JANUARY 31, 2005

Today in History:

Today is the Feast Day of John Bosco, the patron saint of editors ... and boys.

As a lad, little Johnnie would hang around fairs and circuses and pick up the tricks and slight of hand of the conjurers and performers. He'd go off and stage his own impromptu shows until he'd gathered an audience of boys.

Then, before they could slip away, he'd deliver an uplifting message. That's an editor, for you.

Today, editors are feasting on the Ward Churchill ruckus, and the CU regents meet to pontificate on wayward Ward. It was on this day in 1876 that all American Indians were required to move onto reservations or be declared hostile. Some still are.

Among today's illustrious birthdays is that of Tallulah Bankhead (1903), a flamboyant favorite of Mondo Boulder's own Boscos. There is a wonderful story about Bankhead, often attributed to Dick Cavett. Many mangled versions live on the web, but this one, we like to believe, is accurate.

When the Marx Brothers were invited to a party at Tallulah's home, Groucho warned the notoriously skirt-chasing Chico to be on his best behavior. Bankhead was no chorus girl, but an aristocratic southerner, daughter of a former Speaker of the House. Chico remained polite for a while until finally, while standing in a group with Bankhead, he blurted, "I want to fuck you."

To which the unflappable Bankhead calmly replied: "And so you shall, you dear old-fashioned boy."

(We doubt very much that he actually did).

Last Year in Boulderia:

A mountain lion lurked near Nederland, attracted by nine elk and deer carcasses dumped illegally by hunters.

University of Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman asked regents to appoint an independent panel to investigate CU's policies on athletic recruiting, alcohol and sexual harassment.

University of Colorado leaders questioned the timing of the release of depositions that accuse CU of using sex as a football recruiting tool — the week before college football's national signing day.

Last year in Mondo Boulder:

"On Saturday, Peter Aretin, the most modest of the geniuses behind Mondo Boulder, the quasi-popular, alternative-alternative website preferred by the upper echelons of the more discriminating element of the elite Boulderian intelligentsia, standing before the serried ranks of his allies, minions, lackeys and camp followers, 'strenuously denied' all charges brought against him and Mondo Boulder.

'These malicious charges personally hurt me very deeply,' Aretin said. 'They hurt my family. They hurt my colleagues and associates, as well as my allies, minions, lackeys and camp followers. They are particularly hurtful to the unborn children that I might have had if there had been an unexpected failure in one of the notoriously unreliable birth control methods of the mid-50s and early 60s.'"

Kind Bud

"The CU regents huddle today to wring their hands over wild, wild Ward Churchill. This should be at least as poignant as the City Council's frets about prairie dogs: Can't live with 'em, can't control 'em. Just to keep the regental bloviations in intellectual perspective, the president o' this great institution once described 'cunt' as a term of endearment, a position the university has never actually bothered to disavow."

EXPATS ON THE WEB: Hard to belive though it is, people sometimes voluntarily leave the Greater Boulderian Homeland. Sometimes even Old Boulder Bozos. Here's a couple, and if you know of any more, let us know.

http://sezme.net/

http://pithecanthropus.blogspot.com/

Fair Use Notice

JANUARY 30, 2005

Today in History:

In 1882, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born; in 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor; in 1948, Ghandi was assassinated; in 1965, the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill was held; and in 1973, Gordon Liddy and James McCord were convicted in the Watergate break-in. McCord would subsequently reveal that top White House officials were involved.

Last Year in Boulderia:

University of Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman assured Gov. Bill Owens that allegations of CU using sex as a football recruiting tool were false, saying, "I am personally offended at the reports that the University of Colorado would not investigate such charges fully and completely. The people of Colorado deserve an appropriate response." There was to be a lot more investigating than responding.

CU football coach Gary Barnett said, "I believe they will find we have a wholesome, respectful, organized and exemplary recruiting program."

Escort service manager Pasha Cowan's told police that a CU recruiter had hired prostitutes to go to the Omni Interlocken Resort hotel in Broomfield.

Antoine Harris, 22, pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder of a 14-year-old Lafayette boy in 2002, for firing into a car filled with six people after a drug deal on University Hill turned into a robbery.

Kind Bud Says:"Has it occurred to the regents that if they didn't squander so much on the football coach, CU might be able to afford a Marxist with a prose style?"

