All Entries in the "Featured Peeks" Category
Daylight Savings Could Affect Cocktail Hours
(Ouray) Colorado residents are reminded that the change from Rocky Mountain to Daylight Savings Time could seriously distort normal cocktail hours this summer.
“People engaged in that sort of thing should be aware that a small adjustment may be necessary to alleviate confusion,” said Andrea Rotweiller, of Clockmosis, an all-night-long Confront Range public relations firm hired to promote longer days and shorter nights.
Rotweiller suggests that imbibers start earlier in the afternoon and continue later into the evening at first to get comfortable with the new time and than drop back to a comfortable level by, say July or August.
“What we seek here is uniformity and a keen adherence to structured limitations and reasonable intentions. We are not booze brokers,” she said. We simply want people to manage their recreational time and that includes special occasions that might require further expansion of ritual imbibing.”
Clockmosis was quick to point out that it did not encourage or condemn the consumption of alcohol.
In a recently released statement the group insisted that it did not judge anyone.
“Drinkers will be drinkers and tea totalers will be left to their own devices,” it said.
People who do not recognize happy hour or those who tend to drink all day were not undressed by the warning and should simply go on about their business as if nothing had happened.
- Fred Zepellin
Who is prettier? Taylor Swift or Travis Kelce?
Although final tallies in this stirring beauty competition are far from completed, our powdered and puffed experts here are projecting that Taylor Swift has a slight lead with Travis Kielce closing some gaps since football season was completed and he had more time for personal appearances, schmoozing posing.
Beauty contests like this are important to the well-being of the nation and provide a suitable diversion for the tiny-brained when they are confronted with the often annoying, sometimes painful realization that the world is on fire.
Readers will be pleased to know that they will be the first to be notified on earth shattering results that will not be interrupted with disconcerting news from Ukraine, Gaza, presidential elections, street crime or Global Warming. Now sit down and eat your pablum. One of our corrections associates will be around to pat you on the head in a moment.
For more information on this and other stunning beauty contests call your elected officials
SOUTHERN LITERATI EULOGIZE THE BENEFITS OF OKRA
(Yoknapatawpha, MS) Why is it that the Southern writers are often considered the cream of the crop in the United States? The answer may be as simple as a slimy vegetable called okra.
According to a recent survey 89% of all Dixie scribes eat okra (when in season) at least once a day. They eat it fried, in gumbo and mashed up in salads. They eat it boiled, broiled and barbecued. Although the seemingly inconsequential plant has no obvious properties that may enhance creativity, the edible, mucilaginous pods are seen as brain food in some segments of Old South society.
Authors such as William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings are said to have been virtual okra hounds consuming as much two pounds of the vegetable in a typical sitting. Other writers, such as William Penn Warren would not even sit down to a meal until it had been determined that okra was on the table.
According to family members Erkstine Caldwell was even worse. While writing Tobacco Road he constantly munched on chocolate-covered okra and allegedly distilled a powerful intoxicant from the plant. The list goes on. Ellen Glasgow grew prize okra in her massive garden, Joel Chandler Harris gave tons of the stuff to trick or treaters at Halloween.
“The noted Southern writers talked about what happened on a ramshackle front porch after dinner,” says Dr. Efram Pennywhistle of the Pea Green Literary Composium, “while other American writers (with the exception of Twain, Hemingway and Fitzgerald who used okra in a stream of consciousness technique) tended to render a message of greater proportions. Which was more effective, more entertaining? It’s like the difference between catfish and lobster.”
According to academia okra alone won’t make one a great writer. He needs discipline, imagination and originality along with a bowl of pedantic gumbo.
“It’s like a lot of things worth doing,” continued Pennywhistle. “Once one gets past the initial slime the rest of it goes down easy.”
– Small Mouth Bess
“Humor is the prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.” – Reinhold Niebuhr
Sneffels Denies Trade Rumors
Mount Sneffels at the start of the season
(Mr. Woodhouse’s House) Mount Sneffels today denied trade rumors bombarding the high country. The chatter has risen to high decibel levels since Thanksgiving, suggesting that the landmark over-achiever would be gone by the annual winter meetings slated for Tuba City.
Scenarios fly like an incontinent raven perched on a trash dumpster. Most likely, say elders, Sneffels will be swapped for a crest of younger mountains from either the West Elks or the Maroon Bells. Earlier speculations connecting the 14,150-foot peak to lesser ranges such as the LaSals (in Utah) or the Sangre de Cristos have been scuttled by common bloggers. Some are gambling that the mountain will end up out of state while others say an international transaction is on the horizon.
