[repost of ending part, since it got cut off in the online archive due to the silly Unix/Linux misfeature of cutting off mail messages with "From" at the start of a line] == From then on, people looking in the atlas at the library couldn't help notice that something had been censored from it, and this actually increased the attention paid to MRV, including by people who hadn't even heard of the place before this. Once their curiosity had been piqued, it wasn't very hard for them to find it, since it was in other sources such as Google Maps which were outside the control of the town leaders. At any rate, many of the town's leading citizens, including the ones most fervently opposed to MRV, spent much time looking up at its hilltop with their own telescopes and binoculars in order to keep an eye on what those evil trolls were up to. However, they still didn't want anybody else finding the place; they could be trusted to look at it themselves, for good motives of helping to protect Maddenville from it, but if others find it they might be manipulated by the evil trolls, which wouldn't be good. While debate was breaking out over whether the blanking of the atlas entry was justified, a citizen wrote an essay called "BADTOWNS" and posted it to the bulletin board in the town square. It called for a ban on referring, pointing, or giving directions to any town, village, or hamlet that was engaged in personal attacks on any citizen of Maddenville. It was originally designated as merely an essay, but some people attempted to move it from the bulletin board into the law books in the town courthouse so it could be enforced as law, despite it not actually having been voted into effect by the legislature or by a referendum of the citizens. Others tried to move it to the historical archives along with other failed proposals. Somebody even grabbed it and fed it into a paper shredder, but another person painstakingly taped it back together so that it remained on the bulletin board. Despite not being made into law, some tried to enforce it nevertheless, including on people who were trying to discuss the proposal itself and feeling the need to refer to specific things about MRV and other towns that might be covered by the proposal. Some people trying to make such mentions in their speeches and bulletin board postings about the proposal were given warnings, and one who persisted after such a warning was forced to spend the night in the town jail. This tended to chill discussion afterward. Proponents of the BADTOWNS policy claimed that it was actually already law, regardless of the status of the current proposal, due to an earlier decision of the Maddenville Superior Court. This decision was regarding another town called SportsDramaVille, which was settled by comedians with a very tasteless sense of humor. Their main product was a set of trading cards with grotesque caricatures of various figures in sports including players, coaches, team and league officials, and even some prominent fans. The cards also had scurrilous gossip about the people on them, including false and defamatory information, true and privacy-invading information, and nasty personal attacks. Some prominent Maddenville citizens were included, but some people from Maddenville Review Village also were, as well as people from other places and other sports of little interest here. The court decision ultimately banned those trading cards, and anything else connected with SportsDramaVille. Some felt this was an overreaching decision going beyond the proper jurisdiction of the court, and was possibly unconstitutional, but few wanted to object very strongly because of the overwhelming view that SDV and its cards were vile things of no use to the serious pursuit of football. Some thought that the actions of a Maddenville constable soon after the decision, to go and rummage through the drawers of the local sports card shop to find and destroy all of the offending cards even in the dusty, musty backstock that was seldom even looked at, were unnecessary, however. This decision was now being used as a precedent to support larger bans on references to BADTOWNS. The next controversy came when a scandal broke out that some of the football players in Maddenville were using illegal performance enhancing substances, and were lying about it and cheating on their drug tests. This got extensively written up in the national press, and resulted in some players being suspended or expelled from their teams. Embarrassingly, the scandal had been uncovered and publicized by the people at Maddenville Review Village, as part of their ongoing attempt to cast disrepute on Maddenville. When the local newspaper, the Maddenville Goalpost, wrote about the scandal, they included a line mentioning the involvement of MRV in it. This upset a town leader so much that he went around town early in the morning gathering up all the papers before anybody else woke up and read them, burning those papers, and printing a new edition without the offending mention. The paper's reporter and editor didn't much care for this, just like the librarian earlier, but also didn't want to be seen as MRV sympathizers. [To be continued] -- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/