DECEMBER 25, 2004

Fair Use Notice

 

 

This is my late Dad dressed up for his church group.

This season, as in recent times, people seem to be foregoing the use of festive salutations, perhaps, for the first time I can remember, the practice has become politically charged.

That's not to say it was as prevalent in times past as the movies of the forties might suggest.

At one point this year I found myself dealing with someone in a Santa hat, which made them seem likely to me to be a good sport. So I ventured, "Happy Holidays! Or Merry Christmas! Either! Or both!" That seemed to be safe enough.

At least for people in Santa hats. So in the words of Ogden Nash,

"Merry Christmas, Nearly Everybody!"

—Bozo

DECEMBER 23, 2004

Last year in Boulderia:

[From a Daily Camera story]

Trent Reed moved to Boulder from Atlanta five years ago in part because he heard it was the mountain biking mecca of the United States.

Now he feels he was chasing a mirage.

Reed and a growing number of mountain bikers are joining a discontented local chorus that is calling for more access to local lands.

Conflicted over the whole Festive Greetings Issue?

Are you hesitant to say "Merry Christmas" lest people associate you with a resurgent, In-Your-Face Christianity movement? Don't want to say "Season's Greetings" because it sounds too Hallmark? Unsure about "Happy Holidays," which after all, derives from "holy days." Hey, maybe that's a good middle ground!

But what if the person you're saluting is an atheist? And a Jewish atheist or a Moslem atheist, at that?

Well, you could just chuck it all and annoy as many people as possible by basing your festive salutations on real historical persons and events associated with December 25. Beam radiantly and wish all and sundry "Happy Mohammed Ali Jinna's Birthday!!" You know, the Indian politician who fought Ghandi's plan for a unified India and became the first Governor-General of Pakistan.

If not Ali, then there's Anwar Sadat. Maybe Isaac Newton, who would appeal to scientific types, both of the real and pseudo- varieties. There's plenty more: Conrad Hilton, Maurice Utrillo, Humphrey Bogart, or Cab Calloway, to name a few. Hi de ho ho ho!

How about "Happy Coronation Day!"? That would be William the Conqueror, Westminster Abbey, 1066. You could wish everyone at the Bureau of Standards, "Happy Centigrade!" commemorating the historic Dec. 25 in 1741 in Uppsala, Sweden, when the centigrade temperature scale was incorporated into a Delisle thermometer. I don't know how cold it was, probably even colder than Central Boulderia right now, which is -12 Centigrade.

There's lots of other festive possibilities: The first Christmas tree was put up in Britain in 1800, an old German custom imported by George III's wife, Queen Charlotte. So you could probably plausibly say, "Merry Christmas Tree!" thereby ducking the whole issue.

Scottish nationalists could exclaim "Happy Abscond With The Scone Day!" recalling December 25, 1950, when the Scottish coronation (a nice tie-in here with William the C, above) stone, The Stone of Scone, was stolen from Westminster Abbey, where it had been kept for 650 years. Actually, the Scots were stealing it back.

[NOTE:Not to be confused with the scone of stone, which this baked good may resemble if improperly done.]

Maybe the Dec. 25, 1959, introduction by Sony of a transistor television set could inspire festive salutation, though an expletive might be more apt.

For Goths and the melancholy, both Charlie Chaplin and W.C. Fields died on Christmas day. I hate to think of anyone celebrating Hirohito ascending to the throne or Hong Kong falling to the Japanese in WWII, both Christmas Day events, but there'll probably be a few. And who likes to remember how the Romanians celebrated Christmas in 1989, by executing the deposed dictator and his wife? Probably the Romanians.

On a lighter note, Like Arnie and General McArthur, we'll be back with more stuff on the open space ditheration and other topics, if only we can survive the wild jubilation attendant to Mohammed Ali Jinna's Birthday!

So have yourself a merry little Whatever!

—Bozo

DECEMBER 14, 2004 

Today in Boulderia:

The front page of the December 14, 1973, Colorado Daily featured a marijuana-leaf illustration, a Daily staffer looking stoned, and wished readers "Peace on Earth to People."

Last year, "Two Denver men opened fire at a party attended by University of Colorado athletes and recruits ... shooting 15 rounds at the crowd and injuring one basketball player, 19-year-old Chris Copeland," according to a a story on the Camera. Copeland eventually decided to leave the slug where it lodged in his body, and presumably remains.

