RSSAll Entries Tagged With: "Ouray"

Crumbling Ski Slums A Sad Scenario

(Vail, CO — Brie Magazine, April, 2029 — April 19, 2016)

Derelict chalets, dilapidated castles of days gone by too quickly, are all that’s left of the once haughty ski village here. Now most of the buildings held together by second-thought visquine and he neighbor’s duct tape are the homes of high altitude brannigans who live out the legacy of credit cards and plastic architecture gone wild in the 80s and 90s.

Today the railroad employs most of those fit to work. Soup kitchens cater to locals as well as wealthy gamblers on their way to San Francisco and New York City.

Poor construction, over-building and corporate cancer have, in hindsight, been isolated as the culprits in the fall of what looked to be a bullet-proof sub-culture/bonanza high in the Rockies. At the height of the war people weren’t much on skiing.

A stroll (daytime please) through the abandoned slope-side condos gives one a quick, bleak picture of the stark desperation at hand. Crime, drug abuse and degradation are rampant, as homeless vagabonds now inhabit these once ostentatious citadels. Children, adored in discarded, and certainly out of fashion, ski outfits play next to deserted lifts. The parents of a lucky few, refugees from collateral damage, are forced to work in Summit County.

In nearby Eagle a baby cries in a doublewide. A lone Chevy pickup curves its way through town perhaps searching for a loaf of bread, true enlightenment or a misplaced gearshift knob. It’s beginning to snow.

-Dinty Moore

Future February, 2029

 

“Rumors of my canonization are greatly exaggerated.”   – Bernie Sanders with apologies to Mark Twain.

Transylvania Promotes Strongest Asset

(Iron Curtain Closures-Multi-Cromagnum Trans-Everything Day -April 18, 2016)

A broad based yet unlikely coalition that includes various radical environmentalist organizations, dentists, the Trans-Caucasus Castle Repair Tradesman’s Association, the Transylvanian Humpback Support Society (WhatHump.org) and more than five European Union ancestral tourism officials has been created to breath new life into the asinine dream of one old man and his terrifyingly psychotic ancestor.

It is a dream, and an ancestor, that many had thought died long ago but today, hope for bringing Transylvania’s native vampires back home to Transylvanian rural villages is once again breathing horrifying raspy breaths into a heartwarming community project and an uplifting story.

Deep in the tangled, rotted, stinking, serpent ridden bowels of the People’s Transylvanian National Forest And Oil Refinery lie a few government sanctioned, frightening looking shacks surrounding a makeshift castle and graveyard where a small group of dedicated biologists and vampire lovers care for the project’s seven captive vampires while they are retrained to survive in the Transylvanian urban – rural interface.

One of the volunteers points out that “once reintroduced, the vampires will face extraordinary hardships and risk. We must ensure they can survive without succumbing to starvation or even capture or hunting by angry, terrified villagers.”

Given the myths and prejudice against bloodsuckers of all kinds of the last six centuries, as you might imagine vampire reintroduction is a thankless job that can really only be done in a loving fashion by the basest idiots and black hearted losers looking to turn a quick buck. Enter Mstislav Slinvorkian and his transgender partner Hiewassa Gêrural.

“Having Vampires back in Transylvania is a human right. Mstislav and I are not going to let this issue die or blow away on an ill wind. Vampires, werewolves and a fragile and delicate collection of medieval daemons are essential keystone components of the Transylvanian ecosystem and the most charismatic thing about our nation. They are all that we have. Take away our monsters and we have nothing! We’ve been without nothing for too long!”

Mstislav stepped in to calm his flighty but dedicated friend.

“This is so important to Hiewassa. Other nations have traditional heroes – generals and political leaders, authors, ballet dancers and plumbers. But as a native Transgender Transylvanian, Hiewassa feels that bringing back our homeland’s most iconic species will be the first step in transferring new pride for Transylvanians, who are naturally prone to transformations.

“I’ll tell you,” Mstislav whispered, “he won’t talk about it himself, but Hiewassa feels that given his own native blood, his Dracularian family tree and his already apparent penchant for transformation, he may someday suck a villager’s blood. He’s that close to these guys.”

Mstislav was pointing to the castle and graveyard and the seven young hedge fund managers, still in the Armani suits they wore when they were sedated, collared, loaded on the airplane and transported from Wall Street back to their ancestral homeland.

Someday, hopefully, each will roam free in the Translyvanian outback, sucking blood without the constant threat of an Elizabeth Warren congressional investigation or a 55% tax bracket.

That, at least, is the crazy dream of two creepy nut balls deep in the Caucusus and the corrupt shambles of a government in a broken ecosystem trying to rebuild the myth that lies at the heart of so many ethnic Transylvanians’ gender identity issues today.

We will continue to follow Mstislav and Hiewassa’s story as they prepare for partial release of several vampire young into the wild just prior to Halloween 2017.
*  *  *

Map Maker Local realinea Planet

(Ridgway, CO Diversión Con Geografía April 17, 2016)

Poco Elkview Wannamaker ha logrado cambiar el mundo, al menos en el papel. El valiente 2 años de edad, un cartógrafo prodigio, decidió que para la diversión que conectaría América del Sur y China por una masa de tierra extendida prestado de Canadá y se ejecuta a través del Trópico de Cáncer.