Yesterday the Ward Churchill Express chugged along the tracks in utterly predictable fashion, right on time. Even Neil Woelk got on board, asking why Coach Barnett got suspended for shooting off his mouth, but not Churchill. Well, one is, million-and-a-half buck salary notwithstanding, a hired PE teacher and the other is an American Indian tenured professor. Just guessing.

Anyone doubting that it was going to be business as usual with the CU regents got disabused of that quaint notion when newly-enthroned Regent Steve Bosley, the anointed of Jim Martin, told the Camera he thought Churchill was "a part of a group trying to poison campuses with anti-American and anti-capitalist rhetoric." (It must be working! Democrats control the state legislature, and it only took 40 years. Blame Churchill.)

Shades of Joe Coors!

"KHOW talk radio hosts and lawyers [Which is worse?] Dan Caplis, who was president of CU's student government in 1978, and Craig Silverman interviewed Churchill via cell phone during a drive-time show broadcast from the UMC's Alferd Packer Grill on Friday afternoon," the Camera reported. The radio boys have an online petition calling for Churchill's sacking on their Web site. [No petitions or online polls on Mondo Boldo. If it's too much trouble to send an e-mail, skip it.]

OK, fellows, it's time for a little straight, free-market talk.

A few fiery Marxist professors are like ivy on the university walls, like frogs in Varsity Pond. They are a nostalgic part of any well-rounded college experience, either for brash young neocons to taunt or to provide an intoxicating atmosphere for the young, idealistic and hairy to breathe.

If there is anything actually subversive about Marxist college professors, it's very hard to see the effects in the outside world, except perhaps in successfully keeping the wild jubilation attendant to Columbus Day in check. As an effective religion, Marxism is as extinct as Manichaeism, but the rituals can still give us goosebumps.

Like Coach Barnett, Churchill is just doing his job. You can debate which one is doing the worse job, or whose salary is the most cost-effective, but they are both part of the mighty engine of bullshit, something the paying customers demand.

Though Churchill may see himself as a jihadi, he, too, like Coach, is but a small player in the great American edutainment system, a provider of dissent. And you CU regents and you, who we laughingly call radio personalities, and you hyperventilating taxpayers, are all part of it, too. You'd all be lost without each other.

Isn't the whole thing just so 1960s?

—Bozo

JANUARY 29, 2005

Today in History:

The birthday (1912) of The World's Greatest Authority, Professor Irwin Corey, a date he shares with W.C. Fields (1879). The University of Colorado is famous in its own right for madcap professors [Jan. 28], and ought to hire The Prof for an important position, perhaps to replace one of the departed Dicks, Tharp or Byyny.

Last Year in Boulderia:

Boulder County commissioners unanimously approved a motion to allow the county clerk to negotiate a contract with voting-machine vendor Hart InterCivic Inc. Activists now want to junk the system in favor of little hand-counted cards like Swiss people use.

In depositions from a civil case released this day, two CU police investigators said Boulder police Officer Don Spicely, who was an "athletic liaison," helped [CU football] players get their stories coordinated whenever they were to be interviewed by investigators.

Gee, Officer Spicely, we're very upset;
We never had the love that ev'ry child oughta get.
We ain't no delinquents,
We're misunderstood.
Deep down inside us there is good!

Kind Bud Says:"Increasing awareness is good for everyone, and I increase my awareness at least once a day."

JANUARY 28, 2005

Today in History:

William Seward Burroughs was born, today, 1855. In 1892, he patented the first commercially successful recording adding machine, thus paving the way for American domination of world commerce resulting in the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Last Year in Bouldera:

District Attorney Mary Keenan told attorneys in a deposition released this day that she thought CU used sex and booze to attract recruits, and the Great CU Recruiting Scandal was off and running.

That same day, Colt Brennan, 20, a walk-on quarterback at CU, barged into a woman's Farrand Hall dorm room, exposed himself and groped her. Though he was tried and convicted, he was allowed to finish the season as quarterback for Saddleback College, because of a provision in Colorado law that states that conviction doesn't occur until the time of sentencing. Yet again, sports builds character.

Kind Bud Says: "I nearly freaked out when I thought I overheard some dude say he read in the paper they were cremating defeatists."

Everybody cries for justice,
Just as long as it's his business first.

—Mose Allison

As the Mexican Indian would tell us, empires come and go. What persists is the blasphemy of believing that murder is prayer.

—Richard Rodriguez

I hadn't thought about Ward Churchill in years.

