All Entries in the "Lifestyles at Risk" Category
Making fun of lepers in bad taste
EDITORIAL
Hey, I like a good laugh as well as the next guy but making sport of lepers goes too far. Just the other day we witnessed this kind of abuse with a rock throwing incident in one of our National Forests where lepers had camped for the night. Sure, you may not want to camp near them but there is no call for violence. This is ugly. What will these lepers tell their friends back home about their vacation in Colorado?
The refusal of one visitor to rent a jeep after it had been used by a leper is nothing short of malicious and reprehensible. Name calling, metaphorical and otherwise, is inexcusable.
Granted, we do not have a sizable leper population but the ones we do have should be respected.
Don’t these people have enough with which to contend without insult and injury hurled from fellow humans? Bigotry aimed at these unfortunates is ignorant and hateful. It is the offspring of misunderstandings and fears generated by parents, schools and society as a whole. Like it or not, lepers are just like you and I and deserve a break. After all they don’t generally create problems. Most hide out from the sunshine in black timber redoubts far away from the threats of the modern populace. Most love their dogs. Most pay taxes. Most are not to blame for their condition.
Now we’re not suggesting you sleep with one or share toothbrushes but at least allow them to breathe the air, smell the roses, wash their raggedy clothing in streams and rivers and live out their pathetic lives. A complete cure for leprosy, but not stupidity, is right around the corner.
– Kashmir Horseshoe
For a related news piece see “Lepers Banned from Local Streams Until Fall” on Page 49
“We do not want to sell a foot of our land. That is the opinion of all. The Whites can come and take gold and then leave. We do not want them to build houses here.” – “Chief” Ouray
Colona Demands Variance
Designated clairvoyants in Colona are demanding a variance calling for relocation of Colona and a rewind of Highway 550. They say the increased intrusions of the modern world are a threat to the fragile and protected Wildcat Creek Cultural Zone — past, present and future.
“We need to distance ourselves from deep state asphalt, traffic noise, chuckholes, rogue moose, cheeky flatlanders and shallow thinking on these matters,” snapped a Committee for Public Safety member. “We won’t rest until the powers that be in the county lend an era to our undertaking.”
“Any diversion as to the quantity equal to the square of the standard deviation could set off a mad skedaddle for safety nets,” said a county official. “Do you think we’re just gonna sit here and let our black sheep cousin dictate policy?”
Colona is now officially at variance with other hamlets, real and imagined, in the region.
“CDOT Maps and documents are not cohesive with Uncompahgre topo maps or what the river does in the middle of the night when everyone is fast asleep,” explained the architect of the specified variance* requests. “After a century of digging there may be man-made cirques, deep shafts and meandering stope excavations under the whole valley. What happens when it all caves in? Colona seeks to be on the right side of history here.”
“If we can’t get the attention of them up in Ouray we’ll join the West End,” he cranked. “That’ll fix their wagons.”
– Uncle Pahgre
Former Nuggets sixth man, Bruce Brown, is slated to earn $44 million on a two-year contract with the Pacers: $100,000 to play basketball the remaining salary ($43,900,000 for living in Indianapolis).
“Basically the purpose of life is happiness.”
– Dalai Lama
*A variance is a way that cities may allow an exception to part of a zoning ordinance. It is a permitted departure from strict enforcement of the ordinance as applied to a particular piece of property. A variance is generally for a dimensional standard (such as setbacks or height limits). A variance allows the landowner to break a dimensional zoning rule that would otherwise apply.
Link Poised to cast deciding vote in caucus bottleneck
(Washington) The Missing Link could be in hot water this week, faced with casting a potentially deciding vote establishing the prominence of artificial intelligence in government.
One of thousands of Congressional committees, that has been studying UFOs, aliens, card tricks and trickle down fiscal theories could not come up with a majority and decided to yield The Link, a recognized expert on the subject.
A savior to some and a villain to others, The Link expressed surprise and concern that it would “all have to be up to me.” On the run from researchers and scientists for decades the Link has been forced to employ an array of disguises from Hitler to Little Bo Peep.
His tragic, often disjointed career as half super hero and half boogeymen, has further shrouded attempts to communicate with the authorities, landing him on the terrorist list in 2009. An illegal entry (to attend a favorite niece’s wedding) into the US culminated in a high-speed chase, roof-top escapades, a far-fetched alibi, a little mountainy know-how and a plethora of other hyphenated words.
Despite expensive police dragnets and a reward of over half a million dollars The Link remains on the lamb, enjoying life, eating out and romancing.
Although never serving at an elected post, The Link reportedly ran 15 democracies and 3 dictatorships between the Mystery Years (1956-1996) when he was believed to be living in Miami.
Readers are asked to contact police if they see anyone fitting the description of The Link.
-Small Mouth Bess
PUTIN Reportedly DEAD
(Queens, NY) Ukranian neighborhoods here are abuzz with rumors that Vladimir Putin is dead. Celebrations circulate the summer concrete heralding the blessed event. Plots drift from a vile of Cossack poison to a small Stalin-era detention device planted carefully amid his flowing boxers.
“Boom!” gestures a chubby Slavic shopkeeper smiling. “Boom!”
Some say he is already scoped out his resting place somewhere in the vast expanse of Siberia, next to Peter the Great and his beloved Russian chihuahua, Mao. Meanwhile happy funeral goers appear to be enjoying the exchanges of information, true or not.
Others say he stumbled on slippery 16th century Czarist tiles or fell off his secret, high-security throne. More creative accounts hold that he was repeatedly dunked in his bathwater by a swarthy Taliban assassin “until he drowned like a rat”.
This photo, reputedly smuggled out of Russia shows funeral of bigwig thought to be our friend Vladimir Putin.
Insiders insist he has been dead since early 2016.
“They have several autocratic guys who look like Putin, dress like Putin,” said a refugee from Crimea. “Think about it–Many of them look like Putin–White, bvalding, paranoid…Did I mention White?”
“Even his reputed girlfriend couldn’t tell the difference,” cackled one woman from her perch at a local bar.
She further contends that Soviet-like invasions have gone poorly because Russian munitions factories are cranking out foolish Cardboard cutouts of Russian leader instead of bullets.
“Putin was never top gun anyway.” says my golfing buddy, a serious student of living history.
He says if Putin had really been the Man he’d have been snuffed out by other mafia figures unhappy with his early performance in Ukraine.
These claims have been heatedly disputed by the Kremlin and locally by history department heads at Jerry Lewis University in Durango.
-Kashmir Horseshoe
