All Entries Tagged With: "Ridgway"

Squash Still Suffers From Public Relations Crisis

(Squeeze Box Chronicle – July 10, 2015)

The North American Association of Squash Tillers has hired a Madison Avenue advertising firm to beef up its image and present a more attractive option on the dinner table. Squash sales have severely plummeted since the 2000 due in part to successful promotions by traditional competitors like turnips, soybeans, lentils and okra.
The introduction of cute little Tommy Turnip or giddy and cuddly Sarah Soybean have upset the apple cart. Lentils and okra have made great strides too in the garden and on the grill.
It is not easy for a generic vegetable matter like squash to compete with these slick yet phony cartoons,” quacked Melvin Toole, copy boy at Morstern, Hamill and Glick, the agency hired by the squash people.
“We hope to turn the tide here from the inside out,” said Toole. “Imagine little children gnawing on boiled turnips, masticating steamed okra or sipping soy drinks for breakfast. It ain’t right.”
Marketing experts are hesitant to summarize the status of these vegetables admitting that dancing hot dogs and talking raisins have revolutionized the industry. For centuries promoters avoided using humanized food to communicate to the masses thinking no one would swallow the idea of eating their new little friends. Lately however, statistics soundly suggest that the average consumer will eat whatever is placed in front of him, mineral or animal. In addition these interlopers have found that most humans, after constant prompting, would be quite happy nibbling on his own grandmother if he thought, “everyone was doing it”.
“Now squash,” started Toole, presents another set of problems. A lot o it is onomatopoeia, or the formation of words to imitate what they denote,” he said. “Who out there wants to eat something that sounds squished, forcibly mashed or otherwise repressed?
“We have considered renaming the vegetable in out own likeness but names like ecstasy loaf and rhapsody gourd seemed rather forced. It just ain’t like the Cher thing.”
Readers may recall that back in 1980 the agency brought in the actress Cher to plug the onion industry. Her seductive TV spots, where she appeared in nothing but a small black dress designed entirely of garlic clusters and onionskin, never really increased sales substantially but made a lot of onion farmers happy.
One local squash entrepreneur told the Horseshoe that squash is squash and always would be squash.
“It’s not clover. It’s not corn. It’s squash. Anything else is bunk.”
“Those New York boys could convince a prospective home buyer that a cat box was another bath and a half,” he laughed. “Squash was so named in an attempt to allow children to digest a sample of life’s unpleasantness a spoonful at a time in the safety of their own homes.”
Perhaps the most dramatic impact on vegetable consumption is the fast food phenomenon whereas freethinking individuals purposely swallow poison, calling it lunch or dinner. This twisted culinary preference has all but killed dining diversity and will soon be counting these unusually fat garbage gobblers as another category of its victims, effectively relieving fringe symptoms of over-population. Science and nutritional truths clearly shows that eating these unhealthy chemicals should have already done their dire duty but many fast food enthusiasts continue to hold out. For how long?
– Kashmir Horseshoe

Aerobics Anonymous to Meet

(Dancing With Cigars – Ridgway, CO – July 10, 2015)

The secret meeting of Aerobics Anonymous will be held at an undisclosed address on Indian Massacre Highway it was disclosed today. The fledgling support group offers diversions for the recovering aerobiholic in a society where most people don’t even remember that fashion/workout craze.
“We seek to work through the problem by admitting that a problem exists, then denying the causes while applauding the affects,” said Nora Pennywhistle, acting executive director at the for-profit foundation. “After that plateau is ascended the recovery is well on the way. There are a few waivers to sign and a little matter of money.”
A host of thin females will then speak on cutting edge methods for “making inactivity work for you”, the theme of this year’s Let’s Get Physical Days in May. Each participant will receive a free set of leg warmers and touch on recycling tights.
“By whatever name it is called, exercise is the key here,” said Pennywhistle. “It’s no sweat to us how you get it.” – Oral Waters

