All Entries in the "Featured Peeks" Category
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Bar Fly
(Wimpton Finger Wagger and Advertiser — November 23, 2015)
So this guy comes into a bar…actually the two of them had been lounging for most of the afternoon flexing what was left of their pale muscles, pumping wisdom like a tired old well about to call it a lifetime. Both were heavy into self-absorbed. But swashbuckling tomcats like Don Juan were light on scrutiny preferring the other side of the looking glass to the mirror.
These were very important men. Don Juan had an opinion on everything which he shared with the less fortunate like Candy, his shell-shocked drinking buddy who had eager ears but little as backup.
“Yeah, I’ve damn well got her made,” started Don Juan. “Got my bank roll, my trailer house is paid for, and my pickup is runnin’ great.”
He turned his neck ever so slightly and caught a glimpse of Candy who looked like he was trying to crawl into his cloudy pilsner glass.
“For crying out loud, man, sit up straight,” he cuffed. “Look at your body language. It says everything about you. It tips your hand.”
Candy looked at his body. He didn’t see or hear anything but he came to attention anyway following a pattern that had begun early on. Candy was there as a human reaction, to do as he was told. He was all but transparent because it had become easier that way.
“Look at this,” said Don Juan, scanning the local gazette as he reached for his beer. “They sent a probe to Mars but it blew up when it got close. Idiots! I wonder how much that cost. I pay taxes and I’m damn sick and tired of the government shooting off space ships like they were butterflies.”
Don Juan thought about what he had just said and smiled at his linguistic flair.
“I don’t like bugs,” said Candy, “especially flying ones.”
Don Juan continued to read the paper, his glasses fallen down around his cantaloupe nose. To him the expression on his face while reading was far more important than any information extracted from the experience. He wore a somber frown accentuated by hush puppies and a cap that read Cheyenne Frontier Days.
“Winter’s comin’,” he soapboxed. “Look here. It snowed three feet in Duluth just yesterday. I’m glad I’m ready…got my wood all in and new mud and snows on the Power Wagon. How ’bout you?”
Candy looked into the bar mirror. He had a propane heater in his small apartment that was paid for by the Veteran’s Administration because of the war. He didn’t drive and the last time he tried to can a batch of tomatoes, given to him by his sister over in Delta, he’d almost blown up the place. How could Candy prepare for winter? One season just plowed into another.
“Oh, I’m fine,” he choked with a uncertain voice, all but drowned out by the television.
“Fine, huh?” barked Don Juan. “Just like last year when you never got around to taping your windows and your pipes froze. Then you had to sleep on my couch for the whole month of January. Your like the man who had a forest of firewood at his fingertips but forgot to discover fire.”
Don Juan was now on a roll.
“Security doesn’t just wander up into your yard,” he preached. “You gotta go get it. Whether it’s financial, social or romantic there’s a brawl going on and you just as well join in right away. Lead with your left, boy!”
He slapped Candy hard on the back. The tiny toothless aperture just under his road map nose was not to be stopped now.
“Take money, for instance,” he continued. “I worked for thirty-five years to get me a nest egg and now I’m gonna enjoy it. I got stocks and bonds, 40 acres up on the Plateau, a great retirement, CDs, credit cards, a fat bank account and even some of them annuities. Everything I got is paid for and I don’t have any kids to leave nothin’ to.”
Candy stared into his empty glass. Don Juan ordered two more beers and companion shots. He had a captive audience and the four dollars was a well spent investment to keep it that way.
“You might as well spend it all,” quipped Candy breaking into a smile.
“Hell, we might just do that this afternoon,” smiled Don Juan who continued to peruse the paper. He was a man smart enough to perform two tasks at once.
“Yeah, you got to be ready for winter around these parts,” he said glancing in the direction of his doleful disciple who smelled like the wet cardboard on a case of Pabst. “You still got time and maybe I’ll even lend a hand but first let me tell you a story. I know you don’t like bugs but it’s called The Ants and the Grasshopper. It’s by some fella named Aesop. He was a Greek a long time ago.”
Candy perked up. “That’s a funny sounding name,” he mumbled.
Maybe you’ll get the connection here. You’ve got to have your affairs in order. You never know when your card will come up. What would you do in an emergency? What do you have to fall back on?”
Don Juan went on to tell Candy the story of the industrious ants and the lazy grasshopper. Despite the fact that Candy did not like bugs he listened intently. Don Juan told him about the ants drying grain on a fine winter’s day. The grain had been collected over long, hard days throughout the summer months.
