Author Archive for M. Toole
Spring Remedial Geography QUIZ
Try this one! Which state does the Utah Jazz call home?
That’s an easy one. But with ongoing federal attempts to improve education for all, we must arrive at some common denominator. That’s the point of the following: Along the lines of current dulce dome thinking, if everyone succeeds and scores in the 90th percentile that must mean education is functioning right along with everything else in society.
If it’s not fixed don’t break it.
So let’s get those literacy rates up. The schools are already there so let’s go ahead and run them all summer! It is with the application of these simple solutions that euphoria will overrun our basic social institutions and we will achieve the goal of more ineffective education for all. You betcha. Amen.
1. In 1883, Mark Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi. What river was he talking about?
a. The Gunnison
b. The Missouri
c. The San Miguel
d. The Mississippi
2. In what country do the Chinese reside?
a. Japan
b. Holland
c. Wyoming
d. China
3. What four state capitals where named after former American Presidents?
a. Austin, Phoenix, Columbus and Sacramento
b. Madison, Lincoln, Jackson and Jefferson City
c. Montpelier, Carson City, Baton Rouge, Winston-Salem
d. Hoover, Wilson, Roosevelt and Nixon.
4. Is Alaska farther north than Alabama? When?
5. What do Oahu, Maui, Hawaii and Kauai have in common?
6. In what country is Norwegian the official language?
a. Sweden
b. Finland
c. Norway
d. Chad
7. In what country are the Austrian Alps located?
a. Mexico
b. Austria
c. Italy
d. Germany
8. The saying “When in Rome do as the Romans do” is attributed to what city?
a. Paris
b. Rome, Italy
c. Rome, New York
d. Antwerp
9. Rapid-fire daily double!!! Name two countries that touch the Indian Ocean. What does the Continental Divide divide? What city in Georgia is named after Christopher Columbus? Ohio?
10. What country did Rickey Ricardo come from?
a. Pakistan
b. South Africa
c. Cuba
d. Bolivia
11. Over what nation was the Battle of Britain fought?
a. The Nation of Islam
b. Canada
c. England
d. I don’t know. I wasn’t alive then. Maybe Utah.
12. What country dominates the Mexican Peninsula?
a. Costa Rica
b. Venezuela
c. Mexico
d. Tijuana
13. Which has a larger landmass, Greenland or Iceland? Russia or Monaco? Saudi Arabia or Israel? Australia or Denmark?
14. What is the literal translation of Newfoundland?
a. nice doggie
b. new found land
c. Codfish paradise
d. big, cold trailer park on the way to the Arctic Circle.
15. Just who named Hudson Bay?
a. James Brown
b. Little Richard
c. Henry Hudson
d. L.L. Bean
16. The Scottish terrier was bred in what country?
a. Yes
b. Iran (Persia)
c. Scotland
d. Luxembourg
17. What country is known for Swiss cheese and discreet banking practices?
a. Czechoslovakia
b. North Korea
c. Switzerland
d. Haiti
18. Spell Egypt.
19. What’s the difference between North Dakota and South Dakota?
20. If you had Prince Edward in a can where would you keep him?
a. Britain
b. Nova Scotia
c. Prince Edward Island
d. North Carolina.
Send your answers and $15 to Box 1209, Ouray, CO 81427.
If you are chosen you will receive nothing. Thanks for taking the test.
IRS Seizes Horseshoe, Gives It Back
(Mañana) The Internal Revenue Service seized the San Juan Horseshoe newspaper and its assets accusing the publication of tax evasion. In an early morning raid the illegal government taxing agency forced the paper to cease production and dismissed its employees including a blind proof-reader and two bookies employed in the sports department.
“We attempted to place our trademark heavy chain and padlock on the front door,” explained one agent, “but the weight of our pronouncement caved in a fragile bamboo wall rendering the door dysfunctional, trapping night editor and his entourage inside the building until the day shift arrived at noon.”
By then the IRS had returned the paper in tact saying the whole episode was a unfortunate misunderstanding. Insiders say the tax people were looking for illegal farriers and were misled by newspaper’s neon shingle, installed in 1978 to irritate neighbors.
In what insiders say is an unprecedented move the IRS apologized for the intrusion after determining that the paper’s visible assets were confined to an aging RG Dunn cigar box which, in better days, had served as a petty cash capsule and now held only dust
After a lengthy breakfast with several agents masquerading as Mormon missionaries, publisher General Kashmir Horseshoe gingerly raised his frosty mimosa in solidarity with the Magna Carta, The United States Constitution and the Paris Commune of 1871.
“The IRS is returning the newspaper to its rightful owners because enlightened elements there realize that the operators are but impoverished peasants struggling to fashion a narcissistic Walden from designer sagebrush and the ashes of new age procrastination while forcibly implementing Third World morality on the half shell.”
No one in attendance appears to have understood the statement either. Eye witnesses agree that the IRS blinked when the retired military officer handed over personal income tax receipts dating back to the Spanish-American War.
