All Entries in the "Featured Peeks" Category

NEW TAXES EXPLAINED

“…and of corpse, we have the late tax and the early tax coupled with everyone’s favorites the noise tax and the quiet tax,” said Minderbender.
“After that it is quintessential to the continued workings of unresponsive government that these pinholes be wiped out or otherwise deprogrammed from the knees up,” he smiled.
In support of his flamboyant economic theories Minderbender hurled the smile tax and the frown tax into the fray followed by the proposed frankfurter-on-a-roll tax, you wanna drive your pickup around all day tax and the innovative bi-partisan franchise tax on new oxygen, education, medical shortcomings and military adventurism/distraction tax. He completed his monologue by asking those still facing the front of the room if any of them had information as to the movements of what he called bothersome renegades living up in the hills.
For more turn to NASA RESCINDS LUNCH on Page 45

The Frustrations of a Silly Farmer

There are “good” farmers and there are “bad” farmers. There are efficient producers and inefficient producers. There are handsome ranchers and there are ugly ranchers. On occasion one can even point out a wealthy grain grower and contrast him with one of tightened circumstances. Rarely however, search as you will, can there be found a truly silly farmer. This is a story of one of that spare breed. Sure, everyone breaks clods, but did you ever do it with your forehead?
To begin with, Merle came from the city. Strike one. His most profound thought about earth was that it got you dirty despite all precautions. Strike two. Strike three, the ignorance of the fact that man, weather and land are not always compatible, could have been the telling blow, but Merle was not one to run away should some odd misfortune settle down on his fields or farmyard. For this fellow, this Merle Tugley, was above all else, silly. He knew you needn’t wet down your brother-in-law before you turned him into a 5×7 shed but he was willing to try any interesting method.
There was the day he spanked the tractor. It broke down in mid-row and, livid Merle wanted to put it over his knee but knew that that would be a crushing burden. Instead he thrashed it with his bare hands right where it sat, spitting vituperatives downwind. He melded this dramatic tragedy into a type of domestic romance by forthwith marching back and slugging the plow several times.
The following summer, on a Thursday, Merle and his wife, Winnie, were sharing a plate of sweet gophers when Lochinvar, the teenaged moose the Tugleys called their oldest son burst in the door carrying the boar which he used for weightlifting practice. For an instant Merle considered removing the cheese he had rubbed on his mandolin but refrained and sat calmly waiting for the breathless Lochinvar to explain himself.
“There’s a guy at the gate who wants to see the farmer, I guess that would be you,” said Lochinvar pointing at his father. The heir-apparent then stepped into the pantry and began opening a can of asparagus with his teeth.
Merle trudged out to the gate, stopping once along the way to adjust his eyebrows and asked the stranger, “In what way may I be of assistance?”
“I’d like to see your calves.”
Merle sighed. “You’re the third one this week. All right, come along.”
He led the stranger to the barn and they entered whereupon Merle seated himself and then pulled up his pant-legs.
“Well, there they are. Fine pair of calves for this far north the agrologist says.”
The stranger hesitated and then knelt and examined Merle’s calves. He chuckled slightly and then looking Merle full in the face said huskily, “Victorian. Your thighs are probably Tudor. Goodbye.”
“Bloodsucker,” thought Merle as he strode back to the house.
One day Merle was out at the woodpile splitting infinitives with his dictionary for the winter supply when Winnie came rushing up to him, wiping her wet hands on the collie. She moaned, saying. “Your aunt is keeping that groundhog in her hair again. You must talk to her. I can’t stand the chirping and you know I’ve always been mistrustful of a woman who feeds her coiffure.”
“It was you,” Merle intones, “who stopped her from picking rocks. You know that’s always been her hobby.”
“I stopped her, and you agreed at the time, because one night her hernia bounced off our bedroom wall and struck my collection of ornamental muskrats. Smithereens.” The troubled woman threw up her hands at this memory and struck a subsidized magpie that was flapping by.
“All right, I’ll talk to her but first give me a smooch.” Winnie closed her eyes, lurched forward and planted her lips on her husband’s open left eye. He reared back, pawing his face while Winnie turned and went back to the house. Merle was accustomed to this. He remembered several instances of poor aim (not all of them uncomfortable). Once, when Winnie was particularly amorous she lunged at him and with a subsequent crash kissed an Armenian in the adjoining unit of the motel in which they were staying.