“Then along comes this grasshopper, half starved, begging for a handout,” he explained. “One of the ants asked him why he had not stored up any food during the summer. He says he had not leisure time enough and that he had passed the days singing. The ants scorned him saying that if he had been foolish enough to sing away the summer then he must dance supperless to bed in the winter.”
Don Juan waited for a response.
“Mean little bastards,” said Candy.
“You miss the point,” said Don Juan. “The ants worked at getting their ducks in a row while the grasshopper wasted his time. It’s just like you and me,” he added. “I’m the ant and you’re the grasshopper. My house in order while your roof is caving in.”
Then suddenly Don Juan clutched his chest, executing a poignant plunge from his prosaic perch at the bar. A swan dive in a dive. He hit the floor hard, his satellite brew crashing beside him. He was a goner.
At the funeral a lot of people that Candy had never seen talked about what a great man Don Juan had been. They said he had grit. They said he had enjoyed a full life. They said he’d be missed. What they were really doing was a little preheat jockeying for position with regards to his assets, which ended up going to an uncle and aunt Don Juan could not stomach.
Meanwhile Candy wandered home and spent the rest of the day putting up visquine over the peewee windows of his ratty chamber. Were there no end to the chores? Don Juan’s old pickup sat propped in the driveway, a gift from the counterfeit relatives who didn’t want to haul the thing back to Salida. Now he would have to put gas in it. How would he ever get around to that.
– Kashmir Horseshoe
Ralphie to start at fullback against Utah
(Boulder, CO Flatiron-No Starch News November 19, 2015)
The University of Colorado will feature a new face in the backfield when it dons its spikes to play a powerful University of Utah in Salt Lake Saturday.
The new guy, standing in behind the quarterback when the teams collide will be none other than Ralphie, the rough-and-tumble team mascot.
In actuality a bison, Ralphie has masqueraded as a buffalo for many seasons here. His familiar charge out onto the field before home games is a thrill to see, especially up close.
Utah 7 – 2 has knocked off Michigan, and trounced Oregon, while losing to Southern Cal and Arizona in Pac-12 competition in 2015. The Thanksgiving weekend bout promises to be a good one with Utah favored over an improved Colorado squad, that lost two close ones to UCLA and USC respectively.
Ralphie has never played organized football but he appears to have digested the complicated offensive playbook. First down – Hand the ball off to Ralphie who runs straight ahead. Second down – Run the option and give the ball to Ralphie who runs straight ahead. Third down – Run a reversal with Ralphie running the ball. Fourth down: Fake the field goal and give the ball to Ralphie who runs straight ahead. Pay dirt!
“Our biggest concern is that he doesn’t run over his own linemen,” said CU coach, Mike MacIntyre.
In addition to the running back role Ralphie will see expanded snaps at the nose guard position where he has learned the defensive signals in just a few days. Ralphie rush. Ralphie sack. Ralphie blitz.
“He won’t be worked into pass plays due to infamously bad hands, continued MacIntyre, “but he could be employed as a diversion along the line of scrimmage. He’s developed into an excellent blocking back.”
Team seamstresses needed three XXL jerseys sewed together and pants made from a protective stadium field cover at Folsom Field, to outfit the new player. Fans hope a dapper, well-dressed Ralphie will wear down opponents, then dazzle them with unprecedented speed and uncanny instinct as he gallops into the line and stampedes his way to the end zone. – Rocky Flats
New Dumps Planned for Breakaway Villages
(Nucla — Twin Cities Pilot – November 15, 2015)
An innovative yet controversial landfill, built to accommodate old, useless politicians has been tentatively approved by parliaments in both Nucla and Naturita, in the disaffected region of Western Montrose County.
Leaders in the Twin Cities feel that this kind of clean air industry will someday promote the stable growth needed if plans to create a new county are to survive. Projections call for a minimum 200 “apartments” or plots to be constructed by next spring with the facility in full operation by fall of 2016.
“This is purist recycling at its best,” said Chad Rammerbean, who has fathered the concept (as well as many of the children in the area). “We are bogged down with tired old politicos with their heads firmly planted in the 20th Century. If we can only attract a few big names to start with we feel the rest will follow,” he explained.
The resting place, originally called the (late) Bob Corey-LP Landfill, will be renamed The Millard Fillmore Center, so as to avoid hurt feelings. Misconceptions regarding health issues have created problems in an area that once welcomed nuclear waste services and reveled in the glow of uranium leftovers.
“We don’t feel comfortable with all those politicians hanging around,” said one resident. “Many of us are against the name of the place since it fails to recognize worthless electoral parasites from right here in the West End. If we’re going to build this thing let’s at least keep the name local,” he stressed.
