All Entries Tagged With: "San Juans"
Papá Noel Canadiense
(Ottowa) El guerrero de la Navidad vestido de rojo ha admitido su ascendencia canadiense hoy para consternación de millones de fanáticos al sur de la frontera en los Estados Unidos. Farsante.
“Estamos atónitos”, dijo un portavoz de los minoristas aquí. “¿Por qué nos engañaría? ¿Por qué se haría pasar por sí mismo de una manera tan cruel? ¡Debería ser castigado!”
Durante siglos, se consideró que Papá Noel era un producto de los Estados Unidos, ya que su imagen de marca registrada fue creada por personas como Thomas Nast, Clarence Horning, Frank Leslie y Winslow Homer. A pesar de estas suposiciones, la continua insistencia del elfo en que residía en el brutal Polo Norte y su larga asociación con Canadá debería haber indicado una rata.
“La gente preferiría pasar por alto la realidad de una situación en lugar de considerar todas las posibilidades”, dijo la científica social Margaret Swede de Cal Polygamy, una académica visitante aquí. “¿Por qué piensan que los niños canadienses siempre reciben sus regalos primero? Ha sido un fanático de los Maple Leafs desde el primer juego de poder. Incluso va a los juegos de los Expos. Eso en sí mismo muestra una inestabilidad sustancial”.
No se sabe qué hará esta divulgación en las Navidades en las colonias, pero el ex candidato presidencial Al Gore se ha ofrecido valientemente a ocupar el puesto hasta que se nombre un nuevo Santa o se exonere al anterior.
“Santa nos ha engañado durante demasiado tiempo”, continuó Swede. “Incluso la academia liberal tardará en perdonarlo por este acto despiadado”.
Como canadiense en funciones, Santa también es un tema de la corona (Gran Bretaña), lo que puede no tener una buena acogida en los círculos fenianos.
“Su madre era una Murphy”, agregó Swede, “ah, pero no se olviden de la mierda cuando hacen algunas libras al otro lado del mar”.
Después de las vacaciones, Estados Unidos considerará sanciones económicas contra la Commonwealth de Canadá por albergar el fraude barbudo.
– Suzie Compost
Nisei Christmas
“Men speak of them well or ill; they themselves are silent.”
– Stephen Vincent Benet, Ode to Walt Whitman
One Yuletide near Granada, Colorado in 1943, two soldiers sat in a dark cafe watching the snow come down. Snow was still a marvel to these California boy transplants who would be shipping out for Italy in a few days. There was no visible sun in the sky and the windows of the cafe looked as if they hadn’t been washed since the First World War concluded some 25 years ago. One of the soldiers, Private Thomas Okamoto, would go on to be one of the most decorated fighting men in the European Theater. The other, also decorated, would serve for two years in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and see action at Salerno Bay, at Naples, at Cassino, and at Anzio. His name was Kiyoshi Nakamura. He was killed by a German sniper near Saverne, France in early 1945.
It was June of 1944, in Rome, that Nakamura met my uncle Clifford, and shared the following story. He wrote it down soon afterwards, in an attempt to keep it all straight. Perhaps a survivor could make sense of it.
We were staring out the window onto the soggy Colorado street. The flakes melted when they hit the frozen ground. Private Okamoto was talking about his uncle’s strawberry garden back in California. He didn’t know if it was still there. Yes, we were afraid to go to war and we were afraid for our families behind barbed wire at Granada. Both of us had parents detained.
A tall, thin rancher stumbled into the cafe, ordered coffee and sent a bone chilling stare in our direction. It wasn’t a hostile look, more one of astonishment, of lassitude. He turned tiredly away from us and asked the walls and ceilings what the world had become.
Then, without warning, he approached our table. We thought he must be drunk.
“Looks like snow,” he said. “How long you been in?”
Private Okamoto answered him, followed by a crisp sir. He motioned at the chair as if asking it to dance, then sat down.
“I’ve heard a lot of you pups were joining up,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to stare but you two are the first I’ve seen in uniform. Where they sending you?”
“Italy, sir,” I answered, “for the time being. Then Berlin.”
