All Entries in the "Featured Peeks" Category

Montrose Sculpture

Western sculpture adorns downtown Montrose. Come have a close-up look!

Cure for hangover not found

(Bangor) The long sought after cure for the all too common hangover has once again eluded medical workers here at Down East Sanitarium. The mood is somber with many once hopeful staff members having given up.
“Our research is desperate and intense,” said one nurse, sipping on a wine cooler.
Most doctors are quick to agree that the once royal treatment, coded for centuries as “the hair of the dog”, will simply have to do until the antidote can be perfected. Methodology under consideration by the New England Journal of Medicine involves large quantities of baking soda being injected into the victim and energy drink enemas, which are still under extreme scrutiny at this time.
Other “recipes” of note include iced prune packs, oregano tea, skunk cabbage seeds and purges with swamp water. Despite the tasty temptation Tabasco sauce popsicles and diluted Liquid Plumber offer no relief and may cause other complications.
Many physicians claim that hearty exercise could relieve the symptoms of dehydration and lack of deep sleep. Others, however, prescribe an afternoon on the couch with low light and no loud noises.
The United Nations currently spends about $54 million on hangover research quarterly, with that number expected to double by 2018.
“One thing is for certain,” quipped a pudgy doctor as he sipped a cold beer, “whoever discovers the key will become a very rich person. I just hope it’s me. Now, if you don’t mind, I must get back to my testing.”
– Flora Pandora

“Many a man has fallen in love with a woman in light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by.” – Maurice Chevalier

BEST USES FOR LEFTOVER FRUITCAKE

Are you as tired as we are of lame fruitcake scenarios? We chose 20 of our favorites from the recently released 10,000 Uses For Fruit Cake by Macon (Ga.) Bros. Press. Here they are:

1. Soft, absorbent airport runways and circuit boards for computerized baggage claim systems
2. Spongy, edible lifts for shoes
3. Decorative moss fireplace grout
4. Trail tofu for herd animals
5. Backup house trailer skirting
6. Windshield scraper/breakfast bars
7. Candied stick deodorant
8. Sure-grip roofing supplement for safe snow removal
9. Tear-away political platforms
10. Astroturf
11. A backup center for the Denver Nuggets
12. Dog house insulation
13. Congressional dart boards
14. Leak-proof chinking material
15. Canvasses for bad western artists
16. Jigsaw puzzles
17. Patching for the ozone
18. Square frisbees
19. U.S. Constitution grips
20. Succulent decoupage
-edited for clarity by Estelle Marmotbreath (Leftover Fritcake in her own right)

Pleasure Boats banned from treatment plant

(Ouray) The City of Ouray announced that recreational craft larger than 40 feet in length would be restricted from cruising the Lake Ouray Water Treatment Plant north of town. Citing past recklessness and a slew of safety violations as the cause for the prohibition, the town has no plan to submerge new slips until spring.
Saying that the plant was never meant for pleasure boats or recreation, a municipal source suggested that the prevalence of seasonal aromas as well as the close proximity to Ridgway Reservoir factored in on the final decision. Our source then invited reporters up to the poop deck to get a better look at the logistics that remain a sensitive point with both sides in this long awaited confrontation.
Splinter groups loosely aligned with Pitchfork Party militias have threatened “to sabotage water projects in the county until someone stops to smell the roses.” – Manuel Flushe

Christmas Eve On Lonesome

Western Colorado – December 12, 2014

It was Christmas Eve on Lonesome one-hundred thirty years ago. But nobody on Lonesome knew that it was Christmas Eve, although a child of the outer world could have guessed it, even out in those wilds where Lonesome slipped from one lone log cabin high up the steeps, down through a stretch of jungled darkness to another lone cabin at the mouth of the stream.

