Freedom Of The Press In Little Aleppo

Town Father Sentenced
Convicted of bribery, assault,
vote-tampering, grave-robbing,
other.

By IFFY BOULD – There was chaos in the courtroom as the long-running trial of Stanchion Potts came to an end today. When Judge R.J. Fulsome read out the sentence of twenty years, several of Mr. Potts’ supporters and members of his family attacked him with previously-concealed weapons, including a katana and a chainsaw. Four bailiffs were injured, and the statue of Justice was decapitated.

After order had been restored and the statue’s head duct-taped back on, Judge Fulsome detailed the reasons for the harsh sentence. Mr. Potts had not only betrayed his constituents’ trust, the judge said, but done it in such a brazen fashion as to be insulting. Judge Fulsome mentioned the hole Mr. Potts had cut into his office door at Town Hall labeled “Bribe Slot.” Upon hearing this, Mr. Potts wriggled free of the bailiffs restraining him, urinated on the prosecutor’s table, and shouted, “I had to cut the Bribe Slot! I didn’t want criminals in my office!”

[CONT – A6]

Courthouse Chief of Security Fired
Numerous incidents cited; chainsaw
was “last straw.”

By OMONA KORYOKU – There was chaos in the courthouse today after Chief of Security Amble Danitz’s short tenure came to an end, with officials citing gross dereliction of duty, specifically “failure to find a chainsaw with a metal detector and a patdown.”  Upon receiving the news, former chief Danitz picked up the very chainsaw that was his downfall and began swinging it around wildly. The statue of Justice was further damaged, as were several jurors who were minding their own business.

[CONT – A6]

One Dead In Hotel Synod
Foul play, drugs, suspected.

By ERNESTINE BURTON – Most of Magnificent Amberson, 22, was declared dead at the Hotel Synod early this morning. The Little Aleppo Police Department is not releasing the details of the scene, but unnamed sources within the LAPD (No, Not That One) have verified to The Cenotaph that while several organs from Miss Amberson, a local musician, were missing, the neighborhood does not have another Harvester on the loose.

“This appear to be a drug-fueled crime,” the source who is definitely not Officer Sigmund Absence said. “Quite frankly, you’d have to be on drugs to even dream up some of the stuff that was done to this body. Who makes a habitrail out of intestines? And where’d the gerbil come from?”

Forensics is expected to take six to eight weeks if the evidence doesn’t get lost.

“We lost the evidence,” the source told a reporter.

[CONT – A7]

Potts Sentence Fair, Just

By the EDITORIAL STAFF – Stanchion Potts has not gone quietly. From his arrest, when he barricaded himself in his office and jerry-rigged a flamethrower out of deodorant and a lighter, to his arraignment, when he still had the flamethrower, to his trial, which featured at least three lawyers that turned out to be ninjas, to his sentencing, the blood stains of which are still being scrubbed from Courtroom 2, it has been a roller coaster that all of Little Aleppo was forced to ride.

In his ten years in office, Potts was an ethical embarrassment even by Little Aleppos’s lax standards. A partial list of his transgressions: declaring eminent domain on the property that would become Tower Tower while silently partnering with Tower Gildersleeve on the building’s ownership, letting all those perverts into Harper Zoo after hours (the wombat has still not recovered), suplexing Cenotaph reporter Omona Koryoku, doctoring secretly-made audio tapes of his enemies to show that they were communists (or capitalists; whichever was more damaging), grave robbing.

It was, in The Cenotaph‘s opinion, the brazenness of Mr. Potts that led to his downfall. Many a Town Father has been known to sell his vote, but only Mr. Potts went so far as to hold an auction on the steps of Town Hall.

Mr. Potts has used the power of his office to harass his rivals, threaten his enemies, and sabotage his opponents. He has rented out the Main Drag to movie productions, shutting down all traffic and business for the day, while keeping all the money. He has militarized the meter maids. He has attempted to foment ethnic hatred, but only against the Icelandic, and there are no Icelandic people in Little Aleppo, so the whole thing was a wash.

His behavior during his trial was just as bad. Mr. Potts attempted to both tamper with and molest the jury. Three successive legal teams presented his defense, as they kept quitting when Mr. Potts wouldn’t stop objecting to his own side. He kept throwing tennis balls at the judge. Four faked heart attacks. A kangaroo was brought into the courtroom one day to demonstrate that, in Mr. Potts’ words, this was kangaroo court. The judge declared the metaphor too on the nose, and added an additional charge: grand theft marsupial.

Stanchion Potts is not the first Town Father to go to jail. He will almost certainly not be the last. No student of the neighborhood’s history would even place him in the top five worst Town Fathers. Nevertheless, he deserves his sentence, and we deserve to be rid of him.

Letters To The Editor
All letters are [sic] and unedited.
Send your letters to LttE, 1 Greeley Square.
Or just accost our reporters in bars, like usual.

You motherfuckers,

The hysteria of The Cenotaph has been on full display lately. The willful collusion between the media, the courts, and the zoo to persecute a fine American civil servant such as Stanchion Potts is appalling and, I believe, criminal. You have slandered a good man’s name who could have made a fortune in the private sector, but chose to do so in government. That’s sacrifice.

