August 29. '03

United States Department of the Interior
United States Geological Survey
Regional Office
Bldg. 53, Denver Federal Center
Box 25046, MS 415
Denver, CO 80225

Dear Mr. Aretin:

Thank you for your inquiry to the USGS. Your question was forwarded to us here at the regional office.

By way of background, it should be noted that Colorado is generally considered to be an area which has little earthquake activity. The first known reference to an earthquake here in Colorado was on December 4, 1870. It is an account of bottles on a shelf, one inch apart which were knocked together violently, at Fort Reynolds, about 20 miles east of Pueblo.

The largest earthquake in Colorado's history, a magnitude 6.6 on the Richter Scale, took place on November 7, 1882 with the epicenter west of Fort Collins. It caused moderate damage in Boulder where it knocked plaster from the walls at the University of Colorado.

There have been interesting recent developments in the science of earthquake forecasting by scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). The method involves analyzing changes in activity rates of small earthquakes through time to compute the probabilities that areas are likely to be subject to future large earthquakes. 

To answer your question, given the current knowledge about earthquake history in Colorado, it is extremely unlikely that on August 30, 2003, a giant fissure will open up in the earth at Invesco Stadium in Denver, swallowing both the Colorado State University and University of Colorado football teams, their mascots, coaches and camp followers.

But we can always hope.

Sincerely,

A. Erdbeben

Director, Regional Office

August 27, 03

I dropped by Bozo's shack on the steppes of Central Boulderia this morning, with the intention of helping the old fossil update his fashion sense a bit. He was getting the hang of not tucking in his shirttail, so it was time to move to the next level. I came armed with a copy of last Monday's Colorado Daily.

"Look," I said, "I want to show you something. I took out the section that had a long article on "emo."

"You mean Emo Phillips, the comedian?"

"No. Listen." I read from the article:

It's "emo," no giant leap from "emotional," a term originally created to describe a certain contingent of musicians that existed from the late '80s to the mid-'90s, but that has come to describe the zeitgeist of twenty-somethings whose self-search of meaning and emotional resonance shows up almost everywhere in the culture.

"Look at this," I said, pointing to the part of a diagram illustrating the proper emo footwear.

He studied the picture. "'Ripped cons?' That sounds like the weightlifting club at the state pen."

"Converse hi-tops," I said. "Didn't I see you wearing a pair, once?" Bozo rummaged awhile in his closet and emerged with a rather frayed pair of black hi-tops, which he offered for my inspection. I took them carefully. "Well, they're ripped, all right. That's cool."

"Yes," he said sadly. "I mean 'no'. They're probably older than the guy in the photograph. These are the real McCoy. Made in the USA. I believe aficionados refer to these as 'chucks,' short, of course, for 'Chuck Taylor All-Stars'. First they went to making them in Asia, and now Nike owns the company." He shook his head, "These are the last of a breed."

We gazed reverently at the worn sneakers. "Well, here's proof that if you keep something long enough, it will come back in style. Maybe you'll even come back in style, eventually," I said insincerely.

He shook his head again. "I doubt if I'll live that long. I bought these sneaks back in my Clothes Horse Period as an item of formal wear. I used to think it a hoot to wear them with my tux. I always wore the old-fashioned grosgrain waistcoat instead of a cummerbund. I put little silver skulls on it for buttons. And a real bow tie, sometimes a custom-made one in a black/white print. With a wing-collar shirt, of course, with the points of the collar out, not tucked under the tie like a total doofus." He stabbed a finger at another part of the diagram. "They're wrong about the glasses. Buddy Holly wore black horn rims."

"And they call the hairstyle the young miss is wearing 'messy Asian buns'." Bozo looked thoughtful. I could imagine only too well the chain of associations this had set off in his head. He studied the photo. "That hairdo reminds me ..." He rummaged some more in a bookcase. "Ah ha! Here it is. One of my childhood sex symbols. Along with The Lennon Sisters, about whom I used to fantasize that ..." He fell silent.

"I still think this has something to do with Emo Phillips," Bozo said. He finally produced a magazine, found the place, and handed it to me triumphantly.

"I liked him better with that weird bowl haircut," I said at last. I left Bozo sitting meditatively in his back yard, wearing his ripped Cons, I mean his chucks. His shirttail was out.

