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Yule Jewel Astrograph

(General Horseshoe, incorruptible alchemist, star gazer and slave to the solar system takes no prisoners in the following appraisal of your very cosmic existence. Sorry if anyone is offended, upended, rebuked, ambushed or otherwise uprooted by his frank evaluations.)

 

SAGITTARIUS (November 23 – December 21)

Repel nightly fears of household appliance breakdown. What good is drastic self-improvement if nobody is watching? Growth may arrive in strange little packages with odd wrappings and a painful bow on the top. A choice is obvious although primary options may lead one to believe he is at the mercy of his own stupidity. Look before you leap but never through rose colored glasses. Be sure to drain all rum, vodka and gin bottles this month as these are summer concoctions and should not be regularly consumed in colder weather.

 

CAPRICORN (December 22 – January 19)

Peace on earth is not an advertising slogan. Stop beating your head against the wall. Try using a small club instead in order to better reach those empty spaces between your ears. Cut to the quick when dealing with matters of the heart. Cardiac arrest has been found to relieve stress in laboratory rats. While conditions look extremely encouraging for most Capricorns this month, your lack of initiative and zoo breath will cause yet another social explosion. Don’t take any crap off your boss. According to the latest Winter Olympic/unemployment statistics there are plenty of jobs in Utah. Tonight: Cows in the barn.

 

AQUARIUS (January 20 – February 19)

Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learnin’ how. Come on a safari with me. Thus far you have managed to waltz through life without ever considering the importance of where you came from and where you’re going. Good job. If you can keep cruising at this pace you should achieve true enlightenment by next Thursday night. Use caution when working with unfamiliar tools such as your intellect. Household decisions should always be made right there in your house. Comparison shopping may convince you to shun the roll of consumer altogether. Call someone in Cleveland Heights tonight.

 

PISCES (February 20 -March 20)

Just because salmon insist on running upstream doesn’t mean you have to follow. Go with the flow but only on your own terms. Playing the waiting game is much safer in the middle of the river. Avoid predictable feeding habits. It’s time to put on that extra layer of fat for the winter before the bait goes south. Your cold-blooded lifestyle may insulate you from more than you had once imagined. When dealing with family members keep in mind that they operate on similar misconceptions. It’s genetic. Get off your high horse. He will only throw you when you least expect it. Tonight: Skip the chips.

 

ARIES (March 21 – April 19)

When dealing in financial matters keep a stiff upper lip or you could get caught with your pants down. The potential for a long, happy life awaits you but first you must make it through this afternoon. Spend equal time contemplating your inevitable destiny and your increasing density. Take advantage of insomnia. There’s nobody out jogging at two in the morning. Don’t wish too hard for something or you might pull a muscle in your libido. Using words you don’t understand is alright if you’re only talking to yourself anyway. Improvise despite inclinations to bull forward. Damn the torpedoes especially the one headed for your fleshy starboard side.

 

TAURUS (April 20 – May 20)

You will perform best today by staying out of the mainstream. Buying people off could be better than putting them on for size. An old lover will hit you with his or her cane or rocking chair in the wee hours. Today is a great day to have your picture taken with a bowl of cold oatmeal. You will not be run over by a large delivery vehicle this month. If you intend to speak from the heart today make sure to bring along a choreographer. Confusion reigns and that’s lucky for you since it is one of the only things you are good at. Tonight: Educational strolls.

 

GEMINI (May 21 – June 20)

In the year ahead you may find yourself deeply involved in the chronic pettiness the defines your performance. Better you than someone else dealing with it. File all problems under “Z” and then forget them. They are not your friends. Dreams of travel should not be chronicled by sleeping in your car. You may not work well under pressure this month. Try letting the air out of your ego. Learn the difference between on the street and in the street. Tonight: Tennis balls are no better than popcorn balls.

 

CANCER (June 21 – July 22)

Your intrinsic hunter/gatherer instincts are in full swing this week. Don’t attempt to fight it. Hunt and gather till you puke. Pigeons may mistake you for a statue. Dogs may mistake you for a fire hydrant. Stay away from garbage cans when the noisy trucks are in that neighborhood. Break bread but not promises. Fixing things that are not broken may net unexpected results in the early morning. Chicken lips make great stocking stuffers but long legs are better. Go ahead and lie to yourself. Everyone else is doing it. Tonight: Examine the roots of rap music.

 

LEO (July 23 – August 22)

Venus (planet of love and seduction) will enter your 8th house of secrets and intimacy on Tuesday. Spend Monday mucking out your bathroom or the visit will be short-lived. Neptune and Pluto will ask you to co-sign a loan for a cup of coffee on the 30th. Don’t do it or you could get burned. Considering your inept manner of handling daily rituals it is surprising that you are still standing erect. Today is a perfect time to fill your dance card for the winter as the band plays on. Traveling to the beat of a different drummer may require a foghorn. Decisions can best be made by the flip of a coin. Tonight: A fish has his eye on you.

