All Entries Tagged With: "Western"
Choose the man from Montrose, Colorado
Hint: It isn’t former Attorney General Eric Holder. Guess correctly and you could win a new car!
WARNING LABELS HARMFUL TO GENE POOL
EDITORIAL
When was the last time you stood in a bucket of water while repairing an electrical appliance? Do you often climb extension ladders while blindfolded? Can you successfully operate a child proof cigarette lighter? How much cotton is too much cotton when one peers into an aspirin bottle? Buckle up for safety — We wouldn’t want the insurance companies to lose money if you are injured.
The multitude of warning labels that has graced the 21st Century is severely depleting the gene pool by promoting the survival of people who would perish on their own. If we are to follow the theories of natural selection we must put a stop to this neurotic reminder machine that society has found growing like a boil on its posterior. If this insanity continues our off-spring will be no more than a pile of ignorant robots waiting for the next command.
Stop this mad intersession now before it’s too late. The only warning label we need is one that says: Welcome to the planet Earth. Maximum capacity limited. Quality of life fragile. Please do your own thinking.
Time Flies in the Tropics
I have tapped into an incredible reader audience here in my Hoi An hammock. My stumbling scribe act goes over great since none of my neighbors can string an English sentence together and my Vietnamese is still at a childlike murmur. It’s the perfect readership. They scan and smile. No critics. Being a grandfather (ang noi) as well as a journalist (nha boa) is working well in a culture where older people and creativity are cherished.
View from my house
I even did well during the recent flood as no less than 4 neighbors brought me food. Now there is no room in my refrigerator. How can one gain weight on rice and vegetables? Down them with three beers and follow that up with a dessert of a delicious Vietnamese ice cream. I will wait another day to traverse the water. Would you like some chicken and rice? How about a hunk of pickled papaya?
Cua Dai (pronounced good eye) is a bustling street that takes one to Cua Dai Beach.
The Lights are on but no one’s home. Coffee houses seem always empty but blaring, mindless digital bass music blasts into the streets anyway.
Ba Le Market is fun. The lady vendors laugh at my bad Vietnamese but I usually get a lower price because I try to speak to them in their own language.
Sunshine! (Nang!) Even the crabby lady at the mini mart smiled at me.
Finally I get to go to the beach, a 4 km ride on my bicycle.
Toi or I, me…was not used much in Vietnam until the 40s. For 1000 years the strict concept of the individual yielded to the concept of village. It is used today but people still try to get around it when talking abut themselves.
The traffic is absurd. My bicycle is great for long stretches, back streets, beach lanes and after 9 pm when everyone goes home. Often riding in the Old Town or along busy roadways is like negotiating Red Mountain Pass in July or August.
In this vein I neglected to add that the rebar-wielding grandmother from the Use Your Noodle article was texting her son and humming April in Paris when she narrowly (in my Western estimation) missed running into me on Li Thai Do Street.
A palmetto bug runs across the floor. My machete is upstairs. I hope he doesn’t see me. He looks like he lifts cockroach weights. Look at those biceps.
Today I will pay a visit to my Friend Anh Ming over on Tran Nhon Tong Street. He is always trying to show me rooms for rent in his homestay even though he has been to my house. Mr Ming is the nosiest person in Central Vietnam and Western Laos. I fully enjoy making faces of disapproval when he interrogates me. If he persists I start drinking my beer fast in preparation to leave and he settles down.
Vietnamese cuisine some of the best in the world
Sample Dialogue:
Mr Ming: You send people here to stay at my guesthouse.
Me: Well if the opportunity presents itself I will.
Mr Ming: You send to Mr. Ming
Me: I grasp your concept Mr. Ming.
Mr Ming: Air conditioning, Wi-FI, breakfast.
Mr Ming is a gardener/cook/a virtual walking multi-media salesman. Mrs Ming runs the front desk and all the cash. She is extremely pleasant to me and generally ignores Mr Ming. She has offered to take me to the market so I get a Vietnamese price on such things as eggs and toilet paper. She is quite sincere in her offer, but quite nosey too.
Their son, Dung, fixes baby motorcycles. He never asks me anything which is much preferable to the Ming grilling. Mrs. Ting smiles all the time and brings me noodles while rolling her eyes at her husband. Next time I will bring her a rose.
Well then…I’ve been a few spots on several continents but I have never been treated so well as on a little front porch bar on the river. I am the only foreignor that goes there. The only pretense there is that the patrons stare at you if you drink beer from the bottle and not from a glass. “Who brought you up? The dog?”
An Bang Beach palapas
I ask for a glass. Squid salad and beers in this populist’s Vietnamese language school. Smiles and pigeon English are flying all over my table. I started out solo near the street but now I’m set back in a more profound spot against the wall, chatting away to who knows what end. After three weeks I have three adopted grandmothers, two daughters, several good male acquaintances and a host of women mothering me.
My local was flooded recently and from the mud that hangs along the riverbank I think they got a heavy dose of what kept me inside my house for two days. I see people cleaning debris from the river just because they feel a need to do so. Just a little. Everyone does just a bit of pulling and collecting and bagging the trash that was absconded by the bad ol’ river. Sounds almost communal, even tribal.
