All Entries in the "Soft News" Category

Verbal Teas Dominate Market

(Manana) A revolutionary blend of verbal tea has nailed down a 35% beverage market share after only one week on the shelves. According to tea wizards at Terrestrial Seasonings, a Colorado-based herbal health concern, the initial impact was greater than expected leaving the cupboard bare for the time being.
“Out teas will help people to better express themselves, their inner feelings, their outer limits,” said Howie Spout, a spokesperson for Terrestrial. “As the name implies we are of the earth but looking into the cosmos for new direction, new awareness, new tea bag designs.”
Spout was quick to point out that Terrestrial was in no way associated with the Tea Party or any of its supporters.
According to the company’s official statement, a single cup of verbal tea will noticeably stimulate a drinker’s use of action words and spike his oral vocabulary. In lab experiments, researchers found that the rats chattered more clearly and carefully in conversation with other rats after sipping a saucer of verbal tea.
“Although these disease carrying, crop destructive rodents have no written language, communication within the cells and sects seems quite smooth,” said Spout, “and sophisticated in a highly evolved idiomatic manner.”
Verbs, of corpse, are the basic elements of sentence structure that provide action and movement – the caffeine of grammar. Terrestrial expects to stay with a winner and leave nouns, adjectives and adverbs to the other guys.
The verbal teas come in assorted flavors and phonetics such as Blackberry Past Tense and the popular Hibiscus Present-Perfect. The secret tea blends kindle the remote region of the brain cortex that is employed strictly for tantric eroticism, preparation of income taxes and conjugating verbs.
All of the teas are completely artificial and contain no natural flavors or ingredients. In the tradition of Terrestrial, the colorfully decorated boxes are covered with annoying sayings such as “You can’t change the world but you could change your underwear” and “Today is the first day of the mess of your life.”
Tea aficionados are encouraged to keep a wise eye out for Proverbial Tea this spring, a calming strain of Asian and Polar teas that incites drinkers to spurt out poorly timed and tiresome trivialities disguised as imperative directives and inspired declarations. We can’t wait.
– Fred Zeppelin

“Oh it looked about the way I pictured it. Flames, demons, not much to drink.” – Dante, remembering his visit to Hell.

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? Do they sell animal toilet paper?
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 Hunting Editor, San Juan Horseshoe, Box 615, Gunnison, CO 81230. If we use your response in our November issue we’ll give you a free subscription, a free T-shirt and a free roll of toilet paper. No phone calls please.

