The Gory Integrity Story

 

Oh, What a Wayne-2: On the Golden Vacuum of Delco, The Patient Shadow, and the Nature of Entwinements

Yesterday, Wayne Putin The First Marshfield - one of the Senior Meals Heros reported here, the quickly retiring butterfly-fearing hero reported here - was booted by the elegant hoof of Tina Mole off Delaware County's Health Committee.

For no apparent reason whatsoever - except for being a hero in the Senior Meals fairy tale:

He is - SURE.

And here is how the tale begins.

Once upon a time, in the poorest county in New York, there lived Tina.

Tina had two brain cells.

One was named Bonacic.

The other was named You Know Who.

For many years the two brain cells lived together peacefully and ruled the county without incident.

Then both began having difficulties at approximately the same time.

This troubled Tina.

Not because the brain cells were important.

But because they happened to be carrying her crown.

The crown immediately developed cracks.

Jewels began falling out.

Tina pretended not to notice.

For many years Tina's principal source of happiness had been a magical Golden Vacuum.

The Vacuum stood in the center of the county.  Nobody remembered where it came from.  Nobody remembered who had switched it on.  Everybody remembered paying for it and to it.  Sometimes this way:

with children.

The Golden Vacuum possessed a remarkable appetite.

It fed upon taxes, penalties, fees, forfeitures (drug forfeitures most especially - such a yummy forfeiture - right, Dick Northrup?).  It also fed, with great satisfaction upon grants.  The Bonacic brain cell helped Tina in feeding the Golden Vacuum on this particular fuel tremendously.

Most of all, it fed upon prosperity of local common folks, and upon their future.

And, as all golden vacuums have it, it had a very interesting specification: the poorer the county became, the hungrier the Vacuum grew.  And, of course, the hungrier the Vacuum grew, the poorer the county became.

This was considered by Tina's two brain cells an example of proper economic development.

Tina rode the Golden Vacuum everywhere and let it grab everything.

At first the villagers found this unusual.

Eventually they became accustomed to it.

People become accustomed to many things.

Eventually, the Vacuum's appetite became so great that it eventually created a vast canyon, like an abyss, beneath itself.  

The abyss quickly became known among villagers as the Delaware Opportunities Chasm.  It was not really of chasm of any kind.  It was... a crack where Tina's cracked crown pieces started to drop-drop-drop, as soon as Tina's two brain cells suffered what was described as status-shrinking phenomenon.

The chasm soon received a name.  It was the Senior Meals Program. And, the possibly contagious butterfly population problem that was becoming increasingly dangerous towards certain dates like November 4 (a date nobody ever remembered).

That was a dangerous name.  Hurting old people while doing interesting stuff with taxpayer money is what Golden Vacuums happily do, but what villagers frown upon.

So, something - or someone - had to go.

And then - Tina connected her emergency thinking resource: her spinal cord.  It did not really think - no spinal cords do - but it FELT really well.  The danger to Golden Vacuum!  

And, as it usually happens to spinal cords in emergencies, Tina's spinal cord instantly produced just two words - BUT WHAT KIND OF WORDS!!!

IRREVOCABLY INTERTWINED.

The spinal cord stretched with satisfaction.

Not because for that particular spinal cord THAT was a familiar state - no wonder it jumped to mind so readily.

Because Tina herself was happily, and for many years, IRREVOCABLY INTERTWINED in a lot of different things.  Like CWC.  Like other little pet non-profits.  Like little and large PILOTs given to ... well, you know.

But Tina's MOST HONORABLE irrevocable intertwinement (like liaise and supervise, supervise and liaise)

was not Wayne Putin The First Marshfield's MOST DISHONORABLE - IRREVOCABLE INTERTWINEMENT!!!

You must, after all, understand the difference:  that was - IRREVOCABLE INTERTWINEMENT, and this is, on the other hand, IRREVOCABLE INTERTWINEMENT!!!

Even though the Most Pink Irrevocable Intertwinement was - what they call it - Tina's lived experience, the strain of connecting these two words, 33 years after receiving her associate's degree from SUNY Delhi, and never once after that doing anything brainier than operating the Golden Vacuum - caused such strain to her entire being, that she inadvertently nodded, something she never usually does, and a BIG crown jewel dropped into the Delaware Opportunities Chasm.