Last year in Mondo Boulder:

(To the tune of "Big Rock Candy Mountain" (second verse):

In Boulder Colorado we all have SUVs
So we can haul our mountain bikes where we can hug some trees.
And everything's organic here, including rocks and sand!
O, I wanna go and snort some snow
With the wind in my face in the Open Space
Of Boulder, Colorado!

Every day, more and more Boulderians have come to accept that it's over. The Election.

There's not much to do now but grouse about how the ballots were counted until the next election and shoulder the load of new taxes we gave ourselves (plus that surprise post-election regressive Trash Tax boost [ Nov. 21 ] the Council sprang for World-Saving purposes).

That means Boulderians can get back to their own weird Red/Blue-like conflict, the war between the Rec Creationists and the Preservationists over Boulderia's parks and open space. The Rec Creationists, made up primarily of various enthusiast organizations, see open space that isn't full of buff figures running, cycling, hurling themselves off ridgetops, staring moodily into the sunset while holding up a backpack or just throwing a stick for Farfel, as wasted, utterly wasted.

The Preservationists, made up largely of old-timers, city staff, planners, and nature groups, want to keep a lot of it as just empty natural space out there, providing a habitat for things rapidly being crowded from the Front Range like wild animals and farms, the wind in the tall grass.

A major buzzword in all this has been the "Precautionary Principle." This is a neologism for the ancient "ounce of prevention" idea, the notion that once the pooch has been well and truly screwed, it's pretty hard to unscrew him. The countervailing notion, much in vogue in the corridors of power these days, is that there's plenty of time to call the doctor once blood starts issuing from the nose.

The funny thing about the Precautionary Principle is that some Boulderians believe in it implicitly in regard to greenhouse gases and the Kyoto treaty, about which they have much abused the skeptical Bush & Minions, but put it in quotes in regard to closing any open space to their favorite recreational activity.

The More Trails Folks seem to have recently gotten a shot of Big Money. In Sunday's Chimera, a full-page advert appeared urging Boulderia to Keep Open Space Open! In this case, "open" means available for recreation, not unencroached upon.

The ad invokes such Boulderian notables as John Muir, Thomas Jefferson, Anonymous (He works for us. He never said it.) and Edward Abbey, and makes frequent use of "we" and "our" and "us," a co-optive device which always makes me uneasy, perhaps because it reminds me of the punch line of a joke about The Lone Ranger and Tonto encountering a very large force of hostile Native Americans, which, out of deference to Sen Campbell, I will not repeat.

In an amazing coincidence, a Sunday Chimera columnist also weighed in for the Rec Creationist cause in the very same issue. The full-page call to arms was paid for by "Charles Corfield," who may be the same Charles Corfield who is CEO of SandCherry, Inc., and board member of various other tech outfits. He might be the same Charles Corfield late of Silicon Valley. He could be the one who is a trail runner. Or he might be another one altogether. [HINT to the "real" media: Who the Hell is this guy? Is this another Jared Polis making his meteoric rise to power?]

The ad was also paid for by "other concerned citizens." Concerned, but shy. This makes me queasy too, probably because of unhappy associations with that last bunch of anonymous donors backing a local issue, the evil redistricting proposal.

A clue to the identity of the concerned but shy citizens might be found in a recent e-mailing from keep-open-space-open.org, urging us to ACT NOW! BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE! The website is a cooperative effort by the recreation lobby, a collection of local recreation enthusiast organizations that turn out to have interlocking officers and board members. They all have nice websites, too, except for the Boulder Trail Runners.

Well, folks, this is really just another fight about development.

There's a political and social equivalent of the Precautionary Principle, too. Boulderia is already into the business of meeting the public's recreational needs in a big way, with rec centers, playing fields, and an elaborate system of foot and bike trails. One result of this is the huge sense of entitlement in regard to recreation only too apparent in the current PR blitz.

If Boulderia greatly increases its trail system, it will trigger an immense Entitlement Sense Inflation, and if it should someday decide it needs to close some of this area again or to institute fees or other restrictions, Boulderia will discover to its regret that it will be just about impossible to do. An even bigger and better bankrolled recreation lobby will stage a World Class Hissy Fit.

Like we used to say out on the loading dock, "Do a job once, and it's yours for life!"

It's a fight about development because recreational trail development in Boulderia is ultimately all about the automobile. Very few people walk or run or ride a bike to where they're going to recreate. People haul their bikes to where they're going to ride, and drive to where they're going to walk or run.

Because of the pressure of development on the Front Range, Boulderia is increasingly becoming a free recreation mecca for people who live somewhere else. They spend their cash at FlatIron Crossing then go for a hike near the Flatirons in Boulder. So "we" may wind up spending a lot of money on "our" new trails and increasing "our" traffic and degrading "our" air quality into the bargain.