That was enough emotion for one day.

August 24, '03 -- Today in History: It is the Feast day of St Bartholomew, patron saint of tanners and shoemakers, so when in 1572 Catherine de' Medici and the Catholic French court ordered the massacre of thousands of French Hugenots in Paris, it was called, oddly enough, the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre.In 1975, Annabel Hunt scored the first nude performance in a British opera production, and the first on television, finally lightening the mood somewhat.

streets torn up when the students get back, catchphrase, as in "Well, I see they'll have the..." An old Boulder joke which implies that the City schedules major street repairs to coincide with the fall return of 25,000+ CU students, thereby creating Traffic Hell. The real joke is that it's not a joke. It's a tradition.

     —The Unrestrained Dictionary of the Boulderian Language

This fall, Boulderia had a real double-whammy up its municipal sleeve. Not only was the yearlong Broadway rip 'n' tear in full swing, but they tossed in the resurfacing of a chunk of 28th Street, hence embrangling not one but two, two, two, major north-south thoroughfares. Shock 'n' Awww!

The honors in this week's Sunday Camera (one of those things that go bump in the night) Shootout goes to Dave Barry, who details California's attempt to recapture the title of Doofus State from Florida. I have always felt that moving Dave from the "Insight" section to "Diversions" was motivated by pure envy on the part of the Camera's editorial board.

Left out: Dave should have included Arnold Schwarzenegger's real-life statement from his recent news conference: "I will be a governor for the people for a change because, because I want to represent the people because the only thing that counts for me is the people." You can fool some of the people all the time, except in California, where they do it for you.

Mr Free Market Guy, Jon Caldara, is not too incendiary this week, riffing about CU's ranking as #1 Party School by the Princeton Review. He actually makes a good point about the ill-advised abolition of 3.2 beer, though he fails to sufficiently apportion the blame entirely where it belongs: Colorado's conservative government that never met a highway it didn't like.

Left out: The real problem isn't the boozing at CU, but thuggish behavior. It's possible to drink and smoke one's way through college without making that much noise, setting anything on fire, leaving a path of destruction, committing sexual assault, or crushing anyone's skull with a baseball bat. Bozo and his pals are living proof of that. They learned how not to do these things in college and they still don't do them.

Also in this week's Camera, making it a sort of Four-Way Shootout, was Matt Appelbaum's column. The Baumster examines city council candidate rhetoric in an insightful, wry manner that threatens to devolve into humor at times. This should be required reading for all Boulderian voters.

Left out: Mr Applebaum fails to mention one method of ascending to councilhood: Get an incumbent to successfully run for reelection, then bail out, letting the council choose you to fill the vacancy. Oh, I forgot! They have to hold an election now, don't they?

Breaking a long-held prejudice against such navel-gazing, Mondo Boulder had the Counter-Intuitive Agency conduct a survey of readers of this website.

One is out of town on vacation, and the other has the mumps.

August 22, '03

They say of me, and so they should,
It's doubtful if I come to good.
I see acquaintances and friends
Accumulating dividends,
And making enviable names
In science, art, and parlor games.
But I, despite expert advice,
Keep doing things I think are nice,
And though to good I never come-
Inseparable my nose and thumb!

She was born in 1893, died 1967. She once suggested her epitath read "Excuse my dust." Later, she suggested, "This is on me." Her memory is revered at Mondo Boldo.

August 21, '03 -- Yelling Bicycle People Night (I can hear them. They're out there.)

"That'll drive the shoppers to Broomfield," I muttered through clenched teeth when I spotted the headline on a Camera editorial:

But (whew!) it was just a foreign policy sermonette and not another plan for Boulderia's ailing Crossroads Mall.

It is a sad commentary that the most admired athlete in America today is Seabisquit - a horse that has been dead for 56 years."
    

      - Columnist Oliver North, quoted in Chuck Muck's right wing e-letter

I know neither you nor I want prairie dog blood on our hands ...

       —Councilperson Spense Havlick, in the HOTLINE

August 20, '03 -- Today in History: On this day in 1912, General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, entered into heaven.

