Author Archive for M. Toole
Baseball to Expand to Eleven Players
(New York) Major League Baseball has announced that it will expand on-field rosters in 2022 so as to make the game more interesting. The decision to go from the traditional nine players to a bulked up eleven was received with mixed reviews by baseball purists from Boston to San Diego.
“A lot of us are still getting over the designated hitter clause in the American League,” said Sparky O’Toole, a Baltimore Oriole fan who lives in Washington DC. “Now they want to augment the current rosters by going to eleven players on the field.”
O’Toole said the move would further dilute the already dwindling pool of talent that now exists.
“Just so long as they don’t increase the number of pitchers used at one time,” suggested ” O’Toole. “It’s important to keep the 150-year legacy intact but with the price of a beer and a hot dog at most ball parks who’s going to notice another outfielder or two?”
In actually, the specific expansion will affect two newly created positions on the diamond. The first will be a logical fourth fielder who will play short center field or be pulled in to the infield to cut off the run at the plate. The second will be a super-utility player who might find himself filling the hole between first and second or backing up the catcher.
“We feel that the addition of two new positions will make the game more competitive,” said Jeb Bush, newly appointed Commissioner of Baseball. “There was far too much offense last year and the serious fan wants a return to the pitcher’s duel and the one run difference.”
Bush added that football has eleven men on the field at once and baseball has nothing to fear in embracing that numerical relationship.
Republicans in Congress are skeptical as to the move. Some say it is nothing more than another poorly disguised jobs bill aimed at employing more people on at least a seasonal basis. Many say they are sick and tired of what they call and imbalance.
“It’s the people this…the people that,” said Oral Noise (R-Disneyland) from right field. We’ve had it with that tired old mantra. Don’t they realize our focus is the wealthy and the mega corporations? It’s time we all got real.”
“Presumably the size of the entire roster will increase” continued Noise. “Teams will be forced to add four players to play the two extra ones. This reeks of monopoly and we will consider anti-trust legislation to protect the integrity of professional sports.”
Television contracts and product endorsements should not be affected by any of this.
– Rocky Flats
WAS GOUT THE UNDOING OF THE BLACKFOOT NATION?
Called the dark toe in the Algonquian language, gout may have been the culprit in ravaging the Blackfoot Nation. Historians are correct to ascertain that measles and small pox were devastating to these plains tribes but most miss to contribution of uric acid to the formula.
Once linked to gluttony and drunkenness gout is now seen in a different light. The Blackfoot were not big boozers until the whites kicked them onto reservations. So why did they suffer from gout. Their Alberta cousins, the Sarcee, did not get the gout nor did many of their traditional enemies such as the Sioux. Although not contagious, the painful ailment follows protocol.
The Blackfeet, unlike centuries of European victims, exhibited no guilt as it wasn’t yet invented on the at least out here on the prairie.
“The Native Americans ate few processed foods, little sugar, but a “buttload of buffalo, and I ain’t talking western New York,” said Alberta Purinal, a leading dietician how has never had gout.
“Imagine this scenario,” she continued. A brave wakes up in pain after the Sun Dance. He goes to witch doctor who recommends ginger root extract, black cherries, couch grass and Boerhavia extract. When he asks where he can get these remedies the witch doctor simply flinches and days…maybe over in Canada.”
Confusion reigned then as it does today.
One Blackfoot elder tells us he traded three ponies for a vial of potion said to relieve the gout. It didn’t. They told me at the lodge fire to eat salmon but never tuna. Then later I was warned to eat only tuna and never salmon. I can’t remember the mantra: buffalo meat asparagus and berries or buffalo meat asparagus and berries…
-Fred Zeppelin
For a related piece see Dystopian Nightmares by Lizzie Borden, Testosterone Bros., Boston.
Celebrity Gets San Juan Red Carpet Treatment
(Silverton) A visiting celebrity was welcomed to Silverton this week with a short parade, a windy speech by dignitaries and a barbecue in the park. The unidentified guest ate and drank liberally then, after a gratis stopover at a local liquor dispensary, headed off for Durango on the train in the company of two local ladies.
“We don’t know exactly who he was,” said one Greene Street shopkeeper but he was famous all right.”