There was the holy hush in the gray twilight that comes only on Christmas Eve. There were the big flakes of snow that fell as they never fall except on Christmas Eve. There was a snowy man on horseback in a big coat, and with saddle pockets that might have been bursting with toys for children in the little cabin at the head of the stream.
But not even he knew that it was Christmas Eve. He was thinking of Christmas Eve, but it was of the Christmas Eve of the year before, when he sat in prison with a hundred other men in stripes, and listened to the chaplain talk of peace and good will to all men upon earth, when he had forgotten all men upon earth but one, and had only hatred in his heart for him.
“Vengeance is mine! saith the Lord.”
That was what the chaplain had thundered at him. And then, as now, he thought of the enemy who had betrayed him to the law, and had sworn away liberty, and had robbed him of everything in life except a fierce longing for the day when he could strike back and strike to kill. And then, while he looked back hard into the chaplain’s eyes, and now, while he splashed through the yellow mud thinking of that Christmas Eve, Buck shook his head; and then, as now, his sullen heart answered:
“Mine!” The big flakes drifted to crotch and twig and limb. They gathered on he brim of Buck’s slouch hat, filled out the wrinkles in his big coat, whitened and his long mustache, and sifted into the yellow, twisting path that guided his horse’s feet.
High above he could see through the whirling snow now and then the gleam of a red star. He knew it was the light from his enemy’s window; but somehow the chaplain’s voice kept ringing in his ears, and every time he saw the light he couldn’t help thinking of the story of the Star that the chaplain told that Christmas Eve, and he dropped his eyes by and by, so as not to see it again, and rode on until the light shone in his face.
Then he led his horse up a little ravine and hitched it among the snowy holly and rhododendrons and slipped toward the light. here was a dog somewhere, of course; and like a thief he climbed over the low rail fence and stole through the snow-wet grass until he leaned against an apple-tree with the sill of the window two feet above the level of his eyes.
Reaching above him, he caught a stout limb and dragged himself up to a crotch of the tree. A mass of snow slipped softly to the earth. The branch creaked above the light wind; around the corner of the house a dog growled and he sat still.
He had waited three long years and he had ridden two hard nights and lain out two cold days in the woods for this.
And presently he reached out very carefully, and noiselessly broke leaf and branch and twig until a passage was cleared for his eye and for the point of the pistol that was gripped in his right hand.
A woman was just disappearing through the kitchen door, and he peered cautiously and saw nothing but darting shadows. From one corner a shadow loomed suddenly out in human shape. Buck saw the shadowed gesture of an arm, and he cocked his pistol. That shadow was his man, and in a moment he would be in a chair in the chimney corner to smoke his pipe, maybe – his last pipe.
Buck smiled – pure hatred made him smile – but it was mean, a mean and sorry thing to shoot this man in the back, dog though he was; and now that the moment had come a wave of sickening shame ran through Buck. No one of his name had ever done that before; but this man and his people had, and with their own lips they had framed palliation for him. What was fair for one was fair for the other they always said. A poor man couldn’t fight money in the courts; and so they had shot from the brush, and that was why they were rich now and Buck was poor – why his enemy was safe at home, and he was out here, homeless, in the apple-tree.
Buck thought of all this, but it was no use. The shadow slouched suddenly and disappeared; and Buck was glad. With a gritting oath between his chattering teeth he pulled his pistol in and thrust one leg down to swing from the tree – he would meet him face to face next day and kill him like a man – and there he hung as rigid as though the cold had suddenly turned him, blood, bones, and marrow, into ice.
The door had opened, and full in the firelight stood the girl who he had heard was dead. He knew now how and why that word was sent to him. And now she who had been his sweetheart stood before him – the wife of the man he meant to kill.
Her lips moved – he thought he could tell what she said: “GI up, Jim it up!” Then she went back.
A flame flared up within him now that must have come straight from the devil’s forge. Again the shadows played over the ceiling. His teeth grated as he cocked his pistol, and pointed it down the beam of light that show into the heart of the apple-tree, and wailed.
The shadow of a head shot along the rafters and over the fireplace. It was a madman clutching the butt of the pistol now, and as his eye caught the glinting sight and his heart thumped, there stepped into the square light of the window – a child!
It was a boy with yellow tumbled hair, and he had a puppy in his arms. In front of the fire the little fellow dropped the dog, and they began to play.
“Yap! Yap! Yap!”
Buck could hear the shrill barking of the fat little dog, and the joyous shrieks of the child as he made his playfellow chase his tail round and round or tumbled him head over heels on the floor. It was the first child Buck had seen for three years; it was his child and hears; and, in the apple-tree, Buck watched fixedly.
They were down on the floor now, rolling over and over together; and he watched them until the child grew tired and turned his face to the fire and lay still – looking into it. Buck could see his eyes close presently, and then the puppy crept closer, put his head on his playmate’s chest, and the two lay thus asleep.
And still Buck looked – his clasp loosening on his pistol and his lips loosening under his stiff mustache – and kept looking until the door opened again and the woman crossed the floor. A flood of light flashed suddenly on the snow, barely touching the snow-hung tips of the apple-tree, and he saw her in the doorway – saw her look anxiously into the darkness – look and listen a long while.
Buck dropped noiselessly to the snow when she closed the door. He wondered what they would think when they saw his tracks in the snow the next morning; and then he realized that they would be covered before the morning.
As he started up the ravine where his horse was he heard the clink of metal down the road and the splash of a horse’s hoofs in the soft mud, and he sank down behind a holly-bush.
Again the light from the cabin flashed out on the snow.
“That you, Jim?”
“Yep!”
And then the child’s voice: “Has oo dot thum tandy?”
“Yep!”
The cheery answer rang out almost at Buck’s ear, and Jim passed death waiting for him behind the bush which was left foot brushed, shaking the snow from the red berries down on the crouching figure beneath.
Once only, far down the dark jungled way, with underlying streak of yellow that was leading him wither, God only knew – once only Buck looked back. There was the red light gleaming faintly through the moonlit flakes of snow. Once more he thought of the Star, and once more the chaplain’s voice came back to him.
“Mine!” said the Lord.
Just how, Buck could not see, with himself in the snow and him back there for life with her and the child, but some strange impulse made him bare his head.
“Yourn,” said Buck grimly.
But nobody on Lonesome – not even Buck – knew that it was Christmas Eve.
Copyright 1901
by Charles Scribner’s Sons

Elf Profiling Nets Viagra Bust

Special to the Ridgway Demon Press
(Christmas Island—December 12, 2014) Police here have arrested a dozen elves charging them with smuggling. The contraband, three kilos of viagra, was discovered during a routine stop. The elves say they were victims of profiling. The cops say the brake lights were out.
Distrust of strangers has always been part of the local culture here, especially on December 26 when the island is deluged with Christmas refugees like elves and reindeer.
We don’t know what will happen to the elves and frankly could give a damn. It was the headline that had potential.

EDITORIAL
(Montrose, CO—December 12, 2014)
If Santa intends to maintain his position of grandeur during the holidays, he must control his entourage. Every year good citizens are subjected to foul language, brawling and petty theft. Last December we even observed three elves taking a leak off the roof of our newsroom.
Now, as many of you are aware, there is a big debate about elves in prison. Liberals whine saying the proportions indicate disparity of economic opportunity and outright racism. Crap.
The last thing we need to go with the Christmas hype is a bunch of crude little men, often inebriated, roaming the rooftops. Santa, dude, control your wee helpers. We are well armed and tired of their arrogance.