IRS Seizes Horseshoe, Gives It Back

(Mañana) The Internal Revenue Service seized the San Juan Horseshoe newspaper and its assets accusing the publication of tax evasion. In an early morning raid the illegal government taxing agency forced the paper to cease production and dismissed its employees including a blind proof-reader and two bookies employed in the sports department.

“We attempted to place our trademark heavy chain and padlock on the front door,” explained one agent, “but the weight of our pronouncement caved in a fragile bamboo wall rendering the door dysfunctional, trapping night editor and his entourage inside the building until the day shift arrived at noon.”

By then the IRS had returned the paper in tact saying the whole episode was a unfortunate misunderstanding. Insiders say the tax people were looking for illegal farriers and were misled by newspaper’s neon shingle, installed in 1978 to irritate neighbors.

In what insiders say is an unprecedented move the IRS apologized for the intrusion after determining that the paper’s visible assets were confined to an aging RG Dunn cigar box which, in better days, had served as a petty cash capsule and now held only dust

After a lengthy breakfast with several agents masquerading as Mormon missionaries, publisher General Kashmir Horseshoe gingerly raised his frosty mimosa in solidarity with the Magna Carta, The United States Constitution and the Paris Commune of 1871.

“The IRS is returning the newspaper to its rightful owners because enlightened elements there realize that the operators are but impoverished peasants struggling to fashion a narcissistic Walden from designer sagebrush and the ashes of new age procrastination while forcibly implementing Third World morality on the half shell.”

No one in attendance appears to have understood the statement either. Eye witnesses agree that the IRS blinked when the retired military officer handed over personal income tax receipts dating back to the Spanish-American War.

– Fred Zeppelin