Puleo and Lynn Rat Syndicate Find Common Ground

The Lynn Rat Syndicate released a statement praising Margerate Puleo's on going fight against the Food Project farm at Ingalls Elementary. The statement read in part:

"We in the Lynn Rat Syndicate have had our differences with Mrs. Puleo in the past but we would like to thank her on going activism about the conditions at the Ingalls farm. As frequent diners at the farm we appreciate that there will now be more testing of lead in the produce grown there because Mrs. Puleo's constant complaining. We rats want to stay healthy too. Also, the $1000 is less money that the city can spend on rat eradication programs (or as we call it "rat genocide").

In their statement they also agreed with Mrs. Puleo's dislike of beats. They expressed a hope that the space used for beats might better be used for dumping the mystery meat served at the Ingalls cafeteria. "We have been hoping to get our hands on that delicious pink slime for years!" exclaimed the LRS spokesrat at the press conference.

The spokesperson for Ward 2 City Councilor Billy Trahant (who represents the neighborhood were the farm is located) said that Billy was glad that Puleo and the rats now seem to be getting along. "This will go a long way toward creating peace in the neighborhood. Now if we can only get the gang members from eating all the fresh produce in the middle of the night."

The Bananas Top Twelve

Brat Ladies Get Just Deserts

Lynn, Lynn, city of…eccentric cranky old biddies? 80 year old Claire Butcher (Bird Lady) and Marguerite Puleo (Rat Lady) were sentenced to hard labor at the Ingalls School community garden. (Bird + rat = Brat, get it? Well, it really equals birdrat, but that doesn’t sound so good.)

Forced to live with each other next to the garden in Puleo’s residence, Ms. Butcher can only feed the birds in Puleo’s backyard. The resulting bird feces will be allowed to decompose so it can later be used as fertilizer for the garden.

Stay tuned to Fox News, as Butcher will be providing fodder for that network’s viewers sometime in the near future.

New Trash Ordinance Trashed by Chamber

A new trash ordinance was passed. “Henceforth, all receptacles for unwanted, used, and otherwise worthless pieces of garbage shall be cylindrical in nature and designed to hold no more than the maximum of all trash produced by a household divided by 3 or an apartment complex divided by 6. Furthermore all commercial enterprises shall abide by these very same limits and can only employ either 3 or 6 trash barrels to contain their waste. We won’t say which number, you decide and we’ll hand out the tickets based on whether we like you or not.”

A new trash ordinance was literally passed and flushed down the toilet. All that straining and hard work for nothing. Back to the drawing board!

Darts After Hours

Bar owners are taking aim at City Hall and refusing to shut down before midnight this New Year’s Eve. They can’t serve alcohol, but they will be sponsoring an all-night dart tournament in protest. Faces of current and former License Board Commissioners will be super-imposed on targets. Winners will be granted chicken dinner, but no bar will be allowed to serve the victors liquor. The event is being dubbed “Target Practice.”

First Triple Abortion

Lynn truly is a city of firsts. It happened at Three Yolks Breakfast Restaurant during the Monday morning breakfast rush. Both Planned Parenthood and the Roman Catholic church were all over this one. I’d like my abortion sunny side up please.

Phelan Appeals to Pre-civil rights era Values

We regret we didn’t clip and save Tim Phelan’s full page campaign ad in the Lynn Urinal. In it he claimed a lot of recent positive developments as his own and stood for a return to 1950’s values. Tim is the Wally Cleaver Wonderbread politician we love to hate. He also got the most votes in the Councillor at-large election this year. Tim, if only you’d use your considerable powers for good instead of fear-mongering, we might like you.

Controversial Practice of Canning Called into Question

The mayor and the booster clubs found themselves at loggerheads over the controversial practice of canning to raise money for school athletics. Canning, otherwise known as Beaning, consists of threatening to hurl cans of Del Monte green string beans through the windows of passing cars unless the driver forks over whatever coins are stashed in the cupholder. No coins, no mercy.

School System Breaks

A heavily sobbing parent could be heard in the halls of the Lynn Public Schools. “It’s not fair! She broke our school system! Why is she allowed to keep on playing with it!”

“I did not! He did it!” came the response.

“Well, both of you have lost your priviledges,” said the state.

“I’ll take good care of it,” said Kipp.

Avenue King Crip and the Deuce Boys Create New Jazz Genre

It wasn’t the kind of artistic breakthrough downtowners were hoping for, but another Lynn first was recorded in the Neal Rantouille Blackbox Theatre where Avenue King Crip and the Deuce Boys launched what would come to be known as revenge jazz. As a result, the entire city was blocked off by yellow police tape. Nobody could get into or out of Nahant for 5 days.

