All Entries in the "Lifestyles at Risk" Category
Blue Mesa Mermaids Tough Lot
(Gunnison) The local year-round mermaid population is composed of some “rough and ready gals” according to boatmen and nautical observers here. Not only do they co-exist, eluding bothersome fishermen and hungry Mackinaw, but they handily survive the brutal winters on these stark, windy shores.
Unlike the more “wimpy species” that inhabit the Ridgway Reservoir, Lake San Cristobal and Miramonte the Blue Mesa Mermaids exist in a tightly controlled symbiotic society where group survival is paramount.
The aquatic humanoid sirens of the sea do exist, although are generally salt water creatures according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration . How this colony of fresh water mermaids evolved is a mystery still unsolved.
The expanding colony has been part of the ecosystem since 1966 when the dam project was completed. Mermaids here refrain from eating meat, staying up late and cavorting with humans, especially the male variety.
“These ladies don’t even socialize with the fish much less talk to men,” said a marine biologist on loan from the Rocky Mountain Biological Weapons Laboratory in nearby Gothic. “Despite what may appear to constitute a major frustration in the onset, most mermaids say thy live simpler lives without social entanglements.
“Most men are hopeless bores interested only in the kitchen and the bedroom,” said Sarah Finne, a human who has lived with the mermaids for 20 years. “These ladies rarely produce offspring so the colony relies on recruits from other groups and an occasional human. The transformation is a tedious process and most times it ends in disaster. I have lived here for two decades and I am just now beginning to grow a tail and breath properly.”
Finne went on to say that most initial recruits are women who are searching for adventure and those rebounding from failed romantic endeavors. Many have had surface relationships and deep water realities do not always coincide. Due in part to survival instincts and and a keen sense of social order, the majority of these recruits don’t make it past the first swim.
Local women are agin reminded that post-snagging season is the most opportune time to approach the Blue Mesa Colony.
“One can view the mermaids lounging on the shore after the hunters have gone home,” said Finne. Sessions run full or half days. I suggest warm clothing and an open mind.”
– Popeye Manatee
Artificial Intelligence
Be careful what you wish for
The other day I had to be taught how to open a newly acquired umbrella here in my cloud forest winter home. I had hardly ever used one, in fact had rarely even seen one since I’ve spent the majority of my life in the parched highlands of Western Colorado.
This inability to embrace and comprehend new technology will stand as exhibit one if anyone out there wishes to analyze the level of my cognitive processing.
Hey, I’m open to change when it is beneficial and valid. I do not embrace mindless digital beeping or scanning codes to order my lunch (with built in tipping suggestions to boot) I will not use auto checkouts at the grocery (for even a stalk of celery) since these “time saver” devices are another lunge in the attempts by Big Corp to eliminate jobs. I don’t care about the new McDonald’s menu or how Wal-Mart is saving me money since I have never consumed one or been in one, respectively.
While it may be true that I conduct business with cash and take the slow, back roads to town, I am not against change. Admittedly I don’t get all that excited about indoor plumbing unless it is a particularly cold day, and it is true that I did not sleep for weeks after the National League adopted the designated hitter rule.
Some see these conveniences as progress. I see them as anti-human. Artificial Intelligence arrives at the door in an era when society already offers too much that is artificial.
From my initial investigation AI falls into the much ado about nothing category. Does this allegedly new power dynamic simply duplicate Google or enhance GPS? Does it allow machines to think like people or encourage people to think like machines? I guess in systems analysis and rapid data collection it is a breakthrough but for most people it seems just another intrusion.
AI cannot feel, create, adapt or engage in moral reasoning. It has no heart and no soul. But maybe modern humanity places no value on these faculties.
AI has no scent, so dogs cannot detect it and cats can’t sleep in it on the window sill. Bees can’t pollinate it. Horses can’t eat it and birds can’t target it. We have yet to determine how it is received by fish or lower primates.
It methodically tracks, even stalks us too. Case in point: I told my bank I was going to be out of the country for three months and I wanted to make sure there were no geographic glitches in my debit card use. They told me not to worry “AI knows where you are.”
If there is a god of artificial intelligence he/she must be petitioned now!
Thank goodness satirical writing is reportedly not on the firing line with AI, but will our newly empowered humans be capable of digesting this and other art forms in the near future?
-Fred Zeppelin
Next month: “How I made my first million with AI”
What embarrasses you the most about following pro football?
Results of Horseshoe NFL Survey
11% I gave up on this waste of time years ago
18% incompetent referees
33% self-absorbed idiots dressing like clowns at games
29% semi-illiterate sportscasters who are obsessed with mindless statistics
and do not even comprehend the essence of adverbs.
6% Watching football is a choice. No one is forcing anyone to do so.
2 % They cut off my TV so I don’t know who is doing what to whom.
Bonus question:
If the Broncos are so desperate for tight ends why did they pass on Harold Fanning Jr.?
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Gulf of Mexico Satirists Meet
Disenfranchised satirists, some carrying picts and farm implements, are said to be meeting at secret locations-primed for the coming jousts all over the planet. Gut feelings of many contend that the storm is not just on the horizon but way over the rainbow.
News twisters and union mockers reacted to the rumors that oil has been discovered on Mars and water on the Earth’s only moon with only slight smiles and sighs as if to say “Please. Not again.”
An emerging aw suit against what they call the American Taliban claims deprivation of livelihood, mental stress and hair loss. The satirists say Congressional Republicans and the White House have seized the parody baton and kept them from plying their trade.
“How do I get anyone to be astonished, to ponder, or even to giggle after they’ve seen posters of trump plastered all over the place?” said one lampooner who has taken to his bed and watches Humphrey Bogart films in an attempt to regain his composure.
