All Entries in the "Lifestyles at Risk" Category

RUMBLINGS FROM HELL

(Updated Version from 2012)

The scene: Scale model of Kilmainham Jail, Hades.

Jailer: “Oliver! You haven’t finished your lunch. We thought you liked rancid potato skins and maggot juice. You could be in for a long night without dinner. And look, your commode has overflowed. We’ll just call that nice Irish plumber, Mr. Murphy. I’m sure he’ll have the whole mess cleaned up as soon as possible. Oh, those despicable warts…They’ve taken a turn for the worse, haven’t they. You Puritans are so bad with the personal hygiene. Even Lucifer himself cannot stand the sight of you. Have you finished Ulysses yet? It’s your eternal punishment, you know. It was either that or De Valera’s speeches piped in on a 24-hour basis. You’ve had 100 years. They’ll be no dinner for you with that attitude.

(Later that day-Act II)

Jailer: Faith Oliver! You’ve tried to hang yourself again. Don’t you get it? You’re already dead and damned to eternal agony because of the way you acted on earth. Don’t you know that the Irish still spit when your name is uttered? What a legacy…driving the Irish off nine-tenths of their own land then making it illegal for them to buy Irish land in Ireland. Oh but that’s all water under the bridge, heh? Wouldn’t you like a nice cool black and tan? Sorry we just ran out! Ha!  There…there. Here’s your Horatio Nelson statue compliments of the IRA men who blew it up just a few years ago. That should make you happy…or at least help digest your Sinn Fein stew. Good news! You’re getting a roommate. It’s John Chivington from Colorado. You probably met in the de-lousing line. He’s the guy that murdered all the unarmed Arapahoe at San Creek quite a time ago. We hope you get along better than you did with Joe or Adolph. What’s that Oliver? God save the Queen? Yeah, well, she’s over in minimum security. See, while she was admittedly a cold, heartless beast, she fell short of cold-blooded murder in the name of religion. I’ve got to tend to the other prisoners, Oliver. Keep your head about you, you know your one of the devil’s favorites. All the shawlies say: The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. Maybe you could reflect on that one. You’ve got nothing but time.

(That evening)

Satan: I understand, sir, that you have registered a complaint and we Puritans have to stick together, heh? Saints preserve us! Oliver…It’s hot as the blazes in here. What happened to your air conditioning? What? It went out in 1658? Don’t despair, there’s got to be a working fan around here some place…I’ll be right back.

Paper Pledges to Investigate Fictitious Characters

(Ouray) Editors at a local paper here have promised to step-up background checks on an assortment of fictitious characters. It is feared that many of the made-up personalities, that wander the streets of Ouray, and the pages of the San Juan Horseshoe may be wanted felons, suspected terrorists and other deviants deserving of justice.

In the past the paper has not taken these personalities seriously seeing them as simply fictitious, with silly names, incapable of acting on their own. But now, with increased security, phone tapping, detainments and sophisticated witch hunts it has become clear that these pretend people could be a threat.

“We’ve got flags up everywhere so nobody will think we’re not cooperating with King George,” said one editor. “No one is beyond suspicion.”

Critics of the paper say the investigations are only a smoke screen aimed at taking heat off a bucolic editorial policy centered on little or nothing. In defense of policy, one editorial page piece suggests that the American people have been in the political darkroom for so long that they “can no longer tell boiled eggs from electric eels.”

“It’s the perfect opportunity to show our patriotism,” said the editor. “We are in compliance with the federal charade. They make it look like they have matters in hand. We make it look like we’re getting tough with pretend people. Everybody’s happy. The nice thing here is that we don’t have to have executions or military tribunals–We just stop writing about them and they just go away.”

In a related development many in the local media here favor a plan that would put burned-out INS agents in more manageable positions in federal airport security.

“Despite the fact that the agency failed miserably in the area of security prior to September 11 we think they’ll make a fine addition to our newly emerging team,” said one former INS agent turned metal detection specialist. “OK, so a few dozen terrorists slipped by us at the border…that don’t make us bad people.”

Sources at The Horseshoe told reporters that all of its fictitious characters have legal alien status with current visas updated.

Coming up: Executives at the paper plan to form a inter-office agency dubbed Operation Paper Cut, to combat terrorism in the office.

– Lawrence Elk

Who are these Gauchos?

While the real cowboy in Western Colorado is diminishing, his South American cousin the Gaucho is going strong. Here we see our norte traditions falter with the emergence of gentlemen ranchers, drug store cowpunchers and urban refugees riding the range. On the fertile pampas it’s still all spurs and saddles, cows and campfires.