The old politicians will be stores above ground so as to minimize affects on watersheds and water storage. While many local businesses have supported the effort with contributions and sweat equity the region’s most visible enterprise, Union Carbide (the hero of Bhopal) declined to contribute so much as a penny.
“We have already given these elected officials more than enough money during their respective tenures,” said a spokesperson for Union Carbide.
“Most of them were quite cooperative in keeping our environmental operations under wraps. “We see no point in paying them now that they have lost their clout.”
The dump will accept political waste from as far away as New York and Florida. As the capacity increases here politicians from foreign countries may be considered. The only stipulation is that the “client” is still breathing.
“We’re not a morgue,” said Rammerbean.
Meanwhile over in Naturita a satellite industry has quickly emerged, one that would house obsolete words and phrases, discarded elevator music, unread books, top hats, spats, black % white TVs and period sneakers. Already principles claim to have contracts with words such as huzzah, Dodman, dog-leech, thou, atole brose, afoot and cucking-stool.
This literary and popular culture landfill is called Widow Bench Estates, after a little–used term referring to the share of a husband’s estate inherited by his surviving wife. – Melvin O’Toole
Will a Woman Grace the $20 Note?
(Funny Money Land – Fort Knocks & Notions – November 8, 2015)
A final decision as to who will replace Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill were whittled down to three this afternoon as committee upon committee made some difficult choices considering the number of nominations for the honor.
As the ink cleared Susan B. Anthony was nowhere to be seen. Instead a crack team of historians and bankers has named Grace Kelly, Harriet Tubman and Sacajawea as the finalists to replace Jackson, a murderer and extortionist without equal in the early days of the Piedmont frontier.
“It is high time we feature a woman on our currency,” said Norma Jingles, a currency expert at Dollars For Doughnuts, a shadow hedge fund administrator for the Ohio Valley.
“The late Robin Williams said it best,” continued Jingles. “He pulled out a one-dollar-bill and told the audience the face on it belonged to Barbara Bush, when in fact it was George Washington. How stodgy.”
In addition to the aforementioned three, top contenders had included Eleanor Roosevelt, Marilyn Monroe, Clara Barton, Katharine Hepburn, Pearl S. Buck, Emily Dickinson, Rosy the Riveter, Billy Holiday, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Kate Smith, Mother Jones, Jessica Rabbit, Janis Joplin, Dolly Parton, Georgia O’Keeffe and Cher.
Discussion continues tomorrow on who might replace two other undeserving bozos, Ulysses S. Grant and Andrew Hamilton on their respective bills. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin are grandfathered in and believed to be safe from the feminization of legal tender at this time.
A final verdict is expected Monday.
Feds Threaten Meat Supply in Pot Beef
(Leadville, CO High Country Smoke Rings November 5, 2015)
Controlled personalities at the federal level have threatened to cut off Colorado’s meat sources if that state doesn’t tow the line on U.S. marijuana laws. Colorado, along with Oregon and Washington has decriminalized the use of pot in small amounts for recreational use.
“The feds don’t like to be outflanked,” said a pro-pot source here. They like to dictate to us, to be in charge. Our lickety-split, wham bam amendment to the state constitution nailed them to a tree.”
Instead of embracing progressive stands on social issues, neighboring states have petitioned the federal government for help enforcing archaic pot laws in their states. The frustrated response has been nothing more than a series of ultimatums but now it looks like some probing action is in the wings.
“They may be serious about his meat thing,” said the source, “but Colorado is self-sufficient. We have the water, the timber, the sun, the wildlife, the lifestyle and yes, plenty of meat. We also tolerate others, even vegetarians! Out neighboring states are just jealous.”
Applications for hunting licenses have jumped 46% since the federal meat threat was made public. Sales of firearms and gear have been off the charts indicating that a massive in-state hunting population will take to the woods in October.
If Colorado decides to heal and follow the precepts of the central government the meat wagons will once again cross the prairie. If not it could be grilled cheese and tomato soup for the winter.
“It’s the old classic state’s rights question here,” said the pro-marijuana spokesman. “We went to war on this issue once and may have to do so again. Either way I’ve been taking a lot of target practice.”
How this recent bullying might affect the pot status in Washington and Oregon was not undressed. Several other states are expected to include propositions and amendments on the question of recreational marijuana use on their November ballots. Many already have medical marijuana programs in force.
Tentative legislation is impending in six other states that have been impressed with Colorado’s experimental successes.
– Gabby Haze