“These people are more absurd than we could ever make them in words or gestures. It would be funny if they weren’t in charge of the gov’ment.”
“It is difficult to make fun of people who are already head over heels, the classic clowns of the town. When incompetence, arrogance and greed are the rules of thumb, there is no wiggle room for the index finger or even an innocent pinkie,” said Professor B. Esteric Peawit BMI, ASCAP, BFD. LSMFT, of the Good Enough Gulch Peawits, and Visiting Fellow at Stinking Desert Middle School and Accelerated Graduation Institute.*
“Reagan was fun even, in dementia. Clinton was even better with his perverted taste in women. George W was a riot waiting to happen while Obama offered up an easy target. Even Joe Biden (the Gerald Ford of the Modern Age) allowed satirists and late night hosts enough leeway to laugh up one’s sleeve. In the interim, trump can’t take a joke and his followers miss the opportunity to digest the irony inherent to exaggerated critique or ridicule. Teasing is out. Kissing ass is in.”
“Yeh, that too,” chimed the first lampooner.
Consider these presidential satire bullseyes:
Richard Nixon’s jaw and pointed nose
Gerald Ford’s golfball assaults on others at Vail
Jimmy Carter’s toothy smile and his brother Billy
Reagan’s pompadour, jelly beans and Nancy
George senior Bush’s CIA whine and his son Neil
Bill Clinton’s taste in White House aides
Little George’s difficulty with the English language. “Nucular”
Obama’s White House basketball court
Joe Biden’s German Shepherds
Donald trump’s orange hair, fouled family, greed and racism.
*Professor Peawit was recently dismissed from her position as head of the Body Chemistry and Hand Anatomy Department after the school’s night janitor repeatedly discovered her sleeping in her locker in the teacher’s lounge.
-Kashmir Horseshoe
“If you were wondering how bad these Epstein files are, turns out they’re ‘invade Venezuela’ bad.” — JIMMY KIMMEL
All in one bitter pill to swallow
In our frustrated and often impossible attempts to avoid giving attention to bad children, we have clumped together an offscouring of observations about the man who would be king. We promise to limit mention of this situation for at least the week.
tRUMP SOUL SNATCHERS BUSY TRYING TO OUT-PIG* EACH OTHER
(Whiteyville) trump policies are flat out empty, like hollow bottles of Jim Beam at the dump. His constant lies, which kill innocent people in “shit holes” all over the world are a fine blend of arrogance, racism and incompetence. He has surrounded himself with sadists and psychopaths who have not a clue. His policies are dictated by the last person who held his attention. How long before these victims and their families forgive the US? Decades? Maybe if we just send them some cash they’ll shut up.
SICK OF SEEING HEADLINES THAT START WITH tRUMP
From now on we will refer to the President as Humpty as in Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…”Also we will use small t when referring to any bloated narcissists and autocratic child molesters that are mentioned in these dispatches. Most fascist regimes love to use the magic word terrorist to condone and justify violence against anyone who gets in their way. trump’s friends, the illegitimate Israeli settlers on West Bank are the real terrorists. How can Israelis dwell on victimhood and kill other Semitic peoples so indiscriminately? (Oh sorry to bust lingering bubbles but Palestinians are Semitic, as was Jesus Christ, albeit of the Jewish variety. He never demolished the houses of his neighbors, even them Hummus type sons-a-bitches).
trump Security Advisor Steven “America for Americans” Miller
is in fact the spawn of Eastern European Jews, yet he detests immigrants. It all began at the turn of the 20th century, in a dirt-floor shack in the village of Antopol, a shtetl of subsistence farmers in what is now Belarus. Beset by violent anti-Jewish pogroms and forced childhood conscription in the Czar’s army, the patriarch of the shack, Wolf-Leib Glosser, fled a village where his forebears had lived for centuries and took his chances in America. (After several generation little Steven popped out.
Pro wrestling bouts on the way at trump-Kennedy? To replace sissy art say MAGA toadies
Empty seats are like an empty promises. Many artists plan to continue the boycott. Will they end up in El Salvadoran prisons too?
tRUMP IS AGENT ORANGE SAYS RUSSIAN DEFECTOR
“Just color your hair and you too can inherit millions from the father who never said,” I love you Donald”
Some of you remember Hair, the musical wizardry weaving of every last crumb and nuance of the hippie subculture of the 60s? In 2026 we have a 5th Columnist President with orange hair who thinks he too is a genius (see dunning-kruger effect). Remember: Many Italian voters loved Mussolini at first until the things went to hell in a Sicilian donkey cart.Is trump hobbling the nation in preparation for hostile takeover. A 5th Columnist? The Manchurian Candidate? A billionaire Bolshevik yet to come out of the closet? Question:Was the US safer and better equipped to deal with global diplomacy, even with Joe Biden asleep at the wheel, than with a beached whale at the helm?
Tom Homan’s Christmas Special will grace new w-house ballroom in Spring.
Popular tunes include “How to slither and take a bribe on camera and still keep your job”, “Why him not in the calaboose?” And “I may be ugly but I just deposited $50,000”
“Though I tend to think it’s usually a waste of space to devote a column to President Trump’s personality — what more is there to say about the character of this petty, hollow, squalid, overstuffed man? — sometimes the point bears stressing: We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House.”
-Bret Stephens, an American conservative columnist.writing in The NY Times
*(Ed note: Out-pig accepted by Websters coincidently at the beginning trump’s second term in office. Replaces the word empathy. (What is a 5-letter word for the dominant suit in bridge/euchre or a showboat racist on 14 down on your winter crossword puzzle?).
For peripheral stories, and a bit of comic relief, please see 10 Ways to reinvent yourself as more Caucasian and Why senile white men really make the best leaders on our “Opinions are Like Noses” page.
