This Just In! Reader's Property Values Under Attack

Roger,

As the month of October has gone on, I have noticed gradually that the homes in my neighborhood are growing more and more dilapidated, and my neighbors are becoming less respectful of our fair city. As I drive around my street and the nearby streets I see the same thing everywhere. It's as if nobody cares about how their house looks anymore, and everything is going to pot. And what irks me is that this means that it's sending my property values down, down, down!

Let me tell you some examples of what I have seen around town:

• People are leaving uneaten food, like whole squashes and pumpkins, around on their porches. Please people, if you have harvested something from your garden, I'm proud of you, but can't you store it in your basement where you are supposed to? Leaving them out front is just asking for vandalism — I see that a lot of neighborhood kids have cleverly drawn, or even cut, faces out of them.
• The spiders (or is that the squirrels?) have been spinning outrageously ugly webs on the bushes in front of many people's houses. I can't blame the owners for that, but at least they would have the common decency to clean up once in a while! A broom works wonders to whisk away cobwebs.
• This is unbelievably morbid, but I am pretty sure that the dead are being buried in people's front yards, of all places! Look, I know the economy is tight, so maybe you cannot afford a fancy funeral and cemetary, but if you grandmother passes away, at least bury her in the back yard so that her final resting place is not visible from the street!
• I've seen a few scarecrows put up here and there. Scarecrows? In the city? Unless somebody has come up with an ingenious way to scare the squirrels away, I really don't see any need for scarecrows, and it just creeps people out. Honestly!
• The windows in many houses are looking just terrible. Sometimes I see that the residents have put up a picture of some frightful creature, or maybe some words like "BEWARE" or "HAUNTED." Why in the world would anybody want to simulate a house that is haunted? There is nothing more that drives property values down than a neighborhood that has an allegedly haunted house.

Are my neighbors just trying to perpetuate some sort of scam, perhaps so they can drive down the property values to a point where I and other right-minded Alamedans, are forced to move out?

Please Roger, I hope you can help us get to the bottom of this nefarious plot to ruin Alameda.

Pleadingly,

James V. Wherdonfield

Green Living by Janet Marchant: Greening Your Halloween IV: This Time, It's Environmental

If you're like me, you're ready and waiting for an exciting night of green trick-or-treating, with recycled costumes for your kids, all-natural decorations, and organic spirulina candies to hand out at your door. But wait! Before you fire up your Halloween jack-o'-lanterns, have you made sure that they are as kind to the planet as they can be? Until recently, when I plugged in my Halloween jack-o'-lanterns, they flickered to life with the white glow of compact fluorescent lights. Of course, when I realized that those light bulbs are made with some kind of dangerous chemical or heavy metal in them (I forget which), I immediately switched to all-natural incandescent bulbs.

Now my rows of festive pumpkins are guaranteed not to leak anything that is dangerous to children. And as an added bonus, they have the warm, orange glow that you can only get by using those incandescent bulbs.

SunCal Opposes SunCal’s Alameda Point Revitalization Initiative

Citing concerns that have emerged since he initially endorsed it, Pat Keliher, vice president operations for SunCal's Northern California operation, announced that SunCal has dropped its support of SunCal's Alameda Point Revitalization Initiative.

"We like our plan for Alameda point, but we're just not convinced that we're giving the City of Alameda a sweet enough deal in our initiative," Keliher stated at a hastily arranged press conference, "and with so many people changing their position from support to opposition lately, frankly, we were beginning to feel a little bit left out."

Keliher added that although he had hoped that the City and SunCal could come to terms before the election, he has realized that the initiative should have been worded more vaguely, to allow the City room to negotiate a risk-free deal that will minimize distasteful developer profits. "I was walking down Park St. and this gentleman from Inaction Alameda…no, that's not right…Save Our Sandwiches! Alameda? No, I think it was Save Our Sock-Puppets! Alameda; no, no, wait, it was the Coalition of Sock-Puppets United In Inaction! Saving Our Sandwiches! for a Better Alameda…or was it What's the Point? Well, anyway, after talking with this guy for five minutes, I agreed to remove my signature from the petition and withdraw my company's support for the initiative, and I can say with 95 percent confidence that everyone else in Alameda would do exactly the same thing. He's very persuasive."

The announcement comes on the heels of a series of high-profile reversals that have left Councilmember Lena Tam alone as the only person in Alameda who does not yet oppose the initiative. However, given that Ms. Tam has been known to stroll down Park St. herself, it is most likely only a matter of time before she is buttonholed by a concerned citizen and convinced of the error of her ways. When that happens, Alameda will finally be left with the perfect plan for Alameda Point, the only plan that will never disappoint anyone: a plan that will never be implemented!

Lon Geddoff Warns of Gigantic Acorns

Editor,

Now, I never read those sorry excuses for "newspapers" that claim to compete with the Alameda Daily Noose, but a piece of one of those worthless things was blowing around the street the other day and plastered itself to the windshield of my car just as I was getting in it. As I peeled the offending paper off my car, these words caught my eye: "…gigantic acorn…."

I knew there must be some mistake, because if there had been any incidents with a gigantic acorn, I would have read about it in the Alameda Daily Noose. Well, I looked more closely at that darned paper, and it turned out it wasn't even from Alameda. It makes no sense, but someone must have brought a newspaper over here from San Francisco, where they printed a letter from someone in a completely different town that is having a problem with gigantic acorns, and consequently with fat Squirrels.

The amazing thing, though, is that this letter writer has discovered that Squirrels control the weather. There's no explanation of how this works, but when Squirrels eat gigantic acorns, they get fat, and that causes a colder winter.