CLUNK!

But with the CLUNK! sound another brilliant idea visited Tina - Wayne Putin The First Marshfield may be THE ONE!  THE BRIDGE! THE SOLUTION to the little just-starting chasm problem.

And then - a brilliant idea - imagine the strain! - crossed Tina's two shrinking brain cells: let Wayne Putin the First Marshfield be useful for a change.

After all, he was the one who caused all kinds of attentions from all kinds of unwelcome insects to all kind of Golden Vacuum affairs that otherwise were peacefully intertw... well, existing.

So, the work turning Wayne Putin The First Marshfield into usable infrastructure to bridge the chasm began.

First, Wayne Putin The First Marshfield was forced into retirement from his Town of Hamden Supervisor position - no, no, that could not possibly happen, he simple "did not rerun" after 30 years of sticking to all kinds of government offices, with attendant benefits, like a ... very big leather-clad whiskey-sipping velcro.

Second, he was thrown under the bus of The County Health Committee - but as yet is holding up as Delaware Opportunities Treasurer.  Probably, not for long, too.

And - TADA! - THE BRIDGE was born!

It was not bad to be a bridge.  It was mostly comfortable actually.  

Wayne accepted his new fate with dignity.  And whiskey.  Mostly whiskey.

But, even with Golden Vacuum now secured on the back of Wayne Putin the First Marshfield, Tina's spinal cord did not peacefully relax.

There was that inkling feeling... that little shiver on the back... this little discomfort...

No, not with Tina's sidekick Amy who laid more and more ostrich-size lawsuit eggs.  After all, she did it all the time.

For some reason, Tina had worrying dreams.

In those dreams, she saw a regular school ruler emerging from something dark and amorphous - and attempting to do the unthinkable!  That obnoxious piece of wood was measuring her crown!

Sometimes, Tina even saw in her sleep more than a ruler - something that held that ruler - A SHADOW...

A big, dark SHADOW.

Looming behind her.

Calculating.

Measuring.

Clearly making inroads to the Golden Vacuum.  To the Crown.  To all that was - for so long - SO VERY dear and near to Tina.

And then, intermittently, in some of her other dreams, Tina saw helicopters at a distance, and that no-good guy in US Marshall jacket twirling - no, not pink, not fluffy - regular-issue police handcuffs.  That is with his index finger on one hand.   Tina does not even want to recall what he did with his other finger behind his back.

While ALSO looking at her Golden Vacuum and her Crown.

But, as unsettling as the handcuff guy was, Tina's spinal cord trampled her receding brain cells, it kept screaming to Tina: DO NOT be afraid of handcuffs!  Do not be afraid of turtle auditors!  Do not be afraid of butterfly statisticians!  

Be afraid  - ONLY - ONLY - ONLY - OF THE SHADOW.

The SHADOW is the one who looms close by.

The SHADOW is who is unknown.

The SHADOW is who is getting ready to TAKE.

To TAKE IT ALL.

To take the Golden Vacuum - and its magical money-sucking power.

To take the Golden Cracked Crown.

The great big SHADOW continued to loom, with its Crown-measuring ruler, like it had all the time in the world.

And the tiny-tinier-tinest two voices kept telling her - where there are handcuffs, Tina, there will be no Golden Vacuum anyway...

The Kingdom of Vanishing Trust: what did Math have to do with it?

 

Once upon a time, in a kingdom governed by Very Important People, there stood a magnificent castle called The Institution.

The Institution had everything an institution could possibly want: marble stairs, official seals, committees, subcommittees, advisory committees advising the committees, and an impressive collection of documents proving that everything was functioning perfectly.

Whenever villagers complained, a Herald would emerge from the castle gates and announce:

"Nothing is wrong."

The villagers would nod.

After all, the Herald had a very official hat.

Years passed.

One day, a peasant raised a hand.

"But Your Officialness, the bridge collapsed."

The Herald consulted a report.

"The bridge did not collapse."

The peasant pointed.

"It is in the river."

The Herald adjusted his spectacles.

"The bridge is participating in a temporary aquatic relocation initiative."

The villagers looked at one another.

That was odd.

Not enough to cause trouble.