Hallelujah! It was queer to see
Bull-necked convicts with that land make free!
Loons with bazoos blowing blare, blare, blare—
On, on, upward through the golden air.
    Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

   —"General William Booth Enters into Heaven" by Vachel Lindsay

Following the house fire on Sunday that charred a rental unit at 1937 Arapahoe Ave outside Boulderia's No Outdoor Couch Zone, leaving four students homeless, Boulderian Fire Department officials have asked Mondo Boldo to post this announcement, since freshmen and students not living in the No Outdoor Couch Zone may not properly understand standard upholstered furniture incineration techniques:

1. Drag couch from front porch to middle of street.

2. Light couch.

3. Do not hold couch in hand after lighting.

IMPORTANT: Do not omit step 1.

August 19, '03

When your players go into action wearing the proud symbol of a vast, multinational corporation, you can be confident they will be using their equipment to best advantage. When they're driving hard to score, they can stay focused on scoring, again and again.

But even more than their equipment, they'll be backed by a longstanding, character-building traditional set of values that says: In business as in sports, "Only Winners Make the Big Bucks!"

Sports equipment manufactures have long realized that collegiate sports function as a sweet, publicly financed farm system for the professional leagues. So why not get young athletes started using the same expensive equipment they will use in the near-monopolistic world of pro sports entertainment?

Think it over. What choice do you have, anyway?

August 16, '03 -- Today in History: Well, Toto, the movie version of The Wizard of Oz opened in New York (1939) on this day, and Ghengis Khan was killed after a fall from his horse, in 1227. Happy birthday (1925) to Brian Aldiss. If you don't know who this is, you're not a True Geek.

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
was looked on as something shocking.
Now heaven knows,
anything goes.
     —Cole Porter

Wednesday evening last, Bozo was at the Fox for Luciano, with Dean Fraser and Mikey General. It was, he reports, a most excellent show in every way. The crowd was mellow and not of the lemming-like density that is so often the case once CU is in full session. There were African princesses, tropical perfumes, exotic incense, and envy-inducing ganga odors to enrich the sensory experience.

But with sudden shock Bozo realized he was the only male in the building with his shirt (T) tucked into his pants! A check of the room --and subsequent fieldwork-- confirmed that this just isn't done. How had he failed to notice? No Sherlock, he. Mothers, wives, and girlfriends have been --Ahem!-- insisting on this for years, but now, well, apparently, it's Pure Geezer.

So what did he do? Bozo's willing to go along with fashion, he says, where it yields additional comfort. He pulled his shirttail out. "After all," like the saying goes, "If it's nice out, leave it out."

Apparently, the Game Show Network really is going to have a game show featuring debates between Boobnatorial candidates in the Entertainment State's present electoral fandango. The Winner, whoever gets most votes in the election, wins $21,200, the maximum corporate campaign contribution allowed by California law. A campaign contribution after the election makes as much sense as any of this.

So far, no one's jumped on my idea for a Boobnatorial Lottery, but the Mondo Legal department is watching events closely.

The Sunday Camera, with its dense, chewy, advertising center covered in a thin, newscandy shell, had an interesting "Get Out" feature about the Colorado Mountain Club and its 75-year old poet laureate, Boulder resident Stanley Boucher.

Mr Boucher is a true gent and outdoorsman with whom Bozo has on occasion skied.

Not mentioned in the piece: His son is sometime presidential candidate and alt-culture cottage industry, Jello Biafra.

Eight people were killed and 150 injured when rioters clashed with police Saturday night in a central Iranian city. The fracas was precipitated by a plan to redraw the municipal border. Redistricting seems to bring out the worst in people, from Texas to Tehran.

This brouhaha is probably nothing to the bloodshed and rending of garments that will result if the local group pushing carving Boulderia into election districts succeeds in getting the measure passed. There have been reports that people collecting signatures to put the measure on the ballot have described it merely as a proposal to popularly elect the mayor, failing to mention the election district provisions.

It was a rough, stormy crossing. There weren't three days that were fair, and balanced over the railing was how I spent most of the voyage, ready to transfer to the fishes what little nourishment I was able to get down.

August 16, '03 -- Today in History: Elvis died (1977), Madonna was born (1958), and Pete Best, the Beatles' original drummer, got the sack (1962).

