Sunshine almost always makes me high
     —John Denver

Thanks to Hollywood's notorious lack of originality, a whole generation of kids who may never have held an actual comic book know that every superhero and every supervillian has to have a secret identity. Thanks to Clint Talbott, columnist at the Camera Obscura, every kid on my block now knows that the infamous Officer Electro's secret identity is Sgt Scott Emerson, of the Lafayette PD.

The faithful few of you who read Mondo Boldo know that, lighthearted lads though we are, we failed to be amused by the riot cop Taser assault on Liberty McCarty, a female bystander during last Halloween's Hill riots. A color photo of the assault in progress even appeared on the front page of the Camera. Surely, we thought, here in the Boulderian republic, where so many hearts bleed as one, where every citizen is a fiery civil libertarian, there will be a reckoning for this!

But as the days went by, there were no follow-up stories. There was no investigative reporting. There wasn't much outrage expressed in the Camera's letters column, except by a few other bystanders who'd been swept up in the melee and manhandled. One woman, Christina O'Neill, of Boulder, actually wrote to express outrage that the paper printed photos that showed the police in a bad light! Let's shoot the messenger ... with a Taser.

Boulder Police Chief Beckner held a press conference to announce his officers were completely blameless and an investigation would soon be launched. (No doubt it saves time to announce the result first.) The Chief then took the "serious" cases, like that of Officer Electro, out of the hands of the presumably un-serious citizen review panel, reserving them for a more impartial body, the cops themselves.

As the days went by, we began to think: "cover-up."

Being Mondo Boulder, we tried ridicule, mockery and sarcasm in an attempt to shame Boulderia's movers-and-shakers into at least a halfhearted objection to seeing Liberty beaten up on the front page of the home town paper. We ran frequent tallies as the police investigation presumably inched along: 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 100 days ...

But Boulderia's movers-and-shakers don't read Mondo Boulder, and they have a congenital immunity to irony and sarcasm, which can sometimes reach fatal levels in an affluent community where the prairie dog is the dominant species. Mondo Boulder featured the further adventures of Officer Electro, first bringing his special skills to the Knapweed Strike Force [ "Knap Time," Nov. 15, '04 ]:

Immediately following the demonstration, Boulderia's Chief of Security Services held a press conference, describing the operation as a "stunning success" and issued the Standard Denial of Any Wrongdoing. Using techniques perfected in controlling slight blonde women in harem girl costumes, Boulderia hopes to stem the tide of knapweed that threatens to engulf endangered native species such as the delicate traffic circle petunia. The Knapweed Threat Level was recently raised to A Kind of Pale Magenta, up from Puce.

Then Officer Electro, menacing in his full riot gear, spearheaded the Tri-County Prairie Dog Strike Force [ "Dog Soldiers," March 8 ]:

In an impressive demonstration of suppressive force, armored TCPDSF personnel formed up, Tasers at the ready, facing a defiantly chirping gaggle of prairie dogs. Sensing danger, the animals began to release powerful cuteness toxins into the air, but the riot-geared troops were protected by gas masks.

All to no avail. We tried queries direct to Chief Beckner, who eventually tersely admitted the report on Officer Electro was done, but would be given to the Lafayette Chief, who flatly refused to release any information to us, neither the name of the secret policeman or the outcome of the investigation. It's a "confidential personnel matter" the Chief said.

We approached Boulderia's "Best Activist." It was all entirely too small potatoes for him, compared to the obsessive war against the Bush administration and reforming Boulderia's electoral system. We wrote the Boulder chapter of the ACLU, not asking them to intervene, but merely to offer some pointers on using open records law to pry info out of public officials. They didn't bother to reply.

With few options remaining, Mondo Boulder was forced to stoop to direct nagging of the Daily Camera. There was little point approaching the other newspaper-like products in town, who loftily refuse to respond to Upstart Nobodies. The lackey who drew the short straw was a certified Old Boulder Bozo, Earl Noe (The "infamous," according to Mr Appelsauce). On Wednesday, Noe sent a caustic e-mail on the sorry and deficient coverage of this scandal directly to Camera columnist and former Colorado Daily editor Clint Talbott.

Talbott apparently agreed somewhat with this view, and on Friday a report on the Boulder PD investigation by Christine Reid appeared on the front page, and Talbott devoted a column to the matter. Queries on Thursday by the paper finally managed to dislodge what Mondo Boulder had been unable to obtain, the name of Sgt Scott Emerson, Officer Electro's long-secret identity.

There was one other bit of information Chief Paul Schultz had withheld: The Chief completely cleared Officer Electro of any wrongdoing. In other words, right here in Boulderia, where folks lie awake at night worrying about the prisoners at Abu Ghraib and whether it hurts fish when you catch them, a Lafayette cop can nail you repeatedly with a Taser, which can be potentially fatal or permanently disabling, for whatever reason he sees fit. If you are lucky, maybe one irascible old crank will give a damn.

Despite this welcome bit of sunshine, a smell still lingers. Why, for instance, since Officer Electro was serving on the Boulder County SWAT team, was the responsibility for the investigation exported to Lafayette? Was he 'phoning home for instructions there in the alley? And despite the sanguine view Chief Schultz has about the administration of summary electrical justice, the BC Sheriff's Department thought things over in the wake of the investigation and decided Tasers shouldn't be used for "punishment."

Could this mean the Fifth and Eighth Amendments of the Constitution are catching on in Boulderia, joining that all-around fave the First?

Let's hope so. Last March, the County Commissioners couldn't resist the allure of federal grant money so that all the Sheriff's Department employees can have a Taser of their own. The department gave the commissioners the usual blarney about how safe Tasers are. Mondo Boulder contacted the commissioners and urged them to read Amnesty International's damning report on these far from harmless toys. They didn't reply.