Rodeo in Montevideo, Uruguay, 2012

My friend Sergio runs a 2000-acre estancia that is primarily a cattle operation, but caters to tourists from all over the world during the summer months. He cuts quite a pose when he comes into Punta del Diablo for some Friday night beer drinking. Sergio is no slouch in the fashion department. He’s dressed in a crisp, long-sleeve white shirt, riding breeches tucked into his high boots, black beret, his bola hanging and a tarantula mustache waxed “especially for the ladies”. He’s thirsty after a week on the pampas and despite his ultra-carnivorous diet on the range, you can bet he’ll be looking for a steak before the night is over.

“If a Gaucho doesn’t get at least one steak a day he loses his magical powers,” he laughs, “and he has to take up fishing,” he cracks, loud enough for the adjoining table full of pescadores (commercial fishermen) to hear him. “If things really get bad he might even have to look into newspaper work,” he smiles at me, making sure he insults everyone in earshot equally.

Actually the perennial gentleman, he is also my impeccable source on the Gaucho culture, since his family goes back generations in these rolling grasslands near the sea. His great grandfather was even a payador (a wandering minstrel) when he wasn’t trading in contraband or herding cows. Often quiet and observant, my friend cannot shut up when the subject of the Gauchos is on the table.

Today Sergio is traveling in the company of some rough looking hombres that he says are his primos from over in Brasil. They quickly warm to the idea of this gringo writing about their culture. Beers and women are given no quarter as our table gets louder and louder but, since Walter, the bar owner, is drinking with us, nobody can do much about the decibel levels. Soon the singing starts and serenades the dirt-street town and the moonlight sparkling on the Atlantic, just a stroll from our perch. Then, as if on cue, my equally rowdy neighbor, now Uruguayan resident from Western Ireland, shows up and there’s more singing and toasts.

The first trace of the Gaucho in Uruguay was as early as 1600 when they were seen by polite Argentine society as ruffians. The word gaucho was not complimentary yet these cowpunchers were not to be denied. When the flatlands began to be overpopulated with Cimarron cattle, brought from Spain by Pedro de Mendoza, the gauchos began their coming out party. They quickly became an integral part of the global leather industry which was floating the boats of many in southern South America in those days..

“They didn’t even like the way we cooked and ate beef,” said Sergio, “and now the population embraces the asado as part of everyday life. Strangely it was the influx of immigrants from Europe and not the caudillos (the New World born Spanish) that embraced the romance inherent to the gaucho way of life in the early 18th Century. My family most likely came from the Basque country by way of the Canary Islands long before that,” he explained, “but we’re pretty sure we got mixed up with the Guarani (the prevalent indigenous tribe in southern Brasil) and probably the Charrua (a fierce now extinct group that inhabited Uruguay when the Spanish first arrived). The origins are not clear since our history was primarily verbal and everyone was to busy trying to survive to keep score.”

Most of the gauchos from these pampas could easily pass for a Basque herdsman in Colorado.

“We’re not too tall but we pack a punch,” he laughed. “When I was in Spain I was mistaken for Basque at every turn which usually worked out well. A lot of the people I met on the Iberian Peninsula  thought the Gauchos had all but disappeared. I was there to set them straight. We’re here and we’re healthy!

“We’re still not much different than the undomesticated cattle that escaped from the Spanish in the 15th Century. We don’t live in town or on the farm. We have a strong identity and strict code of conduct. We like to play cards, drink mate and fight.

Does that sound like someone you know in Colorado? All we have to do is substitute a little camp coffee for the mate and we got a Rocky Mountain cowboy, chaps, Stetson and dead to rights.

– Manuel Flushe

Mountain Gigolo Ring Broken

(Crested Butte) A sex for money operation spanning five counties has been brought to its knees this week thanks to some dandy undercover work by local vice squads. The ring, a classic escort venture, is said to involve more than 30 men between the ages of 55 and 65 who allegedly prey on unsuspecting women in their twenties. Some members of this illicit cartel are reportedly engaged in all forms of gov’ment and commerce including trash pickup and news reporting.

“These disreputable scalawags were making a killing before we moved in,” said one vice officer all the ay from the Bland Valley. “Imagine seducing beautiful young women with gray-headed charm for profit. How sick.”

The officer smiled when asked why he was in Gunnison County fighting the “optional unchaste” when the meth-amphetamine epidemic rages in the low “red state” areas of the region, saying only “That’s how puritanism works.”

The ring looks to have been most active in Third World ski resorts.

“Many of our most wanted felons have vamoosed and are now living under the protection of business associate in South America and Utah where these kind of problems are settled on the local level.

“Many of these desperate creatures have engaged in these behaviors due to some twisted belief that they needed the money to retire to the suburbs and live in baited communities where they could fish everyday,” said one local woman who is credited with blowing the initial whistle on the ring.

Despite the year-long investigation none of the law enforcement personnel involved can verify any complaints on the part of the targeted clientele.

– Kashmir Horseshoe

READING COMPREHENSION #611:

The following is a short test of one’s ability to understand and analyze prose.

