All Entries Tagged With: "Ouray"

COLORADO WOMAN WEDS COMPUTER

(Gateway) Finny Scanlan didn’t get a lot of dates. From her 16th birthday until just last month, at the ripe old age of 24, she’d been out once, and that was just to Nucla.

Then her world turned upside down with the purchase of a new Power Macintosh (G series with zip drive and CD ram capabilities built right in). Almost immediately her attitude went from one characterized by constant crashes and computer spread to one of desk top harmony. She had met Mr. Right and he was at her fingertips.

“At first I thought What would my friends think? but then I figured where were my friends on all those cold lonely nights that I spent alone crying myself to sleep in my double-wide up Unaweep Canyon?”

Taught at an early age to take things one day at a time Finny proceeded tenuously spending only so much time with her new romantic interest. When she went on-line and flirted with E-Mail she realized she was head over heels in love.

“He began to generate his very own dialogue,” she said. “Sometimes it was in response to a question or prompt, other times it was solely on his own. Then there were the times that he sent love messages out of the blue.”

Scanlan was at first frightened when Roy, named after a cousin from over Paradox way who died during a cloning experiment there in 1996, began to contact her on other systems. In addition to passionate pleas over her screen he sent love notes over the microwave oven and the TV.

“He even talked to me through the garage door opener and once, on a particularly warm May evening through the blender.”

Failing in her attempts to end the relationship several times, Finny soon realized it was meant to be. She thought of his 300MHz, his nine gig capacities, his hard drive with 85 MB virtual memory. He was accessible 24 hours a day, didn’t stop at the bar on the way home and seemed quite compatible with her internal drives.

“Then he popped the question. It was early one morning,” she explained. I turned him on only to find the mouse inactive and the screen frozen with the words Will ya? at the bottom.”

She typed in Yes and the rest is academic. The two were married the next weekend in Las Vegas where these kinds of unions are legal provided one has the administration fees.

The couple plans to have a laptop in the fall.

– Small Mouth Bess

NEWS FROM 100 YEARS AGO

COWPUNCHER SIGNS FOR $95

Atrocious salary sends shock waves through the pasture

(Gunnison 1890) Brackey Toate started working on his father’s tiny ranch near Parlin in 1878. Little did he know he would be a wealthy man in less than ten years. Today he signed a lucrative multi-year contract for what amounts to $95 per month.

The free agent jumped ship in Baldwin last September to try his luck in the burgeoning market. The expansion of ranch land has left the industry with a diluted wrangler pool and seriously short of cowboys familiar with the round-up. Some ranchers have turned to other countries for manpower while the larger ones simply tighten their belts and pay the higher wages.

“This is outrageous!” said one pot-bellied rancher from Quartz Creek. Wild Bill Hickock only makes $150! This kind of money sets a dangerous precedent! Who will pay for these kinds of salaries? It’s the consumer.”

Beef prices have skyrocketed over the past year partly due to the competition for cowboys.

“We have to compete,” said Crystal Alripe, matriarch of the Yellow Tail Ranch near White Pine. “The boys and I can’t run the place on our own so we have to hire seasonal help at least. The cost has become prohibitive. I remember when a cowhand was happy to get a dollar a day and board,” she quipped. “Now they’re looking for the big dollars! Where will it all end?”

Toate’s contract includes incentives, health benefits, horse expenses, a clothing allowance and his own bunkhouse entrance. In addition he gets first crack at the dinner table and holidays off.

“This marks a new day in agriculture,” said Alripe. “The next thing you know the cows will want a piece of the action.”

Besides his daily chores on the ranch, Toate will train to compete in the National Western Stock Show Rodeo which opens in Denver in January. Fiscal wizards say that his performance there will determine future bonuses.

“This scandalous salary is only the beginning,” explains banker Tom Watchitt of Gunplay Bank and Trust in Vulcan. “Besides the income Toate is looking at endorsements, perks from special interests and investment opportunities that would choke a bull. If he plays it right he could be quite wealthy and look forward to an early retirement.”

Already Toate has been groomed as a spokesman for Cheeky Chew, a popular brand of chewing tobacco and may be featured on advertisements for the Million Dollar Boot Company of Ironton. According to close friends he plans to buy a spread near Ohio City and raise Herefords.