We'd better make sure there aren't any giant acorns growing in Alameda, because our winters are already cold enough! And with global warming, our summers are too hot, and I suppose that Squirrels (maybe extra-skinny Squirrels) are to blame for that, too. The bottom line is that all of our problems are caused by Squirrels, and whether they are increasing in number or just increasing in size, they are clearly working to collectively outweigh us.

Lon Geddoff

Schedule of Classic Movie Playing at the Super-Mega-Monster-Plex That Everyone Hates

Following are the schedule and synopsis of this week's classic movie playing at the Super-Mega-Monster-Plex That Everyone Hates, 2317 Central Avenue (all times are a.m. except for those shown as p.m.):

Vampires' Couples' Retreat Citizen (R), 11:10, 1:35 p.m., 4:20 p.m., 7:25 p.m., 10:00 p.m.

It's 1941, and newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles, who also directed and co-wrote the script) is dead. The opening shots show Xanadu, Kane's vast, elaborate, now unkempt estate in Florida. Following failed attempts to conceive, Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) are close to getting a divorce. In an effort to save their marriage, they book a vacation to Xanadu, which they have mistaken for a couples' therapy retreat.

Interspersed with segments of Kane's newsreel obituary are scenes of swimming with sharks and yoga sessions with an amorous instructor Salvadore (Carlos Ponce). Most puzzling are Kane's last moments: clutching an orange, he mutters, "I vaahnt to saahck your blaahd."

A young newspaperman named Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia) digs into Kane's past, seeking the meaning of his enigmatic last words. He meets a mysterious man at a freak show who turns out to be a Vampire. After a series of events, Darren must leave his normal life and go on the road to Xanadu and become a Vampire. Darren meets Jason and Cynthia, and, seeing that they have worked out their problems, frees them from the therapy and tells them to go jet skiing.

Soon Jason and Cynthia return to Darren, informing him with great disappointment that jet skiing will not be invented until 1965. As an apology and consolation, he invites them up to his room for a little drink.

Local Genius Puts Two and Two Together to Reveal Eight-Legged Menace

Dear Editor:

I was reading something on the computer the other day when I ran across this:


Now, unlike most Americans—or even most Alamedans, for that matter—I'm a genius, so I had no problem figuring out what's going on in the shocking photo above. I know that you will understand in a glance, but I'll spell it out for those of your readers who weren't lucky enough to be born geniuses like us.

Most Alamedans get the question wrong because they can't think outside the box the way we geniuses do. "Spider Or Squirrel"? That's a classic example of what logisticians call a false dicotyledon. Clearly, what's pictured isn't a Spider or a Squirrel, but rather a Spider and a Squirrel!

Yes, Spiders and Squirrels are one and the same. I haven't quite worked out all the details yet, but either Spiders are Squirrels in disguise, or Squirrels are Spiders in disguise. Think about it: When is the last time you saw a Spider and a Squirrel in the same room together? Coincidence? I think not.

Like all of the revolutionary discoveries of geniuses, my Spider-Squirrel hypothesis has been greeted by derisive laughter, first from my wife and kids, then from the guys at work, then from the lady at the lunch counter. I find this highly encouraging, because we all know that the more people laugh at your idea, the more ingenious it must be. We'll see how hard they're laughing when I take that all-expenses-paid trip to Finland to receive my Noble prize in zoo-ology.

At any rate, now that I have uncovered the Spider-Squirrel connection, it would behoove you to look more closely into the potentially subversive activities of that hippie-dippy environmental columnist who writes for you. When she's singing the praises of Spiders, does she realize that she is both undermining Measure Acorn and giving comfort to the enemy in the Global War on Squirrels? I call upon you to conduct a full investigation and immediately terminate her column once you find her guilty as charged.

Sincerely yours,
Dean Mirps

Editor's Comment:

The Alameda Daily Noose and I aren't sure which college Mr. Mirps is the dean of, but we see his point about the Spider-Squirrel connection. That would explain why Squirrels and Spiders are equally frightening. However, let's not be too hasty in our conclusions about Janet Marchant. Her pet Spider is an exception, because Miss Marchant is above reproach. We know this because we find it handy to have her columns to publish on Fridays, which are notoriously slow noose days. She saves the Alameda Daily Noose and me a lot of effort, and is therefore a trustworthy person. So hats off to you, Miss Marchant, and also to that rare creature, the helpful Spider.

Green Living by Janet Marchant: Greening Your Halloween: Episode III - Revenge of the Silk

If you're like me, you keep those pesky spiders on the run most of the time, whisking away their sticky webs as fast as they can build them around your house. But Halloween is when the araneaeid order plots its silky revenge at my house. In fact, I encourage it! This year, I'm decorating with 100% natural cobwebs. My pet spider, Nancy, is already hard at work dressing up our front porch and yard.

Whenever I run across other spiders in the house or yard, I introduce them to Nancy in the hopes that they will make friends and start spinning webs together. So far, the other spiders always disappear overnight, sometimes with their webs half-finished, but at least Nancy seems fat and happy.

As you can see from the photos, Nancy has already done some great work on one of the few remaining trees that we haven't cut down for firewood yet, and she has started on the door, too.




Unlike synthetic cobwebs, natural cobwebs are biodegradable. They also cost nothing, which will save you some green! So why not start today on your organic, free-range Halloween spider webs? You'd better hurry, though, because there's not much time left for your neighborhood spiders to set up camp and secure victory in the field of decorations.