Q. Are the subways up and running?
        —Interviewer on The News Hour

(No, and they never will be.)

The Camera actually ran a flash mob editorial in yesterday's paper, rather defensive in tone, in the spirit of kicking a dead horse. In it they ask: "...but if a flash mob gathered and nobody was there to witness it, would there be any point?"

For the merely exhibitionistic, maybe not. But what if it were very difficult to tell who actually were the participants and who were the witnesses? Or what about a flash mob organized only to set the stage for an even more abstruse and less obvious flash mob? And what if people start spontaneously pretending they're a flash mob?

...will not appear today.

"I pledge allegiance [except as restricted by applicable state and Federal regulations] to the Boulderian flag, and to the Good Intentions for which it stands, one Upscale Community, under the Spiritual Modality of my choice, with Diversity, Traffic Mitigation, and Curbside Recycling for all."

August 15, '03 -- Today in History: Napoleon's birthday (1769) has proven a mixed bag. In 1965, race riots in Watts required the attention of 20,000 national guardsman, and in 1969 Woodstock got under way, eventually embroiling 400,000 lovers of music and cultural uplift. Bozo was not at Woodstock. He saw the movie many years later, and thought most of the music sounded awful. In 1987, the Brits banned caning in the schools.

Our paths belong to all of us.
       —Open Forum letter, in the Camera

Here is one of Boulderia's most cherished rhetorical devices in action. This particular instance refers to the bike paths, but you may freely substitute anything publicly owned or even quasi-public, including the streets, parks, municipal buildings, the airwaves, the moon, the stars, the flowers in spring, the robins that sing, the sunbeams that shine, etc. This device implies that since the whatever belongs to all of us, we should all be able to do exactly what we want with it. I call this the "Soft Anarchist Position."

The runways at Boulder International Airport belong to all of us, too, but when a woman who later said she'd taken an herbal remedy and was having a "deep moment" recently drove her car out onto one of the landing strips, the spoilsport police asked her not to do that.

Bozo says last weekend he saw one family that had set up its barbeque grill actually on the bike path at Eben G. Fine Park. This makes a fiery collision involving a bicycle, heretofore not considered possible by scientists, a least a theoretical possibility.

By the time I'd paid the fare and balanced my checkbook, I realized I'd be arriving in my new home, Boulderia, nearly penniless. I would miss the circus. I wondered if they loved clowns in Boulderia.

August 14, '03 -- Yelling Bicycle Person Day

If you reveal a secret, especially concerning trickery or wrongdoing, you're "blowing the gaff." The Historical Dictionary of American Slang tells us this was already underworld slang before 1812.

A gaff? That's a "small hook or spur set in a ring by a cardsharp to facilitate cheating." Now, there was nothing malicious in the flash mob stunts that started springing up recently in various American cities, but the whole notion did seem depend heavily on secrecy and anonymity to set up these bits of mysterious, seemingly spontaneous theater. Paul Danish and another Daily staffer used to do a prehistoric version of this back in the Sixties. They'd board the UMC elevator separately, and then seem to fall spontaneously into an escalating argument disputing with increasing heat whether "Certs is a candy!!" or "Certs is a mint!!"

Once the sensation-hungry media started revealing the existence of and the mechanism behind the flash mobs, the mystery and ambiguity started to quickly evaporate from these mini-events. Here in Boulderia, a would-be first flash mob was announced the day before with a feature story on page one of the Camera. If that ain't blowin' the gaff, I don't know what is.

I forgot to flash on down to the courthouse square yesterday at 6, site of the purported mob (which illustrates one difficulty I'm likely to have as a flash mobster). It turned out a platoon of newspersons, with aerial support by the Channel 4 helicopter, awaited a mere dribble of mobbers. The media can't help itself. Like a sort of baby brother, it can't resist tattling.

It looks as if the whole smart mob phenomenon has now been turned on its head. Instead of a mystifying bit of secret theater, the whole thing's turning into one of those public events in which the more theatrical (that's a polite word for "exhibitionistic") members of the community perform for the wallflowers.