 

VIRGO (August 23 – September 22)

At press time we have received little indication as to your plight for the month. This could be very good news or a disastrous turn of events depending on your altitude. Turn up the bass. Let us know what happens. You’re going to heaven all right but get to the airport early to go through security. We care. Tonight: Panhandle at the mall. Did we mention that we care?

 

LIBRA (September 23 – October 23)

Grumpy neighbors will invite you to dinner. What could they possibly be having? Time sharing your emotions will prove to be a very poor investment. Turn up your internal thermostat or a close associate will be forced to start a fire under you. How can you see yourself as a super hero when you don’t even own a decent cape? Wait for blocking before attempting a runback from deep in your end zone. Sometimes it’s better to settle for the sure thing and begin your operations from the 20 yard line. Although the element of surprise is valuable, throwing into the end-zone too early could leave you with terrible field position later in life. Tonight: Punt on third down.

 

SCORPIO (October 24 – November 22)

Attempts to expand your knowledge are almost certain to be successful considering the jumping off point. Your restless ruler, Mercury, is still moving in reverse and headed for that Ford pickup across the parking lot. Although there is no insurance in life, you’d better get some quick. Opening doors for strangers only encourages them to come in. Venus will enter your sign for a three-week stay – Better stock up on toilet paper. If you spend all your money on trivial things you won’t have to worry about that stack of bills screaming for attention. Turn down the volume and enjoy what you certainly cannot understand. Tonight: Totally.

 

Nisei Christmas

…Men speak of them well or ill; they themselves are silent.”

– Stephen Vincent Benet, Ode to Walt Whitman

 

One Christmas near Granada, Colorado in 1942 two soldiers sat in a dark cafe watching the snow come down. Snow was not a familiar thing to these two who would be shipping out for Italy in a few days. There was no visible sun in the sky and the windows of the cafe looked as if they hadn’t been washed since the First World War concluded some 25 years ago. One of the soldiers, Private Thomas Okamoto, would go on to be one of the most decorated fighting men in the European Theater. The other, also decorated, would serve for  two years in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and see action at Salerno Bay, at Naples, at Cassino, and at Anzio. His name was Kiyoshi Nakamura. He was killed by a German sniper near Saverne, France in November of 1944. 

     It was in late summer, 1943, just north of Naples, that Nakamura met my uncle Cliff, and shared the following story.

We were staring out the window onto the soggy Colorado street. Private Okamoto was talking about his uncle’s strawberry garden back in California. We were not afraid to go to war but we were afraid of what may happen to our families behind barbed wire at camps like Granada. A tall, thin rancher stumbled into the cafe, ordered coffee and sent a bone chilling stare in our direction. It wasn’t a hostile look, more one of astonishment, of lassitude. He turned tiredly away from us and asked the walls and ceilings if we were spies.

Then, without warning, he approached our table. We thought he must be drunk.

“Looks like snow,” he said. “How long you been in?”

Private Okamoto answered him, followed by a crisp sir. He sat down.

“I’ve heard a lot of you pups were joining up,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to stare but you two are the first I’ve seen in uniform. Where they sending you?”

“North Africa, sir,” I answered, “for the time being. Then Europe.”

“You won’t see much snow in Sicily either. Where are you boys from?”

“Santa Ana, California, sir. We are only here to visit our families at Granada. They were moved here in October,” I answered. “We brought them Christmas presents.”

“My name is Walters, Frank Walters. I remember spending a cold, wet Christmas at Cambrai, in France in 1917. I was at Belleau Wood as well, and with the Brits at Chateau-Thierry after the Germans broke through in 1918. I survived. A lot of us didn’t.”

“My uncle Joe was killed in the Argonne Forest,” I said. “His father and mother had only moved to the California in 1895 and they has Joe three years later. They were very proud of their American son. They were presented his Silver Star at the VFW in Santa Ana.”

“And now our government is involved with another war with Germany…and this time with those bastards, the Japanese,” said Walters, catching himself. He looked at the floor.

“You got a lot of family interned at Granada?” he asked.

“Most of them,” I frowned. “The others, a cousin and Private Okamoto’s brother are in the army. They are Americans, you know.”

“I know,” breathed Walters. “Good farmers. I don’t think they deserve what they’re getting. Somebody’s up to no good but the country’s in a panic.”

“After Pearl Harbor it’s not hard to believe,” said Okamoto.

Walters returned to his previous state, not saying anything for a few minutes, just staring out the window and then to the door as if expecting a visitor.

“How old are you boys?” he asked, returning to the present.

“I’m 19 and Kiyoshi is 20,” said Okamoto.

“The same age as my Tommy,” said Walters. “He was lost when the West Virginia went down at Pearl Harbor last December. War does not discriminate, heh boys?”

We sat there in shock. After three days visiting Granada and 14 weeks training to kill Germans and perhaps even Japanese, we thought we’d reached a certain sense of numbness. Now we were sitting here with a World War I vet who had lost a son to the Imperial Navy, to young men his age who looked like us.

“My name is Tommy,” offered Okamoto, stumbling over his words in some attempt to ease the pain that all were feeling by now.