Just odd.

A tiny crack appeared in the Kingdom's Great Reservoir of Trust.

Nobody paid much attention.

Then another bridge relocated itself into a river.

Then a tax collector accidentally taxed three cows, two chickens, and a cabbage for owning an unlicensed boat.

Then a judge declared that a hearing had occurred, despite several participants having never received notice that it existed.

The Herald explained:

"Everything is functioning exactly as intended."

The villagers again looked at one another.

The crack grew.

Now, among the villagers lived a curious old mathematician.

He spent his days drawing equations in the dirt and terrifying local children with discussions of stochastic processes.

The villagers asked him:

"What is happening?"

The mathematician stroked his beard.

"Trust is a funny thing," he said.

"It does not disappear all at once."  And he drew this chart.

Thanks: Prof. Dimitri Volchenkov.

The villagers were disappointed.  They had hoped for a dragon - and

instead they got a lecture.

The mathematician continued.

"Imagine a barrel."

The villagers understood barrels.

"Each strange event adds a drop."

"A drop of what?"

"A drop of doubt."

The villagers nodded.  This seemed reasonable.

"Sometimes a good event removes a drop."

"Excellent."

"Sometimes ten bad events add ten drops."

"Less excellent."

"And eventually the barrel overflows."

The villagers became concerned.

"What happens then?"

The mathematician pointed toward the castle.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing immediately."

The villagers were confused - but the mathematician smiled.

"That is the interesting part."

He explained that people imagine institutional failure as a dramatic event: a revolution! a collapse! a dragon!

Perhaps even two dragons!!

Reality, however, was less theatrical.

The Institution continued issuing reports.

The Herald continued wearing his hat.

The committees continued meeting.

The subcommittees continued discussing the minutes of the previous committee meetings.

Everything looked normal.

Yet something had changed: the villagers no longer interpreted official statements the same way.

Whenever the Herald proclaimed:

"Everything is functioning perfectly,"

the villagers would quietly ask:

"According to whom?"

When a report declared:

"No irregularities have been found,"

the villagers wondered:

"Who looked?"

When an investigation concluded:

"We investigated ourselves and discovered we were correct,"

the villagers developed mysterious facial expressions.

The mathematician called this crossing a threshold.

The villagers called it:

"Having had enough."

Soon the Kingdom entered a strange era.

The castle still possessed authority.

The villagers still obeyed many rules.

Yet the old reservoir of trust had become difficult to refill.

Every new proclamation had to compete with years of accumulated doubt.

The Herald noticed.

The committees noticed.

Even the subcommittees noticed.

This was alarming.

Subcommittees rarely noticed anything.

So the King summoned the mathematician.

"Can trust be restored?" asked the King.

The mathematician considered the question.

"Of course."

The King sighed with relief.

"Excellent. We shall establish a Royal Commission on Trust Restoration."

The mathematician shook his head.

"That is not what I meant."

The King frowned.

"What did you mean?"

The mathematician replied:

"If people lost trust because bridges kept falling into rivers, the solution is not a report explaining that the rivers are at fault."

The King stared.

The mathematician continued.

"If people believe procedures no longer mean what they claim to mean, another proclamation saying the procedures are wonderful will not help."

The King's face became increasingly troubled.

"So what should we do?"

The mathematician pointed toward the nearest collapsed bridge.

"Perhaps begin there."

The Miller/Gransbury's Onion

 

There comes a point in every citizen's life when they realize they have wandered into a government process so convoluted that it deserves its own agricultural classification.

Some people encounter red tape.

I encountered an onion.

A very large onion.

An onion with legal counsel called Sir Frank W. Miller, Esq. of Hancock Estabrook, LLP, a law firm belongs to a very important person: Timothy Murphy, brother of Chief Administrative Judge of Upstate New York James P. Murphy.

The story began innocently enough.  My husband and I needed court and deed records. Not because we collect court records and deed records for fun, but because (1) we wanted to see whether we could clear address certain unfairly imposed sanctions and restore our law licenses based on new evidence and new laws; and because (2) we wanted to prepare a non-frivolous tax certiorari petition on inequality grounds for our property in the Town of Hamden this year - which already did not happen because of the paywall.  