“You won’t see much of this damned snow until way past Rome. Where are you boys from?”
“Santa Ana, California, sir. We are only here to visit our families at Granada. They were relocated over a year ago,” I answered. “We brought them Christmas presents.”
“My name is Walters, Frank Walters,” he said, describing a cold, wet Christmas at Cambrai, in France in 1917. “I was at Belleau Wood as well, and with the Brits at Chateau-Thierry after the Germans broke through in 1918. I survived. A lot of them didn’t.
“And now our government is involved with another war with Germany…and this time with those bastards, the Japanese,” said Walters, catching himself. He looked at the floor.
“You got a lot of family interned at Granada?” he mumbled into his chest.
“Most of them,” I frowned. “The others, a cousin and Private Okamoto’s brother are in the army. We are Japanese-Americans, you know.”
“I know,” breathed Walters. “Good farmers. Good neighbors. I don’t think they deserve what they’re getting. The country’s in a panic and some are up to no good.”
“After Pearl Harbor it’s not hard to believe,” said Okamoto.
Walters returned to his previous state, not saying anything for a few minutes, just staring out the window and then to the door as if expecting a visitor.
“How old are you boys?” he asked, returning to the present.
“I’m 19 and Kiyoshi is 20,” said Okamoto.
“The same age as my Tommy,” said Walters. “He was lost when the West Virginia went down at Pearl Harbor.”
We sat there in shock. After three days visiting a deplorable Granada and 14 weeks training to kill Germans, and perhaps even Japanese, we thought we’d reached a certain sense of numbness. Now we were sitting here with a World War I vet who had lost a son to the Imperial Navy, to young men his age who looked like us.
“My name is Tommy,” offered Okamoto, stumbling over his words in some attempt to ease the pain that all were feeling by now.
“You’re all Tommy,” said Walters, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “We were once children too and it was the same Christmas, but different. Germans and Japanese and English and French all wrapped up like the dark gifts of bitter winter. It’s insane,” he moved his head methodically from side to side. “They put your families in camps and yet you volunteer to fight.”
“What are we to do?,” said Okamoto. “Honor must override or anger, our fear.”
“Honor,” answered Walters, gathering his emotions. “You boys had better drop back a few notches on the honor thing and hold on to a little common sense when you get over there,” he said. The Germans are entrenched all the way up the peninsula. It’ll be no picnic.”
Walters smiled a shell shocked smile and changed the subject to the wine he had drank and the women he had met in France during his war. He then took us totally off guard and asked us to write him a letter saying that it would get to him in Lamar without an address.
“Just send it to Frank Walters,” he said.
We told him we’d send him a postcard from Naples and asked him to watch out for our families if he could.
“I’ll do that,” he said, getting up and disappearing into the snowstorm.
– Kevin Haley
Se teme el reventón de Nochebuena
(Colona) Elementos rebeldes de la pandilla de trineos de los Ángeles de los Elfos se han comprometido a seguir adelante con una cita decadente programada para la víspera de Navidad, según se informó esta mañana. Los elfos, que normalmente se dedican a las tareas de ayudar a Papá Noel en esta época del año, aparentemente están descartando responsabilidades legendarias a favor de la fiesta.
“Sabemos cómo se ponen estos pequeños duendes cuando beben”, expresó un residente de Log Hill que está preparado para los problemas. “El año pasado detuvieron el tráfico y encendieron hogueras por toda la ciudad. ¿Qué pasó con los encantadores duendes que solían asar castañas sobre un fuego abierto y todo eso?”
El año pasado, los automovilistas fueron constantemente acosados a lo largo de la autopista 550 mientras los malvados brownies buscaban fondos para su exhibición pecaminosa. Varios conductores fueron obligados a salir de sus coches y a la fría noche de diciembre por los elfos malolientes.
Se espera que las bandas de trineos del Polo Norte y Canadá desciendan al pacífico burgo alrededor del 22 de diciembre con la juerga que grita en el nuevo año. Se esperan saqueos.