Cynics over on Blair Street say the whole thing was a fraud and that the man was not a celebrity at all but only “swindler” drifting through the San Juans.
“That is hogwash,” said a resident on Greene Street. “We know a celebrity when we see one.”
Sources at the Triangle Service, where the celebrity attempted and failed to fill his tank for free, told The Horseshoe that the town had been bamboozled.
“It’s a good thing he didn’t stay longer or they might have elected him mayor,” said one mechanic.
– Olivia de Quirke
“It is my great desire to reform my subjects, and yet I am ashamed confess that I am unable to reform myself.”
– Peter the Great
The Least Influential People in Western Culture
By Ken Currie
Special from our archives
As a handful of Covid-tired, calendar-clutching fanatics watch another month fly by second-string journalists are scrambling for angles, scrutinizing the virus and its accompanying boredom. I, for one, was quite fond of the 20th Century, having spent most of my adult life in it. I did not stand in the way when the 21st Century arrived on the doorstep. I am not whining. We didn’t get enough. We didn’t accomplish enough. As others list and write about the great events and people of the past 1000 years, I too have compiled a list…not of important people, nor of lesser-known greats. My list does not contain the forgotten or the obscure, but is rather a roster of complete and classic nobodies. Here then is my contribution to posterity…last and least influential.
Alfredo Veducino (1102-1168)
Alfredo served as a monk in Spain. He maintained strict silence for fifty-five years although he never really took an official vow to that affect. The monastery where Alfredo lived was one where fellow monks unearthed and translated what was believed to be the grocery list of the prophet Isaiah. In later years the entire ordeal was downplayed when a senior monk pointed out that chicken chow mein was not available during that primitive Biblical period. This discovery and the subsequent dismissal of the said document shook the religious world of the time. Luckily for Alfredo he had had nothing to do with the research from the onset. He was bust keeping silent adhering to his daily regiment of sleeping until 3:45 in the afternoon and spending the remainder of the day engaging in what fellow monks called escucha de conejos or listening to rabbits.
Stefanos Meridan (1460-?)
Born the son of a destitute Portuguese eel trapper, spent his early years living on the beach with his father. His mother, a stout woman, would not allow either of them in the house do reportedly to the presence of an icky eel slime aroma. At age 11 a desperate Stefanos stowed away on a large merchant ship. After three days it became apparent that the ship had been abandoned. On the fourth day he returned home, cold and hungry, only to be locked out of the house by his mother who complained of a musty shipwreck stench that mysteriously followed the lad about. Later, as an adult, he claimed to have discovered a swift ocean-going route between Portugal and Spain. He set sail, bankrolled by the Italian court, centered in the city state of Sinatra, and three years later was swept ashore along the rocky coast of Scotland. He quickly claimed the land for the queen of Portugal and renamed in Stefanoland, after himself. Almost twenty minutes later redheaded Picts in plaid skirts made him sail away by hurling jagged rocks at his head. He was never seen again. Some one hundred years later a rough map surfaced at some insignificant Renaissance yard sale in a familiar writing style common to Stefanos. The map featured England and Ireland carefully drawn to scale, but named Meridanland and Stef’s Isle.
Ping Hi Pong (1225-1324)
As a philosopher in China, Ping taught meditation to children six years old and younger. He is credited with two metaphysical sayings. One was “The man who can boil a rooster’s egg will accomplish an impossible task” and the other, “To hear a beautiful woman sing, now that’s really something.” To this day no one has proven Ping wrong on either saying. As Ping neared his one-hundredth birthday, an acolyte asked him for the secret of longevity. He smiled, settled back into his easy chair and said, “To live a hundred years one must…” and before he could finish the sentence, he dropped dead.
Ivan Ivanivan (1850-1923)
As a distant cousin of Czar Nicholas, Ivan was extended privileges not often enjoyed by young men of his time. He got two extra potatoes per month and a full equestrian scholarship to Kiev Community College. While at school he penned Czar Wars…The Empire Strikes Us. This was considered controversial by the three people who actually read it (oddly enough they made up the majority of literate people in Russia at the time). He also wrote a collection of poems that the same three people began to read but found to be too controversial to complete. Ivan was traded to a Siberian minor league franchise for a warped landscape rake and lived in that barren place for his last 60 years because, as he put it: “In Siberia nobody expects you to grow a garden.”