Issue No. 1 was important also because Sir Miller was trying very hard to convince courts that we deserved sanctions and anti-filing injunctions specifically because of sanctions that we sought to vacate - and that Lady Gransbury helpfully (to Sir Miller) paywalled away from us.  

Lady Gransbury's publicly confirmed that she digitized and destroyed originals of the court records from 2007 to 2024 - compare:

But - instead of putting those records on NYSCEF into public access - as other court records already are - she is SELLING them, for 

(1) a $5.00 pay-per-view fee;

(2) per-document fee; and, 

(3) annual fees are also "available" - $300.00 for in-state viewers and double, $600 - for out-of-state viewers.

Gransbury says: to fight online deed fraud.

So - we sued her in Neroni v Gransbury, EF2026-106 (when you click on the name, the text of the lawsuit will open from the official court archive, NYSCEF) for presuming that we, out of state users, are more prone to deed fraud than in-state viewers, by putting a double fees on us.

What did she do - moved for sanctions claiming she never made such a presumption.  Maybe sometimes she needs to think what she is doing and what conclusions may be reasonably drawn from what she is doing.

Of course, Gransbury - and her attorney Frank W. Miller, Esq., and Delaware County Attorney Amy Merklen - tried to fraudulently (I stress that word, fraudulently) claim that no such paywalls exist.

That false claim is - what is the polite French word? - ah: BULL.

 Because the pay-per-view wall both on the deeds and on the digitized court records in Delaware County (NY) online VENDOR's portal - not official court portal - is observable evidence clearly shows when anybody visits Delaware County public records website:

Now - why did I need to see A LOT of deed records so that the pay-per-view paywall would start meaning a lot to me, to the point of filing a lawsuit against "Lady" Gransbury?

Let's continue this as a fairy tale.

As of January 1, 2026, The Custodians of the Records (Lady Haley L. Gransbury of 3 Court Street, Delhi NY Supreme and County Court Castle), explained that access would now cost us - and any other litigant in Delaware County, NY who would want to prepare and honest-to-God non-frivolous tax certiorari petition on inequality grounds - approximately the GDP of a not-so-small island nation.

Because The Honorable Knights of Tax Assessment Units of each of the Delaware County townships use 5-year-comparative sale method in assessment of property taxes.

Which means - in order to verify whether a taxpayer/property owner has a non-frivolous ground to bring a tax certiorari petition, allowed by the NYS Legislature to be brought every single year (Article 7 of Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law), the taxpayer/property owner must first pay Lady Gransbury $5.00 to simply view each one of the thousands of deeds of properties sold in the municipality over the 5-year period 

Which, of course, throws legislative intent for an easy, quick and economical tax certiorari proceeding contemplated by the NYS Legislature out the door, and makes tax certiorari proceedings UNAFFORDABLE in Delaware County, NY, one of the poorest counties in New York State.

Lady Gransbury explained her decision for paywalls, for both digitized court records, and the deeds, in the following way:

Meaning - she admitted, under the penalty of perjury, that she INTENTIONALLY restricted my access to those records, "for fear of online deed fraud".  Figure.

So, her fear of "deed fraud" - unsubstantiated as to me - she never provided any proof substantiating it, trumps the Legislative intent behind making tax certiorari proceedings easy, efficient and cheap - for everybody, INCLUDING me.

What happened next is hilarious.

After over a year of attorney Miller chasing me and my husband with applications for sanctions and anti-filing injunctions, I finally finally filed with the court my grievance against attorney Miller about his doxxing the child to spite former DSS Commissioner Scuderi-Hunter, I wrote about it in a prior blog on April 6, 2026.

What did Miller do?

Miller is very predictable.

He had a knee-jerk reaction and immediately put his foot further into his own mouth.

Here is what he did: he asked the court in one of our cases to punish my husband and I for my grievance against him to attorney grievance committee about child-doxxing, where he admitted under the penalty of perjury that he had to remove unredacted records of the child from NYSCEF and replace them with redacted records.

When my husband brought a motion for sanctions against Miller for attempting to punish my husband for my substantiated grievance, Miller (1) defaulted by not opposing the motion - at all;  (2) then ran his mouth at the oral argument that Fred still needs to be sanctioned - because, according to Miller, if we sue together, we are fair game to be sanctioned together, both, for acitons of one another - even if those actions were out of court, unrelated to the particular litigation and a protected activity, like my attorney grievance was.

