Author Archive for M. Toole

MALE DOGS LIE SAYS STUDY

(Curville, CA) Old dogs do engage in new tricks if data collected at Cal Amari University is to be believed. According to a just completed study male dogs are consummate, if not refined, liars.

     Ninety percent of the canines observed attempted to lure female dogs into promiscuity by pretending to have food. The liars exuded or secreted a specific aroma that often convinced female dogs that the male knew where to get food or had food stashed. The results of the isolated tests have gone a long way toward convincing animal behaviorists that dogs are far more intelligent that had been supposed and gives further credence to the concept of letting a sleeping dog lie.

     “It’s the same with male humans,” said Dr. Efram Pennywhistle of Cal Amari. “How do you think all those marginal restaurants stay in business?”

     Pennywhistle, recently fired from his position as Head Wienerwurst at nearby Frankfurter Community College, insisted the data collected is relevant. He says secondary findings prove that cats have been lying to their keepers since the days of the Egyptians. 

“That,” he smiled, “should come as a surprise to no one.”

– Sterling Bidet   

     

WAITING FOR COUSTEAU

A rural harbor. A pier

Evening.

Estragon, sitting on the beach, is trying to take off his flippers and catch a fish with a spear. He pulls the flippers with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before. Enter Vladimir.

Estragon: (Giving up again) Nothing to be caught.

Vladimir: (advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart)

I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I’ve tried to put it from me, saying, Vladimir, be reasonable, there are other fish to fry. And I resume the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turns to Estragon.) So there you are again with a line in the water.

Estragon: Am I?

Vladamir: I’m glad to see you back. I thought you had gone fishing on that boat forever.

Estragon: Me too.

Vladimir: Together again at last. We’ll have to celebrate with a fish fry. I have French wine. But how will we catch such? (He reflects) Get up till I embrace you.

Estragon (irritably) Not now. Not now. I think I have a bite.

Vladimir: (hurt, coldly) May I inquire where His Highness spent the night?

Estragon: On the boat.

Vladimir: (admiringly) A boat! Where?

Estragon: (without gesture) Over there.

Vladimir: And they didn’t make you clean fish?

Estragon: Clean fish? Certainly I cleaned fish.

Vladimir: The same lot as usual?

Estragon: The same? I don’t know.

Vladimir: When I think of it…all these years…but for me…where would you be…(Decisively) You’d be nothing more than carp bait, a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it.

Estragon: And what of it?

Vladimir: (gloomily) It’s too much for one fisherman. (Pause. Cheerfully) On the other hand what’s the good of losing your catch now, that’s what I say. We should have thought of a net a million years ago, in the nineties when the whales still roamed.

Estragon: Ah stop blathering and help me pull this bloody one in. We’re going to be in an underwater film.

Vladimir: Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among the first. We were respectable anglers in those days. Now it’s too late. They wouldn’t even let us throw out a line. (Estragon tears at the flippers) What are you doing?

Estragon: Taking off my oxygen tank. Did that ever happen to you?

Vladimir: Diving equipment must be taken off each day, I’m tired telling you that. Why don’t you listen to me?

Estragon: (feebly) Help me!

Vladimir: It hurts?

Estragon: (angrily) Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts! A spear hurts!

Vladimir: (angrily) No one ever suffers but you. I don’t count. I’d like to hear what you’d say if you were bitten by a barracuda!

Estragon: It hurts?

Vladimir: (angrily) Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

Estragon: (pointing) You might button it all the same.

Vladimir: (stooping) True. (He buttons his fly.) Never neglect the little things of life.

Estragon: What do you expect, you always wait until the last moment to set the hook.

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?

Estragon: Yes, let’s go

They do not move.

Continued next month

Plan to deport illegal Neanderthals halted

A clandestine scheme to deport Neanderthals has been temporarily halted since the large pre-humans are too big. The group, seen as a threat to the harmony of the United States by anti-evolution brigades, had been scheduled to be flown to equatorial Africa on Tuesday.

“We can’t fit them onto the planes or buses,” said one overwhelmed ICE official. 

It’s all part of a plan to rid the country of disloyal citizens according to sources close to Papa “Taco” Don, a shadowy mafia figure who has somehow grabbed the reigns of sanity. White House wailers and weepers (a growing population) accused the current underworld of targeting anyone not in line with the Judeo-Christian evolution doctrine that the world was created in 7 days.

A disturbing result, common to the arrogant incompetence of The Gelded Age has been the mass deportation of Denisovans to Canada without proper winter attire.

Last night three Neanderthals beat up their jailers and escaped to Wyoming, which does not have an extradition treaty with U.S. Somebody in the Trump Administration didn’t do his homework. AI- Arrogant Incompetence? Maybe Denisovans will like Canada. Racial gerrymandering isn’t it?

Hey, don’t fret. It’s just part of the induced Gelded Age where no one has the cojones to stand up for what is right — while sipping the kool-aid of ignorance and racism.

Socio-Economic Funnies #611:

It’s early autumn. Why are our local utility companies stockpiling firewood?

COLOROW’S GHOST RETURNS

Part II Act I

Reader Synopsis: As our stargazing heroine, Salli Radar, beds down for the night in solidarity with her marmot flock an unexpected visitor barges into her makeshift camp. It is the ghost of Ute Chief, Colorow. Has he come to share with Salli the secrets of immortality or does he just want a hot meal? Everyone knows how tough it is to get a solid meal while on cruise control at six feet under but the chief could have waited for an invitation before jumping on an unsuspecting pot of beans. Either way we pick up the action as Salli sits back and watches Colorow consume a large portion of her leftovers, provisions that were earmarked for her ravaged snapdragon crop.