Guilt Allotment Reaches Crested Butte

(Elk Mountain Report – March 25, 2015)
Crested butte’s semi-monthly allocation of prime grade guilt arrived here this afternoon, two days behind schedule, but much to the relief of needy citizens. Many say they were just days from depletion of September’s historic airdrop, part of which was hauled away upon impact by local black bear.
The cargo, hauled in from the Confront Range was poured out all over the town’s major intersections and lapped up under the close scrutiny of all sorts of morality brokers.
Reporter Melvin Toole, of the now defunct Baldwin Beekeeper saw it this way:
“There they were, the guiltless, the flirtatious, the wickedly happy assembled sans buckets at the onus froth to receive their due. Have I detected a smile, a frown, any emotion at all?
“The rickety carts, now freed of their unholy loads, stood motionless at the end of the pavement,” he continued, “their drivers arrogantly spitting and rolling cigarettes while doling out careful quotas of heavy blame and overripe culpability from large plastic garbage cans.”
A spokesperson for the Jokerville Guilt Guild confirmed reports that although funding was still frozen, the government would pick up the tab for this month’s shipment.
“The cost of transporting mass quantities of guilt from the urban centers to so many Hootervilles has risen sharply since the inception of the program in 1985,” explained Emily Marmotbreath of Irwin, Executive Director of Rocks and Pieces of Kindling, the parent non-profit of the guild.
“The demand has remained much the same with some citizens ignoring the program altogether, probably because of pride or ignorance,” she added. “According to many of our eloquent institutions humans cannot live without a minimal application of guilt. The guild simply seeks to maintain a level compatible with churches, schools, gov’ment and social standing within the community.
Supporters of the program go to great lengths to credit the guilt drops for the dramatic rise in casual celibacy and a decrease in narcotics use during the week. A final measure, to be hashed out by the Colorado House, will then be nailed on neighborhood doors from Cortez to Burlington by Friday.
“A society at peace with itself can not flourish,” said Syd Fahrt, a leading proponent. “It is the ultimate powder keg. Guilt holds the inside track in the much-desired “redeeming value” category. Until we come up with an effective substitute guilt is what we have and what we will employ.”
Fahrt then went on to blame President Obama and all people of color for what he called “a failure to adopt sufficient guilt trips in their daily lives.
“Just look at those Blacks and Latinos out there having fun while the white folks sit at home guilty about not mowing the lawn or putting money into the collection plate. It is quite pathetic,” he mused.
Critics point to the rampant abuses that have raised more than one eyebrow in the Senate. Even though most agree that society would fall apart without guilt they contend that the present programs are expensive, ineffective, discriminatory and dull. Slow-moving guilt wagons on the highway and their often surly and abusive drivers on Colorado’s high passes.
“We support aerial spraying and/or the introduction of safe levels directly into the food and water supply,” added Marmotbreath, who is also the Executive Director of Airplanes and Syringes in Western Colorado.
The aerial method, dubbed crop duster zero by jokesters over at the Council of Christians and Jews has come under heavy bombardment by Libertarians and ecological lobbies who fear the spraying will adversely affect voter behavior and quite possibly kill off the local magpie population creating an overabundance of bad guilt. Up until now guilt-free voters slept through Election Day and magpies cleaned the highways exhibiting no outward signs of guilt, overtaking even vultures and slugs in that ranking.
Residents of Gunnison County and holders of a condo key are entitled to 350 grams of guilt per day until May 15 when unused piles of guilt will be swept up and ignited. The ash is then sent to the former Soviet Union where it might do some good in a more primitive form.
The next scheduled stop for the guilt procession is Gothic where in November partisans blocked the road and sniped at the guilt peddlers, wounding three. This time around the guilt carts will be escorted by idle Colorado State snowplows. Air support will be provided by the Saudi Air Force Marching Band. – Kashmir Horseshoe

Game Crossing Signs Confuse Game

(Montrose – March 25, 2015) The plethora of warning signs strategically placed on local highways this winter by the Colorado Division of Transportation has resulted in mass confusion among the deer and elk population.
Many of the herd animals, wards of the state, are simply confused as to what is appropriate action while other resent the uniformity as an invasion of privacy. All agree that things were fine in the past, and that the meddling of C-DOT has only made matters worse.
“The deer and elk are hesitant to cross the highways anywhere due to blinking lights that distract them and uneasiness as to just what constitutes a legitimate game crossing,” said Slim Pudge, a born again taxidermist who now works as a missionary among the herds. “The signs are no more than visual pollution and have no redeeming value since deer and elk cannot read.”
Pudge is convinced that the situation will continue to deteriorate and reach an apex when the bears wake up.
“The bruins will never go for this,” he spat.
The state had little comment on the matter preferring to ignore criticism and concentrate on a much maligned study aimed at determining if herd animals purposely jump out in front of moving vehicles or if eating sagebrush is really that much fun.

BLM to construct new wilderness area

Local Events As We Imagine Them

(Denver) A spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management announced today that it would begin work on a multi-million dollar wilderness area just west of the town of Almont before the snow melts
Today BLM officials appeared out of thin air, recruiting trees, rocks, deer, elk, bear, lion, marmots, coyote, trout, eagles, hawks and mountain goats for their new plastic boondocks. They expect to have an indigenous, well-trained, instinctive staff installed by May.
This is the second man-made designer wilderness area to be implemented in Western Colorado since the Nuggets were a contender. Readers will recall the petti tieux-dieux over the revamping of pastureland in Montrose back in the late Nineties, when the former paradise took on the demeanor of Arvada. The shopping zone is now ranked third in the At Risk Urban Wilderness Places register, according to an impressive academic paper “What if Allah is Nuts Too?” published by the Disappointment Valley Optimists last November.
Almont residents expressed concern over the expected influx of migrant workers who are reportedly headed this way with the announcement of the project.
Newly endorsed Almont Building Inspector Mel Boardfoote-Toole, spent most of last night examining newly poured foundations with a flashlight before driving his 1938 Henway across the river and through the woods and into a large woodpile discarded by fishermen somewhere near the Enchanted Almont Triangle.
“I almost fell out after all that figuring but some space creatures woke me up just before I started flowing down toward Gunny,” winced Toole. “They said they were cruising to Pitkin County to perform “life-threatening surgeries on the mindless rich” according to the one who spoke English.
Anyone involved in this project or this news account has until midnight Thursday to turn himself into the Tin Cup police and receive a full pardon, compliments of the local chamber of commerce.
Vacillators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
– Gabby Haze