Of course, Miller claimed that that attorney grievance was "unsubstantiated" - without providing any evidence of that.

So - I filed another grievance, for Miller's repeated retaliation for that grievance, attaching all the necessary documents.

Here is the grievance of today:

And another one.

Supported by the text of a sworn affirmation to withdraw from a federal lawsuit because CPS represented by Miller were blackmailing my clients, the lawsuit itself, and the docket report showing Miller as representing Delaware County defendants in the case.

That is about "ad hominem attacks" that the supposedly noble Sir Miller is constantly complaining about.

And even now - his entire hysterical (or drunk? or both) campaign for sanctions since February of 2026 (and the longer one, since May of 2025) did not even need to happen. 

All I needed was access to records to which I had an entitlement of access.

I asked politely for that access before filing the lawsuit, too, so Delaware County taxpayers would not have to foot the bill for my lawsuit.  

But Miller - as a very helpful ... smart person - put his foot into his mouth even further.  He was so irate about me publishing the grievance against him into open access into the court docket that he forgot himself - once again - and volunteered this, under the penalty of perjury, mind:

Which immediately begged multiple questions:

(1) why didn't Miller disclose his WITNESS status in Neroni v Gransbury? - where I clearly alleged that the County may have monitored my actions in the online deed registry and the pay per view paywall was introduced BECAUSE OF ME;

(2) what records he reviewed showing that the County was surveilling my IP address activity - FOR YEARS?

(3) Where are those logs?

So - I filed a Freedom of Information/1st Amendment request with the newest self-appointed Delaware County Records access officer - who is also, by coincidence, the County Attorney, who is also, by coincidence, one of the defendants on whose behalf Miller asked the court for sanctions against my husband for my grievance against Miller to AGC.

Here:

So - let's go back to our fairy tale and go on with our peeling of the onion layers.

We stopped at the layer called:

We noticed that you are looking at the records.

Wait, what?

Apparently someone had become interested in my internet activity.

Nothing says "public access policy" quite like keeping an eye on the people trying to access the public records.

Then came another layer:

Because we noticed your activity, we have decided to impose restrictions.

Now we were entering performance-art territory.

I was denied access to records because I wanted access to records.

Kafka himself would have demanded royalties.

But the true masterpiece was hidden in the center of the onion.

While arguing that I should not have access to the records...

While charging enormous fees for the records...

While monitoring my efforts to obtain the records...

While defending restrictions on the records...

The very same people marched into court and demanded sanctions against me.

And what evidence did they rely upon?

The records.

The same records.

The records I supposedly should not have.

The records I was allegedly abusing.

The records they were trying to prevent me from seeing.

The records they insisted were unnecessary.

Those records.

At this point I began to suspect I was not participating in a legal proceeding but rather starring in an escape room designed by bureaucrats.

Imagine a bank announcing:

"You are not authorized to view your account balance."

Then suing you for incorrectly calculating your account balance.

Then introducing your account balance as evidence.

That is roughly where we were.

The deeper I looked, the stranger it became.

The system appeared to operate according to a revolutionary new principle of public administration:

If a citizen does not know what the government is doing, the citizen is uninformed.

If a citizen finds out what the government is doing, the citizen is suspicious.

If a citizen complains about what the government is doing, the citizen is troublesome.

If a citizen files a lawsuit, the citizen is sanctionable.

A perfect closed-loop ecosystem.

Like a self-cleaning oven, except with constitutional implications.

Eventually I stared at the onion diagram spread across my desk.

Arrows pointed everywhere.

Records pointed to sanctions.

Sanctions pointed to records.

Restrictions pointed to monitoring.

Monitoring pointed to restrictions.

The same people appeared repeatedly, like recurring villains in a low-budget legal thriller.

And there, in the center, sat the onion itself.

The Core Contradiction.

They say I do not deserve access to the records.

Yet they use those same records to punish me for asking.

I have to admit, as contradictions go, it is elegant.  Even too elegant.

The sort of contradiction that should be preserved behind glass in a museum.

