All Entries in the "Fractured Opinion" Category

Capitol Could Be Casino by 2019

(Washington) The United States Capitol may see cards and poker chips as early as September according to sources over at the Federal Reserve Board. Although discussion goes on this morning in the House Ethics Committee, approval for the casino is now said to be only a formality.

The facility could be operated by the Potomac Indians, a tribe once thought to be extinct. Real estate claims to what is now the District of Columbia date back to the 1600s and appear to be legitimate. London-trained Lawyers for the Native American contingent affirmed that the matter would never go to court.

Many Congressmen seeking election this year feel that the potential profits generated by the casino could pull the federal budget out of the basement and make them look more attractive to cynical voters across the nation. The Potomacs have agreed to kick back lease with option to buy funds into an escrow which could then be placed in the general fund to finance such programs as Sociable Security and the War on Tourism.

“We expect to run a clean game here,” said one felt table lobbyist, “therefore elected officials and their entourage will be banned from playing anything but the slot machines.”

Unreliable sources here contend that if the Capitol were not redesigned as a casino it would probably become a bed and breakfast or fall victim to a time sharing.

“It’s finally come to this,” said the source. “We can’t keep operating a government at such a hefty deficit.”

ALPINE ASTROGRAPH

Is your birthday not included here? Call our handy 900 number and talk to real live astrologers about your deepest secrets. Two astrologers at once slightly more. $9.95 per minute (minimum three minutes). In Colorado and Utah dial seven and stay on the line.

GEMINI (May 21 – June 20)
Small children can become hostile toward tattoos in the lazy afternoon. Flying coach is for morons. Double the pleasure for another this month by going away. Keep all plans vague and the fog lights on the dim switch. A pet is bored and may seek other accommodations. Get a second opinion on metaphysical matters. Spend time with household organics this evening.

CANCER (June 21 – July 22)
Before jumping feet first into a joint endeavor remember that cultivation for the purpose of distribution is still illegal and can result in the confiscation of property and a jail term. Be smart, stick to alcohol and nicotine abuse, and leave the moralizing to the cops. Tonight: Hold off on that second career until you earn a paycheck from the first one.

LEO (July 23 – August 22)
Handle routine with alacrity. Going after intangible rewards may prevent tactile disappointments later on. Authority figures look better than you do in that skimpy bathing suit. It is always a better time spending someone else’s money. The Libran qualities of tact and courtesy will emerge today. Sadly, you are a Leo. Tonight: The uncanny ability to speak Algonquin through a soda straw could save you major embarrassment.

VIRGO (August 23 – September 22)
You exhibit incredible consistency in that everything is truly overwhelming. Reduce the risk factor by hiding indoors during daylight hours. Avoid mass transit, bicycle paths, dog classes and depressing conversations at happy hour. Ooops…Looks like it’s time to focus on personal hygiene again. Make an important decision this morning. If you cannot afford a decision the court will appoint one for you.

LIBRA (September 23 – October 22)
Don’t spend valuable time analyzing every situation down to the marrow. The guy in the produce aisle does not systematically stack pears and apples by number and weight. The telephone operator does not memorize all the numbers in the Colona phone book. Counting cracks in the ceiling is not considered disturbed in the present culture. It is always better to be obsessive compulsive than compulsive obsessive, or is it? Tonight: Blackbird pie.

SCORPIO (October 23 – November 21)
A romantic interlude will sputter, stagger, limp, crash and burn right before your blood-shot eyes. Alcohol could help prop up a failing ego but only if you keep drinking. Stop repeating yourself. Intelligent people will surely get the message the first time. Stop repeating yourself. Simplify travel plans by staying in the bathtub until pruned. Tonight: Stop repeating yourself.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 – December 21)
Although you generally say the right thing, it’s to the wrong person. Build a better mousetrap and someone will jack up the price of cheese. Is your head half full or half empty? The days are getting longer but your attention span is not. Visit an incarcerated relative. Sticking your neck out may not amuse the hangman. Wash your hands thoroughly after exhibiting good judgment.