The Colorado Daily, back in the giddy Pam White Era, had been briefly infatuated with him until he threatened to sue if they wrote any more stories about him.

Mr Free Speech.

But he must have missed the attention. Reading the essay that's caused all the current fuss, I'm struck, not so much by the fact that it's self-consciously hateful; there are worse shock jocks, I suppose. No, one wonders: if the essay is a representative sample, how did such an intellectual lightweight became a department head?

Would a freshman get an 'A' for this essay? Maybe, but only if his or her prof read it through Big, Black Marxist Blinkers. The theme is Chickens Coming Home To Roost, or Custer Had It Coming, applied to the 911 attack.

The sins for which Churchill indicts the Bush I and II regimes, and America, are real enough. But it takes those big, black peepers with two left lenses to keep any context from creeping in and contaminating the purity of his rage with a sense of scale. Appalling as America's sins are, they are pretty small beer alongside the mass murders enthusiastically undertaken by Churchill's coreligionists in the great, failed Marxist experiments. Is Churchill an heir to their guilt? Or is that trumped by his victimhood as an American Indian?

Mass murder seems to be an unforgivable sin, except when it's duly righteous retaliation (or certain other unexamined circumstances). History becomes a pissing contest over the genealogy and priority of grievances, a calculus of racial, ethnic, and ideological guilt.

Chickens without end, amen.

Those Magic Blinkers conveniently allow Churchill to see the Islamic terrorists as the heroic avengers of Saddam's hapless army and of the Iraqi kids killed by the embargo, instead of a crew of absolutist zealots easily ruthless enough to have done those things and more with a hearty good will if they thought it had been necessary to the strategy of jihad.

Unlike the Great Satan's colleges and universities, though, imam a' don' allow no dissent or Marxist professors. Oh no.

—Bozo

JANUARY 27, 2005

Today in History:

On this day, the birthday (1756) of Mozart and Lewis Carroll (1832), three American astronauts died just 218 feet from the ground in the Apollo I disaster (1967), there were numerous deaths and thousands left homeless in serious flooding in California (1969), and US military action in Viet Nam ended (1973).

Kind Bud Says: "After listening to President Bush's press conference last night, I think applesauce should be renamed 'The Spread of Freedom'."

Last Fall, CU Regent Jim Martin agonized over running for reelection. Should I? Or shouldn't I?

Shouldn't he? Or Should he? He finally decided to run, but almost on the eve of the primary, he said he was dropping out of the race. But he didn't, not really.

In the primary, thousands of Democrats may have voted for him under the mistaken belief that he really was running, or, as a sort of tribute vote, in the equally mistaken belief that he'd officially dropped out. Jim won the primary, becoming the official Democratic candidate. Then he officially dropped out of the race.

As a finishing touch, Martin, who had once been a Republican before becoming a Democrat, endorsed the Republican candidate, who won.

Now, Jim is running again, having unretired for a shot at city council (Hint: This time make sure you live in Boulder!) to replace Mayor Will Toor, who has gone on to a Better Place. Mondo Boulder resists throwing its awesome power behind political candidates, but we think Jim Martin has the kind of decisiveness and vision that qualify him for the Boulder city council.

In the next few years complex issues in the increasingly important area of contemporary prairie dog legislation (and litigation) will face the council, and Mondo Boulder is counting on Jim Martin for some truly memorable quotes, like that one about kids coming to CU "never having had a mother or father."

So keep your fingers crossed.

We're sure Jim is.

—Peter Aretin

JANUARY 25, 2005

Today in History:

In 1989, Monty Pythonite John Cleese won libel damages from the Brit paper, Daily Mirror, over an article alleging he had become like Basil Fawlty.

Kind Bud Says: "You can call an acorn an oak tree, but it won't fool the squirrels."

This should dispel once and for all the foul canard that *fanfare of massed piccolos* the Independent Republic of Greater Boulderia is the exclusive province of left-wing kooks. Boulderia's grounbreaking innovations in the politico-theological realm are bringing us international recogintion for being an equal-opportunity asylum. Note this item from the UK Telegraph:

... for members of the Pie Cult: How could we have been so blind! Yes, use 4 oz. of chocolate! This is now official. Also, reduce cooking time to 1- 2 min. instead of 3 -4 min.

And remember: "Every day is Pieday."

JANUARY 24, 2005

How time flies! Here it is the Feast Day of Saint Francis of Sales already!