There also seems to be a subtle push for commercial events on open space. Boulderians who man the barracades now for "their" open space may one day find "their" favorite trail closed for some sort of Bolder Boulder in the pines.

Of course, the visitors might spend some money. Even though retail sales are in the toilet, Boulder still has the second-highest number of liquor-licenses in the state, so we might become a drowning-your-sorrows mecca.

But do we really want to put all those drunks on the road?

In the end, it's about parking lots and asphalt. All these trailheads need parking lots. Lotsa lots, and it's like Gov Blowins says about highways:

If you build 'em, they will come.

—Peter Aretin

DECEMBER 12, 2004

Last year in Boulder:

Jessica Simpson gave a deposition in which she said that during a Dec. 7, 2001, party at her apartment, two athletes removed her clothing and sexually assaulted her while players surrounded the bed. She said several other players then demanded sex.

Last year in Mondo Boulder:

The existence of the Mystic Santa Hat was revealed. It still proudly flies at its secret Central Boulderia location!

The days pass slowly for The Mystic Santa Hat, high on its lonely vantage point atop a turreted roof in Central Boulderia. But for one brief season, The Mystic Santa Hat is revivified, infused once again with a potent Holiday Spirit, and from its lofty station above the Enchanted Kingdom the faded chapeau becomes a magnet for Santastic energy flows from this entire spiral arm of the galaxy, a guidepoint for migrating flocks of birds, and an etheral nexus between the Flagstaff Star, the North Pole, Atlantis, and the Land of Nod.

All hail The Mystic Santa Hat!

It came to me in one of those brilliant flashes of intuition yesterday why two infamous Boulderian murder cases have never been solved, and never will be.

They will not be solved because a photographer from the Daily Chimera was not on hand to photograph the crime as it was being committed, so that a color photo could be printed on the front page the next day.

And the murders may not have been committed by a Lafayette police officer.

If these simple conditions had been met, I'm sure Boulderia's finest would be near to cracking those cases any day now. My rush of understanding came as a result of a front-page story in Friday's Chimera about the 21 complaints filed as a result of the October 30 cops 'n' yobbers riots on the Hill.

About half the complaints have been resolved, according to The Chief, either because "the complaining party declined to go forward or the officers' actions were deemed justified" by other officers. Letting the police decide if their own actions were justified is probably why these ten cases have been handled in the amazingly fast interval of only 41 days between the festivities and the appearance of the story in Friday's paper.

Among the really tough cases must be that one in which a police officer in full riot gear was pictured in living color on the Chimera's front page Tasing a slight woman in a harem-girl costume. She is lying on the ground, face contorted in fear, her empty hands upraised in a futile attempt to ward off another jolt. It's pretty clear from the photo she couldn't have any weapons concealed that wispy little costume except the ones employed in the war between the sexes.

The photo looks like one of those covers from a 40s pulp magazine showing an alien invader menacing a terrified babe.

In the event that, after the police very carefully think over whether Officer Electro, a Lafayette police officer that the police have delicately declined to identify, might possibly not have been justified in using this level of force, the police will then send the complaint to be reviewed by a panel made up of citizens and some more police.

If the Panel Of Citizens And Some More Police decide that Officer Electro might, just might, have been a tiny bit volt-happy in preemptively subduing a potentially dangerous harem-girl, the complaint will then be passed on to The Chief, who will render the final decision on whether a double dose of the ol' blue fire is a proper means of getting some respect from uppity houris.

This is the very same Chief who, the day after the festivities, announced to the press that the behavior of the police was above reproach. But I forgot: The Chief can't make any decision involving a police officer from Lafayette, where customs may be entirely different, anyway. Even though Officer Electro was under the command of Boulderian security forces, no doubt Lafayette will have to convene some of their own police officers to carefully mull over whether Officer Electro was too loose with the juice.

Reader, if you don't think any of this makes sense, you must be among the governmentally unsophisticated, unacquainted with cutting-edge ass-covering technology.

I don't know about you, but I feel a lot better knowing that, if the police have a complaint with me, the full details will be published in the press and dealt with by the legal system, but if I should, fantastic though it might seem, have a complaint with the police, it will be quietly dealt with by ... the police.

—Bozo

DECEMBER 8, 2004

Today in History:

Thomas de Quincey, author of Confessions of an English Opium Eater, died at age 74, which shows what clean living will do.