Schoolchildren could visit.

"Mommy, what is that?"

"That, dear, is a Class-A Bureaucratic Onion."

"What does it do?"

"No one knows. Every time somebody tries to understand it, another layer appears."

And that is how I learned that the problem was never really the records.

The problem was peeling the onion.

Because once you start peeling, everyone becomes very nervous about what might be underneath.

And judging from the frantic effort to stop the peeling, I suspect they are nervous for a reason.

Sir Frank W. Miller, Esq. and the Amazing Human Shrinking Machine

Once upon a time, in a land where paperwork grew wild and free, there lived the celebrated inventor Sir Frank W. Miller, Esq.

Sir Miller was famous throughout the kingdom for a remarkable device.

He called it the Amazing Human Shrinking Machine.

Unlike ordinary shrinking machines, which reduced only physical size, Sir Miller's invention reduced something far more useful:

People.

Not their bodies.

Their identities.

The machine occupied an entire castle wing and consisted of gears, belts, funnels, levers, pipes, wheels, pulleys, sorting trays, shredders, compressors, and several mysterious components labeled "Trust Me."

Visitors came from distant provinces to marvel at its operation.

"How does it work?" they would ask.

"Very simply," Sir Miller replied.

"You place a whole human being into this opening, and out comes a much more manageable version."

One day the machine received a particularly difficult assignment.

A woman named Tatiana.

The attendants consulted the intake checklist.

Mother?

Yes.

Wife?

Yes.

Caregiver?

Yes.

Daughter caring for an elderly parent?

Yes.

Musician?

Yes.

Animal rescuer?

Yes.

Gardener?

Yes.

Researcher?

Yes.

Journalist?

A big Yes.

Statistician?

Yes.

Linguist?

Yes.

Litigator?

Yes.

Disabled person?

Yes.

Survivor?

Yes.

The attendants stared at the list.

"This one is going to be difficult."

"Nonsense," said Sir Miller. "The machine can handle anything."

The process began.

Tatiana entered one side.

Immediately alarms sounded.

CLANG.

BANG.

HONK.

A red light flashed.

WARNING: EXCESSIVE CONTEXT.

The engineers removed the context.

The machine resumed.

Twenty seconds later another alarm sounded.

WARNING: DOCUMENT OVERLOAD.

The documents were removed.

The machine resumed.

A third alarm appeared.

WARNING: EVIDENCE DETECTED.

The evidence was quickly extracted.

A fourth warning followed.

WARNING: HUMAN COMPLEXITY EXCEEDS RECOMMENDED LIMITS.

Sir Miller rolled his eyes.

"Take out the complexity."

The engineers did.

The machine finally settled down.

Its gears hummed contentedly.

Its belts spun.

Its pistons pumped.

Its Narrative Compression Chamber glowed bright red.

At last a small card emerged from the output slot.

Sir Miller picked it up triumphantly.

"TROUBLEMAKER."

The crowd applauded.

"Amazing!"

"Brilliant!"

"Efficient!"

A child raised her hand.

"Excuse me."

Sir Miller sighed.

Children were notorious for asking inconvenient questions.

"Yes?"

"What happened to all the other things?"

"What other things?"

"The mother."

"Filtered."

"The daughter."

"Filtered."

"The journalist."

"Filtered."

"The education."

"Filtered."

"The disabilities."

"Filtered."

"The caregiving."

"Filtered."

"The research."

"Filtered."

"The facts."

"Definitely filtered."

The child frowned.

"So the machine doesn't really describe the person?"

Sir Miller adjusted his spectacles.

"Of course it does."

"How?"

"It gives us a label."

"But what if the label is wrong?"

Sir Miller looked horrified.

"My dear child, nobody checks labels."

The crowd nodded wisely.

This seemed entirely reasonable.

Soon the machine became a national success.

Complex people entered.

Simple labels emerged.

A teacher became "Agitator."

A doctor became "Problematic."

A farmer became "Difficult."

A librarian became "Concerning."

An accountant became "Extremely Concerning."

The kingdom had never been more efficient.

People no longer wasted time learning about one another.

A single label did all the work.

Then disaster struck.

One morning Tatiana returned.

She brought carts.

Not one cart.

Not two carts.

Seven carts.