– Fred Zeppelin
Highway Painting Sells For 3.1 Million
(Gunnison) A freshly painted stretch of highway between Sapinero and Cimarron has sold for an estimated three million dollars according to an asphalt broker here. The painting, completed on Thursday by elements of the Colorado Department of Highways, will be extracted before the weekend and replaced with a bare stretch of road until the highway artists can get around to repaving and repainting it.
The valuable piece, featuring a severe stark yellow on a black background is about 1/4 mile long by two car lengths wide. It features a constant dots and dash pattern with intermittent solid line superimposed at graduated and parallel points of the universe. Critics had predicted a positive response, reflections of the natural beauty of the countryside. It was always a popular hangout for magpies and other of mother nature’s janitors due to the proximity to a good bar and dancing magpies in the road every other Sunday when they got drunk
CONTINUED PAGE 45
COLOROW’S GHOST
Part I Act 2
(READER SYNOPSIS: In our last episode we met Salli Radar, a former nuclear physicist who walked off her job at a Nevada Test Site, dropped out of high society and moved back to Western Colorado to find herself. Spending an idyllic summer cultivating hybrid snapdragons and tending the family’s burgeoning marmot flock on her grandfather’s Dallas Divide ranchette, Salli knew bigger and better things were in store for her just down the next dirt road. The first act crash landed as Salli bursts forth with a Western rendition of “The Sound of Music”, waking the majority of marmots from a lengthy siesta and setting local heifers on a collision course with E minor. We pick up the action as Salli prepares to bed down for the night.)
Although a comfortable house beckoned, a rough and ready herdsman often took to sleeping on the ground. It was no less than a show of solidarity with the livestock. Salli was no different. As she tried to fall asleep gazing at Jupiter and the headlights from the tourists down on Highway 62 she thought long and hard about her recent work in the nuclear industry and back in Los Alamos, New Mexico where she had designed and assembled weapons capable of destroying Las Vegas or Grand Junction.
The wind kicked up sending an eerie message that winter would be making a house call in about October.
“This is already July,” whispered Salli to herself amid cricket chirps and coyote calls, “I’d better get my nuts in.”
As Salli lay in her goose down sleeping bag, purchased from from a designer outdoor boutique while she still had a fat check coming in, she thought of her fly boy, Mango, who had only last month run off with a bowl of wax fruit leaving her with little roughage and a broken heart.
“That bastard,” she thought, remembering feverish nights in the moonlight on Paiute Mesa and sizzling days with her security clearance and the man she loved in the radiant yet hazy Nevada sunshine. “I miss him so.”
As Salli drifted off to sleep to the rhythm of the vigilant whistle pigs and the swayback skunk cabbage she felt the strange sensation that her camp was being observed from above. Each time she popped her eyes open she saw nothing, but a heavy odor filled the air. It was then that she heard the chanting and the sound of distant tom-toms. The drums got louder as the moon came up for another rousing Charleston with a lingering wallflower star.
“What can this be?” she thought, now frightened by all the recalcitrant racket and the rancorous, pervasive musty smell in the air. “I must be losing my marbles. I shouldn’t be surprised. It happens to a lot of us retired atom splitters.”
Rolling over in an attempt to find a soft spot on the planet, Salli fell back to sleep. The random snoring that had driven poor Mango away now attracted something more wild than Paiute Mesa, something more intoxicating than league night at the Pahrump Bowl. What was out there hovering over the marmot herd anyway?
It was then that Salli awoke, sitting straight up in her sleeping bag. A dark, misty figure meandered its way toward her expired campfire. His glorious war bonnet and taut hunting bow seemed in conflict with his preposterous tie-dyed headband and a badly faded synthetic “Indian” blanket, the kind sold in every border town showroom from Tijuana to Ushuaia. He spoke in quiet, drifting tones as if not to needlessly alarm the snoozing snapdragons.
“I am the great chief Colorow, leader of the proud Utes!” said the spooky warrior. “I have returned to the land of my ancestors!”
“Whoa!” gulped Salli. “How did this guy get in here!”
“I am the great Chief Colorow!” the specter now bellowed. “I come for horses with which to hunt the buffalo!”
Salli sat anxiously as the warrior searched the horizon for the spoils of his intended coup. She had digested all the data on UFOs while working for the government but even the classified variety had never alluded to anything like this Colorow character. This was a completely new ball game.
Had this Pale Horse chief returned to his previous haunt to communicate an eternal message to humanity? Would she share the agonizing particulars of the demise of his people? Why did he choose Salli when there were millions of other more suitable humans crammed onto the planet? Would the Dodgers win the pennant?
George Radar, Salli’s grandfather had mentioned a sacred Indian burial ground somewhere to the west of the family dump on Cottonwood Creek. Had someone left the gate open or had this chubby apparition wrapped in a blanket returned from the ages set on some callous revenge? Had he really chosen her as his medium to communicate sacred and primitive thought to the Twentieth Century? This was almost Biblical!