Clarissa, the Tugley’s twelve year old daughter, could be a trial. She wanted to become a nurse and to this end would often rise at 3 a.m. and, while Merle and Winnie slept, bandage her father so completely that when he awoke in the morning he would, half dozing, think he had either entered nirvana or that his muscles had been removed during the night. She went to school all week and then on Saturday mornings explained logical positivism to her family who offered her tiny arguments in favor of the relativistic morality of stunning your MP with a two-by-four. She considered everyone other than her girlfriends Lou and Miss Libberull, the teacher, to be cretinous oafs who have trouble perceiving even the evident fact that horses are next to godliness.
Clarissa enjoyed sponging the pigs and could watch for hours as Merle pumped money into the machinery. She and her father would go for long walks where he would point out to her the difference between a weed and a shaft of grain (“the weed is like a little muscle-man,” Merle would say, his teeth gritted) or they would observe the wildlife happily until a black or brown bear approached them dragging a scarred attaché case and requesting with gestures the Merle sit down and discuss his life insurance needs.
One fine fall morning Merle was out harvesting when Winnie gave birth to Albert, the Tugley’s youngest. He remembered that he discerned the “pop” all the way from the house while he was steering the combine and almost drove it into the side of the old kosher restaurant that sat noisily in the middle of his best wheat field. Merle rushed back to the house to find Winnie and the baby arguing over what the tiny Albert would have for supper.
Now, at five years of age, Albert still argued over his diet. He most enjoyed dallying about the yard, eating dirt, bark, insects and other assorted delicacies, his mother not far behind slapping his hands and dredging his mouth of this and that. His parents didn’t know it but Albert could have digested northwest Manitoba if given the chance. His mother dreamed that some day her little man would grow up to be a writer, perhaps becoming the editor of the county weekly. Albert had not such ambitions but wouldn’t have minded explaining to anyone his recipe for beetles-in-mud.
Merle could have found a good hired hand. Instead he took on Manny; “Not short for Manfred,” Manny told Merle one day, “but for ‘Man-do-I-feel-good,’ ” the hippie hired hand explained. When there was work to be done you could always count on Manny. He would be either out in the fields picking weird mushrooms or in his room above the garage reading some novel with his eyes closed. He slept a good deal and was known to have once become splendidly recumbent on the buffet table for the entire weekend of a Protestant Businessman’s Retreat when he worked as a waiter in the city. He enjoyed sniffing gasoline fumes and could walk right out of his overalls when called to dinner. Every year he threw his back out at harvest time and then threw his front out in the spring. He threw his top out when there was fencing to be done and then his bottom when asked to paint the barn. Finally Merle would throw him all out. He came back each time claiming he had forgotten his feet.
Merle was almost always an optimist. One day Harold Swuggert stopped by wanting to boot somebody in the head and instead, just for the fun of it, told Merle that a plague of locusts was expected. Merle studied a moment and then said, “Well maybe they won’t be hungry. Besides, Albert could eat them.” He read Bottleby’s prognosis one year and decided to plant eucalyptus trees. Winnie marveled at the way Merle could mash sugar beets under his arms when the crusher broke down. He massaged the cattle regularly and was finally able to throw Lochinvar a distance of at least seventeen feet. He heralded the birth of piglets by facing the sun an giggling thanks to the porcupine god, ending the dissertation by singing, “Swine you very much,” while he tossed his dentures high in the air.
Winnie, too, was happy with her life on the farm. She could now fillet a badger and was able to vacuum around the kittens when she cleaned up the barn. She loved to cook and her specialty was chickens stuffed with beef and a venison garnish, with ham on the side. She always made sure her family had enough to eat. She entertained thoughts of becoming a “new” woman and one day decided to take a course entitled “Micro-economics and the Desirability of Sewing Your Own Pantsuit,” but decided against it when Albert broke out in scarabs. She enjoyed the odd bit of lust and could always find a market for her needlework.
Merle and Winnie would sometimes go to the city for a little holiday and a couple of games of “For God’s Sake Look Out For That Car!” They would check into a hotel and order drinks from room service until Merle got slightly tanked when he would list for Winnie all of the Czars of Russia since 1247 A.D. They looked at each other in a different light during these excursions; Merle seeing a beautiful temptress and Whinny perceiving Merle as a leader of, at least, John Diefenbaker’s stature. They would slide into the hotel bed each night and wake up in the morning on the other side of the room. The farm was a distant oasis that nourished and nurtured and held close to itself everything precious to them, except for Lochinvar’s new Hi-fi.
Ah, farming. Is there a better life? Probably not. Except perhaps for the business of buying and selling exotic kitchen appliances.
-Merle Kissack

