All Entries in the "Soft News" Category
Uncompahgre To Run South in November
(Portland, CO) In an attempt “to make the river safe for fish” the Department of the Inferior has approved a risky plan to completely flush the Uncompahgre River this fall. Environmentalists, concerned as to why there are no fish in the upper reaches of the river while there are surviving species in the South Platte flood plain, have petitioned for the project since 1990.
The flushing will run concurrently with street resurfacing in downtown Ouray so that everyone can be inconvenienced on an equal basis. Residents participating in the popular Save A Trout Program are asked to keep their charges home in a fish bowl. Persons concernd about walleye eating bass and such should keep it to themselves so as not to alarm more dorsal species.
“It should be quite the deal,” said project manager Ariel Buttman of Lakewood. “I’ve lived in Colorado all my life and I didn’t know this place existed. It’s really nice here but what do the people do in the winter?”
The flushing will cost an estimated $500,000 with any fiscal excess earmarked for the Ridgway By-Pass, scheduled to begin next May.
“If our plan is successful we should have clear, beautiful water by spring, you know…the kind they have on those Coors TV commercials.”
– Uncle Pahgre
YOU SO SMART HERD QUIZ
Answer the following questions to the best of your agility.
1. Who holds the current record for does batted in over in the old mule league?
a. Vinny Venison
b. John Doe
c. Bucky Horne
d. Pearl S. Buck
2. Considering the veritable smorgasbord of knee surgeons and sports medicine experts in the Gunnison Valley why does it take so long to get an elk processed here?
3. When is a moose not an elk?
a. When he’s in a rut.
b. On a full moon
c. When he/she wanders above timberline
d. In venison years or moose years?
4 If you get lost in the woods while hunting you should…
a. Call 911 for help on your cell phone.
b. Throw down your weapon and surrender to the nearest chipmunk
c. Follow the rivers and streams until you hit Utah or Nevada
d. Finish last night’s elk chili and send up an organic flare
5. A taxidermist is someone who
a. drives a cab with a skin disorder
b. is employed by the IRS
c. mounts wild animals
d. cosmetically stuffs, grooms and manicures dead animals
6. Do wapiti have souls? What about politicians?
7. How do the deer and elk know it’s opening day?
a. Be perusing magazine articles in Field and Spleen
b. Alternative radio
c. By the smell of burnt beans in the woods
d. The DOW routinely posts the announcement on the aspen trees
8. The GNP of Colorado is composed of:
a.) sugar beets, water, lumber and bad Western art
b.) water, former governors, cowboy poetry and recycled clothing
c.) venison, ditch water, maize, jalapenos
d. waferboard, chuckholes, sorghum, molybdenum
9. The town of Telluride was first called:
a. Ajax City
b. Colorow
c. Bear Creek
d. Columbia
10. The Big Mine in Crested Butte produced:
a. molybdenum
b. Croatians
c. frankincense
d. wool
e. coal
11. What common herd animal is most likely to dart in front of your vehicle at dawn and again at dusk?
a. Bighorn Sheep
b. Long distance telephone company solicitor
c Rocky Mountain Goat
d. Mule Deer
12. How long does it take and how much money does it cost to become a local in most Colorado ski towns?
13. According to leading nutritionists what is the best thing to feed your cowboy boots before the hunt?
14. Which of the following species will travel up to 3 miles for fresh blood?
a. Lawyer
b. Realtor
c. Publisher
d. Mosquito
15. Mule deer
a. are generally smarter than chunks of rock that have fallen onto the highway
b. are often Cub fans despite the fact that they know better
c. have no gall bladders
d. hate leash laws even though they don’t tend to keep pets
16. Which of the following best illustrates your personal hunting code?
a. Just live and let live, then come Friday night, really live
b. I know the license is expensive, my four-wheel-drive truck uses a lot of gas, I hate to camp in the snow and the gear ain’t cheap but sooner or later I’m bound to get that dream shot
c. Shoot first and ask questions later
d. Great shot! Now let’s get these roasts onto a plate with potatoes and carrots
17. Name your favorite herd personality
a. Bambi
b. Rudolph
c. the boys at the Elks Club
d. Moosehead Beer
e. Any one of the delegates to a national political convention
Cut the white wash
- Dump Democrats and Republicans in a big hole and cover. Simmer for three decades.
- End campaign financing and prohibit lobbyist from the nation’s capital.
- Fix the high schools so we no longer graduate uneducated and easily manipulated citizens. Make bilingualism a mandatory experience as well as valid history and political science.
- Admit to a racist, violent past and attempt to correct the future.
- Stop education and health for profit systems.
- Create immigration statutes and stick to them.
- End private prisons.
- Tax the churches and double the salaries of teachers, police, social workers and fireman
- End corporate botulism. Society should never reward endemic greed and inhumanity.
- Make your country the pride of the globe.
“Ain’t no money in poetry. That’s what sets the poet free.
And I’ve had all the freedom I can stand.”
-Guy Clark
Toilet Seat Shortages “Chronic” in Forests
(Ouray) The lack of toilet seats in the National Forests this year has reached chronic proportions and may be linked to a revenge motive on the part of government agencies says a recently released report in Flusher’s Digest.
The independently published piece claims that the USFS and other federal agencies has dropped the number of prescribed toilets in our national forests to punish persons opposed to fees on public lands over the past few summers.
In one such destination, Yankee Boy Basin, new toilet seats are almost unheard of while luxuries like toilet tissue and air fresheners remain on a first-come, first served capacity, with even the most basic supplies exhausted by mid-week. While many campers bring their own waste facilities the more traditional visitor often relies on porta-johns or other privies to conduct constitutional business in the woods.