As everybody knows, St Frank, no relation to pie-tossing Soupy Sales, who was recently canonized with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, is the patron saint of journalists!

So, in honor of St Frank, and our Boulderian journalpersons, we have updated the ever-popular Clippings.

Feast on that!

Last year in Mondo Boulder:

Or take this exercise in weaselogic™:

Some of the Longmont residents of Chivington Drive asked city leaders to change the name of the street. Would you like to live on "Murderous Bastard Street"? According to a story in the Camera, "City leaders said they have no proof the road was named after Col. Chivington. They refused to rename the street, but offered to help pay for a plaque nearby to explain its history."

Recently, the council changed it's mind and renamed the street, but many residents are complaining at the inconvenience.

Boo! Hoo!

JANUARY 23, 2005 -

National Pie Day (see below) We have received clearance from the Research Dept. to today attempt the Classic Boulderian Chocolate Cream with 4 oz. of choco !! The adventurous may do the same. Report to follow.

Boulderian activists will hold a protest today marking the 85th day since a young, unarmed Boulderian woman was felled with a Taser gun by a police officer during the Hill riots. To date, the police investigation has failed to even name a suspect.

Protesters will march from the Municipal Building, where they will urge Boulderian councilpersons to require the Boulder Police Department to observe the Geneva Convention, to the Justice Center where they will hold a rare, daytime candlelight vigil. There will be funky (literally) costumes, giant puppets, and Mothers Walking on Stilts.

Hang on ...

Boulderian activists will not be able to attend, because they are totally obsessed with delving into the minutiae of voting and speedy vote-counting and to bitching about Bush's reelection, here in the Boulderian Republic, shining gem of democracy.

Boulderian councilpersons say they will not meet with any protesters because they are too busy reviewing the independent republic's various fees, taxes, and penalties to see if there are any that haven't been raised in a while. There are also important prairie dog issues to complexify and obfuscate.

Boulderian religious leaders had to beg off, as they must grapple with the rights of the unborn and the supernatural world.

Boulderian peace and justice mavens said they were too busy with issues of Boulderia's attitudes toward the Aztecs.

Never mind.

Today in History:

Today in 1556, an earthquake in China is thought to have killed 830,000 people. Think of this in terms of the recent tsunami, and reflect that it could happen again at any time, right in California.

On Jan. 23, 1971, a single gust was recorded at 147 mph at National Center for Atmospheric Research, here in Boulderia.

Last year in Boulderia:

Today, to the sounds of Native American drum circle and Boulderia's peace and justice activists outside, Boulder officials apologized profusely to attorneys for the American Indian Movement for the Dec. 31 disruption of a sweat-lodge ceremony being held illegally on publicly-owned land. So much for the separation of church and state.

A University of Colorado student convicted of cracking a rum bottle over a Marine's head at a November, 2002 party on University Hill was sentenced to five years in the slammer.

"Where's Tom? We really have to fix this. Running into trees isn't funny."

—Sen. Dan Grossman, D-Denver, searching frantically for Rep. Tom Plant, D-Nederland, after Plant inserted a tongue-in-cheek amendment to the Ski Safety Awareness Resolution that Grossman is sponsoring. Among a laundry list of safe skiing tips — don't obstruct trails, yield to others — Plant suggested "avoid trees." Plant's amendment was adopted. Grossman and ski industry lobbyists weren't pleased.

—in the Camera, 1/23/04.

We agree with Sen. Grossman!

Last Year in Mondo Boulder:

...there's a pie. Today is National Pie Day, a day that inspires deep reverence in any true Boulderian. Not only is it the birthday of Charlie Papazian, the Boulderian schoolteacher who launched National Pie Day, but the fabled Blueberry Pie of Happiness figures deeply in the lore and legends of the Independent Republic of Greater Boulderia.

The pie, which paleoanthropologists believe may symbolize an ancestral memory of the celestial vehicles that bore the first settlers to the Enchanted Valley, is depicted in the Boulderian flag:

Anyone, regardless of which side of the greenbelt they were born on, may become an Honorary Boulderian Citizen merely by pledging their undying allegiance to Boulderia's Sacred Symbol of Prosperity. And who could forget the Legend of Agent Moon Pie?

Naturally, we here at Mondo Boulder are initiates in the priestly mysteries of pie preparation. In honor of this sacred day, we give below the recipe for one of our faves.