Town Father Potts is a patriot, and a hero. Only he had the bravery and integrity to warn us all of the incoming Icelandian hordes, or as he called it: Really, Really White Genocide. How long are we going to wait before we round these people up and throw them out of Little Aleppo? Until they move in? That’s playing defense, and Americans don’t play defense.

Why is no one talking about Town Father Dubrow’s crimes? Everyone knows that he used one of the columns in front of Town Hall to pay off his gambling debts, and not even cool gambling debts. Keno. This man cannot be trusted, and he is also a voodoo priest who keeps many zombies, but yet you in the vicious press insist on crucifying–yes, crucifying–a man who loves his mother and dogs and American mothers and God.

There is a sickness in the country, and the outbreak stems from your newsroom. Your are liars and cowards, the lot of you, and you are trying to kill this country which we love so much.

Sincerely,
Gary Spumanti

Dear Letters to the Editor,

In the May 12th edition of the Kitchen Kittie’s Kountry Kooking column, there was a recipe for cranberry tarts. Perhaps it would have been appropriate to warn the readers not to read the recipe out loud. We had to trap the demon in the rumpus room.

Get on the stick!

Sincerely,
Antonia St. Expiration

Dear Letters to the Editor,

There used to be a Rapunzel Street, right? That’s a rhetorical question: I know there was a Rapunzel Street, because I lived at 131 Rapunzel Street for sixteen years, and now it’s not there.

Someone has replaced my right foot with a copy. It is identical to my right foot in every way, but it is not my foot.

I don’t know if I have a dog.

Sincerely,
Bummer Berlin

Blue Oxen Edge Generals 41-37

By TAWNY MUSSELS – Pitcher Christian Rock and first basemen Hux Grange led the Paul Bunyan High Blue Oxen to victory over the Washington High Generals 41-37.

“Their lead-off guy got on, right? And we start talking, and we’re like ‘Baseball is boring as hell,’ and people heard us and agreed, so we all just decided to play flag football,” Mr Grange reported to The Cenotaph.

Arts & Culture
Live music review: The Snug at the Davidian Theatre

By DAN DRUFF – They didn’t show up.

Obituaries

Alan Lamp, 92 – Alan Lamp died in his sleep Monday night at the age of 92. He follows his wife, Hetty, and is survived by two sons, five grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Born in Little Aleppo in either 18– or 19–, Mr Lamp was educated up until the sixth grade, and then sold to a carpenter for twelve dollars. Mr. Lamp would apprentice with that carpenter, Edwin Fleense of Dancer Street, for the next decade. After Mr. Fleense’s still unsolved murder, Mr. Lamp took over the shop and quickly became Little Aleppo’s woodworker-to-the-stars.

Tables for movie stars, kayaks for pop singers, terribly fancy toothpicks for travel writers: Mr. Lamb crafted masterpieces by the dozen, and commanded the highest prices. A chest of drawers he made for the Pope recently sold at auction for $28,000, despite recent revelations that the Pope never took custody of the chest, nor did he ask for it or have any idea that it existed.

Aside from his commercial work, Mr. Lamb also gave back to the neighborhood. The Tyndale Pagoda on the campus of Harper College has become a local icon and a visual shorthand for the school. His son, Alan, Jr., said that his father “loved that the students appreciated his pagoda, but didn’t like all the sex they had in it, especially the interracial kind. I love my father, but he was a bit, you know, old-fashioned. Don’t write this part down, okay?”

Mr. Lamb will be buried next to his wife, Hetty, in Foole’s Yard.

Magnificent Amberson, 22 – The majority of Magnificent Amberson was discovered in Room 100 of the Hotel Synod Monday morning. Ms. Amberson had recently moved to the neighborhood from Cascabel, Texas, and was the bass player for a local punk-rock band, The Fucks. She is survived by her mother and father, Maybelle and Gulch, and her twin brothers, Northrup and Grumman.

Ms. Amberson’s mother contacted The Cenotaph and asked that we share her a portion of her daughter’s final letter home.

…

Mommy, you should see the hills. There is nothing in Cascabel as green, and I’m counting Jimmy Niemark’s Chevelle. You always know which way you’re going because of them. It’s almost impossible to get lost here.

I can’t lie: I was scared my first few weeks. There’s so many people! And they’re different people. There are some of the differentest people I’ve ever seen in Little Aleppo!

Do you remember what you used to say to me when I was little? About everyone being the singer of their own song? I have to be honest and say that I never understood what you meant. This morning, I was walking up the Main Drag  and caught eyes with a stranger. He was a man I had never seen before Wearing a suit. Just some man.

And then I understood what you meant. He had the same amount of brain behind his eyeballs that I did, and just as much history, and problems, and things he wasn’t going to tell anybody unless he was drunk.

I think people are all about the same, Mommy. Same size, same shape, and same stuff. I mean the stuff inside. And I don’t think we give each other credit for it. And I don’t think we forgive each other enough.

Maybe we should forgive each other as much as we forgive ourselves.

We’ve got TWO shows next week, and we are starting to get fans. When we played Schoolejandro’s on Saturday, the audience was singing along with some of the songs. They knew the words! I almost started crying, and after the show I went and found everyone that was singing and hugged them.

I hope you are not worrying about me, because you have more important things to worry about!

I love you and will see you soon,
Maggie

There will be a memorial concert for Ms. Amberson at Schoolejandro’s on Friday night. All are welcome.