The carts contained timelines, records, transcripts, reports, public documents, spreadsheets, photographs, notes, and approximately twelve metric tons of context.

"What are you doing?" asked Sir Miller nervously.

"Feeding the machine."

The first cart went in.

The machine rattled.

The second cart went in.

The machine groaned.

The third cart went in.

Smoke appeared.

The fourth cart went in.

Several gears resigned.

The fifth cart went in.

A piston attempted retirement.

The sixth cart went in.

A warning siren screamed:

CRITICAL FAILURE.
NUANCE LEVELS EXCEED DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS.

The seventh cart entered.

The machine exploded.

Not dramatically.

More in an administrative sense.

Springs flew.

Bolts scattered.

Three gears filed complaints.

The Narrative Compression Chamber simply gave up and wandered away.

When the smoke cleared, the output slot produced a final message.

ERROR.

UNABLE TO REDUCE HUMAN BEING TO CONVENIENT LABEL.

PLEASE REVIEW FULL RECORD.

The kingdom fell silent.

Nobody had ever seen such a thing.

Sir Miller stared at the message.

The crowd stared at the message.

The child smiled.

And from that day forward, whenever someone offered a suspiciously simple explanation for a complicated person, the people of the kingdom would whisper:

"Careful."

"That's exactly how the Amazing Human Shrinking Machine got broken."

The Kingdom of Hamden and the Mystery of the Vanishing Supervisors - Oh, What A Wayne!

Oh what a reign/Wayne!

Late spring back in twenty-twenty-six...

Went so strange,

From Wayne to Wayne - and quick!

      What a race and what a Wayne! 

Once upon a time, in the remote and mist-covered Kingdom of Hamden, there stood many remarkable things.

There were castles.

There were committees.

There were advisory committees advising the committees.

There were nonprofits supervised by supervisors who also sat on the boards of the nonprofits they supervised.

There were addresses.

Very special addresses.

In fact, there was one address so magical that it appeared to belong to several different places at once.

The Royal Records showed that 33195 State Highway 10 somehow belonged to multiple parcels, multiple descriptions, multiple realities, and, depending on which royal scroll one consulted, perhaps even multiple municipalities.

Ordinary peasants found this confusing.

The Royal Bureau of Address Harmonization found it perfectly normal.

"Nothing to see here," declared the Royal Clerks.

"Addresses are fluid concepts."

The peasants nodded respectfully because arguing with government databases was known to shorten life expectancy.

Meanwhile, the kingdom was governed by a distinguished class known as the Perpetual Supervisors.

Unlike ordinary mortals, Perpetual Supervisors did not merely hold office.

They fused with it.

One such nobleman was Lord Wayne of Marshfield.

For nearly thirty years he served as Supervisor of Hamden, guardian of committees, keeper of summaries, the hero of senior meals program, representative of WAC castles on magic addresses, signer of letters that start bigtime expensive lawsuits (for taxpayers, not for Lord Marshfield), attendee of meetings, and witness to countless discussions whose details somehow evaporated from memory the moment a deposition would begin.

The kingdom admired such dedication.

For decades, Lord Wayne appeared immovable.

Mountains eroded.

Governors changed.

Presidents came and went.

But Lord Wayne remained.

Then came the Butterfly.

Not an ordinary butterfly.

A Statistical Butterfly.

A radioactive one.

It emerged from forbidden charts and spreadsheets - filed (the horror!) in court, too - despite paywalls carefully constructed by the Royal servant Lady (that's a title, not an attribute) Gransbury who, 

according to Lady Gransbury's very own court-extinguisher, surveils the butterfly's (and everybody else's) IP activity in the online registries of the DelCo Empire, the Empire that devours - oops - contains the Kingdom of Hamden.

 

And, butterflies are very understanding creatures - even as to those who try to extinguish them - and they fully realize that court-extinguishers are individuals with a full array of a variety of interesting senses, and with their own entitlement to knee-jerk reactions to things like these and like these.

But, back to our fairy tale butterfly charts and spreadsheets, here we go.

This absolutely evil butterfly and her charts and spreadsheets carried dangerous powers.

THEY COMPARED NUMBERS!!!!

And the numbers begged - really, really badly - questions, really, really big ones.