“It’s a whole new world that we live in,” continued Alripe, “one where a simple cowpuncher can make his fortune overnight and where others don’t seem to grasp the value of a dollar.”

Toate is expected to report to spring training in February after completing a conditioning program here. If all goes well he will start against the Longhorns on Opening Day.

– Slim “Fats” McGovern

      

     

WAL-MART TO EXECUTE DISLOYAL EMPLOYEES

(Montrose) The Wal-Mart Corporation announced today that it will get tough with insubordinate, mutinous employees who do not live and breathe the company’s philosophy. Starting in 2019 a slew public of executions have been slated for the store’s massive parking lot, located south of here.

The move, called radical by even the staunchest of Wal-Mart supporters, will take on an experimental flare and may lead to the adoption of similar measures at other locales. Employees in jeopardy are said to be those who resist tried and true corporate brain washing techniques and flirt with heresy concerning the divine rights of the discount giant.

“We don’t expect management personnel to be affected by these developments,” said a regional executive who once washed Sam Walton’s feet during a trip to South Korea in 1985. “The people are simply not team players.”

Others in line for the end include persons who hesitated when instructed to give part of their meager wages to charity.

“We love those pictures in the local papers where our employees make donations to good causes,” said the executive. “It makes us look good without costing us any money. I for one can’ believe people are so quick to buy this crap but that’s what makes this country what it is.”

The concept of public executions emerged with the proposed Wal-Mart Super Store, slated for construction next to the massive Mormon Church south of town. Company heads are concerned that negative publicity as to the construction will prevent the mass retailer from securing 100% of the trade in the region.

“We don’t want a fair market share,” smiled the executive. “We want it all. We want to turn the traditional downtown into a slum and ship all the profits out of town and our customers are helping us do just that. It’s really quite simple.”

Many residents of the area do not comprehend the damage done to a community when leeches like Wal-Mart latch on. Some even defend the noxious corporation since it creates jobs and convenience. They do not address the cost of to the quality of life and the impact on the social structure here.

The first executions, scheduled for dawn on January 15, will skirt the jurisdiction of several law enforcement agencies since they will be held on private property. Condemned persons will have their choice of firing squad, lethal injection or guillotine. Family members will be admitted free and commemorative photographs of the event will be available (at 20% off with charge card) in the store’s camera department. Accrued retirement benefits will revert back to the corporation’s stockholders at the time of passing. Everyone is invited!

“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

– H.L. Menoken

WESTERN CHEMIST ISOLATES FAST FOOD GENE

(Gunnison) Nutritionists within the academic community here were shocked at a disclosure relating to the alleged fast food gene and the frightening consequences. An eleventh hour discovery by Dr. Melvin Toolovich, Acting Director of the Body Chemistry Department at Western Colorado University, links genetics to insatiable cravings for fast food at distinctive age levels. His findings, as one colleague put it, are “earth shattering”.

In short, Toolovich’s theory strongly suggests that if a man 20 years old consumes an average of four fast food items per week his potential off-spring will be born addicted to this kind of fare. In contrast, if the same man embraces a balanced diet including fruit and vegetables his kids will most likely follow suit. Toole says it’s just like narcotics, guns and hair color.

“We think this linear body response has mega-burgeoned and can now be traced to the sacred depths of accepted nutritional standards. Unchartered, often unreliable  chromosomes that have fallen victim to other more subtle synthetic temptations such as Twinkies, cardboard tacos, soggy fish, plastic pizza and frozen egg rolls,” the doctor warned. “We’re just chumming at present.”

Currently tests are being conducted to see if simulated patterns are in play when a child breathes his first breath. Fast food bosses and their ad agency concubines are said to be waiting for the final results before commenting.

“We’re concerned that these burger and chicken barons will be jumping into the baby food market if the numbers line up right,” gasped Toolovich. “Can you imagine a greasy meat cheeseburger in a jar? “What can you expect when even our illustrious president lives on the stuff?”

As soon as the preliminary DNA tests are concluded, Toolovich will embrace further speculation in an attempt to determine if American foreign policy is at risk due to the state of decision making apparatus on display in Washington DC. Assisting Toole in this endeavor will be members of the We’re History Department at WCU.

