Halfway Serious Stories 

I'm Walkin' Here!

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Time is Money

Public Notice 

Be it known that the occupant herein is officially growing tired of motorists driving at 80 MPH down this ill-maintained state highway in front of this residence which, not incidentally, lies wholly within a posted 35 MPH town speed zone.

 Specifically, also let it be known that these thoughtless actions precipitated by motorists not only terrify the occupant herein, but systematically endanger said occupant herein's life each time he needs to cross the street to retrieve junk mail from his bent-up mailbox that unknown teenagers riding ATVs have crushed with a baseball bat for the third time this Summer.

 Be it also known that on the way back from his mailbox this morning said occupant herein picked up -- a broken and almost empty 16 oz. Labatt's Blue beer bottle, a non-lickable candy wrapper of unknown flavor, a thing with poop inside, and a long rusty 1/4"-20 stove bolt -- from random areas of his heretofore immaculately groomed front lawn; all of which appeared to said occupant herein to be trash carelessly tossed out of/from passing vehicles by aforementioned speeding motorists -- and which have been duly added to a growing pile of like said trash that is currently being temporarily stored under said occupant herein's side porch.

 Also, let it be known that said occupant herein is accumulating the aforementioned collective pile of trash toward the eventful day, sometime in the near future, when he will extract deep and gratifying elephant revenge against all such said speeding motorists who use said occupant herein's lawn as a personal garbage can.

 Thank you, please -- Said Occupant Herein

Happy Burger vs. Mary O'Neil

  What odd set of circumstances do you suppose could touch off a skirmish between a large multi-national corporation and a sweet old woman who dyes her hair blue? 

That's odd all right, you say? But then you probably don't live in a small New England town where oddness is considered normal, and where being normal is considered odd. Small New England towns are also places where the fate of all inhabitants, young and old, can be determined by just one hard or soft-headed individual, and a quirky political process called Town Meeting.

 Several years back at town meeting -- which is always held in late February after most of the town has migrated to Florida --  there was a brouhaha to end all brouhahas.

 As Jocko remembers, it was business as usual that year. The meeting went relatively smooth with almost all town business being attended to in less than three days and two nights.

 As always, there were rolled up sleeping bags piled high in the town house coat closet, and hot meals were offered by the Ladies Ancillary of the First Unitarian Church (Amy Fisher's roasted pork and kidney bean plate); so that meeting participants would not succumb to starvation before they finally got a chance to vote on something.

The hot topic of that year's meeting was Happy Burger coming to town. The old red-brick town house literally groaned under the weight of an overflow crowd that day, with chairs setup in the halls to accommodate the voters. Many more town residents listened to the proceedings on a large loudspeaker Chester Whitfield had installed down in the boiler room.

 The Happy Burger company had purchased a good-sized piece of property west of town along the highway, and then presented a site plan for a hamburger restaurant to the town planning board; whose members quickly rubber-stamped the plan for approval. 

There was only one small hitch in Happy Burger's fast food 'git-a-long. 

The proposed building site was owned by the town, which meant voters would need to approve the sale and disposition of the property.  

Anyway, this snappy official action was mainly because town planning board members must make their decisions based solely upon local zoning laws and state and federal building codes. As long as a proposed structure is safe and legal and at the right place, they don't give a hoot what you build on your property. 

And, more importantly, they don't have to deal with Mary O'Neil. 

Mary, a 70-something firebrand with dyed blue hair that sort of scares the heck out of you when she looks straight at you, is a long-time resident who some people say owns most of town west of the Cumquat River.

 When Mary's not tending to her real estate holdings she's also the town's unofficial Environmental Protective Agent.  If you've never heard of that term before don't feel bad. It's a local one, and the lay terminology for it is tree-hugger.

Anyway, just as the meeting was getting up a good head of steam Mary stood up and asked to have the floor. She was reluctantly granted permission to speak by Merv Shinglehouse, the town moderator, and then quickly stationed herself behind the simulated walnut-veneer podium where she and ranted and raved for about 3-1/2 hours. 

She wanted to tell everyone about the frogs.

 The frogs, she said, were going to die in droves. The frogs were going to strangle themselves. The frogs were going to suffer horrible deaths from the oil scum left behind by thousands of cars that would drive out there to buy Happy Burgers, and in the process leak indescribable fluids into what she said was the frog's 'pristine wetlands home'.

 It was going to be terrible for the frogs.

 Happy Burger had to go!

 Furthermore, she said, after a walking tour of the proposed building site she had also noted an area that was inhabited by pond-skimmers and various other of God's delicate creatures, whose habitat the bulldozers couldn't possibly miss when they broke ground for the new restaurant. 

