All Entries Tagged With: "Rockies"

Words are our friends

From Grammar Junkie, March 25, 2015
Pick the definition that best describes the key word. All are real words albeit rather emote and rarely used in the vernacular. Answer the questions correctly and win!

Coprophemia is
a. obscene language
b. the four-way stereophonic sound created by Peter Townsend.
c. the horn of plenty
d. Someone who fancies feces

Pannage refers to
a. the grease left over after frying food
b. the reproductive capacity of a television camera
c. food eaten by forest swine
d. excess rock extracted from a sluice box

Stasibasiphobia
a. the fear of catching too big a fish
b. the fear that the game warden will warn the bass
c. the fear of living underneath more powerful beings
d. the fear of standing or walking

A kobold is
a. a mischievous goblin who lives in an abandoned mine
b. a hoistman
c. the center wheel of an ore cart
d. a processed piece of ore

A knibber is
a. the person who lives next door
b. the low man on the totem pole
c. a male deer at the magic moment when antlers first appear
d. a spendthrift

An obstringe is
a. a heavily feathered bird with long legs and retractable neck
b. to bind or make indebted
c. payment in cattle in exchange for a bride
d. meditating while gazing at a shrouded navel

Kakemono is
a. a town in Indiana
b. a dessert from a Dim Sum tray
c. one’s older brother’s boxer shorts
d. a printed Japanese scroll with a roller on the bottom

Answers to the IQ test appearing in next month’s issue

1.) If you said the “long way around” was the only safe rout to point B, give yourself one point. If you said point B was not worth the trouble of getting to, give yourself two points.
2.) The answer was “a dog and two birds” Other acceptable answers were: a) Mt Whitney b)19% c) rice curd d)The Hanging Gardens Of Babylon e)>[40]yx f)May 4, 1691 g) sort of greenish or anything written in French
3.) Only if the electrician’s assistant leaves the building from the third floor west window and avoids every third step on the fire escape on his way down does he have a 68% chance of getting out alive.
4.) The answer to this one was “the train arrives at 4:30”. (You must show your work on this one, although it doesn’t matter who you show it to.)
5.) The answer to this one was either The Crimean War or The Korean War. We don’t remember.
6.) The correct answer here was 12. But if you wrote any number from 8 to 57 you’re ok. In fact any number below 150 is ok. Alright, we’ll accept 150 also. Well, if you wrote any number at all give yourself a point. Except 33. Only a doofus would write that.
7.) The correct answer was “I donít know.” Anything else was a shot in the dark. You know it as well as we do. No points.
8.) If you believe the answer to this one was “follow your heart” you are not only nuts but heading for calamity.
9.) The red star is under the third cup. If you have trouble seeing it, close one eye, eat a banana, and try again. Note: the star may appear as four black chickens in Canada.
10.) This one was a trick question; President Coolidge was never a real giraffe.

Scoring: If you scored 0 or less you are not too bright I.Q.-wise. (Don’t feel too bad, many of your type of people are quite successful.
If you scored 1-3 you are near to average intelligence ( a very scary place)
If you scored 4-7 you are above average intelligence, which isnít saying much. After all the average person finds Nash Bridges intellectually stimulating.
If you scored 8-10 you are a cheater. (Don’t feel too bad, many of your type of people are quite successful.)

Dear Editor:

March 25, 2015

I must take exception with an article entitled “Presidential Notes” which appeared in your January issue. For your information Richard Nixon played the electric guitar and not the cello as you repeatedly asserted. Also, Gerald Ford mastered the triangle while in gym class at Michigan, not while sitting in Congress. While you were correct in your assumption that Jimmy Carter played the harmonica you were remiss in your failure to mention his love affair with the washboard. It was at a washboard convention that he met both Teddy Kennedy and Walter Mondale in 1979.
The breakdown of Presidents and their musical instrument of choice follows a simple enough pattern. Some 22 Presidents, including Adams, Monroe, Tyler and Lincoln played the violin while another 30 enjoyed the piano. Teddy Roosevelt could really lay down some ragtime. Two played the tuba (Cleveland and Taft) and seven (including Bill Clinton) have chosen the saxophone as their preferred instrument. The only Chief Executive that did not play a musical instrument was Millard Filmore who was completely tone deaf and spent his brief two-year stint plowing through Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”, which he inadvertently left behind when driven from the White House. His successor Franklin Pierce could not make heads or tails of the book and subsequently gave it to his sister-in-law for her 50th birthday in 1853.
Thumbellina Etchabarron
Cimarron, CO

Creating the new Tinkers of the Universe

And there we sat for 700 years “gnawing on a naked bone” according to William Butler Yeats but “take a peek at us “now to paraphrase Dylan Thomas

Then another peek: Davey Crocket at the Dublin Post Office on Easter Monday in 1916. “Hey, wait. I’m supposed to be at the Alamo…”

Something deep within the Celtic soul seeks solitude, nature, something more than concrete and neon.