“We’ll be needing about 15 or 20 student volunteers who already exist on junk food to complete our experiments. We may even begin to determine future potential within these ranks,” he explained. “We already know that performance and fast food intake are related so we don’t expect our brighter students to rush to our laboratory.”

– Rocky Flats

“It’s nothing more than a flesh wound…now back to your posts!” – Confederate General Kashmir Horseshoe to his troops, after a Union cannon ball bounced off his punkin’ head during the Battle of Meandering Thistle, 1863.

WAITING FOR COUSTEAU

A rural harbor. A pier

Evening

Estragon, sitting on the beach, is trying to take off his flippers and catch a fish with a spear. He pulls the flippers with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before. Enter Vladimir.

Estragon: (Giving up again) Nothing to be caught.

Vladimir: (advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart)

I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I’ve tried to put it from me, saying, Vladimir, be reasonable, there are other fish to fry. And I resume the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turns to Estragon.) So there you are again with a line in the water.

Estragon: Am I?

Vladamir: I’m glad to see you back. I thought you had gone fishing on that boat forever.

Estragon: Me too.

Vladimir: Together again at last. We’ll have to celebrate with a fish fry. I have French wine. But how will we catch such? (He reflects) Get up till I embrace you.

Estragon (irritably) Not now. Not now. I think I have a bite.

Vladimir: (hurt, coldly) May I inquire where His Highness spent the night?

Estragon: On the boat.

Vladimir: (admiringly) A boat! Where?

Estragon: (without gesture) Over there.

Vladimir: And they didn’t make you clean fish?

Estragon: Clean fish? Certainly I cleaned fish.

Vladimir: The same lot as usual?

Estragon: The same? I don’t know.

Vladimir: When I think of it…all these years…but for me…where would you be…(Decisively) You’d be nothing more than carp bait, a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it.

Estragon: And what of it?

Vladimir: (gloomily) It’s too much for one fisherman. (Pause. Cheerfully) On the other hand what’s the good of losing your catch now, that’s what I say. We should have thought of a net a million years ago, in the nineties when the whales still roamed.

Estragon: Ah stop blathering and help me pull this bloody one in. We’re going to be in an underwater film.

Vladimir: Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among the first. We were respectable anglers in those days. Now it’s too late. They wouldn’t even let us throw out a line. (Estragon tears at the flippers) What are you doing?

Estragon: Taking off my oxygen tank. Did that ever happen to you?

Vladimir: Diving equipment must be taken off each day, I’m tired telling you that. Why don’t you listen to me?

Estragon: (feebly) Help me!

Vladimir: It hurts?

Estragon: (angrily) Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts! A spear hurts!

Vladimir: (angrily) No one ever suffers but you. I don’t count. I’d like to hear what you’d say if you were bitten by a barracuda!

Estragon: It hurts?

Vladimir: (angrily) Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

Estragon: (pointing) You might button it all the same.

Vladimir: (stooping) True. (He buttons his fly.) Never neglect the little things of life.

Estragon: What do you expect, you always wait until the last moment to set the hook.

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?

Estragon: Yes, let’s go

They do not move.

Continued next month

“Loosin’ up your breeches, grab a hunk of chew, turn your skis downhill. Now go for it.”

– advice from early ski instruction manual, Red Mountain, 1907

Broncos Break Tradition on Wide Receiver Corps

Dog lovers and revelers on the fringes reported to having spotted John Elway scouting the Meeker Sheep Dog Trials last September.  He was also seen interviewing some dog owners after the event, penciling down cell phone numbers of Basque herders, while spilling his gin and tonic on his new sheepskin boots.

Following up this story and leaving behind all common sense, multiple messages have been received for yours truly at the local pub, concluding that we can expect to see three of the swift furry Border Collies starting in the Denver lineup as wide receivers against Kansas City tomorrow.

Local hero and presidential candidate, Melvin S. Toole has reported that this story is true but the Collies still have to be broken of the habit of bringing wandering sheep back into the huddle after running long post patterns.

Tim Menger

ap,  upi, kfc