But don't worry. "I don't think Tasers should be used indiscriminately," Commissioner Tom Mayer told the Camera.

—Peter Artetin

JUNE 17, 2005

[e-mail]

Your latest article about pot smoking in Boulder...

If you read the article in the Camera carefully, it says that the study was based on interviews done in 1999-2001, not in the last month. The survey question asked if the responder had smoked pot in the last month, but the last month was many months ago.

John

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

8:54 am. I haven't seen the Camera article yet. The period during which the interviews were collected is also included in the piece below, which was written last night, from the press release and the online report. You are right, it doesn't really make much sense to think the authors could gauge month-to-month pot usage based on three years of data, and I mistook the statement, "Four of the fifteen areas ranked with the lowest rates of marijuana use in the past month were in Iowa" as meaning they were claiming to do just that.

Thanks for your comment.

—Bozo

The results are in, and it's a race between Boston and Boulderia, with the Independent Republic trailing its much larger rival by a mere 1.9 percentage points. The score is Boston, 12.2 percent to Boulder's 10.3.

These are the supposed percentages of residents over 12 who smoked pot in the last month.

Allowing for roughly 10 k Boulderians under 12, that's about 8700 peace loving citizens of the Independent Republic who huff the Evil Weed, at least according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), who have arrived at this knowledge by playing with their elaborate statistical crystal balls.

According to SAMSHA:

Data in the short report "Marijuana Use in Substate Areas" are derived from a new online report also released today, "Substate Estimates from the 1999-2001 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health". This report combines three years of data to estimate, for the first time, drug use in 331 localities. The areas were designated by the states. For example, New York has two areas, New York City and the rest of the state, while Pennsylvania has 23 areas.

The marijuana data highlighted in the short report show that of the 15 localities with the highest rates of past month marijuana use in the United States, five were in Massachusetts, three were in California and two were in Colorado.  Four of the fifteen areas ranked with the lowest rates of marijuana use in the past month were in Iowa.

And furthermore:

"As a nation we have made real progress in reducing drug use. These new data provide us with a powerful new tool that can be used to focus and refine our substance abuse prevention and treatment strategies," SAMHSA Administrator Charles Curie said. "Future survey findings will be very helpful to states and localities as they report on progress made in reducing substance abuse and apply for federal funding."

Mr Curie spells out the success of his efforts and gives himself a big advance pat on the back, just in case anyone should miss the implications.

And the clear implication here is that there is now some sort of reliable quantitative measure of pot smoking. Although it isn't mentioned in SAMHSA's Thursday press release, the long report also measures something it calls "Perceptions of Great Risk of Smoking Marijuana Once a Month." Let's call it the Fear Factor. Perceived risks might include entering an irreversible downward spiral of mental and moral degeneracy induced by a monthly doobie, or it might include the fear of having your house ransacked, prolonged judicial humiliation, and having considerable sums of money extracted by the American justice system.

To no great surprise, those abstemious folks out in Iowa register a Fear Factor of almost 49 percent, topping the estimated national average of about 43 percent, while the pot-toking Boulderians register a laid-back 26 percent, even lower than the Bostonian fear index of 34.

It seems when people aren't sufficiently fearful, they will smoke grass. Or is it the other way 'round?

Clearly, there's a fear shortage in Boston and Boulderia that cries out for channeling a boatload of federal tax money into needy police forces like Boulderia's. Unfortunately, the Boulderian government, it's legendary liberalism notwithstanding, has been very spineless in resisting the lure of federal drug money and in letting its law enforcement agencies decide public policy. Doubtless, it will continue so. Unfortunately, these federal fear funds will probably go directly to the cops for shiny new truncheons, and not to local government, where it could be dissipated harmlessly fighting greenhouse gases or raising consciousness.

There's never been a Drug Free America, and there never will be. There'll always be a War on Drugs, and the ruling elite defines what are called drugs. The only thing that might terminate the entrenched pot suppression industry is an energy or ecological crisis severe enough that the country decides it can no longer afford its expensive drug war addiction.

So, gates, vipers, hipsters, fight the fear factor. Keep puffing, and never forget: The Drug War is a direct descendant of an empire-building racial scare campaign by a group of drug enforcement entrepreneurs almost three-quarters of a century ago.

And if someone taking a survey asks you if you smoke pot, lie.

Let the cops in Boston have the money.

—Bozo (Thanks to the Prefect)

JUNE 12, 2005

TODAY IN HISTORY:

Today, in 1924, George I was born.

LAST YEAR IN BOULDERIA:

Charles Butcher, a 30-year Boulder resident, died at age 87.

The first World Naked Bike Ride, which, amazingly enough, was thought up by Canadians, was observed in Boulderia, inducing no particular shock and awe. The second annual installment took place yesterday, after advance publicity in the Camera and Westword. The ride, which might more accurately be called the World Semi-Clothed Bicycle Ride, has already become semi-respectable.

[e-mail]

Great to see that Mr. Danish has found your site. Now that he's got time to surf, I would expect to hear more from the guy.

And how dare the flacks at CU let the cat out of the bag about the dull tools at the Camera [ June 10 ]. Although compared with others at the paper, Elizabeth is much sharper than others. But I can't see that such disparaging remarks will make much difference in the "relationship" the Camera has with CU. What can the Camera do if they're pissed or hurt or angry? Launch an investigation? Ha! I don't think they know what such an animal is, let alone how to go about launching one.

James Burrus

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

News has been a little slow in Boulderia lately, but as they say in the J-biz, "The ads must go on." So in the way that things sometimes do, an Amusing Little Thing turns into a Big Boring Thing.