So is the jig up for the whole flash mob notion? Not necessarily. It's pretty certain there's going to be a fad for rather public and obvious stunts organized over the internet. But I don't imagine that will stop subtle people from dreaming up subtle pranks, things that will leave the uninitiated guessing. They may even find ways to incorporate the media-driven fad into their didos.

If somebody doesn't blow the gaff, that is.

I moved through the fair and, balanced on the stilts with which I was rapidly becoming an expert, soon had a froth of excited children stirred up around my feet. Everybody loves a clown. Almost. Everybody but Hildegarde Boom, the Princess of the Air. She said it's the greasepaint. She hates the smell. Such a fox! News of the ravishing aerialist had spread through the kingdom. Not only was I lovesick, I felt like a cliché. It's a good thing my smile was painted on.

August 13, '03 - - Today in History: Fidel Castro has yet another birthday. Whoo-pee.

[Colorado Springs Councilman Darryl] Glenn said he feared the city was heading down a "slippery slope" with the ban on the open carrying of guns. "I just hope that my fear doesn't come to fruition, that we've let the genie out of the bottle," he said.
     —AP story in the Camera. It's also the birthday of Annie Oakley (1860), who was always careful with loaded metaphors.

She was fair, and balanced on the flying trapeze with a feline grace that entranced the hushed crowd filling the big top, but none more than the lonely clown who worshipped from the peanut gallery.

Sources at Boulder County reveal that the cost of the 4-pound lye spill described on July 9 have been totaled up, coming to $1090, for which the truck company will be dunned.

Of course, it isn't being billed that way, but if you consider it as a package deal for the 33 personnel who responded, that's only $33.03030303 apiece, which isn't bad. You can't get a Boulder carpenter to return your call for $33.03030303.

Still, I will repeat my limited-time (the universe is finite) offer, and pick up any spills of 5 pounds or less of dry sodium hydroxide for $109. It must be within cycling distance. I'll also take on boric acid, copper sulfate, calcium carbonate, sodium chloride, finely powdered magnesium silicate, unbleached farina and similar nasties for the same low price.

August 12, '03 - Today in History: "Mary Had A Little Lamb," vocal by Thomas Alva Edison, topped the charts in 1887. It wasn't very good, but since it was the first sound recording in history, there was nothing to knock it out of the top spot.

"...Bush has given us 700 days without an attack on American soil."
      —Barbara Fresquez, "former liberal precinct committee woman" and former Democrat, in the Colorado Daily. Yes, but you've got to admit the one he gave us was a lulu.

When I delivered my little sermonette on balance in journalism day before yesterday (cribbed from Bozo, who trained in the journalistic seminary, but was never ordained), I didn't realize that "Fair & Balanced" is a registered trademark of Fox News, and had you told me, I'd have denied anyone could be that stupid.

I'm wiser now. I can only plead scant familiarity with Fox News. In what brief exposure I've had, Fox News seemed more in the Hot and Heavy vein than F & B. The Fox Network itself is patronizingly referred to by the effete PBS snobs here at Wormwood Acres as the "Sex and Violence" channel from its relentless sleazification and elevated death toll. Golly! do you suppose Sex & Violence is a trademark, too?

I once read an item about Bill Gates buying the rights to the alphabet, but that was facetious. It seems Fox News has filed suit against Al Franken over the title of his book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." Not content with cutting down the nation's forests and constructing a vast network of roads between the stumps, the vast right-wing conspiracy is bent on privatizing this great nation's stock of trite and hackneyed phrases, with a special emphasis on two-adjective combos.

This is to serve notice that Modest Geniuses, Inc., doing business as Mondo Boulder, herewith claims trademark protection for all the trite and hackneyed phrases on this website, in particular two-adjective combinations having cliché status, that are not already property of the far right.This shall be understood to include, but be not limited to, the following:

Nice & Easy, Thick & Creamy, Fast & Furious, Meek & Mild, Fine & Dandy, Dark & Stormy, High & Mighty, Wet & Wild, Warm & Toasty, Down & Dirty, Fat & Sassy, Free & Easy, Warm & Fuzzy, Weak & Weary, Quick & Dirty, Rich & Famous, Shock & Awe ... Etc.

