Tag Archives: America

You Might Have Missed’em Already

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We do not usually issue dire warnings here at *The Institute but we felt that this new discovery warranted immediate publication. Many of you know from friends and family or seeing old videos on the Travel Channel that we  have a world-famous collection of Sand Dunes here in America. In Colorado in fact, down near Alamosa in the southern part of the state.

You can find them right next to the road and stop and look at them for absolutely no cost for as long as you want. This a right given us by Mother Nature and signed off on by the Colorado House of Representatives, the State Senate and by our Governor as well.

However the problem and hence the unexpected issuance of the dire warning has to do with a problem that our team of Sand and Gravel and Indigenous Rock researchers have come across. We have researchers that travel the U.S. picking up rocks of all types, big, little, round, flat, those shaped like Uncle Skid’s nose, nicely colored ones, ugly ones, a few that are so large we can’t cross bridges with them on our flatbed trailer we haul along behind one of our research vessels. Consequently we have to dump them alongside the road at the first sign of a bridge. This research is critical to determining just how many stones, rocks and other hard things of a sedimental-like nature we have laying around on our American soil.

As the team proceeded with their gathering of rocks along the edge of the Great Sand Dunes they made a startling discovery. Each morning when they returned to begin picking up rocks they noticed that the dunes had moved father to the right. That’s right the whole darn dune. To test their theory they left a rock right up next to the edge of the tallest dune at the end of the day and sure enough the dune had moved to the right significantly. “Holey Pantalones” they cried. ” The Dunes they are moving. Wowser!” ( I know, we don’t always get those cool quotes you hear those fake scientists in the movies make.) They were stunned. If this is accurate and who says it isn’t unless you came out here and did the work yourself, hauled your own rocks and had to drink warm Tang and everything to keep from collapsing in the noon day sun, then we might pay attention to what you think.

These are real live scientists from The Institute here and if they say the dunes are moving we think you should listen up and pay attention. What for, you might ask. How does this directly affect me? Well, consider this. You’re sitting home in your Barcalounger drinking watered down EverClear and the love of your life comes in and says” Cranston, You’re a fat slob. And you’re drunk too. We’re taking the kids to the Great Sand Dunes on a vacation. Go gas the car.” There is absolutely nothing to be said to that so you go gas the car. Two thousand miles later because you probably live in Pennsylvania or one of those funny little shaped states up near Maine somewhere that would fit in one of our garages out here, and you’ve got all seven of the kids with you and they already pulled all the stuffing out of the backseat to make a campfire on the console because they want to make s’mores and you won’t stop. You’re looking for the turn off to the Great Sand dunes and when you finally see the road you take it and what do you see at the end where all those dunes are supposed to be, nothing. The dunes have moved dude. They are like way the hell and gone down to the right. That’s correct, two thousand miles, screaming kids, your wife is telling you she is going to get a tattoo as soon as she gets home, and no Sand Dunes. Whatcha gonna do now.

If you had listened to us and paid attention when we said the dunes are moving. You would have gotten here, seen the dunes, sent the wife and kids off on a hike into the bear infested woods along the dunes where the compasses don’t work because of the high metal deposits concentrated under the sand, and it would be quiet again. Blessedly quiet. You could head back home through Vegas, yeah we know that’s a little out of your way, but so what. Get a room, play the quarter slots for a while, then point it back East listening to Springsteen and other people your kids hate. So, you going to listen to us, or what. We don’t do all this hard work for nothing. We do it for the good of the nation and the people that live in it. Don’t be a doofuss, pay attention when we tell you stuff. You never know when it will help you out.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.

National Pretty Picture Day

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National Pretty Picture Day is a holiday we started here at The Institute to celebrate pretty pictures. “Don’t we have way too many freaking holidays now?” you might ask if you got them off without pay. But what would you say if every National Pretty Picture Day was not only a paid holiday but you’d get triple or even quintiple time for it. That’s right fellow workers quintiple your normal pay just because it was National Pretty Picture Day. Bet you’d like the hell out of it then.