“I’ve always had a warm place in my heart for the Utes even though my ancestors stole their land, drove them out of the country and used them for target practice,” mewled Salli. “I just love Hopi pottery and trips to Mesa Verde.”
Salli quickly determined that if this Colorow had intended her harm he would have already drawn his tomahawk and taken her hair. She further surmised that he was here on a holy mission and would communicate his feelings to her when the time was right. In the interim, she would just sit tight and wait for his astounding revelation. What an impact this would have on the humanity! Would humankind rethink his calamitous rendezvous with ultimate destruction? What new philosophies would emerge? Could this elusive chief snatch 21st Century Homo Sapiens from the jaws of ecological extinction?
Of course, her newfound celebrity status would not emerge without some sacrifices. There would be the loss of privacy, as government heads all over the world would place incredible demands on her time. There would be the endless interviews by reporters and of course the abrasive talk show circuit. She would need a new wardrobe. Would Mango see her on TV? Salli whirled out of her trance as Colorow cleared his throat as if to speak.
“Here it is,” ducked Salli expecting the infinite truth from the happy hunting ground to fill the nearby canyons. “I am all ears, oh great warrior!”
“What’s for dinner, toots?” asked Colorow.
TO BE CONTINUED
Snoring keeps man awake fifteen years
by Ripple Van Winkle. Night Desk
(Moline) When a man’s snoring keeps a herd of elk from a night’s sleep them’s some serious logs sawing.
Melvin Toole has not had a restful night’s sleep since 1998. That’s when he embraced the art of snoring. As he developed the oral/nasal exercise to precision rhythm and maximum audio application, he even kept himself up.
Snoring, in scientific terms, is defined as “snorting noises caused by vibrations of the soft palate. It is preceded in Webster’s by the word snooze and followed up by the word snorkel, for possible alliterative purposes. Or possibly some wordsmith conspiracy intent on leaving most of us in the dictionary dust.
Back to Toole: “I noticed than when I drank more than a quart of whiskey the snoring got louder and louder and the cadence grew less predictable,” said an exhausted Toole from his cave-like dwelling on the clay banks of the Mississippi River. “But rather than stop drinking I examined surgical options.”
Toole told The Horseshoe that he then traveled the globe in search of s surgeon that could help. Finally he found a clinic in Salvador, Brasil that claimed to have had a lot of success improving the lot of the chronic snorer.
“The doctors assured me that if they failed to cure my steadfast malady they could at least transform the sounds into a nice samba beat,” he winced. “I could not speak much Portuguese and even less Brasiliero and so the operation yielded very little.”
Toole’s friends and family have taken to sleeping in the other room or on the hammock outside if weather permits. Some distant relatives have all but abandoned Toole to the horrors of earplugs while others have taken to catching catnaps in Wyoming when they can. All agree that Toole has adapted well despite the fact that, like Einstein, he only sleeps three and a half hours per night.
Problems adhering to local ordinances have burdened Toole with thousands of dollars in fines. Fortunately he is worth an estimated $2.6 billion and considers paying fines to be part of his role as a sturdy philanthropist.
In 2008 he was blamed for keeping up an entire elk herd on Simms Mesa. At one dark point in the summer of 2010 even the dog and cat ran away from home and the crickets moved out,” said a yawning Toole over a monogrammed goblet of warm goat’s milk.
TATTOOS MAY ADD YEARS TO LIFE
(Needle Rock, CA) Adorning the body with tattoos may have some positive effects according to a new study just released by the School of Psychometrics at Cal Polygamy. According to clear findings people with tattoos live longer, on average, than people without the designs.
Of the subjects tested back in March of 1925 and again in May of 1926, then interviewed in 1990 and 2006 almost 80% of those who had tattoos are still kicking. Most seem to be sailors, often from merchant marine ships and fishing trawlers.
“There were far more of these old salt types still alive in 1990 than there are in 2006,” said Dr. Efram Pennywhistle, (of the Gladstone Pennywhistles mind you) chair of the department. “We’ll just have to write that off to inflation. The survey does have a built in inaccuracy component of 14% which is a bit high for these kinds of studies.”
The researchers do not yet know what they will do with the findings until all the data can be further scrutinized and be offset with other similar studies. At present neither the FDA or the AMA have endorsed the displaying of tattoos, or even body piercing, despite links to booster shots and the uses of leeches in treatment.
Reaction within the tattoo and body painting community was guarded with advocacy groups insisting tattoos were “never about mortality, and certainly not morality.”
Local parlors report a slight upturn in walk-in traffic but nothing dramatic.
“We always see a lot of new faces around the holidays,” said Syd Fahrdt, owner of Seaweed Tattoo in Delta. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do with all these toothless tattooed living into their Nineties and more. We’re having enough trouble paying out Sociable Security as it is,”
– Small Mouth Bess