NOTE: This pie is not low-anything. It is packed full of good things, like chocolate, eggs, carbohydrates and fat. The only thing it doesn't have too much of is sugar, the ingredient Americans love to use to render otherwise wholesome food cloying and uninteresting. This pie is for adults with strong tickers.

You need a pre-baked pie shell, which I hope you will prepare yourself.

3/4 C. light brown sugar
1/4 C. corn starch
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 C. milk
3 lg egg yolks
3 squares (3 oz.) unsweetened baking chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I make mine by soaking a vanilla bean in dark rum)

For topping:

1 1/4 c. whipping cream 2 tablespoon confectioner's sugar

Combine the sugar, salt and cornstarch in a heavy saucepan and gradually whisk in the milk until smooth. Bring to boil over medium-high, stirring gently, boil for 2-3 min. Remove from heat.

Beat the 3 egg yolks in a small bowl. Gradually whisk 1 cup of the hot liquid into the egg yolks until smooth, return the mixture to the saucepan, whisking constantly (but gently). Return to the boil and boil the same amount of time again.

Remove from heat. Gently whisk in the chocolate, butter, and vanilla extract until smooth. Pour the filling into your pie shell. Let cool for 15 min while you lick the bowl. Cover surface with wax paper and refrig. at least 3 hrs.

Top with whipped cream sweetened with the confectioners sugar. I like to sprinkle a little unsweetened cocoa powder on top the whipped cream.

JANUARY 17, 2005 -

The Feast Day of Antony of Egypt, the patron saint of pigs [We are not making this up.], and the seventy-ninth day since a riot-clad peace officer felled an apparently blameless female bystander with repeated jolts from a Taser gun during the Halloween Hill riots. But rest easy, Boulderians! The police are carefully gathering information, interviewing witnesses, questioning the entire populations of nearby towns, consulting seers and wise men, reading the entrails of humanely-sacrificed birds for prophetic auguries, enditing the whole on the finest parchments, and preparing to render a decision just as soon as other business, such as the Ramsey case, is concluded.

Today in History:

The birthday (1706) of Ben Franklin, who showed that lightning is a form of electricity, thus paving the way for the Taser gun.

Coldest Boulderian tempertaure on record: minus 33 degrees (1930).

Today's Scripture Lesson:

In order to help poor, benighted liberals get a little religion, as every smug Republican endlessly and tiresomely insists they must, a theologically browbeaten Mondo Boulder offers today's scripture lesson:

And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.

Luke 15:23-24

dark suit principle, n., that quality of resembling the result of pissing one's pants while wearing a dark suit: it gives one a warm feeling, but nobody notices.

—The Unrestrained Dictionary of the Boulderian Language.

A prodigal is returning to the fold.

But unlike that prodigal son in the Bible story, this propdigal had to bring his own fatted calf with him. After straying from the fold of Colorado Counties, Inc., back in 1996, Boulder County is returning.

"It's like having one of our family that has been gone for a while call and say they are coming back. It is fantastic," Larry Kallenberger, executive director of Colorado Counties Inc., told the Daily Camera, metaphorical tears in his eyes. Um, that will be 53,000 smackers, please.

It turns out that Colorado Counties used to be "more conservative," but now having presumably seen the light, it is being rewarded with Boulderia's presence once again, and, coincidentally, with the tidy sum the county will pay in membership fees. Is that 53 grand in your pocket, or are ya' just glad to see me?

"I think anything we can do to join is money well spent," enthused newly-enthroned if unshaven commissionperson Will Toor for the Camera. It will help the county "affect change."

Gee, wasn't it just last November Boulder County was uttering piteous cries that if Boulderia's sheeplike voters didn't let them keep excess revenue, critical services would be cut? It's a little unnerving, as if you were to hand $2.40 to that unshaven bum hanging around the courthouse square with a sign saying "Please Help" and the next time you see him he's having a latte in Starbucks.

Being a little more curious than the average Boulderian newspaper reporter, we asked one of our confidential informants, who prowls the corridors of power, a few questions:

Where did the county find a spare 53 grand?

Does Colorado Counties, Inc. lobby specifically for Boulderia in the legislature, or just Colorado counties in general?

What kind of return will Boulderian taxpayers get on their $53 thou? What did we miss out on during those years when we journeyed in a far country and wasted or substance on things other than membership in Colorado Counties, Inc.?

The answers were a little disappointing.