The Banshee at the Bridge

“The banshee,9 Misther Harry? Well, sir, as I was strivin’ to tell ye, I was goin’ home from work one day, from Mr. Cassidy’s that I tould ye of, in the dusk o’ the evenin’. I had more nor a mile – aye, it was nearer two mile – to thrack to where I was lodgin’ with a dacent widdy woman I knew, Biddy Maguire by name, so as to be near me work.
“It was dark the first week in November,10 an’ a lonesome road I had to travel, an’ dark enough, with threes above it; an’ about halfways there was a bit iv a bridge I had to cross, over one o’ them little sthrames that runs into the Doddher. I walked on in the middle iv the road, for there was no toe-path that time, Misther Harry, nor for many a long day afther that. But, as I was sayin’, I walked along till I come nigh upon the bridge, where the road was a bit open, an’ there, right enough, I seen the hog’s back o’ the ould-fashioned bidge that used to be there till it was pulled down years ago, an’ a white mist steamin’ up out o’ the wather all around it.
“Well, now, Misther Harry, often as I’d passed by the place before, that night it seemed sthrange to me, an’ like a place ye might see in a dhrame; an’ as I come up to it I began to feel a cowld wind blowin’ through the hollow o’ me heart. Mushi Thomas, sez I to meself, is it yerself that’s in it, sez I. So I put a bould face on it, an’ I made a sthruggle to set one foot afore the other, ontil I came to the rise o’ the bridge. And there, God be good to us! in the cantle o’ the wall I seen an ould woman, as I thought, sittin’ on her hunkers, all crouched together, an’ her head bowed down, seemin’ly in the greatest affliction.
such a pair iv eyes as they wor…as cowld as the moon in a bog-hold iv a frosty night.
“Well sir, I pities the ould craythur, no matther the mortal fright I was in, so I up an’ sez to her, ‘That’s a could lodgin’ for ye, ma’am.’ Well, she tuk no more notice o’ me than if I hadn’t let a word out o’ me, but kep’ rockin’ herself to an’ fro, as if her heart was breakin’. So I sez to her again, ‘Eh, ma’am, is there anythin’ the matther with ye?’ An’ I made for to touch her on the showldher, ownly somethin’ stopped me, for as I looked closer at her I saw she was no more an ould woman nor she was an ould cat.
“The first thing I tuk notice to, Misther Harry, was her hair that was sthreamin’ down over her showldhers, an’ a good yard on the ground of aich side o’ her. O, but that was the hair! The likes iv it I never seen on mortial woman, young or ould, before nor sence. It grew as sthrong out iv her as out iv e’er a young slip iv a girl ye could see; but the color iv it was a mysthery to describe. The first squint I got iv it I thought it silvery gray, like an ould crone’s; but when I got up beside her I saw, but the glance o’ the sky, it was a sort iv an Iscariot color, an’ a shine out iv it like floss silk. It ran over her showldhers and the two shapely arms she was lanin’ her head on, for ll the world like Mary Magdalen’s in a picther. And then I persaved that the gray cloak and the green gownd undernaith it was made of no earthy matherial I ever laid eyes on.
“Well, Misther Harry, the word wasn’t out o’ me mouth afore she turned her face on me. Musha, Misther Harry, but ’twas that was the awfullest apparition ever I seen, the face iv her as she looked up at me! God forgive me for sayin’ it, but ’twas like no face I could mintion – as pale as a corpse, an’ most o’ freckles on it, like the freckles on a turkey’s eff; an’ two eyes sewn in with red thread, from the terrible power o’ cryin’ they had to do; an’ such a pair iv eyes as they wor, Misther Harry, as blue as tow forget-me-nots, an’ as cowld as the moon in a bog-hold iv a frosty night, an’ a dead-an’-live look in them that sent a cowld shiver through the marow o’ me bones. By the mortial! ye could have rung a taycupful o’ cowld paspiration out o’ the hair o’ me head that minute, so ye could.
“Well, I thought the life ‘ud lave me intirely when she riz up from her hunkers, till, bedad! she looked mostly as tall as Nelson’s Pillar. An’ with those two eyes gazin’ back at me, an’ her two arms stretched out before her, an’ a keine* out iv her that riz the hair o’ me scalp till it was as stiff as the hog’s bristles in a new hearth broom, away she glides – yes, glides – around the angle o’ the bridge, an’ down with her into the sthrame that ran underhernaith it.
” ‘Twas then I began to suspect what she was. I made a great sthruggle to get me two legs into a fast throt, in spite o’ the spavin o’ fright the pair o’ them wor in. How I brought meself home that same night the Lord in heaven ownly knows. For I never could tell. But I must ha’ tumbled agin the door, and shot in head foremost into the middle iv the floork where I lay in a dead swoon for mostly an hour. The first I knew was Mrs. Maguire stannin’ over me with a jorum o’ punch she was pourin’ down me throath to bring back the life into me, an’ me head in a pool iv cowld wather she dashed over me in her first fright.
“Arrah, Misther Connolly…What ails ye to put the scare on a lone woman,”… sez she.
” Arrah, Misther Connolly,’ she sez, ‘what ails ye, to put the scare on a lone woman like that?’ sez she.
” ‘O, glory be to God!’ sez I. ‘But I thought I was in purgathory at the laste, not to mintion an uglier place,’ sez I, ‘ownly it’s too cowld I find meself, an’ not too hot,’ sez I.
” ‘Faix, an’ maybe ye wor more nor halfways there, ownly for me,’ sez she. ‘But what’s come to you at all, at all? Is it your own fetch ye spirit ye seen, Misther Connolly?”
” ‘Aw, naboslish (don’t mind it)! sez I. ‘Never mind what I seen.’
“So, by degrees, I began to come to a little; an’ that’s the way I met the banshee, Misther Harry!”
“But how did you know it really was the banshee after all, Thomas?”
“Begor, sir, I knew the apparition of her well enough, but ’twas confirmed by a sarcumstance that occurred the same time. There was a Misther O’Nale was come on a visit, ye must know, to a place in the neighborhood – one o’ the ould O’Nales iv the County Tyrone, a rale ould Irish family – an’ the banshee was heard keinin’ round the house that same night, by more than one that was in it; an’ sure enough, Misther Harry, he was found dead in his bed the next mornin’. So if it wasn’t the banshee I seen that time, I’d like to know what else it could a’ been.”
-John Todhunter (1809-73)

