Village 2012

Look at this big mess!

Before our day even began we had crazy on the radar. A very determined critter visited Village last night and went ahead and went through most of the trading post looking for something to eat. Said critter went through the entire upstairs and downstairs of the barn looking for snacks. Fortunately we have become very good at corvée , there was not much food to be found in the peeploft. Unfortunately, homesteaders are not so good at picking up their personal belongings. Old lunch bags and containers were strewn all over the cubby area.

Lula, Ced and Evie clean it all up!

The prints left behind

As you can see above today was meant to be Appraisal Day!!! We had a nice ambitious plan even though it was raining and the tractor was still here. We sang a few good songs, learned a new one, we all told our weird dreams at the same time. We even did a social experiment. If one person puts her finger on her noise, what happens? Everyone else will too and there will be total silence.

actual werking

We moved along into Werk Berzerk with good plans to get everything done before appraisal time. Some of us even got right to work. I don't know if the following crazy was on account of the brownies that Miranda imported through the trading post (the last one sold for 100emmetts), the rain, the tension from appraisals being so near at hand. But, at town meeting this morning there was a gathering of peeps and homesteaders YELLING. This broke up and I collected statements from the selectpeeps, unfortunately in all the hub bub I left them at the farm. While I was collecting, the rest of the community was organizing and posting signs all over the peeploft. Ads and interviews were to be heard on the radio. An new newspaper was being written and distributed- the Rebellion, hand printed against power hungry peeps!

actual werking

Printing up the Rebellion, the new newspaper in town

interviewing Mr.Adams, "I don't want to vote because I don't want one leader. I want to be free."

lunchtime craziness

Mr. Adams falls apart!

His bottom half!

The craziness with the signs and picketing and new newspapers and interviews lasted through lunch... which we had to have indoors because of the rain. Homesteaders were standing on the picnic table benches hollering back and forth at each other during our lunchtime. Needless to say, very few homesteaders had spent the morning on task finishing up their homes for the assessment. The FED held an emergency meeting and decided that we had to take these homesteaders swimming in the rain and to push appraisals off until Monday morning. It was the only solution to steer the brewing revolution clear of violence. This helped somewhat. We all remembered that we ARE friends and we do like each other and all of the problems between the peeps of New Peepshire were left behind. When we returned to the farm and our peeps and changed our clothes and sat down for snack.... the craziness began again. The FED decided to hold an emergency mandatory town meeting to sort out some of the conflicts. Everyone actually attended, which is unusual for our group because some of us hate meetings that much. Owen (not Mr. PeepT) played the role of moderator in the interest of being fair and unbiased. We put together an agenda and got to work. The first item to be discussed was the state of our government and our selectpeep representatives.
"Manbat and TARZAN should be fired for trying to take away the rights of the townspeeps"
Elianna "Ripping down signs is an act of hate, they fired me"
Janis, "I think we should fire all of them"
Chris, "Why should I be fired? I am protecting your rights"
Manbat, "It is opinion that we [TARZAN and Manbat] are bad reps- not fact"
"They [pointing to TARZAN and Manbat] bribed me not to vote for Chris"
"They lied that Chris was bribing people"
Manbat, "The campaign signs are disturbing and distracting"
TARZAN, "Only Manbat bribed"
Mr. Adams, "I think some other people were bribing me too"
Ram, "Manbat bribed me to open the vault"
"Yes, I did bribe Ram, but only to not vote for Chris"
Chris asks Janis, "What lost me your support?"
Janis, "It is more about what the three of you do together"
Chris, "I do all the work as a selectpeep. I've been trying my hardest to make this town a better place."
Manbat, "TARZAN is becoming a doppelganger to me which is ironic. He does everything that I do do but he has his own thinking pattern."
Chris whispers to Ram. Ram moves to fire all three of the reps. Chris whispers to Ram again. Chris, "What he meant to say was 'Who should we fire?'" Ram retracts his motion and moves to fire Manbat and TARZAN as reps. He takes this back one more time and a motion is made to fire Manbat and TARZAN and to elect two new selectepeeps. This measure is voted on by paper ballot and the measure passes with 14 yes votes, two nos and one "neither".
Next candidates volunteer and give less than one minute speeches. My favorite speech came from TARZAN, who promised that if reelected he would not use bribes unless his job was threatened! A lot of peeps put their names in the hat for the selectpeep race this time, nothing like the piddling two names we had for our last election. Elianna, Veronica, Janis, Ringo, Manbat, TARZAN, Ram, Frankie and Madalyn all ran. In the end Janis received the most votes with Elianna coming in second. They are our new selectpeeps. The meeting tabled the other agenda items and recessed.

At this point we only had 20 minutes left until we had to corvee. The homesteaders did the mad dash to put the finishing touches on their properties to get them ready for the appraisal, now set for Monday morning, first thing.