The Irish were victims of English tyranny for almost 800 years. They tried and failed to destroy us as a race. Yet many people of color often mistake us for the oppressors because of the color of our skin. We have never had colonies or oppressed anyone except ourselves. Please get the facts straight and buy us a Guinness or two.

Ronald McDonald Enters Treatment Facility

(Montrose, CO – March 10, 2015)
The McDonald Corporation confirmed that its lead cook and front man, Ronald McDonald, has entered a drug and alcohol treatment facility somewhere in LaPlata County. The clown, known for personal appearances and senseless TV advertising on Saturday mornings, was not available for comment.
It was clear he did not go voluntarily.
McDonald will spend the next three months undergoing therapy aimed at combating recent disorientation and serious depression stemming from his cheerleader role in helping to destroy global small business. Besides the chronic impersonalization of “eating out” McDonald has been implicated in blatant misrepresentation of ingredients, mislabeling menu items, the use of genetically modified foods, and, in the more serious charge…the brainwashing of small children.
These grease mongers have brought the concept of nutrition to its knees and created an unhealthy environment both physically and socially. They have dealt a deathblow to the concept of choice and made the country just that much more plastic and homogenized. It would be far bad enough if they were the only fast foodies but quick success has begat millions of absentee owner/corporate slop houses. They are like cockroaches.”
“Imagine a world without McDonald or McDonalds. What would we lose?” asked one critic. “People I meet in other countries think we all eat this shit, watch television and spend weekends roaming endless malls. How embarrassing,” she winced.
Just last January McDonald seemed to be crumbling, having shouted at a group of preschoolers at the opening of one of his diabetic parlors in Green River. Days later he threw a watered-down coke at a ZYX executive news anchor executive then furiously drove away in his 1949 Porsche, police on his heels.
Upon seizure of his vehicle, officers discovered an illegal stash of clown pornography, a case of Tums and three cosmetic surgery catalogues.
Interviewed back in October McDonald seemed shaken, admitting that the rigors of the restaurant business had taken a toll.
“He was going through some heavy trips,” said Mona McDonald, the clown’s half sister and heir. “Yes, he is a disgrace but I know in my heart that he never intended to hurt anyone.” – Susie Compost

Wal-Mart Ordered to Pay 45.7 Billion in Reparations

(Bentville, AR) Wal-Mart was today instructed to pay more than $45 billion in preliminary damages to American small towns. Saying that the nation’s largest retailer has “stolen the innocence of personal commerce and created a hostile environment for trade” the court denied what amounted to the third appeal on the issue.
The prescribed payments will begin this week with funds strictly earmarked for architectural renovation, commercial reeducation, green space and small business loans.
“This monster has eaten away at the very fiber that is America,” said Judge Timothy Brennan of the United States Court of Serious Jurisprudence, “and has engaged in unfair competition such as misrepresentation, price fixing and the application of brainwashing techniques not seen since the Korean War.”

Oops!

Brennan went on to say that the destruction of small town America must stop and these reparations are just the beginning. He said that the Wal-Mart experience encourages people to be robotic and stupid, which are not two traits consistent with even a fringe democracy.
“Mindless consumerism leads to expanded greed and to desperation which leads to false needs and ultimately more control,” said the judge in his final decision. “The people are sheep and must be protected by a benevolent shepherd not fleeced by heartless men and women who seek to dictate business practices in this culture.”
Bosses at Wal-Mart did not return our phone calls Friday but chatter on the local level suggests that Wal-Mart will be “talking to our friends in Washington” according to one store manager. “This Brennan character will be discredited, disbarred and destroyed before the week is out. And we don’t need government approval since we are the government.”
Officials here denied reports that Brennan would be assassinated, an approach popular with other totalitarian regimes.
A clerk of court, speaking on behalf of Brennan, who is said to be in hiding at the time of this report, said the fines may seem exorbitant but that the destruction is unparalleled in modern history.
“We will never be able to bring back a more gentle, soothing exchange between buyer and seller,” she said. Companies like Wal-Mart have destroyed those days along with a big chunk of Americana. It will never return and the people who support this kind of shabby mercantilism share the blame.”
Brennan, in his closing statement, reiterated these comments saying that shopping at Wal-Mart was unpatriotic.
“What is particularly disheartening is to see that many Americans watch their culture disappearing and they don’t even care. They are too busy consuming junk.”
Meanwhile another faceless Wall Street giant, Citibank, has shrugged off a $7 billion fine imposed by the Justice Department for the sale of high-risk, defective mortgage investments during the sub-prime housing boom.
“We have plenty of money to pay off these paltry damages,” said one unidentified spokesman for Citibank, “and a lot more in off-shore accounts that they’ll never get their hands on.”
Meanwhile Wal-Mart officials denied published reports that it will begin charging customers parking fees during the holiday consumer feeding frenzy in December. – Kashmir Horseshoe