All Entries in the "Reflections on Disorder" Category
DOG HAIR PREVENTS PUBLICATION
(Manana, CO — Looking Back to 1985 — April 22, 2016
A sudden and alarming abundance of dog hair has been blamed for the absence of the popular San Juan Horseshoe from the proletariat news racks last month.
The canine hair, weighing in at just under 112 pounds, is said to have clogged up everything from typewriters to pencil sharpeners to printers to fax machines. The mammal strands even invaded the paper clip box (the lifeblood of this and any other newssheet worth its salt.).
Comparing the disaster to mohair in one’s martini publishers promised that someday soon the paper would be on-line and no longer subject to ink, water, cantankerous printing presses and yes, per hair. Meanwhile in the darkroom filters broke down in the mayhem leaving feet of dog hair in an area built for inches. The situation in the composing room was far worse.
At first the editor banned all dogs from the offices on press day only to realize that if employees could not bring their dogs to work they would quit.
“Then I’d be putting out the issue by myself,” said Belle Toole, Under Editor.
According to a dated memo the only pets allowed in the editorial offices are frogs, smooth-skinned marmots, turtles, tropical fish and miniature sheep.
“This is the traditional approach to the intrusion,” said Toole.
Meanwhile the employees union is considering options and most workers are keeping themselves busy knitting dog hair socks for advertisers.
– Alfalfa Romero
Crumbling Ski Slums A Sad Scenario
(Vail, CO — Brie Magazine, April, 2029 — April 19, 2016)
Derelict chalets, dilapidated castles of days gone by too quickly, are all that’s left of the once haughty ski village here. Now most of the buildings held together by second-thought visquine and he neighbor’s duct tape are the homes of high altitude brannigans who live out the legacy of credit cards and plastic architecture gone wild in the 80s and 90s.
Today the railroad employs most of those fit to work. Soup kitchens cater to locals as well as wealthy gamblers on their way to San Francisco and New York City.
Poor construction, over-building and corporate cancer have, in hindsight, been isolated as the culprits in the fall of what looked to be a bullet-proof sub-culture/bonanza high in the Rockies. At the height of the war people weren’t much on skiing.
A stroll (daytime please) through the abandoned slope-side condos gives one a quick, bleak picture of the stark desperation at hand. Crime, drug abuse and degradation are rampant, as homeless vagabonds now inhabit these once ostentatious citadels. Children, adored in discarded, and certainly out of fashion, ski outfits play next to deserted lifts. The parents of a lucky few, refugees from collateral damage, are forced to work in Summit County.
In nearby Eagle a baby cries in a doublewide. A lone Chevy pickup curves its way through town perhaps searching for a loaf of bread, true enlightenment or a misplaced gearshift knob. It’s beginning to snow.
-Dinty Moore
Future February, 2029
“Rumors of my canonization are greatly exaggerated.” – Bernie Sanders with apologies to Mark Twain.
One Too Many Cowboy Poets
April day, 2016
A cowboy poet
in dungless
pointy-toes
had little to say
but he talked like
a real cowpuncher
would talk.
With a twang and
a drooped mustache
that head under
a big ol’ Stetson,
the drugstore way to smell like alfalfa
or an early autumn cutting.
From a Ralph Lauren
catalogue his monogrammed chaps
stood out like raw meat
in a school of sharks,
backed up to spurs from Mars
or some such locale
too far from the corral
to be a serious contender.
And the cows think it’s all
so very funny
even though they are
the leather
that holds it all together.
Dinner Table at the Spiders
If you’re going to
the spider’s house for dinner
do not be put off by
fly stew.
-Kevin Haley
In the woods near Manizales
Eco Hotel La Juanita sits on a forested slope a short cab or bus ride from restaurants and the urban life in Manizales, Colombia. Incredible views, spa, pool, horses. Nice neighborhood for walking around. Rocio Ortiz and Laura Soto welcome you.
Jawbone May Be 500,000 Years Old
(Dallas TX — Skeletons and Heirlooms — April 4, 2016)
A dusty jawbone found in an n abandoned gravel pit may yield untold secrets about who we once might have been according to noted bone experts. It is reportedly one of the best-preserved artifacts to surface since the Great Pyramids were unearthed.
The lower jawbone is believed to belong to a rare Stegomastodon who was no spring chicken when she expired, said archeologists at North Texas State at Denton.
“We know the beast was a resident here since her jaw was locked in the y’all mode, a definitive and familiar status,” said Dizzy Dalhart, Professor of Body Chemistry at the same university. “She was also a female.”
“When we chipped away centuries of makeup we found a slight chin and an attractive face and jaw. This reaffirms to me the protective attributes of a little blush and lip toner.
– Melvin “Breakfast Meat” Toole