Chip Clancy’s Computer Found in Dredged Goldfish Pond

The normally stately Goldfish Pond revealed its deep dark secrets in September when the renovation of its retaining wall forced most of the water to be drained. Not only was Chip’s missing City Hall Computer found, but the infamous Goldfish Pond scrolls were recovered and set out in the sun to dry.

Lynnfield St. Traffic Light

Breaking News Flash!!! New traffic light doesn’t work so well on first day. Government fucks up again. Can’t do anything right.

Creation of Downtown Marts District

What, you didn’t see this coming? The city clerk all in a hurry to get this new proclamation written, copying and pasting from this document and that one, nobody proofreading the final draft. The mayor blithely signing it into law in a big ceremony? Sorry, spell checkers don’t catch these kinds of mistakes.

Yeah, so now we’re stuck with this stupid Marts district. Isn’t that what we already have with that Shaw’s strip mall, all those mini marts, dollar stores and storefront churches?

This smarts. We’re lucky we didn’t create a shopping carts district or a farts district. Tarts district anyone? Parts?

Incestuous Relationships Pervade City Goverment

The Item did another one of it’s famous exposes. Only this time, instead of salaries, they went over all the incestuous relations working for city government or in some way getting fed off the public teat. What with all the Phelans, Coppingers, Bartons, Cyrs and other “life-long Lynners” around here, it’s a wonder anything gets done. Oh well, at least we have Hong Net this time around.

1950's Values…21st Century Hallucinations

Timothy Phelan for Councillor at Large. Yeah, you heard me. Who doesn't like values that go back 60 years? McCarthyism, the Cold War, segregation, conformity…those were some of our country's best years.

Tim fought for transparency in city government and won…now you can see right through it! MC Tim hosts Rat Pack Club live from City Hall. Every other week, the air-raid siren signals that it's time to gather in the fallout shelter to watch Tim and his Mousekateers.

Tim Phelan put the City Council on Twitter so all the hip kids could follow it! (Still no Facebook page, though) @LynnCouncil follows all the key players: Will Wheaton, Dane Cook and Mandy Moore. In the back rooms of city hall, someone's tweeting their brains out.

Tim successfully proposed and passed 3 separate ordinances PROHIBITING AMUSEMENT PARKS FOR THIRD DEGREE PERVERTS, THE DANGLING OF NAUGHTY PARTS IN BLACK BOX THEATRES and TRANSFATS SERVED PAST 10 O'ClOCK.

Tim successfully fought to muzzle that doggie in the window.

Tim loves this city! He even had someone shoot a YouTube video collage to prove it.

Tim is a life-long Lynner, in other words hip, groovy and cool, not a stick in the mud at all. As a senior at Lynn English, he successfully supported the Fonz's effort to jump the shark. He found his thrill on Blueberry Hill and walked down lonely street to Heartbreak Hotel. To know, know, know him, is to love, love, love him. Vote Timothy Phelan this November 8th and keep 1950's values alive! Happy Days!

Tim Phelan--Moving Lynn Back to the 50s.

Exclusive! Goldfish Pond Reveals Deep Dark Secrets!!

Chip Clancy's old computer

Just one day before the annual GoldFish Pond Fun & Flea Day, the Tomato has uncovered a conspiracy at the highest levels of city government to cover-up the discovery of valuable historical artifacts found when the pond was drained last fall to make repairs on the stone walls that gird its watery depths!

The Goldfish Pond Scrolls are among the most potentially damaging of these finds and reveal shocking secrets that descendants of the the Ingalls clan would prefer remain untold. Edmund Ingalls and his family, the first settlers of the area, were Puritans who disdained the flamboyant conduct of their fellow settlers on the Revere Beach Parkway.

So they moved to an area of Lynn then known as Swamphole and dug a heart-shaped ditch, filled it with water, threw in some goldfish and called it day. The rest, as they say, is history.

Among the other shocking historical artifacts found in the depths of the pond:

• Salvaged computers from the Chip Clancy administration. JFK would really like to get her hands on these! Who knows what incriminating email threads reside on these hard drives?
• Obama's Kenyan birth certificate.
• The remains of the egg that hatched Newt Gingrich.

Our intrepid reporter

The Lynn Daily Tomato Guide to Surviving Hurricane Irene

Wait until the winds start to pick up, then go out to buy a couple of suitcases of Bud at Discount Liquors to ride out the storm.