That 53 grand is "a mere fraction of a decimal place in comparison to the county's $222 million budget," said our informant. It turns out the dough comes from a reserve for incidental costs which might arise like "wildfires, bridge repairs due to floods, etc.," which purposes seem to Mondo Boulder, in its untutored rusticity, as being a lot different than joining a lobbying group which, doesn't, it turns out, actually lobby for Boulderia in any specific way. In other words, CCI will "affect" the same changes whether Boulderia joins or not.

"We are greatly affected by decisions in the Legislature," Commissionperson Toor said, astonishingly. Joining the CCI will give Boulder county "a stronger voice in the legislative process." You'd think having Boulderian legislators serving as president of the Colorado Senate and Colorado House majority leader might allow us save that 53 grand (mere pittance though it is) for a rainy, bridge-washing, day.

And as for any return on the taxpayers' investment in joining CCI or any losses from having been outside the fold, our informant had nothing to say. That's disappointing. Maybe Commissionperson Toor meant, "Money. Well, spent." Punctuation is so important.

In stark contrast, in as unblushingly merry a puff piece as we have ever read, the Camera reported recently how the City's new lobbyist, for a mere 60 grand, has already brought 500 grand worth of benefits, "about a 10-to-1 payoff," one city official said, for benefit of the eggheads in the audience.

It's got to be true! Would a lobbyist or a bureaucrat ever exaggerate? Colorado's legislators in Washington are scarcely credited in this hilarious story. U.S. Rep. Mark Udall and U.S. Sen. Ben "Highhorse" Campbell are mentioned in passing as helping out the lobbyist in his important work.

Hell, boys! Give the whole City budget to the lobbyist, and maybe you can quit making cuts to important city services and we can all make a little something out of it!

The City, too, has also been crying poor, and after Boulderia's sheeplike voters had safely approved a new crop of taxes last November, city council, in a bit of planned spontaneity, raised the Trash Tax. The proceeds went not to anything related to trash, as the naive might assume, nor even to keeping the library open, but to a Boulderian greenhouse gas program to halt global warming. Once again, Boulderia saves the World.

The greenhouse gas program is a perfect example of a Dark Suit Program. Even if you grant that the presently highly speculative assumptions about global warming and the role of human greenhouse gas production in it are true, all true, Boulderia could devote its entire resources to this program and not effect a change measurable by the most sensitive instruments available to human, or even Vulcan, science.

We could get exactly the same result by just praying to reduce global warming. Cash-strapped, retail-impaired Boulderia is spending 450,000 smackers to give ourselves a warm feeling, but nobody else will notice.

And that, I suspect, is exactly the same result that joining Colorado Counties, Inc. will have.

—Peter Aretin

JANUARY 9, 2004

How embarrassing! I sound so self-importantly censorious in yesterday's opening remarks! Let a guy break one little ankle and he gets all shirty!

So Chief, boys, elected leaders, gentlepersons of the press, citizenry: mea culpa! It is but a mere 71 days since a young Boulderian woman was felled with repeated blasts of electric fire administered without due cause by a Taser-weilding officer of the law in full combat regalia. Relax. By all means do a thorough job of gathering information, sifting it for clues.

I know you're going to solve this one!

       —Bozo

Today in History:

"Sir Humphrey Davy's safety-lamp for miners was successfully tried out January 9, 1816, and later on a statistician presented figures showing that in the ten years following its introduction there were more than twice as many explosions in mines as in the ten years before."

    — Will Cuppy, How to Get from January to December

Experienced readers will have already sensed that the above item is merely a pretext for us to insert the original clerihew, something we do at every opportunity:

Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.   

     —Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956)

Today is also the birthday of Richard Nixon (1913), Joan Baez (1941), Bozo (1943), and Gracie Fields (1898), who sang, "The Biggest Aspidistra in the World," and was made a Dame of the British Empire.

[LETTER]

I enjoyed reading your screed on the Visitor Master Plan [December 14], even though I don't agree with it.  Here's some specific feedback:

Yes, Corfield is CEO of SandCherry. He paid for the add out of his own pocket because he cares about this issue. Once he had picked up the tab, other citizens saw the value of it and sent him a few bucks to help out. Hence, the "and other concerned citizens". It would not have made sense to list everyone who contributed (and would not have been possible since some contributed after the ad was published. Anyway, you seem to be implying some sort of conspiracy of special interests regarding that ad. Nothing could be farther from the truth -- it was simple grass roots.  Why?  Because the "recreationists" do not have a seat at the table. The Open Space Board and OSMP itself are totally controlled by radical presevationsists. Those citizens who feel differently about access to Open Space simply have no voice in this process.