In 1943, Jim Morrison, of The Doors, was born, and in 1980, John Lennon was shot dead by a deranged fan.

Last year in Boulder:

Temperatures in Boulder dropped to 15 degrees the night before and barely peaked at 33 during the day, leaving the city with four inches of snow and causing Boulderians to utter banalities like, "blanketing the foothills," and "winter wonderland," but not really doing much to help the drought, according to climatological pundits.

Last year in Mondo Boulder:

Mr Smart Answer Man™ first appeared in Mondo Boldo, along with the expression, "Camel cheese!" Mr SAM responded to, among other camel cheesy items, a letter in the Camera from an expatriate Boulderian who moaned,

I'm sick to death of what Boulder has become, just another Anytown, USA, with too many people, too much development and too expensive for what's left. It used to be a funky, fun place for all where everyone was free to say and do what made them happy. Even for those who called it "the Republic of Boulder," it was still a destination to come and see the "weird" people who lived there.

Dear Smart Answer Man™:

If the Amazing Wayne came out of Whole Foods and saw a bunch of drunk frat boys trashing his 15-passenger van, would he ...

A) whip out his Glock and shoot their punk asses, or ...

B) loan them his favorite Thor-like sledgehammer, the one he saves for antique window-smashing photo shoots, or ...

C) appeal to their superior intelligence as fellow conservatives?

Youth Wants To Know

---------------------------------------

Dear Youth:

The answer is "B," of course, but only after driving all 15 of them to Liquor Mart on a beer run.

Mr SAM

[ Mr Smart Answer Man™ gets e-mail ]

My chemicals cardinal of the planetary's most broadly imposed treat depression drugs; it has been fixed for many more than

. 60 million people worldwide. somebody you know is incuring finer because of it.
Take more

Joey Yli

---------------------------------------

Always good advice, Joey! But maybe you should cut back, just for the Holidays.

Mr SAM

Montezuma has been described as "a thoroughly delightful companion."¹⁰ Once a day, generally in the afternoon, he would put on a simple garment of an Aztec priest and offer a sacrifice to Mexitl, god of war -- usually consisting of ten slaves. It became his favorite pastime.¹¹

—Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

____________________________

¹⁰Unless he suddenly got the notion to cut your heart out.
¹¹Some days he would sacrifice fifteen slaves, just for the fun of it.

A good deal of the Art of the Weird has to do with just recognizing it when one sees it. A brief letter recently appeared in the Daily Chimera:

Imagine my surprise to see that Aztec dance was used to enliven the [annual Feel Good/Accomplish Nothing] awards ceremony at the Rocky Mountain Peace (and Justice) Center. Given the history of brutal oppression, constant warfare and ritual sacrifice practiced by the Aztecs on their neighbors, it would appear that there has been some rewriting, or unforgivable ignorance, of history here.

What is planned for next year's event, dancing Nazis?

You can't really blame the writer for this concise, if sarcastic characterization of the Aztecs; executing captives hasn't gotten a very good press lately. And even the "Nazi" comparison is hardly more bitter than some contemporary sentiments about the A's expressed by conquered tribespersons the Aztecs used for slave labor, ritual sacrifice, and even ate.

Hacking the hearts out of all those living captives might not have accomplished much,¹ but it couldn't have felt very good!

More than one commentator remarks that, "even the Spanish were revolted" by these practices. (And the inclusion of that "even" hints at what they think about the Spanish.) The Aztecs invaded Central America from the north, and when the Spanish invaded later, the indigenous tribes greeted them not as occupiers, but liberators, to use a favorite catchphrase of that insufferable gasbag, Zell Miller.

Responses to the offending letter, which was pretty much in line with mainstream historical thought about the Aztecs, and a second one expressing similar sentiments, has been rather vague. One respondent contended all civilizations have a "history of brutal oppression, constant warfare," claiming it's the Aztec critics who are "ignorant." Another respondent claims intimate personal familiarity with a civilization that is generally agreed to have ended in 1521.

This seems to point toward an uneasy mix of cultural relativism and historical revisionism, but Boulderians need not fear. The Peace and Justice folk are going to hold some seminars explaining why we should bitterly protest the Spanish invasion every Columbus Day but should not criticize the Aztec invasion. Maybe they'll explain how we know the intricacies of Aztec dance, while they're at it.

It all shows that Boulderia is not simply a place that obsesses over its own waste products and Saving The World, but is also a town willing to come to grips with 500-year-old human sacrifice issues, as well.

Now tell me that's not weird!

–Peter Aretin

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¹Except for making the sun come up every day, of course.