And the worst of it - the absolutely improper and indecent butterfly left THA PAPER TRAIL, visible to PEASANT TAXPAYERS!  CALLING UPON THEIR REBELLION OF THINKING AND ASKING QUESTIONS!!! 

Lord Marshfield and Kingdom of Hamden royalty was ... how to put it politely - outed.

Panic ensued.

Soon strange things began appearing throughout the kingdom.

Citizens started whispering:

"Why do some assessments seem to float far below sale prices?"

"Why do others float above?"

"Why does the graph look like a butterfly?"

"Why is everyone suddenly angry at spreadsheets?"

These were dangerous questions.

Immediately the Royal Public Relations Wizards issued emergency bulletins.

The butterfly was irresponsible.

The butterfly was divisive.

The butterfly lacked proper civic attitude.

The butterfly had probably violated several committee rules.

Unfortunately, the butterfly continued flying.

Then another complication arrived.

The State Audit Turtle.

The Audit Turtle was a legendary creature.

It moved very slowly.

Sometimes so slowly that nobody could tell whether it was moving at all.

But when it finally appeared, kingdoms became nervous.

Especially kingdoms with overlapping addresses.

Especially kingdoms with public money.

Especially kingdoms with delayed audits.

Especially kingdoms where the same names appeared repeatedly on boards, committees, nonprofits, advisory councils, oversight bodies, funding arrangements, rescue operations, and emergency press releases.

The Royal Council assured everyone that all was well.

Emergency meetings were held.

Press releases were issued.

Additional committees were formed.

A Task Force on Butterfly Awareness was established.

A Commission on Responsible Spreadsheet Usage was proposed.

A Working Group on Excessive Curiosity was discussed.

Then something extraordinary happened.

Election races happened - yes, there were still those, even though the outcomes were, for 30 years, Putin-like - ("we elect Marshfield - elections").

And this particular election race was suddenly NOT Putin-like.  Marshfield quietly disappeared from the race - without an explanation.

The Kingdom of Hamden gasped.  Where is Pu... Marshfield?

The butterflies gasped.

The spreadsheets gasped.

Even the Audit Turtle appeared mildly surprised.

Court historians immediately began debating the significance.

Official historians explained:

"Pure coincidence."

Independent historians observed:

"That is a very interesting coincidence."

Journalists sharpened their pencils.

The Royal Public Relations Wizards demanded sanctions against the pencils and engaged some court-extinguishers of evil butterflies (the court-extinguisher toils overtime, since the interlinked fairy tale he filed two more fairy tale - PUNISH PUNISH PUNISH HER SHE STILL MOVES AND BREATHES YOUR HONOR!!! - thingies).

to join the previous company:

(as to the last one, the court-extinguisher was briefly dazed and ascribed the butterfly's husband's motion to conduct discovery into the court-extinguisher's magical representation of Lord Marshfield while at the same time investigating and prosecuting Lord Marshfield to the butterfly herself - because, guess what, these butterflies and their husbands are indistinguishable, don't you think? Especially to super-experienced court-extinguishers?).

While all of that butterfly-extinguishing drama was unfolding, The Audit Turtle continued approaching, The Butterfly continued flying, and the Kingdom of Hamden was nowhere farther away from the oh so possible federal raid investigating - without any bars from any court-extinguishing teams - the little discrepancies (for millions, potentially billions of dollars) in the Kingdom of Hamden's tax assessments, and into who got what under the table for these so-little breaks.

And somewhere in the distance, hidden behind hills, forests, committees, overlapping addresses, delayed audits, advisory boards, magical tax parcels, mysterious nonprofits, and approximately twelve thousand pages of public records, the Kingdom of Hamden entered a new era.

An era in which the villagers had begun asking questions.

Which, as every ruler knows, is where the real trouble starts.

But the main thing is - against the onslaught of the evil butterfly, the Pu-elections have taken a turn - from one Wayne to another.  Now the Kingdom of Hamden will have Wayne-the-Financial-Wizard-Butterfly-Fighter-And-Another-Deposition-Hero - maybe, another-double-deposition-hero.  With Kingdom's excited peasants looking at another 30 years of Pu-Wayne#2-elections. 

Oh, What A Change!