Sneffels, according to agents, has fallen out of favor with the San Juans who might be looking to embrace a youth movement. Last year several neighboring peaks complained that the often-decorated mountain crumbled in a tight situation and did little or nothing to accommodate wildlife or encourage snowmelt.
“Missed tackles, poor shot choices, camping out in the penalty box and the inability to run out fly balls has created a climate of mistrust, even resentment, at the highest levels, say rocky critics
“Rebuilding has always been a rough time for mountain ranges,” said Zach Gaza, agent for the mountain. “Sometimes old friends get swept under the alpine carpet and a sort of progress ensues making it difficult to tell the forest from the trees.”
Although Sneffels is not considering retirement, close associates say the peak might accept a lesser roll in relief, whereas it does not have show up for early drills or to play every day once the season has commenced.
The most likely arrangement is that Sneffels sits out the winter and moves on in the spring. The most probable destination: The Nepalese Himalayas. Trades have been discussed involving Naya Kanga peak from the Langtang Tigers or possibly the bookend giants, the Chulu peaks from over in the Annapurna Range. Kanga brings power from both sides of the plate while the Chulu boys offer speed and staying power at over 6000 meters.
“Sneffels is worth more than another run of immigrant domes,” said Guy Guy, former coach for the Fossil Ridge Rangers, a minor league elevated mass. “A lot of these foreigner mountains are overly sensitive to the elements. They resemble volcanoes ready to blow their cool at the slightest provocation,” he said.
“A little shake-up is what we need in the San Juans, countered a highfalutin Uncompahgre Peak, who has lorded over Sneffels for centuries. “These mountains are just getting a little too comfortable with the present arrangement. Maybe it’s time for Sneffels to take a knee. The last time we saw him thrive on the power play was 15,000 years ago. No bat speed. Five fouls and you’re out! The old “comin’ ‘round the mountain when she comes” pretext doesn’t compute in these Cenozoic times.”
Uncompahgre says a high elevation house cleaning is in order.
“I’m the big dog in town,” he continued. “And I don’t mean just in elevation either. There’s only room enough on this range for one pinch-hitter and that is yours truly.”
As the saga winds down for the off-season, the question remains as to how the lithosphere might realign with these continental drifts, or trades, looming. Sneffels has continued to wallow in denial, adopting a pouting, no comment demeanor while less-than-friendly television analysts measure seismic hot spots, watching for signs of the smallest fault in the mountain’s stoic exterior.
– Small Mouth Bess
AMERICANS TO EMBRACE LEFT LANE DRIVING in ’25
Most motorists in the United States will negotiate left lane driving next year due to new legislation aimed at keeping up with the Joneses, while not stepping on anyone’s joneses in the process.
The action was lauded from India to Ireland and from Malta to Montserrat, where drivers operate on the left side of the road and have for over a century.
A full roster of which states will require the shift and which states will never reach 4th gear is expected this week. According to POX News this is just one more attempt to drag our freedoms down the path of socialism and one world thinking. Brave talking heads there pledged to keep driving on the right no matter the consequences.
“Your cooperative motorists exhibit patience and self control when faced with these changes. Others are not quite ready to hit the road, especially when confronted with stick shifts, right turns and roundabouts,” said one cynical traffic engineer in the working in the Rockies. “Let’s get one thing straight: A flat tire is still a flat tire and incompetence behind the wheel is still a major factor in collisions.”
“Lowering the national speed limit to 45 should help but maneuverability in snow storms will be challenged. It should be an interesting few months,” he chided.
Police are encouraging motorists to stay home until the summer. Most expect DUI arrests to decrease until the new patterns are absorbed and integrated.
-Alfalfa Romero
Our website employs simple, albeit flighty wind editing techniques that don’t kill eagles
New Years Resolutions Popular in ’24
It’s New Year’s Resolution season again but don’t despair, this is not one of those stupid resolution columns. It’s a stupid chronological resolution column. Although documented episodes of out with the old, in with the new proclamations exist throughout the annals of history, perhaps no year better exemplifies these tragic attempts to get back on track than the 24th year of each century. Conveniently enough, this enlightened harvest of historically linked passages arrived in our cognizant copy basket on New Year’s Eve. While we realize that there are a multitude of vows and pledges that have had far more impact on mankind, we have chosen to focus on resolutions that were actually kept. Despite other images that this piece may conjure up, it is apparent that the elements, the planets, and the gods have always looked favorably on 24th year resolution makers. It’s kind of a quarter century-eleventh hour thing. Long after Guana, an attractive Neanderthal princess, inhabiting Asia Minor in about 4000 BC, started her New Year by promising that she would get her family out of “this drafty old cave and into something modular”
St. Augustine continued the promises. Curiously enough it was January 1 in the 24th Year of the 6th Century. The stodgy bandwagon moralist had promised Pope Gregory he would convert Britain to Christianity. Two months later he baptized a leading antagonist, Ethelbert of Kent. Ethelbert would go on to become one of the most abrasive lounge singer/performers in Canterbury. Seeing what he had done, Augustine made a second resolution in which he promised never to discuss religion or politics. He then retired to a remote monastery to write his memoirs, which include the popular tune “Let’s Spend the Blight Together”.