In the meantime, Mondo Boldo is not giving up so easily on Fair & Balanced™. Bozo says he was using this one when the Fox people were wearing 3-cornered pants. You, Dear Reader(s), can expect to see this phrase used in this journal in Many & Creative ways in days to come.

August 11, '03

For toxic mountains purple prose
Above the fruited plain

Jennifer Heath of Boulder writes in the Camera's soapbox section:

Using Roundup means supporting barbarity, greed, the loss of land and small farms, the further impoverishment of already poor people, many of whom live close to the Earth. It is part and parcel of such practices as the patenting corn or wheat and privatizing water.

Well. We don't use Roundup here at Wormwood Acres, either, but we are a little particular about the ecology of public discourse, and considering the sort of horrific news that appears in the rest of the same issue of the paper, use of overblown rhetoric such as "barbarity" in this context is definitely toxic.

And since much of what comes out of everyone's exhaust pipe is toxic, you, too, Ms Heath, are "supporting barbarity, greed, the loss of land and small farms, the further impoverishment of already poor people, many of whom live close to the Earth" if you drive a car. It's hard to find anyone in Boulderia, even an infant in disposable 3-cornered pants, who isn't supporting barbarity, etc., in some fashion.

And incidentally, humans have been privatizing water since they took up agriculture about 8,000 BC. Gardeners good and true have also been modifying the genetic makeup of plants by selection for perhaps even longer. Systematic genetic modification of plants by hybridization began in the 18th century, and it has been possible to combine genetic material from entirely different species or genera by hybridization for some time now. Almost all the foods we eat have been genetically modified through human intervention, and for many years, a great many of these have been proprietary varieties.

While I won't deny that it is more satisfying to have sex with a partner than to masturbate, the difference isn't that enormous.

—Dr Ruth Westheimer. That depends on how you define "that," Doc.

August 10, '03 -- This day in 1675, the foundation stone of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich became one of the many and varied things that were laid by Charles II.

This week's Sunday Shootout goes to News of the Weird, which this time around covers the whole gamut of outrage, pity and terror needed to capture postmodern life as she is lived. Runner up is Dave Barry, who is in good, that is to say, silly, form, and who, by pegging his column on an actual news event (Man Bites Fish), maintains a thematic continuity with NoW in the adjacent column.

Mr Free Market Guy, on the other hand, lectures us on the "liberal mainstream media." Brace yourself, but the Boulder Daily Camera has a liberal bias! Mr Caldara surprises by not mentioning Fox, Clear Channel, or Rupert Murdoch even once in the column. So I break out in giggles when the free market guy argues that the news columns of the Camera are, in effect, a sort of quasi-public utility and ought to present more of the conservative view.

In other words, the Camera lacks "balance." The idea of balance as a kind of moral imperative is on old one in journalism, and mostly honored in the breach. It was most often fostered by a state of benign local monopoly, if it happened at all, where the publisher had little practical reason not to work all sides of the town square. Get two papers in town, and any semblance of balance is likely dumped down a mine shaft, and early ferociously partisan Colorado papers tend to bear this out. They make the Camera look like the soul of even-handedness.

A lot of the moral force behind the notion of balanced reporting comes from the idea of people being dependent for news on some sole or limited source. This is hardly true in the age of communications/entertainment glut in which people assemble their personal realities from a smorgasbord of sources. Insofar as the public craves balance, not to mention critical thinking, the market can deliver it. But public tastes just run more to sex, lies, and videotape than to Reason magazine.

The Camera knows its readers and advertisers well, and it gives 'em the diet of gentle liberalism they crave, even a token free market guy.

Now, what could be more free market than that?

August 9, '03

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that Boulderia's reputation for exoticism and weirdness is, at this point, mostly hyperbole. Although this eccentricity is the stock in trade of Mondo Boulder, fairness requires an admission that the place is coasting on a reputation earned in the Glory Days of the '60s and '70s.

For one thing, it has become too expensive a habitat for the truly bohemian fauna that once gave the place panache, and this is true of the college population as well. Boulderia is now the preserve of the Bourgeois Bohemian, hunted with such wit and accuracy by David Brooks in BOBOS in Paradise.