“La víspera de Año Nuevo sería un buen momento para mantenerse alejado del centro de la ciudad”, dijo el local que empuñaba el rifle. “Ahí es cuando planeamos combinar músculo por músculo. Ya hemos tenido suficiente de su mierda”.
Bass boats arrive at North Pole
The first frozen bass boat fleet arrived at Santa’s Workshop this morning. The craft, one of 15 purchased in November, is specially designed to make use of an overabundance of elf muscle available at the North Pole.
But primarily it is a sign of the times due to great polar melting and the disappearance of icebergs, fish and mammal habitat. The bruised topography has dictated a new approach to survival in the Far North. What used to be massive chunks of ice is now frigid water, ever rising, ever-consuming. Climate change does not support sleigh travel even if the sleigh can fly.
“We got tired of all the deniers, the greed and the ignorance associated with the man-made crisis,” said Santa Claus, who, with the help of twenty elves guided the boat into a protected slip out of the wind. “Fossil fuels are responsible for the demise of our lifestyle and yet they are drilling just over the horizon.”
One elf chimed in: We’ve got more water than ice and snow – sleighs can’t cut it and reindeer don’t swim well. We’ll still use reindeer to haul our new boats over what snowy terrain remains. Citing a “little known fact” the elf said that it always took more than one sleigh to make the rounds on Christmas Eve.
“Now we will have enough bass boats to deliver presents to every kid on the planet, at least while we still have a planet,” he bragged.
News that the loyal elf faction here would be expected to take to the ores did not go down well. Many are not comfortable with the plight of the galley slave even for one night in December.
“It starts with one night then before we know it we’re in chains rowing through glaciers and ice mountains whenever Santa wants to go on a road trip or has business in Canada,” squawked another puffed up elf.
The remainder of the fleet is slated to arrive this week and undergo major modification before the Yuletide begins. Each of the larger boats is named for one of the eight reindeer with other smaller vessels tagged for North Pol landmarks and Santas immediate family.
“If the destruction caused by human generated climate change is not addressed today we will need every boat and more to make it to dry land again,” said a visibly exhausted Santa. “Coal in their stockings hasn’t worked. Future believers may be writing me letters c/o Mount McKinley, Las Vegas or Mars.”
Fred, Red and Ted Herring contributed to this report
Late scores: Arctic League – Polar Bears 6 – Elves 0
Deadline for hibernation permits draws near
(Bland Valley) Colorado Residents who wish to hibernate this winter have until Thursday to obtain official State Hibernation Permits. The procedure is simple enough and cave assignment/placement is often immediate. Applicants must only stop by the nearest Division of Wildlife office to pick up the needed forms.
“We have begun to closely monitor hibernation since more and more people have expressed interest in this winter diversion,” said Kay Slumber, Director of Latent Dormancy for the Western Slope. “This, combined with the population explosion here, has made cave space a premium and has threatened to disrupt the peace and quiet enjoyed for centuries by innocent fur-bearing animals.”
In addition to a small fee, persons wishing to enter this torpid state must also undergo a hibernation safety course, which is offered on Saturdays until January 20.
“In effect, this is an extended deadline,” smiled Slumber, “and we hope participants will be kind to our clerks when registering. We know you’re tired and hungry but getting testy with our people will only make matters worse.”
-Geraldine Cod
LOW-CAL CHRISTMAS STAMPS RELEASED
(Denver) The United States Postal Service has announced plans to release some 400,000 low calorie Christmas stamps in time for the holidays. The stamps, featuring Santa Claus and other celebrated Yuletide icons, will be first-class and available at the window on December 14.
The stamps are a colorful bit of Americana, appropriate to the season and contain less than three calories. Customers who prowl the post office hallways have for long complained about health considerations when purchasing stamps. Of course, the benefits of the low-cal stamps are only apparent when one licks the back of them. A self-adhesive batch, mistakenly produced last month, are only props and will be saved for emergencies.
If the promotion is a success consumers should expect to be assaulted by a grand array of theme stamps throughout the year. Next up: Heart-shaped first-class stamps for Valentines Day and 70-cent stamps for April Fools.
-Small Mouth Bess