Voila! It's PRgate! [ June 10 ]

The saga of CU's foot-shooting PR czars continues in today's Camera. Having worked them over in his trademark mild-mannered way in a Friday column, Clint Talbott hands off the boys to tag-team partner Editor Sue Deans in today's paper. In addition, the Camera provides a long list of staffers who are graduates or otherwise connected with CU in some way. The Camera's going to batter the PR twins with sweet reasonableness until they ralph on their Florsheims, but the message is clear: "You're dead meat, flack-boys!" (Boulder Weekly's Amazing Wayne had already dissed the pair in a May column in his trademark veins-bulging style.)

Nowhere, in any of this is the slightest acknowledgment that this incident is, in fact, laugh-out-loud funny. In today's paper we find flak Mike Hesse telling Deans in a phone call, "Her and Ray have been having a few battles." Our own in-house CU J-school grad tells us that should be: "Her and Ray has been having a few battles."

Our sides are aching!

You don't get much for 150 grand a year these days, let alone a mere 80 or 90. Wherever you look, from the highest offices of the land, to local government, to academia, to commerce, the country's been taken over by overpaid doofi. And if this much is glaringly apparent to Modest Geniuses of our humble ilk, you know we are into the deep, deep taffy, folks.

One of Mondo Boulder's correspondents, the aforementioned CU J-school grad, recently e-mailed all the CU regents to complain about the overt religious proselytizing and hypocritical arrest of free speech protesters at the Bolder Boulder Folsom Field events and the general "ethical and intellectual flaccidity" at his alma mater, threatening to auction his diploma on e-Bay. He got back an e-mail, not from CU, but from the Bolder Boulder, to whom the regents had presumably fobbed off his complaint.

The regents have their own $300 per hour hired PR gun, in addition to the school's $300,000 house comedy duo, but probably no amount of money can address CU's fundamental unwillingness to relate to the public, let alone the press.

–Bozo

JUNE 10, 2005

TODAY IN HISTORY

Today (1895) is the birthday of Immanuel Velikovsky, Russian born writer who proposed the idea that the Earth had been visited many times by space aliens, thus providing inspiration for The Weekly World News and similar tabloids and generations of Boulderians.

KIND BUD SAYS: "Ward Churchill is a man who doesn't think before he opens his mouth. He doesn't think after he opens his mouth, either."

[e-mail]

Hi there.

Sometimes I'm a bit slow, but it occurs to me that if Brother Churchill claims to have authored essays, polemics, screeds, or bathroom graffiti for his ex, which she then published under her own name, [ May 24 ] he is in fact confessing to an intellectual crime as serious as plagiarism. How does this differ from, say, sitting in for the lady at her final exam or writing a term paper for her? It may not be plagiarism, but it is still academic fraud.

Mondo Boulder is a hoot.

Citizen Danish

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

Golly! We thought for a moment you were sending in your vote for the new American Idol [ May 28 ].

Come to think of it, Wardo really should have been included in the lineup, though he has no documented connection with Paula Abdul. Here he is, for last minute voters:

Wardo

It's almost possible to feel sorry for Wardo. He's entirely the Cinderella, or, if you prefer, Frankenstein, of CU. Had it not been for the University's cynical machinations to snap up this prime "Indian" he'd be teaching art at a community college somewhere, a poorer, but perhaps happier man. But whatever happens, it will not be CU that will take the hit. And the possibility that the whole mess will be quietly buried fades with every passing day, largely because the Rocky Mountain News is doing the Special Glacially Slow Investigating Committee's job for it, and in considerable detail.

That's why it's not really fair for CU to fire Wardo. Let's have a full-on, whiz-bang investigation, full frontal disclosure, but at the end of the weary day, CU should have to lie down with the bedfellow it chose. And maybe the Senate should confirm John Bolton too. (But nix on that mustache!) Now that he's been pre-spanked, shoo him into the pitiless glare of the spotlight and let him do his party piece.

And speaking of copyright infringement (one of the many sins of which Wardo stands accused) we note that Frontpagemag.com is reprinting the Rocky's stories on Wardo. Trouble is, although the Rocky is fully credited, there is no statement that the copyrighted material is being used with permission, and no publication of the original copyright notice. We sent e-mails to the Rocky and to Frontpagemag.com, but so far, no comment.

The website is the forum for "conservative firebrand" David Horowitz, the proponent of conservative affirmative action for America's college campuses. His appearance at CU in February drew a surging throng of 100 people. In March, Frontpagemag.com carried a story claiming a UNC student had been flunked for refusing to write an essay to "explain why George Bush is a war criminal." This proved to be bologna of the purest ray serene, and Horowitz had to retract. At Churchill's much-ballyhooed April speech at Eastern Washington University, he identified Gov B'lowens, former Secretary of Education William Bennett, Second Lady Lynn Cheney, Newt Gingrich and Horowitz as the half-vast right wing conspiracy out to get him.

And speaking of dildoes, there is that wonderful story in yesterday's Camera about CU's PR plan to bedazzle Boulderia's media. This is the brainchild of Ray Gomez, recently hired associate vice president for university communications. When the Camera Obscura got wind of the plan and asked for details, Gomez accidentally sent the paper e-mails detailing how he planned to give reporter Elizabeth Mattern Clark a "cleaned up version" and saying she wasn't the "sharpest knife in the drawer." First Gomez tried to deny he referred to Clark, then finally admitted it.

Gomez formerly worked for Disneyland and owned a So-Cal spin-control factory whose motto was, (no kidding) "When you don't have time to think."

Translation: "When you don't have time to think ... lie!"

Mondo Boulder knows who the dullest knives in the drawer are: The spatulas who hired Gomez and fellow flack Michael Hesse for $150,000 a year. Each.

