Author Archive for M. Toole

Gunless Tuesdays

Elements of the Colorado Senate have passed a breakthrough preliminary bill calling for Gunless Tuesdays to be implemented in 2015. The legislation calls for residents and visitors alike to recognize Tuesday as a day where guns are not acceptable in social interaction. In what has been called a beginning proponents hope that by showcasing one day sans guns the movement toward personal disarmament might get another jump-start. Hunting groups, environmentalists and personal property advocates are in support of the innovative bill which will be on the ballot in 2016.

Radical Fairy Tales

with Melvin Weatherman

Part XXVI Angela Davis

Once upon a time there were some less than happy panthers of the black persuasion. They, in an attempt to protect their charming Oakland neighborhoods from violence wrought by “genocidal, racist police fascists bastards” had been thrown in the slammer charged with everything from littering to treason.

And it came to pass that a political science professor at Cal Berkeley, named Angela, heard of their plight. Angela, who was about 359 degrees left of center herself, found out that the panthers, with names like George Jackson and Bobby Seal, were actually not criminals at all but political prisoners who were being abused while in custody. It appears that Eldridge Cleaver (no relation to Beaver) was in the can at that same time penning “Soul On Ice”, but we’re getting ahead of the story.

Although not particularly shocked by the goings on in at Soledad Prison, Angela was a bit surprised how obvious the police were in their attempts to clamp down on the panthers. It was common knowledge at many prisons that the panthers had been targeted by the cops for their subversive activities. They were being deprived of their constitutional rights. (Editor’s note: Now, some 30 years later that can be said for all Americans but then it was just a few or so we were led to believe). The lives of the panthers were in danger. Every day there were murders within the prison walls. Who would suspect the cops? She decided to act.

On March 14 she successfully smuggled 17 high-powered rifles, three hand grenades, a laptop rocket  launcher, 2 coconut cream pies, a roll of ostentatious toilet paper and a copy of Tuesday’s New York Times into the prison. The place exploded. All right, so it wasn’t as impressive a strike as Attica but it was one of the first experiments of its kind and the prison population was new at this kind of thing. Unfortunately, her drastic steps lead to much more violence and the score has never been settled up to present day.

As the dust settled the authorities failed to prove one damn thing with regards to Angela’s participation in the attempted prison break. She currently teaches radical kindergarten in El Cerrito.

(Source: Bedtime Tales for Generation X by Mario Andretti and the Free Speech Movement)

FABLES FOR OUR TIME

The Moth and the Star

A young impressionable moth once set his heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this and she counseled him to set his heart on a bridge lamp instead. “Stars aren’t the thing to hang around,” she said; “lamps are the thing to hang around.” “You don’t get anywhere chasing stars.” But the moth would not heed the words of either parent. Every evening at dusk when the star came out he would start flying toward it and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home worn out with his vain endeavor. One day his father said to him, “You haven’t burned a wing in months, boy, and it looks to me as if you were never going to. All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps and all your sisters have been terribly signed flying around house lamps. Come on, now, get out of here and get yourself scorched! A big strapping moth like you without a mark on him!”

The moth left his father’s house, but he would not fly around street lamps and he would not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying to reach the star, which was four and one-third light years, or twenty-five trillion miles, away. The moth thought it was just caught in the top branches of an elm. He never did reach the star, but he went right on trying, night after night, and when he was a very, very old moth he began to think that he really had reached the star and he went around saying so. This gave him a deep and lasting pleasure, and he lived to  great old age. His parents and his brothers and his sisters had all been burned to death when they were quite young.

  Moral: Who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is here today and here tomorrow.

The Unicorn in the Garden

Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. “There’s a unicorn in the garden,” he said. “Eating roses.” She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him. “The unicorn is a mythical beast,” she said, and turned her back on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still there;  he was now browsing among the tulips. “Here, unicorn,” said the man, and he pulled up a lily and gave it to him. The unicorn ate it gravely. With a high heart, because there was a unicorn in his garden, the man went upstairs and roused his wife again. “The unicorn ate a lily,” he said. His wife sat up in bed and looked at him coldly. “You are a booby,” she said, “and I am going to have you put in the booby hatch.” The man, who had never liked the words “booby” and “booby hatch,” and who liked them even less on a shining morning when there was a unicorn in the garden, thought for a moment. “We’ll see about that,” he said. He walked over to the door. “He has a golden horn in the middle of his forehead,” he told her. Then he went back to the garden to watch the unicorn, but the unicorn had gone away. The man sat down among the roses and went to sleep.

