DUSTINGS OF THE SAN JUAN

Composted by Oral Waters

Scoffs at Mandatory Legislation
JUDGE RULES ON CREDIT CARD FEEDING
(Ridgway) A local magistrate here says the care and feeding of credit cards should be a personal matter and up to the individual debtor. Furthermore, she ruled that credit card abuse did not fall under the jurisdiction of Sociable Services.
Heralded as a major verdict for personal freedoms by many there are still those who would have liked to see more regulations.
“If the consumer decides not to feed his card for a month that should be his business,” said Melvin Toole, a band saw repair analyst from Log Hill. “We already have the feds looking down our shorts at every turn as it is. Why would people want more government interference?”
The judge’s conclusion may have more extensive ramifications than first presumed due to a recent disclosure that Bill Clinton had put the Kosovo campaign on his Master Card back in the Nineties. Insiders say the Cheney-Bush team did the same in Iraq.
“People just don’t realize that credit card purchases are the same as buying an item with cash,” said Toole. “The only difference is compounded interest.”
Despite the ruling most consumers continue to be kind to their plastic. According to a nationwide survey over 80% feed their cards, (generally in the morning) 70 % take them for a walk everyday and some even grant them a paid two-week vacation each year.

TOURISTS PLAN TO STAY
(Ouray) In a sharp turnaround from previous summers visiting tourists will remain in town long after the September deadline. People who were once written off as weekly wonders will now be residents.
The population explosion is expected to jack up the county census figures by about 300% according to service agency statistics. Already highway crews have begun the tedious exercise of widening minimal access roads and paving dirt paths.
“I never thought I’d see the River Road under blacktop,” said a source from the state highway crew.
The first pilgrims will arrive Thursday in the form of a small communal group from Tucson, followed by a church bus from Wichita Falls. Then all hell will break lose in July when refugees from the heat in armored personnel carriers and land dinghies of all shapes and sizes.
The first arrivals will be temporarily housed at the local high school until they locate permanent housing.

Oooooooh…Popeye….
POPEYE-OLIVE OIL WEDDING PLANNED FOR JUNE
(Norwood) Comic book icons Popeye T. Sailor and Olive Oil have announced that they will be wed at sometime during this year’s Tequila Festival this summer.
“It’s about time after a 70-year affair,” squinted the sailor, pipe dangling from his oversized lips. “I figured it was about time to make an honest woman of Olive.”
Oil will wear the combined ensemble of peasant dress and work boots that has become her standard over the decades. Her hair will be in a conservative bun accentuated by loop earrings. Her intended will be dressed in his sailor suit.
“Popeye is concerned about the removal of several erotic tattoos,” whined best man/caterer Wimpy (no last name given), “that he got in Singapore during the war.”
In a surprise announcement it was learned that former U.S. Attorney General (and Hero of Waco) Janet Reno would stand in as maid of honor. She and her current beau, Bluto, will fly into Montrose they day of the nuptials on their way to a gun show in Grand Junction.

Chief Ouray Named After Town

Red Mountain Dig Smashes Long Held Version

(Ironton Park) Archives exhumed from the old jail here suggest that the town of Ouray is older than previously believed and that Ute Chief Ouray was named after the mining settlement and not the other way around. According to the data Ouray was settled in 1830 by Neapolitan fur trappers from Santa Fe.
“The discovery throws our historical perspective out the window,” said D. Mickey Ratshoe Bennie, a local museum piece. “Now all the books will have to be rewritten. This really jerks my chain! Fortunately we have an idle, motivated populace that has already rolled up its sleeves and jumped into the fray.
Although the town had no charter and few dwellings in 1830, it was called Ouray, an Italian word for a preferred method of boiling pasta at higher altitudes. Three years later, when future chief, Ouray, was born in Taos, his mother looked up…saw pasta cooking over an open fire and named the lad. At the time she did not know he would become a celebrity or that the aforementioned confusion would occur.

GHOST WRITERS FRIGHTEN TRIBES
(Placerville) Ghost writers, allegedly in the employ of the San Juan Horseshoe, have been scaring the daylights out of stone age tribesmen camped on the edge of the San Miguel River here. The primitives, at first hostile, have taken to worshipping the spirit scribes, bestowing them with lavish gifts of gold and tellurium.
A longtime policy at the paper calls for the hiring of a skeleton crew of ghost writers for the summer so as to pursue historical documentation with minor embellishment.
According to publisher General Kashmir Horseshoe (CSA 1861-1863; USA 1863-1865) retired it is far easier recording local history when one is surrounded by a staff that actually lived during the prescribed period.
“Our agenda calls for first-hand accounts, not hearsay as practiced by so many other annal sorcerers,” spat the general. “Besides, we don’t have to pay them anything.”
Peculiarities like this tend to become debauched by chroniclers and then blown out of proportion by local plebeians already upset by news of spring riots in Purgatory and strikes in Limbo. Chanting “Let us out or send us down,” unruly mobs of poor souls in both places are still out of control. At press time local authorities are cautious not to draw parallels to the two separate incidents, preferring to call the whole charade a paradox.