READ THIS SEGMENT ONLY ONCE OR

FACE DISQUALIFICATION AND FORFEIT ALL PRIZE MONEY!

A bear and a rabbit sat on a log deep in the forest. The bear felt a great bowel movement coming on but was out of toilet paper. He turned to the rabbit and asked, “Do you have problems with things sticking to your fur?”

     The suspicious rabbit asked why and then scurried away leaving the bear to his own devices, which most likely would have been a bush or some bark. The angry bear muttered, “You just can’t count on those damn rabbits when you need them.”

a.) What did the bear mean by things?

b.) Are bears really all that concerned with personal hygiene?

c.) What happens if a bear, or other hibernating mammal has to go in the middle of the winter?

d.) Do rabbits and bears actually converse?

e.) Would the bear had been better off just grabbing the rabbit, without all the chatter?

Send your answers to Wabbit Editor, San Juan Horseshoe, Box 1209 Ouray, CO 81427. If we use your response on our site we’ll give you a free subscription, a free T-shirt and a free roll of toilet paper. No phone calls please.

The Beer Pilcher of Granada

The Hotel Alhambra occupies almost a block right in the middle of the Granada, across from Parque Central. The terrace potential here is high even if the service is the slowest in all of Nicaragua. After a day roaming dusty streets, followed by a swim with the freshwater sharks along the Las Isletas del Mar Dulce (Lake Nicaragua), a cold Victoria beer sounds like heaven.

The hotel terrace offers shade, well-worn comfort, cheap drinks, great local cuisine and an engaging (May I practice my bad English on you?) staff. It is the ultimate perch from which to observe the nightly neotropical parade in a fascinating city bent on forgetting decades of economic and civil strife, compounded, sadly, the policies of my own country.

The brightly painted walls of yellow and blue are accentuated by hordes of ancient vines, orchids, and vivid hanging flower baskets. The high ceilings, abstract art in chipped paint, create a subtle vertigo while the ceramic acoustics of the tiled palace chime the melodious Guardabarranco and Carlos Mejia Godoy.

The entire patio is one step up from the street and is encompassed by an imposing rail to keep the great unwashed from bothering the paying customers. Expanding the radius are struggling palm trees, the nearby lake, horse and carriage operatives, the aroma of frying fish, loud music, walled stucco houses, skinny dogs, pleasant people and crowded passageways wrapped around a 16th Century cathedral.

Delirious traffic in dilapidated chariots circles around and around the park acting out some mad petroleum mating ritual, horns keeping time with a torrid, indistinguishable beat.  Across the avenue enterprising venders sell anything from hash pipes to baby alligators. They have long ceased daily commerce and have headed home for the night. I have been warned to avoid the park after these hawkers have gone. Already a seedy element has emerged, preparing to propagate business after dark, intent on another crap shoot of drug sales, petty theft, outright robbery, muggings and chronic drunkenness.

Poverty and tourism have never melded to anyone’s satisfaction.

But I’m on the proverbial sunny side of the street or so it seems with the combo-neon and florescent patio lights turned up to fine print levels. A world away from the park, I enjoy another Victoria with a snifter of 12-year-old Flor de Cana  rum, arguably the best rum in the Free World (which of course does not include bad ol’ Cuba). The British couple sitting to my left is much impressed with the pungent black bean and garlic soup (another treat from evil Cuba) while three local merchants smoke trophy  puros (cigars), offering me one which I accept with a short referendum on my provenance. At the far end of the terrace banister are thee laughing tourists from Managua, who have accumulated at least 15 bottles under their table, an effective method for calculating beer purchases.

That’s when I spot him. He stands out from the others. This guy looks the rough, crude menace but somehow less threatening from afar. He’s big for a Niacaraguan. He meticulously picks through the treasures in the park’s austere trash bins, discarding pieces then angrily kicking over the can. Underprivileged  garbage, dissipated fruits of the poor displayed in skeletal wire and grungy bins. I saw him sitting on a bench at the plaza talking to himself earlier. On second examination he appears almost harmless compared to some of the other toughs that circulated here. Just another shabby street man eyeballing the hotel porch. I look away yawning, stretching, ordering another beer.

He crosses the street but fades into the shadows only to surface at the far end of the block. Passing slowly by the terrace after several reconnaissance missions he suddenly swoops down like a parched falcon grabbing a glass of beer off the British table and drinking it in a gulp, setting the glass carefully down afterwards. He sets his sights on another beer, from the merchants table this time, and slams it down as well, gently replacing the bottle on their table. He then runs off happily between the alley’s hourly hotels, the abandoned language institute and the designated pickpocket staging zone.

I laugh to myself not wanting to appear entertained by the intrusions. The merchants do not appear particularly perplexed peering over at me with that only in Granada look, sans surprise. They shake their heads. The Brits are at first amused, then irritated, then amused again. Their eyes wander the terrace searching for some logical explanation, finding none. Is he part of the all-inclusive experience?