Also, hard times have had a sobering effect on our fair burg, not only the recent dearth of rainfall, but the financial desertification brought on by the Dot Com Bust and the creation of a retail black hole just down the road in the breakaway county of Broomfield. Not to mention the murder of little You-Know-Who, which I won't. We've aged.

No, Boulderia only seems something rich and strange when compared to the Cromwellian hordes restlessly surrounding its protective moats of green, roundheads perfectly willing to trash the institutions of the land as well as ravage the countryside itself if it will confound the heretics. But when you compare Boulderia to that Fount And Source, that Mother of Weirdness, California, we seem like a model of probity and reticence. And our little troubles are mere trifles alongside the tar pit in which The Gonzo State has gotten itself, and into which it is like to wiggle even deeper.

Finances, Potential for Natural Disasters, whatever the category, Boulderia pales in comparison. And politically, everyone knows the California Recall Extravaganza is now the hottest thing in reality TV. California's going to forget its troubles for awhile with a big political gladiatorial game, after which it will wake up to the same old legislature, the Terminator as Gov. and a $40 million hangover.

A day or so ago on The News Hour a couple of former California governorpersons agreed that debate should be a part of the games, and that was something to fire the imagination! Here's Mondo Boulder's initial wish list:

Arianna Huffington vs Arnold
Gary Coleman vs Larry Flynt

Or: Maybe the whole field could be handled in a special week on Hollywood Squares. One thing is certain. The Entertainment State can't afford to keep throwing these political bloodbaths, diverting though they are and pulling better ratings than even the presidential race, without finding a way to cover the costs and maybe bring in a little spondulix. How about a pay-per-view gubernatorial combat? No wait! The Gubernatorial Lottery! Win this baby, and you're Governor of California. If the winner is really lucky, he or she could be at the helm when the whole works breaks off the continent to become the Kingdom of New Atlantis. They could sell tickets for this governmental jackpot all over the US, and maybe in Canada and Mexico as well. This could work. This could make big bucks.

Boulderia, too, is heading for something of a regime change, but the biggest problem the electorate may have with the city council election is telling the candidates apart. Compared to the new, edgy California political style, Boulderia's electoral orgies are like the picking of new church deacons.

Would you buy a City Council Sweepstakes ticket?

August 8, '03 -- In 1974, Richard Nixon became the first American president to resign from office.

August 6, '03

If you haven't run into him yet you probably will. Not only is he cruising along the sidewalk on his, nubby-tired, 21-speed Sidewalk SUV, he's talking on his cell phone, leaving only half a brain and one hand free to avoid running into you. It's the latest variety of techno-pest, the cell-phone cyclist, and, thank God, Boulder, now he can accessorize!

According to a "Cool Gear" feature in today's Camera, companies are beginning to cater to this growing market with clips that can attach the phone right to the handlebars, "so as not to miss any incoming calls," and a padded case shaped like a water bottle that will protect the phone "in case of a crash." Sure, if the phone is not where it is likely to be, in the rider's hand or clipped to the handlebars. Clearly, a cell phone air bag is desperately needed.

It's just too bad we must offer no products, in order to forestall your ungovernable desire to send us money, because the Mondo Boulder Consumer Research Center has just developed an oh-so-cool gear item that could easily become the next road rage: the pedestrian helmet. Imagine the oblivious cell-phone pedestrian who is struck by a cell phone cyclist and knocked off the sidewalk into the street and into the path of a cell phone driver (this might even be an elderly cell phone driver, on his or her way to plow into a farmers' market). Thanks to the cell phone pedestrian helmet, his noggin, like that of the cell phone cyclist and the cell phone driver is protected from other cell phone users. It may be mostly full of air, but you wouldn't want to scratch the case.

Today is the day one of the Statehouse Gang's proudest pieces of recent legislation, the Pledge of Allegiance law, takes effect, going down in history alongside such stellar moments as the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the first use of the electric chair, which also happened August 6. Starting today, Colorado teachers and kiddies must take the Pledge each day, although with characteristic moral courage, Colorado lawmakers provide no penalties for disobeying the law. The Pledge law will soon halt the decline of modern youth and have them as patriotic as folks were when we developed the bomb and the electric chair.