In addition, she said, there was present on the building site a mound of mysterious 'gooey black stuff' that looked and felt to her like tar. 

.She added, " I had a tongue taste of it, and it was plenty bitter." 

Mary then went on to tell everyone that if the restaurant moved to town, the quaint and charming character of the place would be lost forever. 

"Up in smoke!", she said.

 Why there'd be Happy Burger wrappers strewn helter-skelter all over the fields, and the bright light from the new stoplight would certainly keep anyone from watching even a small part of the lunar eclipse that was going to happen next year.

 She then went on to say that if the town allowed the insurgents to build a 'hamburger joint'  on that land she, for one, was going to move to Jaffreysburg and sell her real estate holdings in town.

That caused Harry Kunkleman, who was then President of the First Savings Bank, to sit up and squirm around some; but he didn't say anything that Jocko can recall would amount to participation in the meeting before he went back to sleep.

Anyway, just as Mary was about to win everyone over to her side old Joe Sylvester stood and cleared his throat,

 "Mary", he said in a loud voice, "You're so full of it 'yer eyes are brown!"

Tom continued, "That land 'yer talkin' about out there ain't wet from the rain. That place is wet from Billy Sullivan dumpin' his septic truck out there for the better part of the last fifteen years. Them frogs is already livin' like pigs in shit!"

 Mary blushed and gagged and damn near fainted (in that order), and then grudgingly ceded the floor to old Tom as she stormed out of the hall, her blue hair flayed in all directions not unlike a misaligned TV antenna.

 After she'd cooled down some Mary returned to the meeting because she'd heard whooping and shouting and cheering and a wild commotion going on inside.

 "What's going on, Tom ", she asked.

Old Tom replied, "While you was out there sulkin' we took the vote on the Happy Burger place. It was 236 for, and 235 against. Did 'ya vote?"

"No", she replied almost inaudibly.

"Ah yah!" he said," 'Ya want fries with that, then?"

Since that fateful meeting day not a lot has changed around here. Happy Burger never came to town for other unexplained reasons, and Mary still takes to the podium at town meeting to rant and rave about the frogs.

 Where would we be without her? 

Science in Action

Lightning Fast Service

Jocko's Internet Service Provider (ISP) claims that if he buys the new and improved Ultra High-Speed Broadband Service starting at only $17.95 per month it will make his Internet data connection lightning fast. This got Jocko to wondering about just how fast is lightning fast. 

Well, in case you decide to try to outrun a lightning bolt sometime, here is why you should probably forget about it. 

According to experts who know about such things there are various stages in a lightning strike. Initially something called a step leader, which is nothing more than a bunch of (positive) charged air, moves down toward the ground at a speed of about 200,000 miles per hour.

 As the step leader approaches the ground another streamer with an opposite (negative) charge runs up into the sky to meet it.

 Once a connection is made between the two streamers the electrical current that causes the brilliant flash we see (the return stroke) moves up into the sky at a speed of about 200,000,000 miles per hour.

 When you consider that the speed of light is approximately 669,600,000 miles per hour, that's just a hair under WARP .3

 Jocko thinks his ISP bullshitth some. 

Beam them up, Scotty!

Music, Music, Music 

Put another nickel in...

In that nickelodeon..

All I want is loving you and

Music, Music, Musak.

Do you remember that blast from the way back musical past tense?

 First off, it may surprise gazette readers to learn that Jocko was once a regionally famous mediocre cocktail pianist, which was never his real fulltime day job at any point in his life. 

He became this kind of pianist mainly because it was a quick and easy way for him to receive free cocktails for doing almost nothing.

Most young people today will probably not have a clue about what a cocktail pianist is since there aren't many cocktail drinking places left (or right) anymore, and you can't play gansta' rap songs on a Steinway without them sounding like, well, 'My Blue Heaven'. 

Although Jocko likes all kinds of various music including selected gangsta' rapping music, he likes jazz music the best. He especially likes the music of jazz pianist Art Tatum, who had humongous hands and who managed to play big  jazz chords without even stretching his fingers apart a lot.

Jocko is no longer a lounge lizard with an overflowing tip jar, but he can still play the keyboard when the arthritis in his left-handed fingers doesn't pain him when he pushes down hard on the black keys.

 So, in order to provide some free downloadable musical entertainment for gazette readers, here is an original and upbeat downloadable 60-second jazz piano piece called 'Jocko's Theme';  which was always the grand opening and last call number for his stirring piano-farte performances; which were performed nightly at some of the finest clubs and taverns in Happy Valley, New Hamster and Mobile, Alabama respectively, during the late 1970's. 

