Author Archive for M. Toole
Dodgers Moving Back to Brooklyn
(Sunset Park — Flatbush Base Stealer Press)
After 67 years in Los Angeles, the Dodgers have decided to return to Brooklyn. The popular franchise will begin its 2026 season in New York according to a team spokesman.
The move was described as fiscal in nature although growing seismic activity, gang violence and increasing smog may have entered into the final decision.
“There are innumerable issues to resolve,” according to a team owner. “But in the final summation we prefer the Big Apple to El Lay.”
The Dodgers will not be able to return to the old haunts of Ebbets Field or even the Polo Grounds since the historic parks were long ago “plowed under”. Negotiations are reportedly going on with existing facilities and the local government.
“It got so that we couldn’t see the pitches, even on a good day,” said player personnel director Melvin “Sac-Fly” Toolovich. “Even when the wind blows the pollution stays put out here at Chavez Ravine.”
One option appears to be a rooftop stadium above Barclays Center, the home of the Brooklyn Nets NBA team. That, according to local environmentalists would have less impact on a neighborhood still reeling from urban stadium expansions in high real estate locales. It might also be in keeping with progressive gardening techniques developed in Paris and Berlin. Yields from each of these communities have been impressive and baseball might lower its carbon footprint here, say the experts.
The Dodgers (originally the Trolley Dodgers) will remain in the National League if the relocation is approved at the highest levels. The move is expected to fill the void left by the New York Mets’ abrupt move to Havana, Cuba where people still speak proper English and understand the dimensions of the slow curve.
– Rocky Flats
Dinosaurs to blame for Slope roads
(Denver) The often deplorable condition of Western Colorado’s roads is due to centuries of abuse by dinosaurs according to Governor Jared Polis. Likening the destruction to some 50,000 tractor trailers dropped directly on the asphalt from the sky, the governor praised road crews and defended disbursement of public funds during his reign.
“These mindless lizards never paid one penny of highway tax either,” chimed Polis from the veranda of the gubernatorial mansion here. His appearance would be cut short as weather experts warned of a particularly dangerous brown cloud air index levels, serious enough not to be diluted by an abundance of temporary hot air.
The governor went on by blasting critics and free-lance skeptics who were quick to point out that no dinosaurs have roamed these parts for centuries. He equated the lack of attentiveness to history’s manifold destiny and the chronic fiscal irresponsibility of more recent times.
“This is no partisan issue. These animals did the deed many years ago and we are paying for it today,” said the governor. “even before they built Interstate 25.”
“One cannot discount the damage wrought on our transport arteries by these ignorant beasts of enormous mass,” he said. “Other states like Texas and Arizona have far nicer roads and the common denominator there is that no dinosaur bones have been exhumed.”
Polis called on all students of motorized travel to do their homework on this issue. He promised to appoint a committee of archeological teams to further study the problem. Dinosaur fences have been proposed as well as a highly controversial fossil fuel pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.
“We have already started building dinosaur crossings (with tunnels) and creating a sense of tight security around the more prevalent digs,” said one fossil scientist. “Some of our flaggers have even reported seeing dragons in the Bland Valley and the occasional rogue unicorn on the Uncompahgre Plateau. We must be careful not to upset the natural balance or there goes our chance at cheap gas for another generation.
It is commonly held that one day dead dinosaurs turned into oil much like Rumpelstiltskin straw turned to gold or Pinocchio puppets turned into real boys.
Polis assured voters that the problem would be handled and that residents and visitors alike would once again experience the quality of highways, trails and toll roads built before the Civil War.
“This is outrageous!” said one Republican county commissioner. “Next he’ll be telling us there won’t be a state of the state address because the dinosaurs ate his homework. Imagine people tied up in traffic trying to get to the gold fields or to the Rapture or to attack sleeping Indian villages. Not on these roads!”
There has been no response to the issue by the powerful dinosaur lobby since it is believed the group has suffered extinction, which according to some is the exact, and final opposite of evolution.
– Kashmir Horseshoe
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