–Peter Aretin

JUNE 8, 2005

LAST YEAR IN BOULDERIA: A 2-inch-per-hour gullywasher soaked the hills west of the Heil Valley Ranch during the evening, bringing significant quantities of those hills washing down into the valley below. "It toppled a ranchland fence, triggered rockslides and filled a small pond near the Heil Valley Ranch Open Space parking lot and trailhead with loamy silt," reported the Camera.

"What's that yellow stuff all over the hills?"

"That's hay, Mr Tambourine Man!"

Yup, they dropped tons of hay on it from the air to try and stabilize the muck.

KIND BUD SAYS: "Money talks. The rest of us just mutter under our breath."

sportsibitionism, n., exercise performed for a maximum of public visibility; See Dick run! Run, Dick, run!
    –The Unrestrained Dictionary of the Boulderian Language

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a-gonna do
But there ain't to cure for the summertime blues.
      –Eddie Cochran

It's back, heralded by those harbingers of warm weather, the Four Horsemen of Summer: The Bolder Boulder, the Boulder Creek Festival, Tick Season, and West Nile Virus.

You may be able to avoid the last two, but the first two are inescapable.

I couldn't muster much enthusiasm for the Creek Fest this year, possibly because of a gastrointestinal memory of the toxic funnel cake I ate there last year. The Fest resembles an extended soccer scrimmage held in the dreamlike miscegenation of a craft fair and a carnival midway. It has lots of food concessions to graze, where, for only what turns out to be a little more than the cost of dinner in a fancy restaurant, the adventurous gastronome can work up a four-star case of indigestion.

The Bolder Boulder, 40-odd thousand strong, seems to be becoming one of the nation's premier sportsibitionism events. On one end, it's a road race, featuring the buffest of Boulderian citizenry actually running 10 kilometers. At the other end, it's a pathetic rabble hoping against hope they can walk six miles without collapsing. That's about the widest gamut of athletic prowess possible in one event, especially if you count the world class runners who race separately, after the struggling and straggling have been mercifully curtailed.

The BB lost much of its remaining charm for me last fall, when it put its mailing list in the service of Republican Steve Bosley, the event's founder, in his successful bid to become a University of Colorado regent. Bosley, Jr is the current race director. Still, the ineluctable weirdness of a mass community shuffle endures.

Riding to the start on a warm day, in a bus entirely filled with people in ripe sneakers, one can close one's eyes and imagine one is on a tour of the picturesque cheese country. It was, fortunately, cool this year.

Then there is that inspiring sense of standing shoulder to shoulder with one's fellow citizens, all with but a single purpose. This comes before the race, at the quaint Community Piss, as, young and old, great and small, all humbly wait before the serried ranks of Porta-Potties for that all-important last leak.

The first real sign of the compulsive control-freak mentality behind the BB is the starting zone. About a quarter-mile of chain-link fence hung with blue plastic tarps shields the starting line, like the Elysian mysteries, from the impious eye of any spectator. Someone might take a picture. Or something.

Along the course, there's lots of entertainment. Belly dancers. Elvis impersonators. Many garage bands set up at curbside. None of it is as entertaining, however, as what is shuffling along, mile after mile, through the streets of Boulderia. I caught a glimpse of Betty Hoops hula-hooping along at a faster pace than much of the rabble. Those things were invented when I was just a kid: What goes around comes around, eh?

But finally, Folsom stadium, site of the race finish on the beautiful University of Colorado campus is in sight. People sense the objective is near. The objective is a little nylon goodie bag that is given to race participants. It is for this the masses have toiled six long miles. This cute little bag traditionally contains a real food item, say, a piece of fruit, and various weird food-like nosheries produced by the ingenious health food industry, which I will not attempt to describe. Participants also get bottled water and a canned soft drink, or a bottle of some kind of watery, unbelievably anemic beer-like liquid. Puzzling over the contents of the goodie bag, gingerly toothing the contents like an immense troop of inquisitive chimps gives the crowd something to do during the Memorial Day ceremonies honoring America's war dead.

These ceremonies are described by Bosley, Jr, as "non-political and non-religious," and that's true if you don't count jingoistic celebrations of American military might, with suggestions it is divinely sanctioned. B-1 bomber flyovers and speeches by Republican legislators who otherwise refuse to set foot in the Boulderian Republic have wowed past crowds of peace-loving citizens.

I missed the speech by the war hero this year. I was stuck in Balch Fieldhouse, where, in a claustrophobic nightmare, a vast, surging mass of shufflers was being sadistically squeezed down into a single file while harangued by unintelligible Orwellian loudspeakers. This is also part of tradition; the PA system sounds like complete gibberish in all parts of the fieldhouse and some points in the stadium, evoking at times feelings of inchoate dread. It turns out the PA was telling the finishers they would have to go to the opposite side of the stadium to get their snack-like treats.

I hear that the speech I missed was a hum-dinger, a non-religious exhortation to accept Jesus as your lord and savior, etc. Then they arrested some peace activists for holding a banner criticizing our current military fiasco and one with something about free speech on it. Well, the peaceniks had their chance. Junior had offered them a booth outside the stadium for the discounted rate of $4,333.33, marked down from 13 grand.

Thou shalt have no other sponsors before thee. Give Orowheat a chance. Gosh, what do you suppose would have happened if that banner had read, "GOD BLESS AMERICA"?

These events inevitably make me remember the 57,000 American lives that were wasted in Viet Nam. They make me think about all those who might not have been so patriotic, those who went because they felt they had to. And the unwilling conscripts.

I nearly forgot: After the inspirational part, the world-class runners race. This can be confusing for folks who are in one of those parts of the stadium where the PA system is unintelligible. A group of tiny figures will start running, and just as they are getting up speed, they run right out of the stadium and have the race outside.