 O.K. If even one gazette reader actually enjoys Jocko's original cocktail piano stylings he might try to create a big downloadable piano-farte album that almost any older or younger person can download here for free and then transfer onto a CD disc, and then play back later to scare the heck out of their dog, or selected other household pet.

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

A friend of Jocko's, who knows a lot about such things, told him yesterday that in order to attract more readers to this website it must contain:

Jocko doesn't have even a small clue about what these kinds of materials are, so he is just going to make up a few things he thinks may be controversial and digitally colorful and musically downloadable.

As promised, here is a colorful and varied digital photograph for your topical viewing pleasure:

This is a picture of Jocko's controversial morning breakfast this morning, shortly after it was cooked but before he started eating away at it. Note the huge gob of real creamery butter that is shaped almost exactly like the Pacific island of Bali, and the small ocean of 'Hungry Jack' syrup. The economy Wal-Mart sausage has been cooked to perfection. This is, indeed, a breakfast worthy of being served ala' carte to Britney Spears; except Jocko would not serve it to her on this cheap kind of dinner plate.

 Now on to the controversial things. Because Jocko is mostly mild-mannered and uncontroversial by nature and doesn't have even a small clue about what things are controversial, he guesses that the subjects of religion, politics and sex might be subjects that most people find controversial: 

Religion

Rumors to the contrary, it may surprise readers to learn that Jocko is a moderately religious person. His religion is called the Religion of Jocko. Granted, this religion has a microscopic following, but it's a religion all the same. 

Jocko believes that if a person must have a belief system then it should naturally start with himself. Perhaps later Jocko can graduate to believing in other belief systems, but for now he believes in himself. 

Jocko has also noticed that down through the ages many people who subscribe to other religions usually end up killing each other, mostly because they can't agree upon whom is the Main God, and who are the Auxiliary Gods.  Religions are tricky things.

Politics

 Jocko believes that all presidents, senators, monarchs and dictators should  be made to first serve apprenticeship in some kind of training program before they get to control things like people, and tax or graft money. This O.J.T. (on-the-job training) would consist mainly of crash courses in war and atrocity management, fiscal accountability, how-not-to-tell-big-whoppers to the public and basic human rights. 

Also, politicians who run for for any office (except Regional Dogcatcher and Register-of-Wills) should be elected semi-annually, instead of every two, four or six years. This would partially eliminate Jocko having to listen to political attack ads before and after the Oprah show for up to two years prior to each local, state or national election. 

Sex

Aside from it being one of the cheapest forms of adult recreation known to man or woman, Jocko thinks sex is, for the most part, overrated. 

Jocko also thinks that the entrance fees to all U.S. National Parks should be lowered to $1 or less. This would reduce our national dependence on sex as a cheap form of adult recreation and also slow population growth; which would, in turn, decrease the number of automobiles on our nation's highways; which would, in turn, decrease air pollution due to automobile emissions, and therefore all but eliminate global warming.

  Most gazette readers have probably figured out by now that Jocko was just being devilish and sneaky when he said he was going to talk serious about controversial subjects such as sex, politics, and religion here in this column. 

 Jocko actually knows little or nothing about those subjects that's worth writing down. However, because he has included the words wild sex party, partisan politics, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, George W. Bush, insurgent terrorist, Britney Spears, Anna Nicole-Smith, Oprah, and Beyonce in this moderately long and wordy paragraph, the Google word-indexing spider robot thing will go into topical indexing overload when it crawls up onto this web page and soon Jocko will have many new Internet surfers and friends who will stop here to peruse and maybe even read some of his prize-winning stories.

  ....or it may get him blacklisted from Goggle for the remainder of his remaining Internet years; which doesn't matter that much because he can always play the piano-farte and drink cocktails instead.

So there you have it. Controversy, colorful and varied digital photographs, and free downloadable music. 

The only thing that Jocko has purposefully left out of this long column that his friend said might also help to boost readership is pornography; because Jocko is quite sure that you would not want to see him naked.

-j

Greetings from Happy Valley, New Hamster 

'Where Winter Spends the Winter'

Current Local Temperature:  -10 F. (give or take some)

Valley News

Ice Storm Cripples the Valley 

  Wendell 'Slouch' Magee, 74, longtime resident of Happy Valley, slipped and fell on the ice that had accumulated overnight on his front porch due to the fierce Winter ice storm that has left most of the town paralyzed, and pretty pissed. 

We're happy to report that Wendell is O.K.