Cuando hubo terminado de colocar todas las islas del Pacífico diminuta en su sitio incluso Amerigo Vespucci no tendría que reconocer el lugar.

De acuerdo con la Sociedad para la Preservación de las supersticiones y la Hermandad de Geógrafos físicos este ejercicio demuestra que el mundo es plano.

 “Esto es una completa tontería”, dijo un vocero de esta última organización. “Algunos niño con un lápiz de color no puede cambiar la posición de los países, mucho menos continentes enteros.”

Mientras tanto el comercio es rápido con Colombia y Perú se beneficia del mercado de café muy abiertos en China, mientras que los antiguos puertos, Shanghai y Hong Kong vieron exportaciones récord de bienes manufacturados a América del Sur.

“Lo que tenía que ser enviado a través de un océano ahora se puede entregar directamente a la puerta del consumidor”, dijo ZXing Taosace, de la China comunista capitalista Yangtze Press. “El dinero ahorrado en estas transacciones se utiliza para construir un puente peatonal a través de segmentos inseguras para la negociación.”

Cadena de tiendas adictos en los Estados Unidos están enojados de que han quedado fuera de las oportunidades comerciales lucrativas pero muchos no pudieron localizar los continentes que participan en sus teléfonos celulares.

– H.L. Menocken

Why don't we have a President like Pepe?

Why don’t we have a President like Pepe?

Pepe President of Uruguay copy

GOOGLE THIS GUY! Tired of politicians in the US? Check out the stats on Jose Alberto “Pepe” Mujica Cordano who was President of tiny Uruguay until 2015. A Social Democrat, he and Tabare Vasquez have changed the country for the better while avoiding the entrapments of regular day to day political meanderings. He drives an old VW Beetle and lives in his tiny house on the outskirts of Montevideo while giving away most of his small salary.

Are We Reasonable Anymore?

(Sicilian-Hibernian Report  —  April 15, 2016)

Due to an apparent crisis of confidence in the American people, the United States Supreme Court, in cooperation with the Surgeon General and the Transportation Safety Administration, has downgraded the American version of the near universally recognized “Reasonable Man” standard to the slightly less rigorous but much better fitting “Barely Above An Idiot” standard.

An embarrassed  United States Supreme Court has determined that because there are so few actual ‘reasonable men’ left in America upon which to draw criteria to implement the ‘reasonable man’ standard, and because the public at large is largely unreasonable, the standard ‘reasonable man’ standard no longer cuts the mustard.

The highest Court in the land has lowered the bar and media reaction has been ecstatic labeling the case the “Call A Spade A Spade” decision.

Quoting from the Summary at the front of the Opinion (because nobody likes to read the whole thing):
“Americans are no longer legally bound to behave like reasonable men even if they are women. From now on, the American people will bear no burden or expectation of acting reasonably, in any situation, any longer, by anyone’s standards. Notwithstanding the foregoing, all immigrants shall continue to be required to be reasonable at all times, temporarily, until we figure out what’s going on.”

Writing for the Court’s majority the late Justice Antonin Scalia had once noted that the Court’s ruling could be seen as a recognition that the nation had become a “continental community of unreasonable nitwits who can no longer grasp the golden ring of reasonable behavior and thought.”

In a stunning development, the ghost of the said Scalia has appeared in front of the Supreme Court building confiding to corporate media nearby that “most Americans wouldn’t know a reasonable man if one soundly slapped them like a wet salmon.”

Meanwhile Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that regardless of the fish reference, Justice Scalia wouldn’t know a reasonable man dressed in black robes or white ones.

*Justice Sotomayor noted for the record that she has no intention of paying any attention to this ruling and she doesn’t expect anyone else to do so either.
*Justice Kennedy disagrees with the decision but believes it is not so bad as to be unreasonable and prefers to ‘get along’ so Justice Kennedy therefore joins in the majority.
*Justice Clarence Thomas added nothing and desires readers to guess at whether he joined the majority or the minority in this decision or possibly just blew this one off.

– Ms. Lina Baquere

____________________________________________________________

One Too Many Cowboy Poets

April day, 2016

A cowboy poet
in dungless
pointy-toes
had little to say
but he talked like
a real cowpuncher
would talk.

With a twang and
a drooped mustache
that head under
a big ol’ Stetson,
the drugstore way to smell like alfalfa
or an early autumn cutting.

From a Ralph Lauren
catalogue his monogrammed chaps
stood out like raw meat
in a school of sharks,
backed up to spurs from Mars
or some such locale
too far from the corral
to be a serious contender.

And the cows think it’s all
so very funny
even though they are
the leather
that holds it all together.

Dinner Table at the Spiders
If you’re going to
the spider’s house for dinner
do not be put off by
fly stew.

-Kevin Haley