Dr. Lisa Blackhart (1801-1888)
As the first female doctor in Boston to refuse to touch newborn infants, Lisa was encouraged by her brahman family to hit the Oregon Trail. After two difficult months in the saddle she decided to turn around and try heading west. She settled for a time in Kansas City doing odd jobs like radical amputation and liver transplants. Soon she became shocked by the illiteracy rate among two-year-olds. Determined to start a school to cure these social ills, she found her dislike of children to be a formidable obstacle. She moved on to Denver but found young children there to be equally annoying. She finally landed in Sacramento where she began a medical practice again. However, after only two months as a frontier doctor, she initiated a stern policy of refusing to see anyone who was sick or injured. With no patients to treat and no children to teach Dr Blackhart described her golden years as “the most fulfilling of my career.”
Wolfgang Jack VonStein (1679-1735)
As a boy in Hungary, Wolfgang (a long shot to make anyone’s list) longed to play the piano. Sadly, his parents could not afford to purchase such an expensive instrument but they did provide him with two chicken bones that he carried with him at all times. All over the village Wolfgang could be heard tapping the bones together to create increasingly complex rhythms. After a chance meeting with John Sebastian Bach at a local cafe the maestro offered to tutor the prospect free of charge. Once, at Bach’s home, the great musician demanded that Wolfgang rinse the chicken grease from his fingers before touching the piano. An enraged Wolfgang stormed out of the house never to return. In the years that followed he composed several symphonies to be performed entirely on poultry bones. Today a noted virtuoso, Rupkin Mensonich, performs VonStein’s work outside a sushi bar in Prague free every other Thursday unless it rains or something. Mensonich is number seven on our list.
Marcia Kreep (1821-1891)
Born in Vancouver on the wrong side of town, Marcia perspired to be an inventor. Among her drawings are elaborate schematics for what she called her “clock dismantler” and her similarly designed “pocket watch smasher”. Her early inventions were not well received and she found herself embracing poverty. Plus she was quite poor. This never changed. Other designs by Kreep were the “mechanized digital book dropper” the “self-sinking ponga boat” and one curious concept entitled simply “the thing that doesn’t work right”.
Jeff Singlehair (1946- )
A Flint, Michigan native, the idealistic Singlehair rejected his father’s offer to join him as a partner in an environmental engineering firm. Jeff said: “You engineers are wrecking the world with all that train smoke and other ungroovy stuff, um, man!” Jeff then joined the hippie movement but became disillusioned when, at age 20, all of his hair fell out. He attended a small Everly Brothers concert at Windsock, N.C. in the summer of 1969 mistakenly thinking (to this day) that he had been a part of the largest, most famous rock and roll event of his generation. Jeff currently lives in Chevy Chase in a Chevy van and makes candles for aromatherapy workshops around Southwestern Colorado.
Read more of Ken’s keen observations in his newest coffee table book “Norwood Exposure” which is exclusively for sale in Nucla and Paradox.
Watch for our Nine Billion Most Average People of the Last Millennium
in next month’s special insert site and see if your name is mentioned!
My Night on Camp Bird Road
It was a dark and stormy night or maybe it was the perfect summer evening. I really don’t remember. All I know is that I was hungry, that being redundant since I am a healthy, five-year-old, 300 pound black bear. The heavy rains have netted lots of berries but how many berries does it take to fill the stomach of a bear as big as me? Every so often I need something more substantial, something that sticks to the ribs, as they say.
Wait, there’s a cabin at the end of this lane and no light on. I wonder if anyone’s home? I wonder if the door is locked? It doesn’t matter since I am a bear and doors mean very little, even though we bruins know full well how to open them. Maybe I should break through a window and check out the provisions. It could be trouble but no one’s around and I am big and hairy.
I approach from the wooded side of the cabin and get up on my hind legs to have a sniff around. Boy, someone should firm up this porch. It barely holds my weight. I peek into the kitchen and notice that the furniture looks rough. The couch looks like second-hand but I don’t plan to take a nap. I plan to eat! These humans could really use a decorator.