Today we liked:

the whole day!
the sun came out for a little while
finishing houses!
resolving issues
finishing furniture
singing to and from the pond
we got political all over the place!
the whole week!
going on strike
it didn't rain ALL day
swimming
werk berzerk
learning to dive

We wish:

for an ice cream sundae
to be dangerous in the river
to have finished furniture
goggles didn't always fog up
it wasn't Friday
for a dark chocolate fish
for a pleasant weekend
the screwy campaign thing didn't happen
for infinite amounts of money
to continue thinking about Village when I get home
that furniture stays dry over the weekend
my hair comes out blue
for thunderstorms
it rained harder when we were swimming

Where to begin? It is funny how our village changes as we approach important deadlines. The major theme today was WERK! We began with Fish and Chips and Vinegar, or as some like to call it: the Salt and Pepper song. We sang this in a round and then we had the best and most lively rendition of Mountain Dew I have heard yet. It was impressive and mellifluous! During our announcements we discussed some very important dates: appraisal day, mini fair and the peep auction. We began our discussion of what an appraisal is, what the mini fair is, and what the auction is. We learned why we should want to be little capitalists for these events! Appraisal day is tomorrow! This means that all properties must be finished before lunch, it also means we should have a very nice pictorial in the blog tomorrow. We also had a few announcements from our town fathers (the selectpeeps), something about peeps not attending meetings and maybe loosing their right to vote because they don't show any interest in the town politics. The topic of paychecks for trading post employees was mentioned. Apparently they haven't gotten any. The trading post manager has gotten hers. There were whispers for a strike, but no one stroke this morning!

I got a picture of the Grim Peeper!

It seems that as we werk harder on houses and businesses other important jobs fall through the cracks. The radio station was unmanned this morning. Rolph and Jacques spent a long time talking about flatulence and the situation with the mint (and the lack of cash) as well as the situation with the trading post manager (for full details on this please read today's paper). Eventually a DJ kicked Rolph and Jacques off air.

Rolph asked the newspaper editor if he could write some kind of exposé about the happenings in town. The newspaper editor seemed agreeable to this and then disappeared to build her house for the rest of the day. The result of her actions was not what she had anticipated!

Many homesteaders elected to stay at the farm during swimming today to make more progress on their homes. Some went swimming that really ought to have stayed behind.

really thorough during clean up!

finishing up a house

nicely furnished

look at that rug!

Mr.PeepT has a really BIG boom box!

hard at work, making big messes!

Town meeting

Town meeting was very intense! Manbat and TARZAN are continually trying to push through legislation to take the vote away from the citizens of New Peepshire. The only reason they were unsuccessful at passing this law was because this was meant to be a town meeting, not just a selectpeep meeting. The town clerk and secretary were present and they were allowed to vote. When this measure failed Manbat moved to fire the secretary. This was a vote only for the selectpeeps and Chris was outnumbered by Manbat and TARZAN. When asked what his plan was, Manbat replied, "My plan was to fire the secretary, I did it real good." The secretary stormed off saying, "Good luck finding a new secretary! I'm keeping all of the minutes I took!" Chris said, "We can't run meeting without a secretary." Chris had a point. They all looked at me then and said that Rolph was keeping minutes for them. Rolph denied this and said that he was only present as a reporter.

Chris was not very impressed at losing the secretary, he decided to try to get back at Manbat and TARZAN with his next order of business. "The mint is doing a horrible job, we need change [meaning mackenzies], I believe we fire the mint." (See details about the bad job at the mint in the paper) Chris then left the meeting to bring back the former secretary and any other townspeeps he could get to rally with him in firing the mint workers. At this time Manbat tried some diversion tactics, "Didn't you say we had to discuss the trespassing law?"
"That was before you fired the secretary," replied Chris. A motion was made to fire the mint workers. Manbat, "If you paused the meeting I can too." Manbat and TARZAN left the meeting to find votes to save their jobs. Looking for yes votes for the mint is REAL hard. Meeting is suddenly popular! Manbat, "Did you hear Chris or me getting seconded by Mr.Adams that we recessed the meeting? If you fire us workers you will have no money!"

The motion passes and the mint workers are fired. "We will hide the money and the stamps to print more- We WILL make it corrupt! We can reconsider this decision tomorrow at the selectpeep meeting!"

Manbat turns to everyone who is working in the peeploft, "ATTENTION everyone: You now have no more money!"

The meeting tried to move on to the trespassing law but TARZAN was having a lot of trouble understanding what was being said. With no secretary, there was no one to read back the wording of the law (because no one was writing it down). The meeting tried to recess and failed. The discussion was tabled and the meeting recessed again with success.

Shortly after this meeting the FED Times Semi-Weekly was printed and in the hands of all of the homesteaders. The first action was by the editor of the Peep Times Semi-Weekly. She stormed up to the peeploft to try to stop the presses because they were printing the wrong name on her paper! The next action was the trading post employees getting organized (sort of) and going on strike. Hoping to be paid. A lot.

Tmon decided to make himself manager of the mint and hired back TARZAN and Manbat. They got to work shortly thereafter so Tmon must be an effective manager. Much more so than the FED, the selectpeeps, or the banker!

Our day was so close to the end, but the trading post manager didn't want to lose all of her workers and she didn't want to lose the support of so many friends, so she divided the entire trading post bank account balance (some 6941 emmetts) between all of her workers and had over 700 emmetts directly deposited into each of the workers bank accounts. It will be very interesting to see what happens tomorrow!