Go to Lynnway Liquors and buy a Central Square Chardonnay and an Oxford St. Pino Noir to go with your Swiss Chard and Artichoke Quiche made with produce purchased at the Marblehead Farmer's Market. (You live in Lynn and our Farmer's Market closes well before you get out of work.)

Find yourself a sick, I mean safe, building.

Stock up on dead rats to feed the pitbulls.

Buy enough Peanut Butter, Fluff and Wonder Bread to feed an entire army of jaywalkers.

Don't forget to attend the Turbine after-party early Monday morning.

Set up a toll both on the Nahant Causeway and extort money from residents trying to evacuate.

Tempt the fates by scaling High Rock Tower.

Schedule an outdoor event.

Pretend you're the ghost of a pirate and hole up in Dungeon Rock.

Oh, Say Can You See

The Lynn Department of PyroTourism recently launched a new program to bring tourist dollars into Lynn for the 4th of July weekend. As part of its Holiday Hood Style initiative, the city plans to dispense with its officially sponsored Fireworks extravaganza and instead take advantage of the numerous illegal fireworks displays.

Pyrotourism coordinator Cokie Kristofferson puts it this way: "It became apparent to us that the quote unquote amateur displays were out-shining our official fireworks in longevity, creativity and loudness. So the TNT bus tour will take its place."

Seven TNT tourbuses, recently acquired from Buster's Bus Inc., feature glass ceilings through which paying passengers get an unobstructed view of the festivities as they travel through Lynn's diverse neighborhoods. Bunghole Liquors has paid for naming rights for the new event.

"We're calling it the Bunghole Bomber Independence Day Spectacular," said Bunghole spokesman Thaddeus Warner Higgins. "Pay a little extra and we give you the full immersion experience. Not only do you get to ride the bus, you also get to lodge with an actual child-support-paying dad as he watches his paycheck blow up."

Not to be outdone, Downtown will also get into the action by hosting an art auction called FireWorks and Fluff: the Abstract Art Explosions of Durkee and Mower. Pieces to be auctioned off include "Wanksta Surprise," "Slumdog Covered in Marshmellow" and "Peanutbutter and Fluff Massacre." The "Fire Ho's" will provide the entertainment.

"If you think about it, fireworks are like farts...explosions from people's backyards, only ear-shattering," said Lynn Arts Director Patience Prufrock. "And smelly." And so Lynn Arts will host a "Farts After Hours" cocktail hour as a way for people get some release after the auction.

"We'll know it's done when we just hear a fart every two to three seconds," said Prufrock.

DMT: Just Say No to Trash

In a move many are heralding as just plain silly, the Lynn Department of Magical Thinking has banned all trash from the city. Trash barrels could be seen feeling very lonely and commiserating in support groups outside city limits.

"From now on, we're strictly a carry-in carry-out community," said DMT Director Harvey Keck. "Abracadabra," he then blurted.

After an uncomfortably long silence, Keck resumed, "No trash shall either enter or leave city limits. Boo!"

When asked if his second statement contradicted his first, Keck replied, "It's somewhat of a paradox, isn't it? Yahtzee!"

"But the limitation to 3 barrels of trash per household or business worked so well in decreasing the rat population that we decided it only made sense to take this approach to its logical conclusion. Shazam!"

The Power of Words

Harvey Keck is a believer in the power of words. " We tweaked that trash ordinance every which way but loose, change a word here, a comma there. Each time we noticed a definite change for the better in people's behavior, even when we clearly didn't have the resources to implement the changes. All these months spent hammering out this solution in Ma Keck's basement has proved to be worth it. That's a big 10-4, Sasquatch!"

Such awesome power is not to be trifled with. But Keck believes that he has mojo on his side. "I was born under the seventh sign and I'm the seventh son of mayor Darius Keck. Bingo!"

The Rat Diaspora

Since the ban was decreed, rat refugee camps have been spring up along Lynn's borders with Swampscott, Salem, Revere and Saugus. the United Species Commission for Animal Displacement issued the following statement: "We deplore the angst this trash ban has caused amongst our fecund furry friends. What'd they ever do? Oh, yeah. Nevermind."

Angelina Jolie has joined forces with Willard and Ben to speak up for the displaced rodent population. "I am coming to Lynn, but not to shoot a movie scene. Those rats need my help. Shame on Harvey Keck."

Willard and Ben had no comment, but nodded vigorously when asked if Lynn had gone to the dogs.