 Unfortunately when Wendell fell he landed smack on top of his Pekinese dog ' 'Brutus', who had to be transported to the Valley Vet Clinic and General Store to be treated for what Doc Aiken described as 'Canine Trauma'.

 They had a little trouble at first keeping the animal quiet in the back of the dogsled until Mary Cunningham found and administered a dose of emergency dog biscuit, which did the trick.

   Portions of Happy Valley are still without power this morning. At one time or another almost every house in town was without electricity. The heads of the police, fire and highway departments (Horace Peterman) met this morning to brief town officials (Jo Anne Gautier-Simpson ) on the status of emergency operations, as power crews (Jamie 'Stretch' Sistare) continued working hard laying extension cords to restore power to both houses, and the old stone barn.

  Chester Whitfield, who doesn't live in town anymore since he was arrested for vagrancy six times last month, stated to this reporter, 

  "We'll get through this crisis 'cause we Happy Valleyians are a hardy bunch. We stick together. I mean that literally. We stick together. Ah ya!"

In other news:

 The annual Happy Valley Residents' Meeting and Chowda' Cook-Off, scheduled for February 14th,  has been postponed.  It turns out Mary Cunningham, who is in charge of and is paid handsomely to stoke the town hall wood pellet stove prior to the meeting, accidentally got the bags mixed up and stoked it with rabbit pellets instead of wood pellets.

 Everyone in town except Horace Peterman agreed that the smell was not conducive to a fruitful and productive residents' meeting. Horace stated to this reporter, "Don't understand what all the fuss is about. Aahh ya! Smells just like my place." 

The meeting has been postponed until early Spring, when we can have the windows opened up some.

j-

News of the World 

Polaris Interruptus

  Thirteen days ago, what has tentatively been described by officials as a 'large and unexpected shift' in the earth's internal magnetic field, triggered a calamity of unprecedented global magnitude and scale. 

Topping the list of serious problems: 

  Devices powered by electric motors that travel more than 5,000 feet above sea level are rendered unstable, with a tendency to run backwards.

  Since early last Tuesday morning all of the earth's 234,478 low-orbiting satellites have gone quiet, which has placed a major kink in worldwide electronic communications.

  Robert T. Scamalot, a spokesperson for the government of Nigeria states, "We are most sorry but we are temporarily unable to continue global financial services at this time. Rich and greedy Americans must now help us in our time of need.  You are pleased to rush a cashier's check for $8,000,000, made payable to the Nigeria Electronic Criminals Benevolent Association', immediately to our country by way of land-based mail. Thank you, please." 

   When asked exactly what he thinks may have caused the global malady, Dr. Werner Van Hosen, Chief Scientist for The National Atmospheric Agency replied to this reporter, 

  "That's a funny one. We'll probably have a look at it after lunch."

   In Washington, the Gore administration has declared a state of local emergency. Intra-city travel by automobile in the nation's capitol has been limited to registered democrats, lobbyists, emergency and police vehicles only. The nation's rail and bus services are operating at 110% of capacity.

  In another recent development, the Fifth Rumsfeld Brigade of the Army National Guard was dispatched to restore order to the rural hamlet of Pie Town, New Mexico (Pop. 45) late this afternoon. The town is located at an elevation of 4,999.5 feet

  Shortly after 1 PM MST today a crazed motorist allegedly opened fire on several town residents with what has been allegedly described by witnesses as a Boston Cream Pie Gun Thing. 

  The motorist allegedly aimed and discharged the device from the roof of his electrically-driven Saab vehicle. The allegedly mentally unstable man and his vehicle had been stalled in gridlock traffic along U.S. Highway 60 for more than sixty hours. 

  Forty-four Pie Town residents and a Springer Spaniel named 'Muffy-Jean' were rushed to Socorro Generalized Hospital suffering acute indigestion after being struck by what bystanders describe as 'fluffy brown and white projectile matter'.

   Pie Town was inundated earlier this morning when a contingent of protestors from the Save Vermont From the Environmental Bullies Coalition, driving 'anti-green' electric vehicles, changed polarity at the top of the hill on the west side of town, and then rolled back into the town square; where they collided with an Oregon-bound contingent of protesters who were returning from the annual Save the Spotted Barfly Convention and Beer Brawl, which was held this year at Billy-Bob's Steak House in Wichita Falls, Texas.

   All in all, it was not a good day for Pie Town.

   However, there's a bright side to this unfolding global story. Hammond Sandowsky, Chief Mechanic for Montana's Deer Creek Fun n' Sun Amusement Park, comments:

  "Yessah! Business been a' real good since we get to start the Big Sky Coaster at the low end."

  "That last hill's a real doozey now!"