As soon as the husband had gone out of the house, the wife got up and dressed as fast as she could. She was very excited and there was a gloat in her eye. She telephoned the police and she telephoned a psychiatrist; she told them to hurry to her house and bring a strait jacket. When the police and the psychiatrist arrived, they sat down in chairs and looked at her with great interest. “My husband,” she said, “saw a unicorn this morning.” The police looked at the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist looked at the police and the police looked at the psychiatrist. “He told me it had a golden horn in the middle of its forehead,” she said. At a solemn signal from the psychiatrist, the police leaped from their chairs and seized the wife. They had a hard time subduing her, for she put up a terrific struggle, but they finally subdued her. Just as they got her into the strait jacket, her husband came back into the house. “Did you tell your wife you saw a unicorn?” asked the psychiatrist. “Of course not,” said the husband. “The unicorn is a mythical beast.” “That’s all I wanted to know,” said the psychiatrist. “Take her away. I’m sorry, sir, but your wife is as crazy as a jay bird.” So they took her away, cursing and screaming, and shut her up in an institution. The husband lived happily ever after.

Moral: Don’t count your boobies until they are hatched.

If Grant Had Been drinking At Appomattox

By James Thurber

The following story is the fourth in a series including “If Booth Had Missed Lincoln,” “If Lee Had Not Lost the Battle of Gettysburg,” and “If Napoleon Had Escaped to America.”

The morning of the ninth of April, 1865, dawned beautifully. General Meade was up with the first streaks of crimson in the eastern sky. General Hooker and General Burnside were up, and had breakfasted, by a quarter after eight. The day continued beautiful. It drew on toward eleven o’clock. General Ulysses S. Grant was still not up. He was asleep in his famous old navy hammock, swung high above the floor of his headquarters’ bedroom. Headquarters was distressingly disarranged: papers were strewn on the floor; confidential notes from spies scurried here and there in the breeze from an open window; the dregs of an overturned bottle of wine flowed pinkly across an important military map.

Corporal Shultz, of the Sixty-fifth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, aide to General Grant, came into the outer room, looked around him, and sighed. He entered the bedroom and shook the General’s hammock roughly. General Ulysses s. Grant opened one eye.

“Pardon, sir,” said Corporal Shultz, “but this is the day of surrender. You ought to be up, sir.”

“Don’t swing me,” said Grant, sharply for his aide was making the hammock sway gently. “I feel terrible,” he added, and he turned over and closed his eye again.

“General Lee will be here any minute now,” said the Corporal firmly, swinging the hammock again.

“Will you cut that out?” roared grant. “D’ya want to make me sick or what?” Shultz clicked his heels and saluted. “What’s he coming here for?” asked the General.

“This is the day of surrender, sir,” said Shultz. Grant grunted bitterly.

“Three hundred and fifty generals in the Northern armies,” said Grant, “and he has to come to me about this. What time is it?”

“You’re the Commander-in-Chief, that’s why, said Corporal Shultz. “It’s eleven twenty-five, sir.”

“Don’t be crazy,” said Grant. “Lincoln is the Commander-in-Chief. Nobody in the history of the world ever surrendered before lunch. Doesn’t he know that an army surrenders on its stomach?” He pulled a blanket up over his head and settled himself again.

“The generals of the Confederacy will be here any minute now,” said the Corporal. “You really ought to be up, sir.”

Grant stretched his arms above his head and yawned.

“All right, all right,” he said. He rose to a sitting position and stared about the room. “This place looks awful,” he growled.

“You must have had quite a time of it last night, sir,” ventured Schultz.

“Yeh,” said General Grant, looking around for his clothes. “I was wrassling some general. Some general with a beard.”

Shultz helped the commander of the Northern armies in the field to find his clothes.

“Where’s my other sock?” demanded Grant. Shultz began to look around for it. The general walked uncertainly to a table and poured a drink from a bottle.

“I don’t think it wise to drink, sir,” said Shultz.

“Nev’ mind about me,” said Grant, helping himself to a second, “I can take it or let it alone. Didn’t ya ever hear the story about the fella went to Lincoln to complain about me drinking too much?