Línea Maginot recorrerá Colorado en julio

Desde Eres Sólo Historia Antigua – 10 de julio 2015

(Crested Butte) El legendario Línea Maginot, piensa que es inexpugnable por las fuerzas francesas antes de 1940, visitará este antiguo gigante de la minería del carbón como parte de un verano espectacular viaje a través de los Rockies.
Unirse a la Línea Maginot será el advenedizo Siegfried Line, o Muro Occidental, así como la stumblebum Hindenburg Line, una posición defensiva hacia adelante alemán construido en 1916-1917 cerca de Soissons en el Aisne.
Lo que las tres líneas tienen en común es que ninguno realmente mantiene a nadie. La Maginot estaba flanqueado, el Siegfried desierta en la cara de victorias y el Hindenburg, a pesar de la lucha irregular, se perdió al armisticio firmado en 1919.
Tal vez lo que sigue para deleitar los historiadores de la guerra es el fracaso de la Línea Maginot, que resultó inútil cuando los alemanes simplemente tomó un atajo a través de Bélgica, yendo alrededor de las defensas de lujo y marchando a Vichy Paraíso.
A pesar de su vínculo con la derrota más devastadora de la nación en la historia de la línea todavía evoca un cierto orgullo, patriotismo sutil. Descubierto en un montón de basura París la Línea Maginot en 1946 el hito fue limpiado y poner de nuevo juntos a partir de mapas y gráficos de la Segunda Guerra pre-Mundial. Sus acompañantes fortificaciones militares Siegfried y Hindenburg siempre se han mantenido y sólo tenía que ser recogido y enviado (fortines y todo) a Nueva York, donde la gira por Estados Unidos se origina.
“La verdadera atracción aquí sigue siendo la Maginot”, dijo Entraylea Maginot, bisnieta de André Maginot el homónimo de la zanja sin gloria. “Eso es lo que la gente viene a ver. Le costó 3 mil millones de francos sólo por la alfombra! ”
Los mayores Maginot, que, afortunadamente para su honor, pasó en unos ocho años antes de la ineficacia de la línea fue sacada a la luz por los generales alemanes en 1940, no sabía ninguna de las otras líneas. Se espera que todos ellos se llevan bien durante los viajes.
La División de Cumplimiento y Turismo de Colorado espera que la inclusión de los recorridos y la venta de marihuana legal aumentará el turismo en un 30% este verano. – Bambi Bumble

Hinckley Mistakenly Drafted by Raiders

(Special from The Federal Rehab Flyer – Gunnison, CO – July 10, 2015)

Longtime federal guests and Texas (not Colorado) native John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate then President Ronald Regan on a rainy Washington morning back in 1981, has been accidently drafted by the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League (Aren’t long sentences hard to read?)
The foul-up came late in the meetings when most team representatives and player agents were bored and tired. It is not uncommon for a team to draft a dead person or a fictitious person, much to the chagrin of the sports franchise.
“Oversights can happen,” said Red White, organizer of the draft and subsequent festivities following the workday. “All those names and faces and the films and the statistics can make a normal person into a raving lunatic! It’s a wonder we don’t draft ourselves.”
White reminded the press that in 1985 Dallas drafted Sirhan Sirhan, who had changed his name to Mohammed Sirhan after assassinating Robert Kennedy in 1968. Of course the Cowboys dropped all contact after realizing they had acquired a pariah, especially when, due to prior commitments, he couldn’t make rookie camp.
Hinckley, who has not fired so much as one shot at a major politician since his incarceration, may be eligible for parole in 2020.
The Raiders employed Jack Tatum for all of those years,” said White. “The fact is that Hinckley has been legitimately drafted and now the ball is on our quart…or gridiron as it were. The team plans to pursue the mater until it runs out of rope,” he smiled.
Meanwhile Hinckley has been lifting weights and running pass routes in his cell. He has again began writing Jodi Foster, a former 49ers drum and bagel girl. The content of those letters has not been made public but cellmates say it is a confusing arrangement of Xs and Os with a progressive rendition of Taxi Driver, written in Greek and Latin, thrown in for ballast.
Other teams, most notably the Denver Broncos, have been mum on the development while awaiting the evolution of what could be a major precedent and newest hype in professional sports.
“Remember when Denver prematurely drafted the Manson Family in 1975?” smiled White. “The team wanted to shore up a porous offensive line and may have done just that, until someone came to his senses. This just proves once again that in this twisted society, there is no such thing as bad publicity,” he railed. – Kashmir Horseshoe

Summer camping above Crested Butte

Summer is never a given at a campsite above Crested Butte

Nudists offer clothes to earthquake victims

(Special from The Voice of the Volga – July 10, 2015)

An altruistic nudist sect that donated several truckloads of clothing to earthquake victims in Chile is at it again. This time an airplane full of warm duds and blankets are headed for Hashishistan, a former Soviet republic located somewhere north of Turkey and west of China.
According to unpublished reports the Potomac Rambling Bares, an ancient society of nudists is still collecting generators and wool socks that are slated to be shipped Friday. Temperatures in Hashishistan, although temperate to date, can begin the plunge to zero as early as October.
The Bares, who wear clothes to work have been invited as honored guests to both Chile and Russia in September. However, political footballs, kicked from Kiev and Santiago may succeed in foiling the visit. In Chile nudity is no big deal. Even the serious Catholics don’t seem to give a damn. The group will probably never even be noticed unless, of corpse, there is coinciding trouble with Argentina, Bolivia or Peru and the black-tie nudists are buttonholed as spies, strip-searched and collared.
In Russia nudity, along with most everything else, is nothing new.
The unclothed were first discovered near Yekaterinburg near the Ural Mountains in 311. Many of the slapstick czars were born naked until Nicholas I put a stop to that in 1825. Czar Nicholas II, under the influence of Russian monk, Gregori Rasputin, banned nudity altogether in 1908, stirring hopeless resentment that may have ignited the revolution in 1917. Although a Communist, Stalin returned to the stringent norms of the Czar, making nudity a crime in the Soviet Union. Victorious German soldiers tell of newly liberated, nude villagers coming out to meet them in Belarus and Lithuania in 1941.
Today Russia proudly boasts over 4.8 million nudists with many more born each day. – Neville Hoser