CAVE SHORTAGES WORRY BEARS

(Kebler Pass) Local bears have expressed frustration and resentment this year as higher prices and a chronic shortage of caves have driven many out of the region. A growing number of the mammals have been forced to live in ramshackle shelters or share crowded housing with other bears, not even in the same family, just to make ends meet.
Newcomers to the area have driven cave prices through the ceiling with little relief in sight according to local housing concerns who say that if the situation is not rectified Western Colorado may experience a drop in year-round population.
“In order to accommodate the urban Ursidae who brings in his honey from the outside, many of the long-term shaggies may be forced out of their territory,” said one immigrant realtor, “which is progress in its purest fiscal form.”
In a related bit of news the Department of the Inferior has announced that a scrawny skunk cabbage crop could create serious food shortages for bears as the autumn makes its grand entrance. This will most likely translate in an increase in contact between hungry bears and man. Humans actively engaged in suburban sprawl are asked to pack up their things and move back to Moline before it’s too late. Those who choose to remain are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the rigors of the natural food chain.
– Walter Wonderlust

NATION’S RUM RESERVES: JOBS VS ENVIRONMENT
(Hillsboro, Carriacou, Grenada) The United States could find itself completely out of rum in the next five years according to sugar cane brokers here. Lack of conservation and export to other planets has placed a severe strain on distillers all over the Caribbean. A desperate increase in production has only led to an even larger jump in consumption, especially in the inner cities and the outer limits.
Already several hinterland politicians are calling for an end to the moratorium on the manipulation of natural rum resources in the Rockies. They say that the continued dependence on foreign molasses will reduce this country to nothing more than a slave to the whims of the rum cartels.
Merchants here are suggesting that imbibers back off and substitute whiskey or gin for rum until this emergency subsides. Traditional sources of sugar cane have already been placed on the endangered list in the Lesser Antilles and the public consumption of native rums has been outlawed all along the snowy, white beaches of the Grenadines. – Suzie Compost

Crawl Spaces, attics could be infested
FALL IS THE TIME TO CHECK FOR HIPPIES
Special from the National Injunction Service and Homeland Security Act
(Woodstock, NY) Loyal consumers are reminded that autumn is the time to muck out crawl spaces, window boxes, attics, sheds, garages and privies for hippies. This species, like many others in our forests, attempts to locate appropriate accommodations for the winter before the snow falls. Hippies have been known to move into all types of structures from a common line shack to the Taj Mahal only to abandon those digs for a more Spartan summer dwelling when the spring arrives. It is during this cosmic mud season that hippies are as scarce as a bull elk in the local grocery parking lot.
In order to effectively rid one’s household/property of these pests one must first identify the problem. Have there been hippies nesting in the home on prior occasions? What can one do to discourage these squattings? Are you inadvertently doing something to attract them?
Board up those windows, seal up crawl spaces, insulate attics, haul old tires, cardboard, aluminum siding…anything that could be used for temporary construction…to the dump.
A little preventive maintenance today could save a multiple use nightmare down the road.
Next month: “Cat hair and high altitude salad ideas”

NO TV FOR WELFARE RECIPIENTS

In what is perceived as an attempt to show he’s no run-of-the-mill tax and spend Democrat Barack Obama is getting tough with fraudulent welfare recipients and is taking away their television privileges. The temporary action is aimed at flushing out persons receiving welfare checks who are sandbagging the system. The Obama people think the action will provoke an immediate response and that an estimated 40-50% of those abusing the assistance program will quickly terminate their relationship with their social workers. Another 25% are expected to follow suit once the weekend sports menu comes around.
Like most of his other rescue missions the details of this plan were not released. It is not known if the feds will send repo-like agents around to pick up the televisions or if the cable companies will do the dirty work from their fortified inner-city bunkers. One thing seems certain, though, the honor system will not be employed. After a few short weeks, when all the paperwork has been filed, needy people will again be able to enjoy the fine viewing that represents reality.
“Although we have not been informed of the specific variables of the procedure one thing is clear,” said Frida Fishe, special secretary to the special secretary’s secretary, “that is, that Barack wants his foot on the accelerator of this baby. He’s cramming it into second and the tires are screaming! He’s laying a heavy patch of rubber!”
The President is racing to cut the fat from the system and transfer ineffective social workers to The Pentagon or The Department of Energy by 2016. After restricting television viewing the Administration plans an assault on other lethal drugs common to federal housing projects and rural slums. Already lobbyists for the giant pharmaceutical companies have filed protests and are getting jumpy.
In time it is surmised that the majority of unwarranted welfare recipients will grow tired of listening to the radio and go out and look for work. That development, of course, is dependent on whether minimum wage crawls out of the dark ages and indigent people can make more filling orders than filling out forms. – Ripple van Winkle