Unfortunately, as the ad says, while we were out enjoying open space (me for the last 35 years or so) the process was hijacked by a bunch of extreme "exclusionists". Now we are struggling to be heard, though it is late in the game!

This is not a fight about development. I don't understand your argument there at all. Pretty much all the available land has been snapped up, so future OSMP acquisitions will be much more limited than in the past. Now the discussion is about how to manage the land: keep people off the land they paid for, or let people enjoy and appreciate the open space to the extent that they do not damage it. Remember, these are not really "natural" spaces, it is an urban park with a 100+ year history of human management.

I think you should update your site to reflect these comments.

Thanks,

Peter Bakwin

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

We appreciate your letter, but perhaps this is a good time to reiterate that, unlike the aboveground media, we don't advocate anything, except perhaps the increasing pervasiveness of irony in modern life.

It would be foolish to pretend that Boulderia's Movers and Shakers, let alone its Shakers and Bakers, are affected in their mysterious ways by anything said here. We, the subalternative media, operate in the revered tradition of the Sarcastic Old Farts who sat on the benches in front of the courthouse, offering up pithy and unvarnished observations of the passing scene. So, as much as it lightens our lonely hours here in our underground command center, a letter to Mondo Boulder won't do much to advance any particular outcome or get any good fights fought.

On the other hand, in writing to MB, you are at least afforded the dignity of a response from a live, human-like lifeform. It's not like shouting down a well.

All that said, as connoisseurs of Public Rhetoric, there are some interesting features of the Rec Creationist campaign that merit continuing attention.

WE ARE THE PEOPLE -- "We represent the majority. ...and Thomas Jefferson, John Muir, Edward Abbey, and Anonymous." It's standard political practice to try this one on, so there's no real dishonor in it. But once anyone puts up a full-page ad putting themselves firmly on the side of the angels they are putting themselves squarely in the limelight. Bruiting something about is one thing, or whispering it in the corridors of power, but the official commencement of PR hostilities, with graphic design and all, is news in itself, at least around here, anyway.

The truth is, the active combatants in the current dustup are a very small percentage of Boulderia's taxpayers. What that great mass of folks really think depends on what a cleverly designed and administered push-poll might reveal.

WE PAID FOR IT, SO WE GET TO USE IT -- Nothing reveals more about the unique sense of entitlement some Boulderians feel in regard to publicly-financed recreation than this rallying cry. They've also paid for the streets, the library, the courthouse, the jail, the sewage treatment plant, the city watershed in the Indian Peaks ... yet public access to these things is quite circumscribed; restricted either partly or completely in various ways as a matter of policy, to no great outcry.

But there is a entirely different attitude about being able to recreate on public property on the part of a substantial number of people. Why? It's precisely because Boulderia has had a truly remarkable network of recreational trails in its parks and open space for years. This suggests that, counter-intuitively, building more trails will not placate Rec Creationists. Quite the contrary, it will confirm their belief that recreational access to publicly owned land is a right which should be overseen by users.

WHAT DEVELOPMENT? -- The consequences of recreational trails don't stop at the trailhead. I was recently out on an errand that required my car, and out of curiosity, pulled into the parking lot of a popular Bouldrian trail. There were people sitting in idling SUVs waiting for a parking spot. One unoccupied vehicle idled while I guess the occupant went for a really quick hike.

Cars were pulling in an out constantly. It was like Whole Foods parking lot. The dirty little secret about recreation in Boulderia, alas, is that it's all about the automobile, and as development proceeds in the Front Range, it's only going to get more so. This is unavoidable, but it's a hidden cost of recreational development that it would be foolish to ignore.

A letter in today's Camera from a man in Broomfield complains about how much access "we" have lost in the county. He seems to have forgotten that "we" lost Broomfield itself, when it split off to form a county of its own, taking all its shopping center wealth with it!

So here at Mondo Boulder, as true Boulderians, In the Process We Trust, and after all the tears and tantrums, a compromise will be reached. This compromise may, as sometimes happens, combine the worst features of all the various viewpoints, so that nobody is really happy with it. The technical term for this is "fair," and it's a kind of karmic payback to the various parties involved for being such pains in the ass.