– Melvin O’Toole
Buffalo Phil’s Body Stolen Again
(Ridgway) The body of Buffalo Phil is missing again. Authorities here say that grave robbers masquerading as state highway workers brazenly disturbed his grave late last night and may have made off with the remains of the famous frontiersmen.
The late Buffalo Phil is reputed to be buried in an assortment of spots across the country. He is said to grace gravesites from Golden, Colorado to Cody, Wyoming to downtown Ridgway. Although no community can prove that it is in possession of the real Buffalo Phil’s cadaver, each holds a bang-up summer festival marking the life of the former mountain man.
This is the third time this year that Buffalo Phil has been taken. In two previous thefts, bodies were exhumed and then returned when crooks failed to extort ransom money for the famous stiff. Forensic experts have long concluded that there is but one Buffalo Phil and that the others are mere impersonators.
Communities such as Golden and Cody lay claim to the distinction of having Phil in their cemetery but so do such burghs as Moose Pit, Idaho (which hosts a local rodeo in his honor) and Big Hornet, Montana (where a Buffalo Phil look-alike contest is in its fifth year running). In Little Liar’s Grove, New Mexico Buffalo Phil sightings lead Elvis sightings by more than three to one in December.
According to residents of Carson City, Nevada, a pale and ashen Buffalo Phil was seen leaving Verandas of Venus, a local establishment of delight early this morning. An eyewitness, engaged in the delivery of propane at the said location claims that Phil strolled across a casino parking lot and got into a gaudily painted circus wagon then disappeared into the clouds.
Despite confirming that leads are shadowy at best, law enforcement personnel are working around the clock in an attempt to solve this macabre riddle.
– Ripple Van Winkle
EDITORIAL #611
Snow balls a menace to the peace
During recent visits to Crested Butte we have repeatedly been shocked to see juveniles engaging in the inappropriate behavior of snowball throwing. It would be bad enough if these junior scoundrels were simply battling it out among themselves, but they have encouraged the combat to cross over into other, more moral segments of society.
Haven’t we come any farther than this? Are we still like monkeys hanging out of bark-infested trees hurling coconuts at four-legged beasts sentenced to the cruelties of gravity? Is there no law and order? Will no one stand up and be counted?
It’s getting so that one does not even see the traditional beaver pelt stovepipe top hat on the street anymore. We cannot blame the occupants of this fashionable, flamboyant headgear for succumbing to the icy threats of street punks, scarf-masked thugs and pre-pubescent hooligans.
Why just this morning on Whitrock Avenue, a gentleman, attempting to negotiate the stairs at Snyder’s Shed and Breakfast was accosted by alley urchins armed with snowballs. Before he could duck back into the familiar confines of his redoubt they were on him, pelting him with the little arctic missiles, knocking his hat to the ground, purposely upsetting his daily constitution, causing him considerable injustice.
Some of these little criminals even travel with dogs.
Will we the responsible members of society just sit back and wait until our civilization tumbles into the abyss? Remember the Saracens? Remember Chamberlain and Czechoslovakia?
The solution, although awkward, is a simple one: Remove the projectiles of this roughhewn subculture by removing the fallen snow. The town already has the trucks. Let’s get on with it and look forward to a more peaceful, secure tomorrow for everyone. And while we’re at it let’s go ahead and get rid of the dogs and kids too.
– Fred Zeppelin
O’Hare Airport to become Obama International
The international airport in the Windy City named for WW II flying ace Butch O’Hare (a non-politician) back in the Fifties will be known as Barack Obama International Airport come May 2017.
According to supporters it couldn’t have come at a better time what with the Cubs running away with the Central Division and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s desperate attempts to quell violence in the city.
Obama adopted Chicago and taught Constitutional Law at the esteemed University of Chicago before his campaign and election to the Presidency. The flip-flopping action comes just weeks after Congress pledged to restructure its patterns and avoid naming airports after ex-presidents such as George H. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
We’d rather name our functioning infrastructure after cultural and entertainment icons which represent the real American spirit,” said Selma Gantry, who has spent tome in over 4000 airports worldwide. “Why name an institution after a politician on either side of the aisle?”
The Illinois Department of Public Safety, thrown together recently to bring some sense of normalcy to airport name restructuring, recommended that Bush International in Houston be named for the late Mickey Mantle and Reagan Airport be named for Bob Marley, even though the latter was born in Jamaica.
“Anybody is better than the present power broker namesakes,” she continued. “Anything will do. Please show some taste and get rid of the Reagan statue at the entrance to the nation’s most prominent landing zone. It’s almost as bad as the provincial Bronco near Denver International. Traveling Europeans are laughing at us. It’s an embarrassment. Please!”
In a related undertaking, a well-received plan to rename Dulles Airport Katherine H. Hepburn International Flyway, appears to be making strides and will most likely be undressed again after Trump is impeachment. The Dulles Brothers were instrumental in setting the nation back some 50 years with reactionary foreign policies that torment us even today. Their black and white missionary zeal is blamed for failure upon failure and has left the American people with an all but insurmountable legacy that is in no way comprehended by most of the populace.
– Attila Diggins