     Colorow ate and ate. Salli had never seen anyone actually inhale beans before. The desperate consumption, however intense, did not interfere with Chief Colorow’s epistle which he sprayed out to the four corners of the world with his compliments.

     “Good beans,” said the chief.

     “Thanks,” purred Salli, the kind of woman who experienced a great deal of pleasure watching a man eat his dinner.

     Finishing his meal Chief Colorow then gazed up into the sky as if waiting for someone’s supernatural approval before continuing his incantation. He began to chant, then passed gas, then looked Salli squarely between the eyes.

     “I am Chief Colorow of the Ute Nation. I have returned to the scene of the crime to witness white culture run amuck. You have paved the earth and put up lodges built of cardboard and glass. You have broken the spirit of the land so that she is no longer your confidant. Even the animals in the mountains plot against you!”

     “Whoa,” thought Salli. “This guy’s one of those radical tree-huggers or something. Why do I always get hooked up with the crazy ones? Sometimes I wish I was back at the Pahrump Bowl with my darling Mango. He wasn’t real bright but he was mine. Besides, I never really liked fat guys and Mango was built like a starving candlestick.”

     Salli spoke to the chief in conjunction with the soft undertones and gentle breezes of the Western Colorado night.

     “Tell me great chief, what can I expect in the hereafter? Is there such a thing as infinite bliss? Are we reunited with ancestors and loved ones? How’s the food in up in heaven? Are there weigh loss clinics for chubby ghosts?”

     “Those your horses?” asked the chief, choosing not to respond to Salli’s inquiries but rather drifting off into a semi-trance followed by another round of the specter’s allegorical confabulation.

     “I have returned to the scene of the crime not for revenge as that wheel is already in motion,” said Colorow. “I have returned rather to lift the Ute Curse from these valleys and canyons. By doing this I seek to create an environment where free men can take hold of their destiny. They must run the scalawags and carpetbaggers out of this sacred land before they destroy it for all future generations.”

     Salli sat dumbfounded as the chief ranted and raved about men who would sell their soul for gold and still want more.

     “This guy is really out there, she thought to herself. He reminds me of my grandfather when he’d get into the chokeberry brandy and recall the bloody details of the range wars fought against the sheepmen.”

     Salli would sit mesmerized on her grandfather’s mangled knee since there were no other chairs in the cabin and the floor was so cold at night. The knee had met its match in 1889 during a particularly curious binge over in Leadville. It was never clear why George Radar wanted to jump from the brothel’s mahogany bar into a tiny glass of brandy in booth three but one thing was for sure: Once he set his mind to doing something he was going to do it, that is unless he passed out first.

     Salli looked at Colorow who sat cross-legged, contentedly contemplating his loincloth.

     “I must have horses to hunt the buffalo,” he uttered in a groan. “The elders are counting on me to bring home meat for the winter. My horses are all gone. What is a warrior without his mount! Young woman, you must act as my agent! The buffalo are passing through my realm and the old ones are hungry.”

     What could she do. This guy sounded desperate. Salli had always fallen for pathetic, dysfunctional male types and she could feel the emotional merry-go-round beginning to churn, only this time she was falling for a fat, horseless ghost who was probably a slob as well, and prone to unannounced fits of hysteria.

     “I know where we can get you a horse but we must be quiet.” whispered Salli sliding closer to Chief Colorow who retreated to the other side of the fire. Do you have a color preference? I think white is nice, before six but maybe something in a palomino or a paint just so long as it doesn’t clash with your war bonnet…”

     It was at that moment that Salli experienced the finest of hallucinations as she looked up and saw Colorow perched atop a massive black stallion, his lance by his side. He skipped across the sky and was gone, presumably in pursuit of the illusive buffalo. Although he hollered no adieu Salli knew he would return to continue his quest.

     “This is too much,” sighed Salli, “but I’d better catch a little sleep while he’s out. Tomorrow’s another day and my snapdragons need a little attention.”

– Sterling Bidet and Gabby Haze

Should Organic Farmers Pay for Grazing on Public Land?

(Uncompahgre Plateau) Farmers grazing onions and potatoes on public lands here have petitioned for a general variance that excuses them from seasonal grazing fees. Saying that their vegetables don’t eat anything, are quiet and immobile, the growers, most of them organic tribesmen who migrated to this area from New Mexico in the 19th Century, catch water, add nutrients to the soil and clean up after themselves.

     “It’s not like onions trample existing flora or that potatoes give off methane gas,” said Betty Sweetcorne from her sun-dried tomato camp near the Transfer Road. “And when the harvest comes we don’t haul our produce to lower elevations in cattle trucks leaving cow pies in their wake.”

     Sweetcorne adds that most of the vegetables grown on the Plateau end up at local farmer’s markets and not sold to giant food conglomerates where they are dyed, wrapped in plastic and marked up to be sold hermetically.

      Currently the Department of Inferior is considering a plan that would borrow funds from the newly enacted Horse Flesh Tax legislation to cover these grazing fees.

-Sterling Bidet

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, 350-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. And besides, a fellow has to have a social life—I’m headed to town.

     I was soon in Ouray and expecting something special.

     Wait, there’s a cabin at the end of this aspen grove 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. Sometimes it’s canned beans or oatmeal. Sometimes it’s smoked salmon and jars of frozen berries. You just never know till you tear off a cupboard door. Dispensing with formalities, pardon me as I I tear off the cupboard door. Oh. Cheerios! I love Cheerios. The only thing better than cheerios is Sugar Crisps. They always have a bear cub on the front of the package.

     Now where have they hidden the honey? These kind 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’s 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 like roaches at a bonfire. 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. Maybe I’ll stop and visit Mom. 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.