9. The banshee, the female apparation who wails before the death of a human (but only for members of old Irish families), is sometimes accompanied by a coach-a-bower—a huge black coach which is pulled by headless black horses, and driven by a dullahan, a headless phantom. Duffy’s Sixpenny Magazine (Dublin) tells us that “the sinister, coffin-mounted coach rumbles to the door of a dying Irishman or Irishwoman, but should anyone be so foolhardy as to open it a basin of blood will be thrown in his face.” The origin of the dullahan is obscure. According to Thomas Crofton Croker, it is believed to have emanated from Norway where, folklore has it, the heads of corpses were cut off enfeeble their ghosts, however, W.B. Yeats offers the suggestion, that the dullahan may have descended from the giant of Irish mythology who swam across the Channel with his head in his teeth.
10. Many Irish folktales dealing with fairies are laid in November, the third fairy festival of the year. The first is May Eve which, however, occurs only every seventh year when they fight furiously for the harvest—the choicest ears of grain, of course, belong to them. The fighting can be detected in the shirling of the wind and the debris of the fields and woods flying about. Witnessing this, the peasantry respectfully remove their hats and murmur, “God bless the good people.”
The second of the fairy festivals occurs on midsummer Eve. At this time, when the bonfires are kindled on every hill in honor of Saint John, the fairies are at their merriest—and usually most lustful. Sometimes, on Midsummer Eve, they will steal away beautiful girls for their brides.
The November Eve festival sees them at their wickedest—and gloomiest—for this is the first night of winter, according to the old Gaelic reckoning. On this night, the fairies dance with the ghosts, the pooka is abroad, and witches make their spells. After November Eve the blackberries are no longer wholesome because pooka has spoiled them.
*The Celtic form for keen; to wail or howl in mournin for the dead.