According to a story in the local paper the scenario has become a “squishy” one with hordes of campers being forced to use the great outdoors as their latrine. While this practice is quite popular with other mammals, humans tend to congregate in designated camp grounds and use nearby land as their dumping grounds.
“Bears and mountain lions often cover 50 square miles per day hunting and staying away from people,” said a spokesman for Poop Jumpers, a local recreational association that is responsible for waste management among other things. “It’s easy to see why they aren’t the problem. Sure, we’re talking organic but the impact is caused by congestion not substance.”
According to the Department of Public Sanitation, a wing of the Homeland Security Agency, the magazine’s accusations are false and there is no revenge motive for the termination of federal funding.
“People who were against the fees will just have to stand in line a little longer or provide for their own comforts,” said Roy Thistledown, a campsite host and former CIA operative from Spar City. “We’ve had the same problem all along the Alpine Loop until we started handing out little pooper scoopers compliments of the local chambers of commerce.”
The article continued saying campsite fees were up three dollars from last year. Whether that increase was enough to build more facilities was unclear at press time. Alluding to a presumably federally generated pamphlet advising campers how to dig a cat hole, the paper went on to describe just how to cover and disguise the aperture.
“People in emerging societies solve these kinds of problems by charging a small fee at the entrance to restrooms,” said one camper who has lived illegally in The Great San Juan for 50 years. “Often the fee, collected by an otherwise unemployed person, includes tissue and a splash of down under water.
Despite the failures often common to other functions of government there this potty policy seems to have merit.
“I cannot speak for the outlying areas or for jungle redoubts, said the squatter, “since the media continually warns us they are populated by bandits and terrorists are not safe for deep-seated human habitation.”
When contacted yesterday one state sanitation official agreed to look into the matter.
Criticized for running a feature piece on such a sensitive subject right on the front page an unreliable source at the local paper said that the story needed to be told.
“In addition, it added, “the piece provoked more reader response than coverage of the week’s city council meeting and the Republican state convention combined.
Part 29 of this fascinating series is slated for December.
Patrons are reminded to keep valuables in their front pockets in the quaint little alleys, cafes
and cobblestoned plazas in the vicinity of the theater and museums.
HISTORY OF THE CLAP
Ever since homo erectus strolled these shores the ritual of clapping in approval and/or appreciation has been with us. Why did such an odd ritual gain such favor within societies as remote as the Maori in New Zealand and the Utes in North America? Were ancient peoples really only trying to kill flies when the curtain went down? What did early entertainers from places like the Fertile Crescent think when the audience began slapping their hands together at a particularly moving moment on stage? We have no idea. Nonetheless, here are some of the more pronounced developments chronologically introduced through the ages.
5000 BC a clumsy Bornean orangutan (spanking monkey) falls from a branchwater eucalyptus tree while applauding a traveling mango juggling troupe near the Mount Kilimanjaro. Millenniums later his ancestors repeat the behavior at national political conventions.
2750 BC Early Hittites disguised as edible crustaceans receive the first recorded standing ovation after a lackluster performance of Don’t Cry For Me Watusi.
1523 BC Nefertiti is applauded by Egyptian Talisman’s Union after acquiring her own checking account despite the protests by hubby and noted Vaudevillian, Akhenaton. The Nile Valley punk band, The Pharaohs, jam for an additional four hours after a third ovation accompanied by kazoos, washboards, sirens, sand whistles and canned laughter.
900 BC Sumerians invent beer and they bring down the house. Gobshites, with wind-generated clapping machines, first appear in Eire. Distillation gets a thumbs up as the applause lasts all month.
401 BC Xanthippe, wife of Socrates first appears in public wearing slinky clapping gloves made from the bat guano.
559 BC – Confucius releases his classic One Hand Clapping Backwards. 2500 years later it becomes the film Rocky XVII.
522 BC Prophets Ezekiel and Zoroaster simultaneously predict the emergence of Elvis, but mistakenly put his birthplace as Delta, Colorado.
200 BC After a tedious reading of Reconnoiter My Arse Gaelic warrior Courvoisier Cu Cuchulainn bows from the waist and is beheaded by Roman legions.
11 BC First case of fruit throwing, amid rampant clapping, at an indoor venue in dusty Carthage.
2 AD Invention of the trash/vomit bag heralded as man’s finest achievement to that point. Put your hands together for…
Continued on Page 45
Harris to change name of DCA
(Warshington) Vice-President Kamala Harris has pledged to rechristen Ronald Regan International Airport Bob Marley International if elected President in November.
The announcement was received much to the delight of attentive historians everywhere.
The GOP is accusing her of communism, favoritism and disrespect for its Great Communicator. Harris, whose father was Jamaican, shares the the same ethnic roots with Marley, perhaps the most original and prolific song writer and musician of the 20th Century.
In the end it appears that the majority of polled Americans prefer reggae to robot. But it was the wonky (thankfully not waving) Ronald Reagan statue at the entrance to DCA that put the tide on the ebb and embarrassed many, forcing some sort of compromise.
Naming infrastructure after self-aggrandized but pedestrian royalty, showcases attempts by sitting elected to worship privileged ascendency. They feel that this measure mandates descendants, ignores incompetence and validates sacrosanct power position in a society tilted to the wealthy. They want to show themselves as great when they have been marginal at best, some worse than others. Many are liars and thieves.
-Tommy Middelfinger