CAPRICORN (December 22 – January 19)
Jumping out of an airplane is fine. Just make sure it has left the ground first. Never rent a house to transient dog handlers! Complete all hangovers. Keep plugging away at life. Persistence is the key. Compensation will come in good time. Then you can kick back and enjoy the limelight armed with the proper sunscreen. Please gargle before exhaling. Tonight: Draw the grapes.

AQUARIUS (January 20 – February 18)
Nuke the Moonies and Moon the Nukies! Morning worship is not defined as two hours in front of the mirror. Wash your heavy loads on the gentle cycle. Do something nice for livestock. Beware of whiskered men carrying machetes. Keep to the gutter and avoid a lot of extracurricular socialization. You have no right to walk up here on the sidewalk with the rest of us. Tonight: Ripe mangos at five feet.

PISCES (February 19 – March 20)
Roll up your sleeves and get your fins into your work. Summer is a good time to add those little artistic touches that you have been thinking about in your abode. Change the color of the little coral pebbles, try tinted glass for more privacy, add a few shells and check the water temperature. Be sure to stay in the little net during cleaning time. Oops! Don’t get so near to the filter…Oh no! Oh, well…Easy come…easy flow.

ARIES (March 21 – April 19)
Experiencing chronic cabin fever in the middle of May does not forecast a satisfactory winter. Health problems will subside with a biotech diet. Is that a tomato in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? The planet Mercury has assumed a forward motion but your Cougar has four flat tires. Relax, lot’s of people with six fingers do fine in government work. Bio-diversity is only one of the answers. None of the others even took the trouble to get hyphenated)

TAURUS (April 20 – May 20)
Pursue pleasure. You will run into enough pain without exerting any unnecessary effort. The world is a coin-op video game and you are stuck with only folding money. Be receptive and not deceptive while outflanking anal-receptive tendencies. Taking advice from strangers based on astrological movements and ancient constellations will get you nowhere fast. Listen to your parents. Tonight: Wander the lawn till dark.

– Kashmir Horseshoe, Astrosurfer.

Celebrity Shortage Spurns Action

(Montrose) Pointing to a shortage of celebrities living in Montrose County, commissioners here have decided to offer tax breaks and building incentives for bonafide celebrities who relocate here.

The initial blueprint, based on the incentive master plan that brought Wal-Mart to the city a few years back, features attractive tax breaks for the first five years of residence, a waving of existing zoning laws and a relaxing of tedious building permits and access considerations.

Durango has celebrities. Ouray and Crested Butte have a few. Crawford too has had famous residents. In Telluride everyone who has a post office box is, at least in his or her own mind, a celebrity. Why then, ask the commissioners, has Montrose been left out of all this?

“If we had just one authentic celebrity the others would come,” said one commissioner.

“This lack of luster is holding up progress,” said another.

When asked about the thousands of people who already live here who may be put off or even uprooted by the arrival of the rich and famous the commissioners did not respond. Later one confided to the press that celebrity presence would raise the tax coffers significantly through an upturn in fan visits, positive publicity about the area and an increase in sales tax.

“If the longtime population shifts or even migrates we cannot be concerned. Progress does not come easy and we need to keep pace with the 21st Century,” said one commissioner. “Just imagine Tom Hanks or Bridget Fonda on a brochure with the Black Canyon in the foreground. Just think of it.”

A plan to give tax incentives and other benefits to residents already paying the county’s bills was quickly voted down in the shadow of all the excitement.

– Kashmir Horseshoe

Bering Straight Bridge Scrapped

(Basura de Blanco, AK — Murdoch’s Spill — May 2016)

One of the last legacies of former Governor Sarah Palin, for years relentlessly squashed by the Obama Administration, has mercifully been put to rest. The proposed toll bridge over the Bering Straight has been defunded.

The suspension structure was supposed to have connected the Chukchi Peninsula to the Seward Peninsula about 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle. The cost was estimated to be over $140 million and the construction was to employ most of Palin’s extended dysfunctional redneck family.

Progress studies soon proved that the amount of travel between the two spots would never recover the investment “in a million years”, factoring in a possible spike in population, dire global warming and the discovery of gold in both of these locales,” said one Treasury official on the scene.