For those unfamiliar to the scene, there may be a moment of disorientation as they realize they are sitting in a stadium watching a foot race on a big TV screen, picking bits of organic dried sweet potato out of their teeth. Just so everyone will feel at home, there are commercials. It is during these that crucial parts of the race take place.

The tiny figures may come zipping back into the stadium, faking out the part of the crowd that can't hear very well, making them think the race is ending. But they may zip right on out again. Eventually, they do come back in and finish the race to a lot of insdiscriminate cheering. Eventually, the crowd filters out and either limps home or finishes spending the 11 million dollars they're required to part with before being allowed to leave Boulderia.

To tell the truth, I've never passed between the sacred blue tarps, and I've never gone through the official finish, either. I've never entered, and I've never given the Bolder Boulder a nickel. I keep some friends company, and go for a walk on my sidewalks and my streets and eat the weird stuff in their goodie bags.

So far, I have escaped arrest.

–Bozo

MAY 28, 2005

MAY 24, 2005

Of course you will also put a stop to the sophomoric dripping sarcasm and demagoguery in your local columns, which also does absolutely nothing to help bring us together. These are not the traits of talented wordsmiths, and the views they so often delight in ridiculing happen to be the core values of many of your readers, not just some distant straw man. I thank you for practicing what you preach.

—huffy letter to the Camera from an Ann Coulter (!) fan, 11 23 03

However, it seems to me that way too often a kind of haughty sarcasm parades as intelligent discourse; the wittier the put-down, the greater the presumption of superior perspective. If you have a sufficiently cogent argument for something, you should have no need to impugn the intellect of someone who disagrees.

—another letter writer to the Camera, 04 17 04 When did "wit" stop being a synonym for intelligence?

We've often been hurt and puzzled that some Boulderians just don't seem to cotton to the sophisticated humor doled out here. And we're often left bemused by that species of scold found in Boulderia, who is able to primly decry sarcasm while failing to condemn the Ruthlessly Nice in pursuit of some self-interested agenda.

Well, Science has addressed these questions, with the discovery of the human brain's sarcasm center.

So we gladly offer these modestly geniustic meditations as a sarcasm-rich diagnostic tool, for the benefit of humankind. And if our brilliance fails to dazzle, why, don't blame us. Don't ask for your money back.

Get those prefrontal lobes in for their 100,000 mile checkup.

We do know sarcasm is something our Wardo appreciates. It's another thing he wishes he could do well.

Apparently, Wardo, like much of the Boulderian intelligentsia, peruses these pages, [May 19] because a story in Monday's Colorado Daily now reveals that Wardo "could" release his rock 'em, sock 'em 50-page response to the Glacially Slow Investigating Committee "in the days ahead."

In what other days? might we ask.

From Anonymous Source: He's going to have it printed on pulpy paper by one of those little left-wing presses and try for a best seller on Amazon. Wardenburg Health Center and CU lawyers are demanding the book carry a disclaimer that it should not be read by persons drinking a glass of milk.

*snort*strangle*

Wardo's attorney has dropped some tantalizing hints. Hints in regard, for instance, to those explosive charges that some of Wardo's writings bear an unacceptable degree of textual identicality to writings by former wife Annette Jaimes and to Rebecca L. Robbins, described by the Doily as a professor at Arizona State University. When we searched ASU's directory, however, Robbins' name came up zip.

Wardo is not guilty of plagiarism because, says his legal eagle, he wrote the material himself, and gave it to Robbins to publish as her own work. Jaimes was reported in the Rocky as saying "he's a liar, and he's a fraud." The Camera says Jaimes is now a professor at San Franciso State University, but the search engine of SFSU's website can't find her, either.

Anonymous Source: [Choose] 1) They've gone into hiding, or 2) are on the lam like Thelma and Louise in a high-speed tour of American college campuses. Along the way, both women will rediscover the strength of their friendship and suprising aspects of their personalities and self-strengths in these trying academic times.

Anyway, let's make a leap of faith and assume Wardo is not a liar and a fraud. If he really did give ownership rights of this material to someone else, even verbally, it is (gasp <-sarcasm! NOTE: Everything else herein is completely devoid of any ironic implication whatsoever) not his property anymore. You may be shocked, dear reader(s) to know that if you so much as send a letter or even a classified ad to the Camera Obscura, it is not merely their prerogative to inflict clumsy changes to its spelling and punctuation, no, it becomes their property. You must ask their permission to reprint it in that New York Times Anthology of Great Classifieds.

So, needless to say, Wardo's claim is pretty weak tea as a defense against plagiarism. Maybe it's copyright infringement instead. The Glacially Slow Investigating Committee can wrestle with this one.

But if this is a sample, and Wardo hopes to make a dime, they'd better shrink-wrap that book to keep people from peeking.

—The Snot-Nosed Upstart Nobodies

May 20, 2005 

[ANOTHER LETTER]

Hey! What gives with Mondo Boulder? Your actions have directly refuted your classic motto “Send no money, there is no product.” I didn’t offer money for the Wardo Totem because, well, the instructions that permeate your site tell me not to.

And to say that Mondo Boulder doesn’t need more junk is silly. Junk is not only the coin of the realm (BoBos, after all, live for acquiring rare and meaningful junk), but from what I’ve been privy to, it’s used prodigiously for ornamentation at Limbo Ranch. Granted, one person’s junk is another’s prized possessions; it all comes down to values.

I’m disappointed, to say the least. But if you ever want to get rid of an old printing press, let me know.

The Prefect

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We realize these matters can be complicated for laypersons.

That's why were going to have Bill Frist contact you, as soon as he is through explaining why his March 8, 2000 vote to uphold the filibuster of a judicial nominee isn't really a filibuster, to explain why "cash" isn't really "money."