The law is intended for teachers and students, but don't be left out. You can start each day by viewing and pledging your allegiance to the Boulderian flag, and even download the new, improved Honorary Boulder Citizenship certificate (don't let the fact that you're already a citizen of Greater Boulderia deter you) right here, absolutely free. So cheer up.

August 4, '03

Dave Barry takes the honors in the weekly three-way shootout in this week's Sunday Clump, the one that comes wrapped in a thin lawyer of newspaper. There's also a pretty good item in News of the Weird that reminds me of one of the blackout sketches done by Live Soap.

(When do we get more Live Soap? Bozo has a secret crush on Sally Clodfelter.)

This week, Jon Caldara magisterially praised the Public Library for doing exactly what we would expect, or rather, demand, that it do: speed up the deletion of borrowers' records to mitigate the effects of the Patriot Act. Still, he can't resist sniffing:

You can imagine my reluctance in handing out kudos to the library. These guys refused to fly a large American flag in the foyer after 9-11, inspiring the passage of a new state law requiring them to do so. Still, they had no problem hanging a display of dangling dildos. Lovely. Like so much of Boulder's government, their desire to make political statements often overrides their responsibility to simply do their business.

There's nothing wrong with my, or the library's, imagination; it's Caldara's that seems to be defective in failing to discern that the same independent-mindedness that speeds the deletion of records causes the library —and so many Boulderians— to prefer the free display of controversial art to forced displays of patriotism.

The state law to which he alludes is an especially poltroonish piece of work. Not only is it drafted too vaguely to pass muster legally, it carries no penalty for violating it, and hence, manages to be both intellectually and morally cowardly. In fact, it's a prime example of the Statehouse Gang's "desire to make political statements" overriding "their responsibility to simply do their business."

And I haven't noticed any big flags in the library foyer, either, although the one that has always been right outside on a pole yet waves. Maybe Mr Caldara should make it his mission to invoke that state law and force them to hang the flag the size of the Mayflower's mainsail that they originally declined to display. Do keep me posted on how that goes.

Come to think of it, where are all those flags that were plastered all over town? Remember the Free Wave Three? Those people from Free Wave Technologies who taped a flag to the library for the benefit of a Camera photographer? I wonder where they're taping flags these days? They missed a great photo op when the Invasion of Iraq kicked off.

And where is El Dildo and his American Patriots Foundation, and his run for public office? Don't expect me to answer these questions for you. Do you think I'm a newspaper? On second thought, don't expect the newspapers to answer them for you either.

But Bozo says he's glad that Mr Caldara brought all this up because, though it is taking a while, the 2002-and-Half Dillies, are coming along. Then will we praise upstanding citizens like El Dildo and extend honor and recognition to civic achievements like that flag display law, both here in Greater Boulderia and in that surrounding gray area, whatever it's called.

August 1, '03

I don't think so, Toto. But it is the historic anniversary of Colorado's entrance into the Union, in 1876. They must have rung the church bells during my nap, and mechanical difficulties must have prevented any of the local papers from memorializing our becoming the 38th state.

Or maybe folks were just too busy celebrating the birthday (1838) of Jules Leotard, the French acrobat (guess what he invented) or the day the first Mars bar went on sale, in its native England. Exactly 37 years later to the day, the first pix of Mars, the planet men are from, were beamed back to Earth by the Mariner 6 spacecraft.

But in a less serious vein, departing Boulderian councilperson Don Mock released a message on the council HOTLINE "a list of the issues and events where I feel I played a significant, sometimes critical, role." Most of these items were pretty non-controversial, if somewhat hyperbolic, such as, "Increased/stabilized city support for the Dairy Arts Center," "Turned the RPP into NPP (which ended moratorium on expansion)" (Oh, goody!), and "Saved outdoor shuffleboard courts from demolition." (Quick: for one Mars bar, when was the last time you saw these courts in use?)

But one item had me clutching my sides: "Rationalized the Neighborhood Traffic Mitigation Program (NTMP)." If there is one word that does not describe the NTMP, it is "rational." "Faith-based" would be much more appropriate, because a lot of faith is required to believe traffic is either "mitigated" or "calmed" by this expensive exercise in civic magical thinking.

Mr Mock is one of the scientists on our highly-educated council, but then there are "scientists" who insist the Earth is 8,000 years old, too.

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