Palin was recently in the headlines after a dinner with Donald Trump and her hands-on familiarity with domestic violence. She did not return our phone calls Thursday.

“We’d be far better off building a bridge between New York and Moscow and putting the entire Palin clan in jail,” said the official.

– Kashmir Horseshoe

“When she said “I hate your hair, not referring to the color or the style or even the texture but to each individual follicle, I knew the gig was up.”
– Melvin O’Toole, lamenting on lost romance.

Vice Squad Strikes Gold, Parrot City in Flames

Special from The Gladstone Gladiator (May 1, 1884)

(Parrot City) The dark side of the mining boom came to light tonight as contingents of local deputies, backed by Pinkerton agents and remnants of the Colorado State militia staged a midnight raid on brothels and opium dens here.

Their expenses paid by railroad interests the small but hallowed army was silent moments before the strike. They are one as the new abolitionists joined by a young reporter from this paper, a foul-smelling circuit judge and an anxious undertaker from Silverton. They move on the sweaty gulch under the eye of a band of Utes peering from the painted ponies of their last hurrah.

Not since the Civil War have such perverse conditions existed unchecked by civilized men. Upon entering the muddy hollow that has come to be named Parrot City it becomes apparent that one must keep a firm hold on anything of value.

Swaying residents, drunk from rapid fire fermentation, stand in the doorways of makeshift tar shacks watching for the slightest weakness, a blink, on the part of the regiment. A nickel for a beer. Four cents for a life.

The first order of business is to close down and torch the ramshackle Mule Billiards which doubles as a house of ill repute. Since January this dump has hosted several murders in its debauched halls. Miners, heavy with gold dust and momentarily rich in ore from surrounding claims are systematically fleeced here and then thrown out to the rutted streets to survive the frigid night in their skivvies.

Run by Polly Singleton, The Mule will be the first to go. Hallelujah. Watch it go up in flames. Watch the rats scurry to retrieve their lives as the flames creep higher into the frosty spring night. The sun seems to have stayed up in the sky just a wee bit longer to catch the finale. Ashes to ashes. Purification. On to the next den…

That same night there was gunplay out at the Shamrock Mine, some fourteen miles from the main from Sullivan’s Ditch where my father was last seen packing ore onto his bare-boned burro before the descent to the flats and on to the assay office over at Lake City. Some people here say he never made it down the mountain, that a slide got him and washed away his treasure. Others say he was bushwhacked by bandits that roamed the ragged heights. I believe they did him in and took his precious cargo of life. I’m certain his murderers sleep in Parrot City tonight.

When we reach Shamrock a loud explosion distracts us from our holy mission. Light in the sky. Handguns blaze. We return the fire. We can’t tell who is who. Now they’re all cold on the ground. We lost one of the Pinkertons to foot blisters but otherwise reported no casualties. After a meal of army rations we head back to town to continue sterile purge of the infested gambling halls.

The Chattanooga Saloon. Roulette wheels and keno. The devil’s picture book. Whiskey, soaked chips, courtesan champagne, tiny rooms of sin sag the ceiling above. Stains of the boom. Costumes of deplorable mirth!

One staggering poker face draws on a Pinkerton gun slinger. Dead-eye shot! He drops to the hard wood floor never again to shuffle a deck. Another thinks about it, fingering his leather holster but decides to exit through the back alley into the night.

We disarm the lot and detain wicked in the parlor awaiting further instructions from Rev. Chivington, who should be arriving from Capital City this very night.
But wait…they’re hanging the inmates of the Parrot City calaboose! They’ve had no trial! Shouldn’t we wait further…”The boys are just having a little fun,” says a former Union sergeant. “Let them be. We’ll cut ’em down after we’d scared them a bit,” slurs the judge.

Then it was on to the hash parlor, the China Belle opium den where men fancy the foggy dreams of demons and narcotic fantasy, wasting away until the dehydrated dawn comes looking for another handout. Unfortunately there is no one there. They have been warned of our coming and we set the block of leaning shanties ablaze in their absence. It makes a dandy roast on a cold morning. They called the district Parrot City’s Rec Center. The damned at play in the alpine meadows of the Lord!