Moments later I catch his movements back along the rail. This time he grabs a bottle of Victoria off the Managua tourists’ table and drains it. That tipsy table is not quite sure who drank what. They call the waiter who comes running with one of his fellows and they throw the beer thief to the ground with the fury of Volcan Mombacho. Nothing personal…but he is fouling up the sacred serve and volley of gratuity. He escapes and returns to the badlands of the park and looks at us yelling, “Beer belongs to the people!”

I have to admit I am enjoying his antics with every cold Victorian that goes down. The waiters apologize to the victims and replace their beers. They even brought me a free beer after I expressed outrage and threatened to write a bad review on the place in The San Juan Horseshoe en los Estados Unidos. No one seems all that ruffled.

But this beer guerrilla is the real deal. This stalwart boozehound, this dry debunker, this macquerau guzleir may be more than what meets the eye. He’s a force. His clownish persistence cries out to be recognized. The man is a talent. The cat burglar of cold beer!

He doesn’t try to steal beer from me. Perhaps I could be trouble. Perhaps there are easier marks. Considering my sense of fashion and attention to hygiene that particular evening the man probably figured I too stole what I have and was intent on drinking it. I have actually had street people come up to me in South America and offer me their coats on a cold night. Maybe we are kind or at least kindred…

I finish another beer and move to the relative safety of a table next to the kitchen door where I can chronicle the action while avoiding future larceny. This bullish pilcher won’t get my beer.

“He won’t be back,” a waiter announces brushing his hands of the incident. “He won’t dare pull that stunt again.”

Yes he will.

I watch as the conversation returns and beers disappear down appropriate throats. The table I vacated is now occupied by three Nortes with backpacks. They order Victorias and quesillos (braided Mozzarella cheese served in a warm tortillas swimming in onions and cream) and sit back innocently while noisy hookers come out for a stroll. Hunched behind them is our beer thief himself, who is now spouting on about the glories of Sandino right there in ultra-conservative downtown Granada, trampling on nostalgia, and interrupting the colonial ambience of it all. I order another beer, ignoring his gaze but watchful, digging in for the rest of the performance.

The curtain reopens with the same sly grin, the slithered walk, the thirsty demeanor. He promenades by the terrace once more, the dirty, demented hops high jacker. He grabs a beer off the Norte table and drains it with the refined movements of a jaguar. The backpackers are stunned and in the momentary chaos he takes anarchistic license to drink another, without spilling so much as a drop. Then its the same delicate trademark return of the bottles to the table where they had been.

“Down with capitalism!” he cries as the cook and several bouncers grab him and roughly toss him into the street oblivious to freebooter traffic, jagged cobblestones and road apples. One of the burly men then punches him lightly, exhorting a muffled threat. He is gone.

Stunned, the Brits and one of the local businessmen join me at my redoubt by the kitchen. We are all now completely regaled by the heists. The tourists from Managua call it a night and the backpackers sit clutching their beers. I quietly indulge in my good fortune. I have yet to fall to these pranks. I feel cocky and worldly, bullet-proof and quite sophisticated. We order food, paella, avocado salad and fried plantains. The talk turns to the country’s turbulent past and hopeful future.

The British couple applaud me for my attentive vigil in the face of dangerous beer snatchers. The merchant does too inviting me to her shop the next day.

A traveler such as you who pays attention has nothing to worry about when visiting Nicaragua,” she smiled.

“When I am in unfamiliar terrain I try to remain alert,” I smiled back, showcasing my lunchroom Spanish and my alleged survival instincts.

“You have to appreciate the man’s persistence. There is a man who knows what he wants and how to get it,” I jive.

The conversation stopped upon further commotion in the kitchen. Moments later our beer man was hurled through the swinging doors to the floor chased by the owner and the bouncers. They were sweating and did not appear amused. He had apparently been hiding in the freezer knawing on a side of beef and breaking eggs against the side of the cooler. Despite his near strangling and his bouncing off the concrete floor he was still moving.

He looked up at me pathetically. I didn’t know what to do or think. Here’s this poor thirsty creature about to get his ass kicked who couldn’t give a damn either way. Sad. A tragic world…Just another day in the life…

Then with one desperate grasp he laughs and grabs my beer from the table and, despite his unfortunate horizontal posture sucked it dry.

“My beer!” I cried, as our ardent guest of dishonor was then most indignantly escorted out the front to destinations unknown. Smiles emerged as our dinner arrived.

“I certainly hope all this beer stealing doesn’t create some international incident,” says the merchant. “We’ve had enough problems with your country over the years,” she chides.

“Can I buy you a beer?” laughs one of the Brits. “That was a Victoria, right? They are really quite popular tonight.” – Kevin Haley