“You’re all just children,” said Walters, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “We were children too and it’s another Christmas. Children with guns and tanks and planes. Germans and Japanese and English and French. Dead because of power hungry leaders without the right answers. It’s insane,” he shock his head methodically from side to side. “They put your families in camps and yet you volunteer.”

“No matter how bad things seem we must retain our honor,” said Okamoto.

“Honor,” answered Walters, gathering his emotions. “You boys had better drop back a few notches on the honor and hold on to a little common sense when you get over there,” he said. The Germans are entrenched all the way up the peninsula. It’ll be no picnic.”

“We’re not afraid to die for our country,” said Okamoto.

Walters smiled a shell shocked smile and changed the subject to the wine he had drank and the women he had met in France during his war. He then took us totally off guard and asked us to write him a letter saying that it would get to him in Lamar without an address.

“Just send it to Frank Walters,” he said.

We told him we’d send him a postcard from Rome and asked him to watch out for our families if he could.

“I’ll do that,” he said, getting up and disappearing into the snowstorm.

– Kevin Haley

LOW-CAL CHRISTMAS STAMPS RELEASED

(Denver) The United States Postal Service has announced plans to release some 400,000 low calorie Christmas stamps in time for the holidays. The stamps, featuring Santa Claus and other celebrated Yuletide icons, will be first-class and available at the window on December 10.

The stamps are a colorful bit of Americana, appropriate to the season and contain less than three calories. Customers who prowl the post office hallways have for long complained about health considerations when purchasing stamps. Of course, the benefits of the low-cal stamps are only apparent when one licks the back of them. A self-adhesive batch, mistakenly produced last month, will be saved for emergencies.

If the promotion is a success consumers should expect to be assaulted by a grand array of theme stamps throughout the year. Next up: Heart-shaped stamps for Valentines Day and 50-cent stamps for April Fools.

ANOTHER GROPPO APOLOGY

We have grown tired of extending these seasonal apologies to Groppo the Elf and his battery of attorneys but in the spirit of the holidays we will reach deep and try to un-ruffle a few feathers once more. First of all, allow us to set the record straight.

The short piece appearing in the November issue lambasting the elf and his heritage was, admittedly in bad taste. Moreover we really never had lewd photographs of Groppo dancing with local politicians. The prints, as it turns out disappeared the night before this issue was to be put to rest.

We were forced to substitute a story about the much maligned Spar City de-lousing effort and some color pictures of Melvin Toole hanging Christmas lights at the one of our burgeoning number of local prisons.

Repeated references to Groppo’s alcohol abuse were presented only in context so as not to endanger the reputations of thirsty citizens who often imbibe with elves, gnomes and fairies over the holidays.

Accusations that the elf’s physical stature and mental capacity are the result of his diet of chocolate-covered bombardier beetles, hoarded crawfish Twinkies and strained swamp grass digested while growing up south of the airport in Kenner, Louisiana, is true. Our further deductions can be verified by consulting the sister-in-law of his late dietician, and therefore shall not be introduced in this piece.

Feeble attempts at collecting damages from this publication by the family of Groppo are unfounded and backstabbing . We never said that his immediate family are drug addicts, only that the current climbers on his squalid family tree were pathetic junkies and weak substance abusers. We never really said they were “juicers” either since most no doubt distill their own juniper, corn, potato and barley juice and swill on the porch, thus their public behavior, although suspect, cannot be chronicled.

Never mind all that. Let’s shake hands and part as friends, Groppo. After all you’re really no worse than most of us, especially when viewed through the rose-colored filter of the Yuletide. – Editor

 

WAL-MART GIRL (to the tune of Surfer Girl)

Little Wal-Mart, consumed one

Credit cards come all undone,

Can you hear me

Can you, Wal-Mart Girl?

 

I have watched you from afar

drag you fat butt from your car

Don’t you get it,

Don’t you Wal-mart Girl?

 

Saturdays, we shop together

at the Super Store

In my pickup I will take you

straight to aisle four.

 

What you buy is no one’s business

on your shopping rounds

Better that you skip the check-out

and loose twenty pounds.

 

Now I say from me to you

I will make your charge card due

You don’t need it

You don’t Wal-Mart Girl.

– Kevin Haley, with apologies to the Beach Boys

 

 

 

 

Kids Must Declare Gifts

(Ogden, UT) Children are no longer exempt from service at the hands of Internal Revenue Service. As of midnight, December 24 all kids receiving Christmas presents must determine a fixed value to the gifts and declare them on the appropriate IRS form.

This departure from past considerations comes as a result of increased defense spending under the heading War On…(fill in the blank). Gifts that are appraised at over $100,000 fall under tax relief bill #49939928-QP and require no new tax. Expenses incurred by those in the top 2% in annual income are fully deductible.

Juvenile evaders are warned that cash gifts fall under the category of tips and must also be declared. Children returning or exchanging presents will be liable only for the highest priced item. Coal, like last year, is a flat 10% deduction.