Spring Cleanup Sacks Town

(Manana) The first ever spring cleanup in Manana has terminated the town. After three days of hauling garbage, old tires, discarded machine parts, plastic, broken furniture, abandoned trailers and other debris to the county dump there is nothing left of what was once a thriving little burg that once commanded a spectacular view along the Little Packer River.
“Other towns seem to be able to handle a little sprucing up without changing road maps,” said mayor Muriel Armbruster who has taken up residence some six miles away at Colona. “We started with the highest intentions and the result is the disappearance of the entire town.”
Monday morning all that was left of Manana were fragile skeletons of dilapidated downtown shops, the wobbly shell of the post office and a few mangy dogs looking disoriented and hungry.
“I don’t know how long it will take us to return the town to its normal condition,” said Armbruster. “Right now there’s nothing here but a few spindly, framed remembrances. With the arrival of our traditional spring wind storms, those too will fade into architectural history.”
As expected the town has applied for federal aid.
“These town cleanups are serious business,” added the former mayor. “I wonder if we could incorporate the landfill.”

Bear Given Condoms

(Norwood) The Forest Circus has agreed in theory to allow black bears to purchase condoms at a variety of outlets due to overpopulation in the Ursidae ranks of late. Unconfirmed sources verify that the black bear population has increased 20% over the past year and will continue this trend due to the stabilization of fodder and the lack of natural predators, especially in the spring.
Groups of animal rights advocates, back from a bivouac with aardvarks and antelope, have agreed to provide birth control information to younger, more impressionable cubs. The adults, however are on their own targets of TV ads they don’t see and billboards that they cannot read.
As one might readily imagine, this development has upset a host of human political/social/religious persons, many of whom have never observed a bear in his natural environment. They fear that the use of condoms within the bear population will hamper the continuity of the animal’s rigid social strata, encourage permissiveness and introduce latex guilt to and otherwise happy-go-lucky, hungry species.
The big question, of corpse, is: Will the bear use the condoms?
“We see no indication whatsoever in the farthest sense of a tilted, twisted imagination that would even slightly suggest that these bruins are going to put on a rubber before dancing the horizontal two-step,” said Stanley Rock, who has produced over 200 short films on bear behavior.
“It is a fool who still thinks we live in a democracy,” said one local ranger. “In 2014 he who shouts the loudest often wins out, while the poor bears can’t utter so much as a compound sentence. It’s them what’s getting their indiscretions trimmed.”
– Small Mouth Bess

Congress Sponsors Dodge Ball Team

(Bethesda MD) The United States Congress will soon be dodging more than the issues with the creation of the Capitol Idea, an amateur dodge ball team. The squad will compete against other government agencies this summer while they are out campaigning for reelection. Citing popularity of the sport and the relative expense of fielding a team the Senate and the House of Representatives will participate as one unit.
A recent vote in the Senate, which unanimously approved a plan to pay the governing body minimum wage until the economy has fully recovered, may require that lawmakers travel to out-of-town games on the bus rather than in private jets.
Most other competitive agencies will follow the prescribed One Man – One Eight-cylinder Pickup approach to transport, with the Central Intelligence team relying solely on mental telepathy to reach the playing fields. Homeland Security will not field a team since the entire contingent is out digging trenches around the White House. Shadow government entities, which have been engaged in the sport for decades, will drop the clandestine pretense and form a league playing solely night contests.
“Dodging balls is better than dodging bullets,” said one Congressman, who has been opposed to further military action unless it is in the nation’s corporative best interest or creates more jobs among his constituency.
“Hopefully we can get around to officially designating our policy after lunch,” he said.

– Carl LaFong