If I exert just the right amount of pressure on the glass it will give in. A light push…There with a little crash I’m inside.
Now to the important part without further delay. I wonder what kind of grub these absent humans have stashed in the cupboards. The fools always leave something around in case of a big snow. Dispensing with formalities I tear off the cupboard door. Cheerios! I love Cheerios. The only thing better than cheerios is Sugar Crisps, which have a bear on the front of the package.
Now where have they hidden the honey? These kinds of humans always have honey around in one of those plastic bear jars for some reason that escapes me. They should have plastic bee jars. The jars are always real sticky and it’s hard to get the lid off without any thumbs on my paw. Here it is in a small cereal bowl. Real easy to eat. Now I have a feast and there are some grapes in the refrigerator too. I think I’ll go back out on the porch and chow down. Ahhhhh….
Moments after eating I hear a rustling in the bushes. What? It’s one of those humans with a cooking pot and spoon in her hand. Now she’s banging the pot with the spoon. What’s she trying to do? Wake up the whole neighborhood? If she thinks I’m going to run off because she’s banging around, she’s nuts.
Now she’s staring at me. Doesn’t she know how dangerous it can be to make eye contact with a bear? And why isn’t she wearing bells? Didn’t she read the little books that the rangers give out at the cute little campsites?
I stand and give her my best growl. Usually this works. Now she’s gone into the house. Maybe there are a few more boxes of cereal inside. I crawl back through the broken window taking care not to scrape myself on the jagged glass. Look, there are cans of soup but no opener. There’re marshmallows. And what’s this? Coffee? Bears don’t usually like to eat coffee but we eat garbage. I’ll try anything once. Now I hear the human upstairs on the phone talking about me. She’s telling someone on the other end of the line that there is a bear in her kitchen.
In a mater of moments a mob of these funny creatures is at the gate. One has a gun. They all look mad. I hope he’s not stupid enough to fire that thing near the house. Someone could get shot. Apparently he does not realize how dangerous firearms can be in the hands of a human. Now he’s aiming the gun in my direction. He lifts it and fires into the air. I charge without hesitation. I’m a bear, you know.
Despite their sophisticated technology the humans scatter. The bluff worked. I knew they weren’t really a threat. I quickly scamper across the yard and into the black timber and up the hill to safety. I’ll have to go back another night to finish the rest of the groceries. It’s nice to know they are there.
That was fun.
Leftover Defense Funds to Fix Streets
(Gunnison) Recently discovered coffers, once earmarked for the defense of Gunnison from a Rebel onslaught during the American Civil War will be used to repair many of the town’s back streets, a city source confirmed today. The annual road construction is set to begin at midnight on Thursday.
This year’s effort will feature dawn to dusk asphalt drops compliments of the Flying Aces of Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. The drops will occur every half hour between Denver and Rio Grande Avenues north of the rodeo grounds all the way to Tomichi Heights. Persons who simply must be in the area during the month of July should be paying particular attention to the skies.
“A little care exercised today could be all the difference,” said one road supervisor. “We don’t want anyone getting hit with 100 yards of asphalt dropped from 300 feet in the air, or is that 300 yards of asphalt dropped from 100 feet,” he said. “We’re suggesting that the entire stretch be designated a hard hat area just in case.”
Flame retardant asphalt mixed with magnesium chloride and able-bodied crews from local insane asylums will then spread other hardly hazardous materials out. This phase of the work is scheduled to be completed by Valentine’s Day, 2004.
One official vehemently denied reports that the spruce up had anything to do with the Hell’s Angels picnic slated for late July.
The bankroll for the project, found in a tunnel near the once magnificent LaVeta Hotel, was comprised of silver certificates, gold coinage and Confederate currency is on deposit at the Who’s On First National Bank in Pitkin, so as to avoid favoritism in town. It will reportedly be sold off to collectors as the project nears completion. Visiting hours are 9 am to 3 pm unless it rains.
Then we’ll get to Blue Creek Canyon.
– Rex Montaleone
“A nation of news consumers both overfed and malnourished —”Americans gorge themselves daily on empty informational calories, indulging their sugar fixes of self-affirming half-truths and even outright lies.”
– Chris Stirewalt, fired Fox News Political Editor