We aren't ashamed to bring in an expert.

–The Proprietors

May 19, 2005 

 

[LETTER] 

Dear Mondo:

I am vastly interested in owning a Wardo Fetish Figure. But, being as how I’m more than a little cash poor at present, I was wondering if you would, in the spirit of the indigenous Bouldarians, accept some barter. As values go, I’ve got mine and I’m not a little skeptical of the others being touted in the media of late, so I’m not sure how these tokens will be, well, valued. But here goes.

I’m willing to offer two cubic feet (about a half a tree) of paper comprised of the closing documents of the first home purchased (and subsequently sold in order to absquatulate to Longmont) in Boulderia. The trees used to create these documents were old growth trees from prime Spotted Owl habitat in the Northwest. I would also throw in the printing press that was stolen from the town of Valmont in order to lend legitimacy to Boulderia by virtue of its ability to print the TRUTH paid for by the ads of said Realtors to ply their trade. This should put me in the running, no?

And if that isn’t enough, I have some reserve that I can pony up. Namely the grease-soaked stones from the sacred fire circle that begat The Sink.

So put me in, if you feel my wampum qualifies.

Wing Commander Prefect

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The Mondo Boulder Auction only accepts cash. Tempting as your offer is, the purpose of the auction is to unload junk, not multiply it.

And more unfortunately, Bill Gates has already acquired the rare, 19th-century (Or should I say, "19 Th Century," in the new Upscale Dumbass or Paris Hilton style favored by certain shopping center developers?) wardo fetish figure as part of his plan to acquire Everything Remotely Interesting and store it in a High Tech abandoned salt mine under controlled temperatures.

But all that is hardly important, now, in light of the sudden inability of Boulder headline writers to properly use the word "refute."

This is serious. In the May 18 Camera Obscura, an inside jump head tells us, "Churchill refutes fraud allegations." The next day it happens again in the Colorado Doily: "CHURCHILL REFUTES OKLAHOMA TRIBE'S CLAIM THAT HE IS NOT A MEMBER."

Look, whoever you are, writing these headlines, put down those mice. Stand up. Walk over to the dictionary (there's one somewhere in the office). Look up "refute" and read the definition (silently!).

See?

Our Wardo (any resemblance to actual persons, living or wooden, is purely coincidental) has hardly refuted anything. What he does is bluff and bluster, and try to insult his critics with his usual lack of style and skill. One would need to read that 50-page (or 50 Page, in the new Hyphen Free style) response he submitted in order to form an opinion whether it was, in fact, a refutation. Hints dropped by Wardo's attorney, who seems as deluded as his client, are not reassuring.

While the Special Glacially Slow Investigating Committee must labor, not only at a snail's pace but in secrecy, there's no reason Wardo himself couldn't release to a salivating public the full, amazing text of his "crushing" or "Slam Dunk" response to the charges against him. (The local papers delicately seem unwilling to press him on this issue. Perhaps they fear he will call them a rude name.)

No reason, that is, except the fear that anyone reading Wardo's crushing 50 Page rebuttal might laugh out loud until milk squirted out their nose. Wardo and his lawyerly Alter Ego probably nurse the desperate hope that the Special Glacially Slow Investigation will ultimately come to naught and that all records will be buried in the backyard in one of those "confidential personnel matter" dodges public employees use, and that Wardo will never have to publicly answer his critics.

I can't think much else they could be hoping for.

Wardo's academic critics, "Snot Nosed" though they allegedly be, published their criticisms in reputable journals. If the Special Glacially Slow Investigation concludes it's just too damn much trouble to shoot Wardo, he will proclaim that he has been thoroughly vindicated and that he need answer no "transparently pretextual" criticisms of his more bizarre bits of scholarship.

And as the Wardo vs World bout just gets stranger and stranger, now with The Worst Professor in America "refuting" the tribe that insists he's not a member, he rebutting away that he is so too a member, nya nya, all those cries of a Neocon Plot Against the Academic Left are starting to sound, well, pretextual.

Consider this recent sample of Wardo rhectoric, quoted in S.F. Weekly: "What kind of mentality imbues the people who habituate the bar that turned it into a place where they socialize and have recreation finally find this to be an acceptable kind of adornment to their environment? And I've got an answer for you. And that answer is: Eichmann! Eichmann! That is the mentality of Eichmann!¹"

It's Professor Irwin Corey's Evil Twin!

Sure, there is a Neocon Plot Against the Academic Left, but Karl Rove at his most Machiavellian could not devise as dirty a dirty trick as Wardo himself.

He's going to be rolling unconstrainedly around the decks of the good ship Sea Ewe, breaking the legs of his shipmates and stoving holes in the hull, for some time to come.

–The Proprietors

___________________________________________

¹All together now! (To the tune of "Iko Iko")

Indian boy going down town
Eichmann! Eichmann! un day
You don't like what the big chief said
Said Jockamo feena nay

chorus:

Eichmann! Eichmann!
Eichmann! Eichmann! un day
Jockomo feeno ah na nay
Jockomo feena nay !

MAY 7, 2005

This is your opportunity to bid on a rare 19th-century "wardo" fetish figure of painted wood. Ethnologists tell us these totemic figures were made by a nomadic people who roamed Boulderia's mountains hunting, gathering, and speculating in real estate. They spoke a complex language that used real words and were skilled workers in plywood.

These early inhabitants of our mountains would stake out large tracts of the high valleys, sell and resell, or rather, barter and rebarter, these prime lots to each other for ever-increasing sums until they could no longer afford to live there, and then migrate to a new locale.