The Pinkerton bullies are getting itchy for a fight. We’ve met little resistance in our attempts to muck out this hole. Several of the men are headed back down Corduroy Street in search of holdouts. Someone has set fire to the Chattanooga. I wonder did our prisoners get out or face hell’s own fire right here on earth? No report at mid-morning. Witches burned at the stake? The tools of their misdeeds the kindling of vengeance.

Out in the street it is clear that the victims of the necktie party are still in flight, dangling from the noose. Unclaimed souls stranded in space, scarecrows of the swift sword. Fodder of decorum.

Suddenly there is gunfire coming from the upstairs of the Henson Hotel. Somebody’s got a rifle up there. Three of our men are down bleeding in the dirt street. Another is hit.

“Take cover,” screams the sergeant himself holding his belly. “He’s up there,” points one of the deputies, close to tears at the scene. “I can see the rifle!”

The firing subsides and we began the tedious chore of closing in on the balcony assassin. Creeping slowly on all fours I slide along the cupola and into an empty hotel room. The exchange of fire continues, while in its lapses I can almost hear my target breathing through the thin walls of the 19th Century. I hug the hallway wall making my way through barricades as the shooting subsides. I force the door my revolver hip high. There’s no one there.

Surveying the room one more time. Then I pull my handkerchief as a flag of truce and carefully approach the open window. A flurry of bullets greets me there.

Waking up heavily bandaged in a hospital cart I scribble my story while the ghost of John Brown speaks to the righteous of our next engagement. They’ve got excitement in their eyes. A pretty nurse tells me I will likely survive my wounds.

Three weeks later Parrot City is up and running again, a new cast of characters roaming its seedy streets, the mines giving birth to mounds of the evil ore.

– Kashmir Horseshoe

Haliburton Sells North Dakota To Russian Energy Company

Western slope employer, oil field giant and fairly well-off defense contractor Haliburton recently sold North Dakota to the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom. The move has left Canadian negotiators stunned, as they felt they had been close to a deal to acquire additional rolling prairies, not to mention future pipeline right of way. In a surprise move, Haliburton shut Canada out of the deal, choosing to work with Gazprom instead.
Sources say that Canadian negotiators are steaming mad, as the whole thing was their idea in the first place.

‘Ya, sure. We figured that since nobody over there in Washington was paying much attention to anything, why, Canada might just be able to pick up some of that great Canadian top soil that we’ve been losing down south for years,” remarked Gordie Flambeau, chief Canadian negotiator.

“So, we struck up some talks with those guys over there at Haliburton, cause, gee, we’ve known ’em for years over there and they’re really smart fellas, and anyway, we told ’em what we were thinking. And so then those Haliburton guys, they said, ‘Heck, we pretty much own North Dakota but we really don’t need it anymore. Why don’t you crazy Canucks take North Dakota off our hands?’ So we said sure! Then next thing we know, our old friends over there at Haliburton sold North Dakota right out from under us, to the Ruskies no less. You can imagine that we are pretty darn disappointed.”

Sources from the U.S. State Department expressed some surprise that Haliburton had sold North Dakota and immediately questioned the appropriateness of the transaction. Following our explanation that corporate giant Haliburton had in fact recently sold the state of North Dakota to Russian energy company Gazprom for a twelve figure sum, a spokesman for the State Department indicated off-the-record that they would likely be filing an strong objection to the sale in coming weeks.

Gazprom has refused comment but has initiated armored truck and supply convoys through Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska to North Dakota, aka West St. Petersburg, from Galveston, Texas.  There is reason to believe that Vladimir Putin has scheduled a visit to the newly renamed West St. Petersburg in coming months. Putin has reputedly remarked, “I like to be owning North Dakota. I will ride horse and shoot giant grizzly bear like Teddy Roosevelt and wrestle Buffalo with bare hands.”

It is unclear whether North Dakota will retain its U.S. Congressional delegation, and sources tell us that Congressional officials are scrambling to recall the phone numbers of the North Dakota congressmen so that discussions can begin.