       —Peter Aretin

JANUARY 8, 2004

Seventy days ago, a police officer assaulted a woman with a Taser during the Halloween disturbances on the Hill. The incident was witnessed by a Daily Camera photographer, and a color photo of the attack appeared on the front page of the paper. The filmy costume the slender woman wore made it abundantly clear she could have posed absolutely no credible threat to anyone, let alone a group of riot-clad police officers.

So far, the police "investigation" has revealed only that it was a Lafayette cop, and Boulderia's feckless leaders have done nothing, except to fret uselessly about prairie dogs and greenhouse gas and to propose raising traffic fines to make us all safe.

Here is another milestone in the police work for which Boulder has become justifiably famous, and another reason why shame should preclude Boulderia's elected officials, passive citizens and timid newspapers from whingeing about the erosion of civil liberties under the Bush regime or torture at Abu Ghraib.

Last year in Boulderia:

About 1 am this day last year, a University of Colorado student preparing to shoot his friend in the back with a pellet gun wound up handcuffed on his knees when a Boulder police officer happened upon what looked to be a violent crime in progress. After the "victim" told police he had asked his friend to shoot him in the back "to see how it felt," one was ticketed for aiming a weapon at someone, and the other was ticketed for underage drinking. Please: Leave the abuse to the professionals.

Last year in Mondo Boulder:

"On this date was fought the Battle of New Orleans, the decisive battle of the War of 1812. Due to a scheduling mix-up, it was fought in 1815, after the war was already over, not in 1814, as many people thought back in 1959, because of the huge Top 40 hit by country singer Johnny Horton, set to The Eighth of January, a traditional fiddle tune."

For those of you who, like me, have sometimes wondered it it's possible to break an ankle while it is encased in a plastic ski boot, the answer is: Yes!

This question has now been field-tested by me, personally.

A pity. This was going to be My Big Comeback Year. Last year was also going to be My Big Comeback Year, but the snow wasn't very good and I suffered the shock of discovering I can't seem to breathe at 13,000 feet.

This year, I came back with a Renewed Sense of Determination, new boots, new car, and bottled oxygen. Things were looking good. New snow at Lake Pandora, almost enough to cover the snags and crust in the woods, several nights of reggae coming up at Trilogy: Life was sweet. But instead of rocking to Zionway Soundsystem, I wound up watching another rerun of "That's Entertainment!" on TV.

One errant tree is all it took. I was having lots of fun right before this tree took it upon itself to administer a body check. I don't suppose it can really be blamed; it was, after all, dead. As Close Encounters of the Arboreal Kind go, it was fairly low impact, but something really wrong happened to my left ankle in the course of my trademark rag doll routine.

So I verified two things that had been heretofore pure conjecture: You can break your ankle in a brand new pair of Terminators, and that you can't ski any damn good with a broken ankle. At least, I can't. Of course, I struggled back up again as quickly as possible after the impact, assuming that it was going to really smart for awhile, and then it would be back to business.

Uh. Huh. Not this time. It only took a couple of turns to know the Pooch had been Screwed. I had been transformed in an instant from something wild and free to the worst, most awkward skier on the whole mountain, teetering shamefacedly down with as few really ugly turns as possible. Officer Hubris busts another offender.

At least I wasn't five miles back in the boonies when Fate stepped in.

No use crying in one's beer, I guess; it ruins the head. In theory, I will now have lots of time to weave deep and probing meditations on the Boulderian scene for the obscure annals of Mondo Boulder. We received a highly-critical letter that needs parsing. Maybe I'll now be able to finish Whatever Happened to the Dillies? and Bozo's Boot Museum. That one will give me a chance to give my wry, ironic worldview a real workout.

But maybe not. Everyday chores take a lot longer wearing my newest boot, this knee-high walking brace thing. At least it's a tasteful swat-team black, and matches the rest of my gear, and not pink or some dorky shade of medical white. And I suppose I'll have to do some aggressive hobbling or some such to try and stay in some kind of shape. That could take some time.

I read in the paper about another backcountry skier killed in an avalanche, and a young, top-flight ski racer who broke a leg in two places and assorted other bones during a practice run. So I suppose I should keep the whining and whimpering down to a muted, background level. One of these two is out for the season, the other out for all seasons.

Viewed in this light, my famous luck is still working. It's all relative.

So I'm still planning on making a Big Comeback this season; it's just going to have to be a little bigger than I originally planned.

—Bozo

JANUARY 2, 2005