Highlights of other maintained resolutions quite possibly include:
624 AD: Marauding Arabs, searching for the legendary oil reserves described by the Roman poet, Sinclair, sack Carthage mistaking it for suburban Byzantium. Their leader, Caliph Abdelmelik III, makes a New Year’s Resolution to start carrying a decent map into battle.
724 AD: Byzantine Empress Irene overthrows her son, Constantine, blinds him, and assumes sole power. She then proposes to marry Charlemagne. After repeated rejections of that conjugal arrangement, Irene promises to quite chasing men and to stop blinding people. Despite her sinful behavior she was later canonized by the Greek Church.
824: After a string of architectural disasters, early electrical contractor, Alfonso III, resolves only to wire castles built with drywall. Saracens, looking for an open service station, get into a gas war with Bulgarians. In January they make a resolution to put the the Holy Land on the market in order to pay for further military excursions into Europe.
924: On December 31 Danes promise to stop sacking the Irish Coast but they don’t say anything about rape and/or pillage. The Sultan of Ghanzi resolves to send his gums to the dentist once a year. Gondola operators in Venice pledge to go on strike until tips improve. A dramatic population explosion in China gives birth to the concept of 1/2 orders on sweet and sour pork. The Chinese guarantee effective birth control methods and dynasty-subsidized egg roll distribution by 926.
1024: The Cid takes Valentia from the Moors and promises to return it when he’s finished with his Christian remodel. Unfortunately it is mislabeled as a present to his precocious offspring who break it the day after Christmas.
1124: An assortment of holy men, including St Anthony of Padua and Chinese philosopher, Chu-Hsi promised to stop talking to the sky in public.
1224: Scots defeat British at Stirling Bridge and then again at Chevy Chase. King Edward I of England’s New Year’s Resolution is to refrain from playing his bagpipes before dawn. He instructs his troops to avoid looking up the kilts worn by anyone related to Robert Bruce.
1324: The Duke of Gloucester vows to stick to his diet in 1325 but is murdered before he can properly push himself away from his dining room table.
1424: Lucretia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI, shocks the Vatican by divorcing Giovanni Sforza and running off with the marginally elegant Alfonso of Naples. Her New Year’s Resolution: Don’t unpack until the ring is paid for. Michelangelo sculpts “Bacchus” and pledges to stop using profane language during his next project .
1524: Vasco de Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope under the flag of Lisbon. However, after the check bounced, the explorer resolves that further business dealings with the Portuguese would be on a COD (not the fish) basis. The Second Spanish Armada is scattered by storms in the Atlantic. Spanish King Phillip II makes a resolution to start watching the Weather Channel in 1525. He further pledges to move out of mom and dad’s basement by summer.
1624: Peter the Great’s luggage is once again lost during a journey through Prussia, Holland, England and Vienna. He makes the trek disguised as Peter Michailoff in order to study European ways. In January of 1625 he vows to travel with only a carry on.
1724: Casanova drops dead moments after vowing to stop chasing young women. After taking Vienna, Napoleon resolves to keep an extra pair of dry socks in his pack. He then exhorts his tired soldiers to “let the good times roll”. Headhunters in New Guinea make their first New Year’s Resolution: To eat only vegetarians. Court of Versailles promises to clean its Venetian blinds once a month.
1824: The citizens of Savage Basin, Colorado pledge to stop carousing and staying up late. That temperate climate hangs over the town to this day, especially on January 1. Old Man Roberts, proprietor of Tuller and Roberts Grocery vows to stop bitching and chewing tobacco when he has to cut up a chicken. Mrs. Williams, a cook at the Victor Restaurant in Ophir, promises to stop burning her husband’s toast. “Shorty” Bridgeman, “the racker salesman” resolves to stop spitting while during conversations. Dr. Copp, a Durango dentist vows to stop drinking before oral surgery. The United States government promises to uphold all future treaties with the Ute Nation since most of the latter have already been relocated to Utah anyway.
1924: World leaders, including Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin make a New Year’s Resolution to hold their collective breaths until world peace is achieved.
2024 World leaders attend a Conference on Global Warming, leaving their stretch limousines running so as to make an effective escape if someone smells a fossilized rat in the proceedings.
