All Entries Tagged With: "Rockies"
Region has share of silly laws
(Disappointment Valley, CO — Desert Sun — April 29, 2016)
I always enjoy the timely baby journalist pieces about antiquated laws in bluenose locales like New England and the American South. These folks have been sitting on their porches since the 1600s and have had plenty of time to dominate police blotters and tie up the courts with ridiculous directives and lukewarm commandments still on the books for the benefit of no one.
We folks out here in the Real West have not had the luxury of 400 years to hone our own restrictive edicts but we have developed a few that are real whoppers! Here are some of the more entertaining ones:
It is against the Territorial Law (never rescinded) to talk with your mouthful while driving through Sapinero. That is why the restaurant at Hunter’s Point has had such a bad track record. Tourists who insist on picnicking should be aware that their vehicles are subject to search without provocation. Fortunately Sapinero cannot afford a police department and the laws are pretty much ignored by everyone including the bighorn sheep that eat with their horns on.
It is against an 1892 ordinance to spit on the street in Gunnison, Colorado when the temperature dips below zero. Without lowering ourselves to descriptive graphics the situation seems quite clear: The spit freezes threatening the safety of other pedestrians who might slip on it and fall.
There is a humorous restriction still on the books in Ridgway that makes it a misdemeanor to wear dirty long-handles into the Uncompahgre River. The act itself can land the culprit 2 days in jail. According to ledger footnotes, the law was passed in an attempt to protect trout in the river, one of the first decrees aimed at environmental preservation.
Another sister law prohibits the use of gravel on state and county byways since it irritates horses and fouls up carriage wheels. This 1879 law was passed just hours after the Brunot Treaty, the precursor of banning the Utes from the San Juan Mining District so the White folks could dig for gold. It was never clear if gravel referred to precious metals.
One could be arrested for walking down Elk Avenue naked in 1890. It is still the same today in Crested Butte. Usually in mid-winter the offender was also forced to undergo psychological evaluation. Secondary streets in the booming coal town did not fall under the same jurisdiction. Dogs were never included in the restrictions.
Up until 2013 it was a crime to cultivate marijuana in Colorado. Today state tax coffers are bulging with cash encuraging state leaders to consider investing the boon in education, transportation infrastructure and social programs for the underprivileged. These priorities had long been ignored by federal authorities in favor of bombing other sovereign nations.
-Kashmir Horseshoe
Realestatus Interruptus Act Eradicated
(Ophir, CO — I’m From Telluride Magazine — April 28, 2016)
A harsh 19th Century land use edict has finally been abolished in this 21st Century resort hamlet at the base of 14,000- foot Mount Endowment.
The Ski Trenches, a loosely aligned community, just downwind from the now defunct Wilson Spirit Refuge and Recovering Llama Ranch, had at one time required that the community sport at least one Realtor for every ten residents. That was then. This is now.
“We are witnessing the passing of an era,” said Warren Trafalgar III, who has held an assortment of licenses since last week. “We can only see good things in the works now that the statutes have unshackled us all.”
The termination of the much hated and clearly antiquated Realestatus Interruptus Act will allow the resettlement of Pandora and the rezoning of Liberty Bell subdivision from penal-rural-industrial to aerial-subsidized-agricultural. It’s a lot like colonization. It wasn’t fit for the working class but could make a great condominium compound for the ultra-rich.
The infamous act was originally created in 1879 to provide creative financing on early civic projects in town. The original owners of the property, the Ute, had no credit rating or deed culture, and banks were uneasy lending money on unimproved land.
The static situation became more clouded since the Utes had never asked to borrow anything from their new neighbors in the first place. In 1880 alone over 75 closings could not be consummated due to archaic banking practices and timidity at the higher levels of finance.
“One never knows who or what he might run into in the mountains,”
– Hannibal of Carthage, 211 BC
Marijuana Cholesterol Free – FDA
(Montrose, CO High and Low, April, 2035 April 26, 2016)
In a bold move to protect one of the nation’s most lucrative industries the US Food and Drug Administration has declared marijuana to be cholesterol free. During a stopover here top administration sources voiced support for further legalization of the weed for medical and recreational use.
Since 1950 the FDA and assorted government health agencies have labored to find some danger in the smoking or eating of the herb. They have found very little especially compared to other sins such as alcohol and tobacco. This latest announcement was seen as capitulation by some, as logical by most and as the end of the world by others .