“So-And-So is a fool,” said Lincoln. “So this fella went to What’s-His-Name and told him what Lincoln said and he came roarin’ to Lincoln about it. ‘Did you tell So-and-So I was a fool?” he said. ‘No, said Lincoln, “I thought he knew it.’ ” The General smiled, reminiscently, and had another drink. “That’s how I stand with Lincoln,” he said, proudly.

The soft thudding sound of horses’ hooves came through the open window. Shultz hurriedly walked over and looked out.

“Hoof steps,” said Grant, with a curious chortle.

“It is General Lee and his staff,” said Shultz.

“Show him in,” said the General, taking another drink. “And see what the boys in the back room will have.”

Shultz walked smartly over to the door, opened it, saluted, and stood aside. General Lee, dignified against the blue of the April sky, magnificent in his dress uniform, stood for a moment framed in the doorway. He walked in, followed by his staff. They bowed, and stood silent. General Grant stared at them. He only had one boot on and his jacket was unbuttoned.

“I know who you are,” said Grant. “You’re Robert Browning, the poet.”

“This is General Robert E. Lee,” said one of his staff, coldly.

“Oh,” said Grant. “I thought he was Robert Browning. He certainly looks like Robert Browning. There was a poet for you, Lee: Browning. Did ya ever read ‘How They brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix’? ‘Up Derek, to saddle, up Derek, away; up Dunder, up Blitzen, up Prancer, up Dancer, up Bouncer, up Vixen, up—’ ”

“Shall we proceed at once to the matter in hand?” asked General Lee, his eyes disdainfully taking in the disordered room.

“Some of the boys was wrassling here last night,” explained Grant. “I threw Sherman, or some general a whole lot like Sherman. It was pretty dark.” He handed a bottle of Scotch to the commanding officer of the Southern armies, who stood holding it, in amazement and discomfiture. “Get a glass, somebody,” said Grant, looking straight at General Longstreet. “Didn’t I meet you at Cold Harbor?” he asked. General Longstreet did not answer.

“I should like to have this over with as soon as possible,” said Lee. Grant looked vaguely at Shultz, who walked up close to him, frowning.

“The surrender, sir, the surrender,” said Corporal Schultz in a whisper.

“Oh sure, sure,” said Grant. He took another drink. “All right,” he said. “Here we go.” Slowly, sadly, he unbuckled his sword. Then he handed it to the astonished Lee. “There you are, General,” said Grant. “We dam’ near licked you. If I’d been feeling better we would of licked you.”

Mr Ha Ha’s in Luang Prabang, Laos

Mr Ha Ha’s in Luang Prabang, Laos offers noodle soup and shots of Lao Lao (rice whiskey).

Password and user name needed at Pearly Gates?

(Gunnison) Persons wishing to enter the kingdom of heaven this spring may be required to provide a password and user name at the gates. The adoption of these data safeguards looks to be an attempt to control hackers and identity thieves, even at this celestial capacity.

The passwords and user names should be chosen/determined by the individual candidates and must be registered properly so as to coordinate entry when that entry comes up. Passwords will not be sent to hopeful recipients according to stipulations on www.paradise.com, the heavenly web page.

“This is going to be a problem for people who have yet to master computers,” said a high-level source who talked like an archangel or maybe even looked like Saint Peter himself.

Passwords must be 10 letters long with no numbers included while user names should be no longer than 15 letters and should include at least one number and one capital letter. Zip codes, telephone numbers and Social Security identifications or winning lottery combinations will not be accepted.

For most people the inclusion of passwords and user names is merely inconvenient while for others the news has come down like the initial impact of a cold January toilet seat.

COLONA MAY GO OFF DOLLAR STANDARD

The town of Colona has announced that it will likely pursue “other means” for conducting business and paying debts. Abandoning the dollar as legal tender may be in the works due to a sluggish economy and consumer confidence statistics pointing to further fiscal pitfalls.

Right now residents here are trying to determine a course of action that might substitute Cloonies for dollars or simply go to a structured barter system utilizing local assets such as venison, trout, marijuana and firewood. Cloonies are paper currency still backed by gold and silver harvested from mining sites in the higher mountains. Locals say they have stockpiled enough of the precious metals to finance a railroad.

“At least we adhere to a standard,” said one private party here. “We don’t just go around printing paper money and then throwing it at problems like some gov’ments have been known to do.”