When these nomadic Realtor people first encountered the prosperous yuppie settlements that sprang up in the Boulderian lowlands, they noted the central role played by White Male Radical Professors in prosperous pioneer socio-commerce. At some point there arose an esoteric nomad splinter cult based on the belief that totemic wardo figures, prominently displayed, could attract White Male Radical Professors to the nomad encampments, thus reaping the benefits of prosperity for themselves instead of the white settlers.

No one is certain whether the wardo cultists were motivated by specific goals, such as an abundant corn harvest, or a broader cultural need to launch a wide-ranging examination of tenure, academic freedom, and free speech, ultimately yielding extensive media coverage that could be parlayed into lucrative book deals and lecture tours, but this rare wooden figure could form an impressive centerpiece for any collection of ethno-academic objects. Most of these scarce figures were burned for firewood during the blizzard of '88.

Nor does anyone know exactly why this mysterious people abruptly vanished.

It has been suggested that an internecine competition for a limited number of White Male Radical Professors by a rapidly expanding native population caused their civilization to collapse. Some believe that, fearing another ice age and a precipitous drop in property values, they "split for the coast." There have been more controversial suggestions the Realtor people were given blankets deliberately infected with postmodernism and leftist ideology, turning their central nervous systems into Silly Putty and causing the failure of their complex mortgage and lending culture.

The most radical theory suggests that they just moved to Longmont.

Don't miss this chance to own this rare ethno-academic artifact! Submit your bid via the e-mail link below. The purchase price is fully tax-deductible in Bulgaria and Venezuela.

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Learn More:

Churchill, W. Nobody Here But Us Chickens!

Gregious, E. The Cracked Pot: Preindustrial Postmodernism

Max, R.E., Home on the Range: Amortization and Refinancing Rituals of the Native Peoples of Boulderia

Plywood Institute of America, Easy Weekend Projects

Wood, P., The Yard Sign: An Ethno-Socio-Economic History of Social Stratification and Religious Expression Through Signage in the Pretextual Realtor Societies of Early Boulderia

MAY 5, 2005

Kind Bud Says: "The Three Pillars of Misrule are Conventional Wisdom, Good Intentions, and Wishful Thinking."

Conventional Wisdom, The First Law, [phil.] If an action fails to produce the intended result, you obviously need more of it.

–The Unrestrained Dictionary of the Boulderian Language

 

Last June, when Boulderia was giddy at the news of getting its first Economic Vitality Czar, Mondo Boulder published one of our patented little Facetious Fantasias in which a little kid suggests that "instead of a salary, to pay the Economic Vitality Coordinator a commission, giving him a cut of any new sales tax revenue he brings in." When the new EVC hears this suggestion, he says "I'm outta' here!" with "considerable vitality."

Well, Economic Czar Michael Stumpf, lured away from a demure little municipality in Wisconsin, has in turn already deserted his new bride. The honeymoon didn't last a year. If he'd been hired on the terms suggested by Mondo Boulder's hypothetical kid, he'd owe the City money. As it is, he did a lot better than that. After being introduced around and shown the local ropes at $80,000 per, he deserted the municipal bed to shack up with a private company, following several businesses that took flight during his brief economic husbandry.

Stumpf had denied rumors he was bailing, telling Boulderia's grownup-sized newspaper, "I'd be calling the newspapers if that was true." A few days later, he was gone, fled to the arms of a "local consulting firm." And he didn't call any newspapers.

If Mr Stumpf were a member of the Bush administration, a judicial nominee, or even an ethnic studies professor, people would be calling him a liar, and worse. But this is the business world. The Camera has even delicately refrained from naming the private firm instrumental in the breakup of the relationship. How cozy!

You don't get much loyalty these days for $80,000 a year. You don't even get a "Good-bye, and thanks for all the fish." Stumpf, who hadn't been much heard from since his hiring, has declined to even comment on his hasty departure.

What Boulderians will get for their not-quite-eighty-grand is an edifying lesson in The First Law of Conventional Wisdom. The only outcry about this little seduction and abandonment has been, "When will we get a new one and how much more will he get?" The Camera, predictably, is singing this love song.

Don't expect a single, living soul in Boulderia to question whether it is really useful for a city that continually cries poor to blow its paycheck wooing more bureaucrats. Don't expect anybody to suggest, like that little kid in our fantasy, to tie such a job to real-world results.

Anyone who has studied the titles of legislation produced by the Bush administration knows that names are used as often to mislead as to describe. So it is with our EVC, who can't create economic vitality. His (or her) real purpose is to hold the hand of the business community and whisper, "I still love you!" Another purpose is to draw attention away from our elected officials and already extensive bureaucracy, who have the power to make policy and who should already have created economic vitality, if that were something that could be done by local government.

The First Law of Conventional Wisdom explains why sinecures like this, once created, never go away, no matter how ineffective they prove to be. For generations to come, Boulderians will have an Economic Vitality Coordinator, no matter how good, or bad, the Magic Kingdom's economic vital signs.

When things go well, they'll give him more money because it's obviously working. When things are bad, they'll give him more money because he obviously needs it.

—Peter Aretin

MAY 3, 2005

Kind Bud Says: "Some people worry that a civil war along religious lines will break out in Iraq. Well, that would bring them up level with the Irish, at least."

The tenured ethnic studies professor said Thursday that he will respond by explaining "in detail why the allegations are not simply false but transparently pretextual."

–The Camera Obscura, 04 29

Say what?

I know that "textual" means pertaining to a text, so "pretextual" would presumably mean having to do with the state of something before it was a text, but "transparently?" What does that suggest? So I did what I usually do when encountering a degree of erudition far greater than my own.

I went to look it up.