The regulatory agency insisted that the expanding worldwide markets for North American cannabis had no impact on the decision.
“We don’t care who politicizes this issue,” said one scientist. “The facts are the facts and pot does not create bad cholesterol. While the marijuana smoker is not putting himself at risk, he is no healthier than anyone else .”
Ever since the demise of fossil fuel use in 2020 the federal government has been searching for assets to exploit. Now in 2035, despite ancient fears as to legalizing the evil weed t he brink may finally be in view, even though many states in the South and Midwest continue to cling to ignorance and superstitions with regards to the herb.
Marijuana can now be sold alongside chicken and fish and just around the corner from the organic aisle.
– Fred Zeppelin
White Collar Workers Riot
Expensive Cars Turned Over, Portfolios Hurled at Police
(New York — Nice Neighborhood News — April 25, 2016)
Financial district workers continued a rampage up and down Wall Street this morning, angered by the shooting of an alleged white-collar criminal by local police. Shouting down authorities the privileged mob moved toward Fulton Street where other angry local Bourbons, including doctors, lawyers and dot com nouveau rich joined them.
Most had even loosened ties, chucked heels and discarded expensive cuff links as they joined the hellish mêlée.
The misguided frolic precipitated after a Black officer shot a white-collar worker after the latter allegedly fled the scene of insider trading and penny stock manipulation. The location has been known as a high yield hedge house where margins were often counted in beta bytes and the index determined by who had the hot hand at the closing bell.
“Embezzlement is embezzlement no matter what time of the day,” said a spokesman for the police department. “The suspect failed to heed the warnings of the officer in the early morning hours and paid the price.”
The suspect is recovering from a leg wound at Steven Talkhouse Clinic in Queens. According to Officer Truman Washington he shot only after the alleged perpetrator continued to elude him on Nassau Street and threatened passersby with a heavy briefcase and his cell phone.
His name is being withheld until his significant brokerage clients can be notified. The officer is on temporary suspension with full pay until the matter can be reviewed and stock options identified.
Police have cordoned off all secondary avenues leading to and from the epicenter of the demonstrations. Saabs, Volvos and Cadillacs litter the backstreets. The affluent crowd exhibited fortuitous restraint when it came upon Mercedes Benzes and Rolls Royces parked along the Hudson River.
Sadly, a nearby sushi bar was torched and its gin reserves quickly depleted when it refused to open early for lunch. Minority-operated news stands, beauty parlors and unlucky pizza joints were vandalized by the surging throng of wild-eyed professionals.
“An inner alarm went off inside this wealthy herd and the vehicles were untouched,” said the source. “It was some kind of sacred come-to-your-senses respect thing that overshadowed the compulsive rage that we’ve suffered for the past few days here.”
While authorities have succeeded in isolating the violence many fear that the situation will escalate after the market shuts down for the day. Efforts by White leaders to calm the crowd appear to have failed. Police remain hopeful that the majority of the troublemakers will return to the robotic afternoon commute and return to steaming ghetto redoubts in Greenwich, Short Hills, New Rochelle and Great Neck.
If not, Mayor Bill de Blasio has threatened to call out New York and New Jersey National Guard units unless they are still busy fighting in the Mideast.
– Cory Applewhite
Manana Stressing Out Again
(Colorado Small Towns — High and Higher — April 24, 2016)
Manana (Colorado) residents are likely to experience increased stress in 2016 according to postulated statistics arriving in our outbox by the minute. In the minute Colorado burgh, 34% of the town’s reasonable people say they are more likely to fly off the handle or in some cases overreact to daily tension and negative stimuli than in 2014.
A majority ay the town has become a pressure cooker while over 11% report having trouble with rural routines.
Those surveyed as part of a social reach out from Denver singled out summer traffic, dog waste, increased lawn responsibilities, high grocery prices and the gov’ment as the major sources of their befuddlement while another 17% admitted that the strain of baiting hooks, running to town for toilet paper and organizing camping gear could push them over the precipice at any given moment.
In response to this state of emergency someone’s gov’ment is building landing zone front porches on existing structures as Soul Recovery Quadrants. If this fails to remedy the crisis the authorities intend to put the entire town on medication….or was that mediation?
