they're compensated for moving here--this neighborhood was nothing, they made this neighborhood! So they're entitled to reap the profits from selling out. The unending toil of living in a high-rise apartment with a balcony needs to be rewarded.

Even some of the people in our own group can't admit their homes are subsidized. "Oh no," intoned our eminence gris *Vincent Piano. "Not subsidized--we get tax benefits, but so do many buildings." Indeed---but they don't get nine-tenths of their property tax forgiven, by law, every year. Costing the rest of you-the-taxpayers. This tax break is the continuing glory of the *Fernando Lamas program. It's why Mr. P and I paid less for our balcony and our view than a Tennessee resident would pay for a double-wide.

The titular head of Muttonchop Rights, Incorporated, is a personal injury lawyer, *Toby Mugg, Esq. That's almost condemnation enough right there. Peace, trial lawyers, you know some of your colleagues make you cringe. Lawyer Mugg is one of them. His skills are unquestionably excellent for what Muttonchop Rights, Inc. needs to do: encourage the mar---I mean client, to feel injured. Imagine all of Muttonchop City wearing a giant whiplash collar.

But the real brains of the outfit is a quiet man who'd have been good in espionage work: *Will Wascoal.

He's an administrator. He's also President of the Board. Note his shell-pink ear is ideally formed for rumor collection. Then his pearly white brain cognites upon what he hears, and his spidery fingers pull the Muttonchop City strings.

One of his continual headaches, or two perhaps, are the *Anglers, Lonnie and her criminal lawyer husband Donald. Donnie, a ringer for Jerry Lewis' Nutty Professor, specializes in frivolous lawsuits: he once sued a 91 year-old lady for slander.
She had complained to the Board that he threatened her. Muttonchop Rights' titular head, Toby Mugg, was his attorney.

The suit was laughed out of court. Mr. Mugg and Mr. Angler parted company thereafter. The Anglers' temprements don't lend themselves to direction, so they are now independent Monetizers, running their own third-party candidate every year, assuring that one of Muttonchop Rights' candidates loses to one of ours.

While Donnie terrorizes 91 year olds, his spouse handles the rest of the world: almost anybody is subject to Lonnie's outbreaks of bizarre, hostile behavior. She once tried to snatch a paper out of the hands of one of our group at a meeting, and the two women had to be separated. She sneered,"Sit down, old woman," at another target, and, to a third, "Everybody laughs at you--you deserve to be laughed at."

She once actually, touchingly, prepared an exhibit for Mr. Polly: she approached him with an article about the resurgence of his old, outer-borough neighborhood. "You should move back," she told him. "You're a miserable man who likes making everybody else unhappy."

"Lonnie, I've heard a lot about you, and may I say you've lived up to your reputation," Mr. Polly replied.

Lonnie stomped off and found her husband. Observers in the field (at a safe distance) later reported lip reading," are you going to let him talk to me that way?"

Shortly thereafter, Donnie Angler approached Mr. Polly: "Well, well, I've heard a lot about you too!" he sputtered, "and you live up to everything I've heard about you!"

"Thank you." said Mr. Polly. Lonnie has been giving him a wide berth since then.

After Mr. Blatz conveyed his message to Mr. Polly, I began to carry pepper spray. I wondered if this was enough. I considered what other weaponry might be legal, effective, and available.

A nail gun. On his show, Keith Olbermann had shown a montage : X-rays of the otherwise empty skulls pierced by home depot's best: real friendly fire.

Sad to say, nail guns aren't good to use as concealed weapons. They're large, they have to be pressed against the targeted surface, usually, and the ones with the real fire power require air compressors. I couldn't very well ask our home intruder to wait while I plugged in the air compressor.

We finally divulged to Vincent Piano that Mr. Polly had been threatened. "Ohh, that," said Mr. Piano. "We've ALL been threatened! It's a rite of passage. You get used to it."

Not so far.

*Names, keywords, and appearances changed to protect Mr. and Mrs. Polly. Actually, the portraits aren't technically accurate, but spiritually, oh yes.

Muttonchop City Part One: Election Season Home Opener

THIS JUST IN: Newly arrived under our door, the first evil snowflake. Board election season is opening, as if one ugly election weren't enough. Soon we'll have the same blizzard of hatemail, accusations and verbal projectile vomiting. Mr. P and I are, guess what, the opposition.

Here's where I try to hide from my neighbors' search engines: we live in an apartment complex, *Muttonchop City,* that's part of the *Fernando Lamas* Program. Anyone searching Fernando Lamas for real, you can stay, but you won't find him here. More important, the neighbors who've threatened Mr. P and me won't find us here.

If you live in New York, you might know that a program sounding like the *Fernando Lamas* Program created buildings throughout the city for the non-wealthy. It allows middle class people to live in either rentals or kooperatives for very little. Kooperatives: non-googleable misspelling. Fairly large, elevators, laundry rooms and landscaping--nice. More than the residents would ever be able to hope for otherwise. Your tax dollars at work.

These complexes were often built in what were remote areas that have since become hot neighborhoods. If your income qualifies, you enter a lottery for a space on a waiting list, and should you win the lottery, you wait for years, and finally you're notified that you're in. Or you can cheat; Fernando Lamas buildings are full of professional, highly competant cheaters. And people who got here honestly, like Mr. P and me.

The proviso is that you can only sell the place for what you paid. Mr. Fernando and Mr. Lamas didn't foresee the kooperatives growing intensely valuable. A loophole in their law allows kooperatives to vote on whether to stay in the program, or leave it. By leave it, I mean gather all the profit on the now valuable kooperative you helped them buy with your taxes. Take the place private. Which also screws everybody on the waiting list. It's like the immigration debate, in a way: We got in, now you stay out.

When Mr. P and I first moved in, we thought *Muttonchop City* would be full of residents skipping through the plaza singing "Tralala! We live for nothing in the heart of Gotham! Whee!"

They don't do that. The corner pizzeria owner says these are the sourest beings he has ever encountered. "They've forgotten where they came from," he told us. "I grew up like they did--in a tenement, walk-up apartment: bathtub in the kitchen, the toilet in the hall--no elevator. No nice tiled shower. No laundry room. Now they got used to their good fortune and it's not enough for them. They come in and chew over how everybody's screwing them, while I'm paying thousands of dollars more a month than they do and I don't have a balcony! I'd give my left one to live here! They're the unhappiest SOBs, I'm telling you, I've never seen anything like it. "





*Names, key words and search terms changed to protect Mr. and Mrs. Polly