It turns out "pretextual" isn't a real word. It's one of those Uncle Remus words, as when, in between zippedy do-dahs, he declares, "Everything is satisfactual." In our freewheeling postmodern world, however, the mere fact that something may not be real is nothing to keep scholars from bruiting it wildly about. A little judicious googling revealed that "pretextual" is a fairly popular buzzword in certain quarters, and sounds like something thought up by a lawyer, to mean "in the nature of, or pertaining to, an ostensible or professed purpose."

So I suppose what The Tenured Ethnic Studies Professor is getting at in that quote is the oft-expressed crank legal doctrine, advanced by Wardo's lawyer and endorsed by the Colorado ACLU, that if you are an Utterer of Controversial Things, the Frist, pardon me, First, Amendment forbids anyone from peeking to see if you have stashed Mom in your freezer, or if your works occasionally bear an uncanny degree of textual identicality with someone else's.

This doctrine ought to be welcomed by embattled souls like Tom DeLay, John Bolton, or even Adolf Hitler, if he turned out to be alive and living in Niwot. "Sorry," they could all declare to their critics with supercilious hauteur, "your investigation is completely pretextual."

But maybe this nifty legal umbrella only works in the strange, alternate universe of academic free speech. We must not forget it was in this academic Land of Make Believe that a university president and university flack declared that "cunt" is a term of endearment used by Chaucer, when the word does not appear in Chaucer at all, let alone as a term of endearment. It's amazing how many people still believe this flagrant whopper, never having bothered to check. Maybe Chaucer said it pretextually, or while channelling D.H. Lawrence.

In this environment, how can making up a little history, personal or otherwise, constitute "research fraud?" So if the esteemed Tenured Ethnic Studies Professor will only explain how the allegations are "simply false" he can skip the "transparently pretextual," part, and that will be completely satisfactual with me.

—Peter Aretin

MAY 1, 2005

It's something of a tradition at Lake Pandora that the best snow of the season may decorate the slopes after the area is closed. This has happened many, many times through the years, and Mayday, 2005, was no exception. With no official snow reporting, it's difficult to say just how much new has fallen on Pandora, enough that, despite warming temps and longer days, all the rocks and weeds that were appearing have vanished.

According to the dedicated folks at the Colorado Avalanche Center, who have stayed on past their official closing to issue informal reports and weather info, "upwards of 2 to 3 feet has fallen in the N mtns" in the past week.

It's too bad Colorado's ski areas aren't as dedicated. Loveland called it quits on Mayday, without ever having had a corn season to speak of. This leaves only A-Basin offering lift-served thrills, and the Basin has grown increasingly timid in recent years, closing off huge tracts of the area as soon as a few rocks appear.

Quite a few skiers and boarders were at Pandora this weekend, with cars parked for a hundred yards or so along the road outside the gate. Conditions have been mixed, with daily warm-ups creating sun crusts on top the nearly isothermal snowpack, which hasn't been able to support a skiers weight. On Mayday, a shot of several inches new and cooler temps helped out, and it was possible to find stashes of real powder, even some surprisingly good tree skiing.

All this new snow guarantees that, even after significant melting, the snow pack will consolidate and should yield a good period of corn snow for the climbing-skin crowd.

Incidentally, though the lifts are stilled, the Pandora webcam still operates, so it's possible to get a peek at what's going on there and make a guess about weather and new snowfall. If you look closely, you might even catch a glimpse of your Snowpack Inspection Service in action.

—Peter Aretin

APRIL 30, 2005

Kind Bud Says: "A bust in the mouth is worth two in the hand."

Boulder Weekly has just issued its Best of Boulder edition, taking the opportunity to give itself some hearty pats on the back and to slam the competition, if that is the correct word.

The Weekly's own Wayne Laugesen is deemed the "Best answer to bureaucracy" for that incident in which he smashed the antique windows those bureaucrats were trying to make a homeowner keep in his historic house. BW leaves out that two [count 'em!] two sets of usable, old windows were smashed. Laugesen got a second set of windows from a recycler and smashed those so a Westword reporter could photograph alternative journalism in action.

Well, he's not the answer to wasteful bureaucracy, anyway. The Westword piece also featured a shot of Laugesen gratuitously brandishing his pistol, though he recently declared, "One has almost no statistical probability of getting murdered, mugged or harmed by a stranger anywhere in Boulder." So the gat was either for warding off friends and family members or for the benefit of Westword's more dangerous, edgy Denver readers who might be tempted to come up to Boulder and horn in on the window-smashing racket.

That quote about the safety of Boulder came from an especially wolly-headed recent column in which Laugesen used the occasion of one of the Pearl Street Mall bum's attacking a man in a wheelchair then breaking the leg of his would-be rescuer as a pretext to attack the "the spoiled, provincial and intolerant crowd" who aren't reassured at the thought that they could get a statistically insignificant broken leg while shopping on Pearl Street.

Such wimps! The wheelchair-bound and elderly should just carry a sledgehammer and a pistol, like Wayne does.

BW also took a dig at Dirt, the Daily Camera's idea of what parts of the Camera young people would read if they read the Camera, calling Dirt the "Most aptly named new product."

Dirt is not produced by "idealistic editors and publishers" scoffs the Weekly, and contains "puerile odes to beer and boobies."

Heavens! How soon we forget!

Mondo Boulder could never forget idealistic Wayne's column, "Beer, boobs, barf & booze." "A small group of old folks has chosen to live among students," wrote Wayne. "They love the youthful charm but want cops to save them from the beer, boobs, barf and booze that go with college life."

Wayne leaves out any mention of that couple of cool ones, Samantha Spady and Gordie Bailey, in this ode.

You could read this November, 2004, column on Hill riots, which makes some good points about the Boulder PD, for yourself, except that it is missing from the BW website.

—Bozo

We didn't have to make any of this report up; 'strue.