All Entries in the "Fractured Opinion" Category
Norwood Left Off World Map
(Wrights Mesa – Topo-Porno Maps Magazine – December 31, 2016)
Citizens are outraged here with the news that the own of Norwood has been left off the recently published Rand-McNally World Atlas.
“There will be hell to pay,” said one longtime resident.
While locales like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles were represented without issue by a large spot on the proceedings, Norwood was nowhere to be seen.
“We even got out the magnifying (spy) glass and reconnoitered the wide open spaces,” said Elf Manchuwski, a hardware/software entrepreneur headquartered up Thunder Basin. “And still we found no Norwood. This Rand McNally fellow is really playing with fire.”
Manchewski plans to circulate a petition in Norwood demanding a recall of “the defective atlases” and a written apology to the citizens of Norwood from Rand McNally. He would also like to get his picture in the Norwood Post.
Many here are particularly offended by the snafu in that McNally is likely related to the McNallys in Naturita, known Norwood haters and probably poachers.
“The pizza deliver guy smelled like patchouli oil and cheap gin. I hated him right away, hated him for everything I had no experienced out there on the road…but that has absolutely nothing to do with the story I am about to share with you tonight.”
-Rocky Flats
STUDENT KIOSK
Gunnison, CO December 29, 2016
The Western State Journalism Department will once again offer Home Letter Writing 101 on Thursday nights this fall according to “volunteer” instructor George Sibley. “This is in no way meant to be a review of the alphabet but more an attempt to motivate kids to write home to their parents,” said Sibley, “since that seems to be the source of the funding that keeps silly classes like this one afloat.”
Students and faculty alike are warned that a flood of Ernest Money has been circulating campus on since September 5. The counterfeit currency in question, a five-dollar Ernest Goes to Camp bill and several other denominations featuring Ernest Goes to Allepo and Ernest Goes to Free Community College are being passed to unsuspecting consumers as we speak. Luckily, more dangerous bills such as Ernest Gets a Hernia and an assortment of crisp new Gomer Pyle Joins the Marines bucks have disappeared in the vicinity of Webster Hall. Local police insist that either the bad bills have already been hauled out of town or that they have broken the largest counter- counterfeiting operation in history.
Students wishing to have their bikes stolen this fall are asked to park them in specially designated bike theft racks which are accessible to all local thieves who own a screwdriver or an ax. The bike racks are located at the entrance to all campus buildings and at major intersections throughout the city of Gunnison.
Director of the Hotel Management Department, Alan Cox, has announced a plan that would provide for the personal needs of students at WSC. Along with consultants Jerry and Dani Weinberg, Cox has perfected a new breed of hound which has a life expectancy of just 134 days. “This way students and ski vagabonds can have the companionship of a pet and not the responsibility of dealing with same at the end of their particular season.” Cox, owner of the Nordic Inn at Mount Crested Butte is not a rookie when it comes to the inventing racket. In 1978 he developed the first doggy dialysis system in which individual aid stations resembled fire hydrants.
An unnamed Western State student is in fair to stable condition Friday after consuming most of a 1959 Buick LeSabre. Melvin Toole, 22, of Lakewood reportedly ate the car as part of a bet. He is currently being held at St. Roscoe’s Hospital here and is expected to be released as soon as a succeessful oil change can be performed next week.
– Attila Diggins
Or perhaps a bowl of coal?
Sensitive Christmas observations from Real Alaska Magazine
Yuletide Duels #449
“Sir! You offend the feminine gender of the state of South Carolina with that careless talk of hoop skirts! I challenge you to a duel!”
And with the slap of a riding glove in Charleston, Count Marcourte set into motion a series of holiday duels unprecedented in American history. His opponent, a rank industrialist from Boston, was shot squarely through the forehead the next morning
A sellout crowd observed from a nearby hill.
The victim’s name was never clear. It was either Hazelrod or Hazelbloom, or something designating yellowish brown or worse. Count Marcourte had won the day and he revelled in his lopsided victory through the holiday season.
“No Yankee can hold a candle to a Southerner when it comes to combat,” said Marcourte. It was early June 1860.
The victorious count fought three more duels that year, winning all of them in the fine fashion displayed on that Charleston morning. In 1861, with the attack on Fort Sumter, Marcourte joined the Confederate Army and later lost an arm at Fredericksburg. After the war, he returned to the sport he loved so well and became a local legend as the finest one-armed dueler east of the Mississippi.
Finally, on Christmas Day 1879, Marcourte was struck between the eyes by an insubordinate clay brick of unknown origin. He lasted only moments.
NOT TAUGHT IN HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY CLASS
(Bogota Fun With Fruit Review December 10, 2016)
In 1928 The United Fruit Company (fruit company from Louisiana) had banana plantation in Colombia; and the workers organized a strike against them. They demanded written contracts, eight-hour work days, six-day work weeks and the elimination of food coupons. The strike was one of the biggest strikes in Colombian history, and many communistic and Liberal parties participated.
U.S. officials in Colombia, along with United Fruit representatives, portrayed the worker’s strike as “communist” with “subversive tendency”. In telegrams to the U.S. Secretary of the government, the United States of America threatened to invade with the U.S. Marine Corps if the Colombian government did not act to protect United Fruit’s interests.
An unknown number of workers died after the conservative government of Miguel Méndez sent the Colombian army to end the union. An army regiment from Bogotá was dispatched by the government to deal with the strikers, which it deemed to be subversive. Whether these troops were sent in at the behest of the United Fruit Company did not clearly emerge.
The troops set up their machine guns on the roofs of the low buildings at the corners of the main square, closed off the access streets, and after a five-minute warning opened fire into a dense Sunday crowd of workers and their wives and children who had gathered, after Sunday Mass, to wait for an anticipated address from the governor.
General Cortés Vargas, who commanded the troops during the massacre, took responsibility for 47 casualties. In reality, the exact number of casualties has never been confirmed. Herrera Soto, co-author of a comprehensive and detailed study of the 1928 strike, has put together various estimates given by contemporaries and historians, ranging from 47 to as high as 2,000. Survivors, popular oral histories and written documents give figures 800-3000 killed, adding that the killers threw them into the sea.
Residents Warned on Second Hand News
(Ridgway, CO — Unreliable Sources on Parade — December 3, 2016)
Public health officials here have issued a warning as to the dangers of inhaling second hand news accounts.
It has long been believed that facts, secrets and rumors floating along earth’s atmospheric wall were harmless, but new tests show that physical and mental damage often occur from prolonged exposure to indirect information and whispers meant for others. Sometimes these experiences can be fatal at least in the sense of logic and good taste.
“Although logic and good taste have taken a backseat with recent political upheavals we can still use these parameters to determine personal freedoms as compared to verbal intrusions and primal screams,” said Arnolt Worde, a semantic technician and survivor of America’s public schools.
The health people recommend avoiding exposure to secondary news especially in unventilated areas such as saloons and town meetings.
– Sue Nammi