That’s exactly what we’ve set out to do here at The Institute. Get you quintiple pay for a day where the only thing you’d have to do is look at least at one pretty picture hopefully here on the blog, and then send us one dollar via cash check or money order. We added the dollar to the bill that is rapidly dying a slow death in Congress right now, because we thought of the holiday first and it was hard work requiring a huge amount of time thinking real hard. And drinking highly caffeinated tea while looking out over the mountains that border the Institute grounds too. This caused a rapid beating of the heart muscle and blurred vision. A health risk to be sure but that’s how highly we think of you our readers that we’re willing to take some of the chances we take, just to bring you a better life.

Right now you are not allowed to submit your pictures for this holiday but that may change in the future depending on how this send us a dollar thing works out. If we got enough of those dollars and they weren’t that funny money from the monopoly game or hand-drawn pictures of dollars that are supposed to fool us, then we might change our mind. We have ex-bankers here on staff that are trained to spot that kind of thing, so don’t even think about it. If our National Pretty Picture Day bill can be snuck through Congress, a dollar will be automatically withdrawn from every living American’s paycheck and deposited in our overseas account in the Barbados to cover our costs and expenses. But look what you’ll be gaining. A day off. Quintiple pay. And most importantly a day filled with pretty pictures. Really nice ones that make it worth it.

We’ll be bringing you more information as we follow our bill through the Congress of the United States. Yes it is our great democratic system at work. Isn’t America great?

Drunk and Disorderly

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There has been a lot of talk in the press lately about the disappearance of bees. The main point of their argument is that once we were up to our asses keesters in bees, and now you have to put an ad on Craigslist to meet one. They’re just gone. No note, no warning, no packing up their honey and leaving, They’re just gone. Well, people whose lives depend on honey and the necessary bees to manufacture it, are understandably upset and rightly so. How are they going to make a living if they can’t exploit the genetic obsession of bees to create honey.

This bee loss thing causes lots of problems. One of which is, if bees are gone what are we, as concerned parents, going to use for that all important Sex Talk? The birds and The Horses? The birds and the Ferrari F12 berlinetta with its direct-injection 6262 cc 65° V12 engine? Although the Ferrari holds some promise as a suitable replacement for the bees, it still doesn’t have the cache of the birds and the bees. So you can see there is a real problem facing us if we lose our bees.

As to the question, Where are all our bees going, I believe our special team of world-renown, Institute-trained Apiologists, or people who do nothing else in their small, pitiful lives but study bees, talk about bees, photograph bees, look at bees, count bees, worry about bees and countless other bee related activities, have come up with a possible theory. They postulate that the primary reason for bee loss is they get hammered from drinking the nectar of flowers and fall out of the bloom onto the ground where they are promptly eaten by things that eat bees, hence a gone bee. A bee that does not return. A bee that is now for all practical purposes dead.

This is an interesting theory. Nectar has an alcohol content, because of the fermented sugar it contains, that is slightly higher than Everclear or roughly about 800% by volume, and you know that if you have ever been trashed on Everclear you lose many of your primary motor skills and fall down striking your face on the curb chipping both of your front teeth. This also leads to an infraction of California’s Penal code 390D (Drunk, Unconscious) and if you’re really unlucky a 314 (Indecent Exposure) or a 288 (Lewd Conduct) Both of these are bad. Since it can be assumed that you weigh approximately way more than you should and the alcohol effects you in that manner, what does it do to a bee that only weighs like a minus .004% of a gram. They become legless, or in this case wingless, and then the inevitable happens. It’s a major trip down to the waiting open maw of the local bee eating critter. [Who by the way sometimes gets a major buzz going from eating too many bees, but that’s a problem for another time.] And that means one less bee. And that means we are well on our way to becoming bee-less.

When put to the question our nerdful Apiologists stutter and stammer and produce very little in the way of a possible solution. Some of their suggestions suggest that they had been sipping nectar before attending this briefing.  Suggestions like, taping the flowers shut at the peak of the nectar producing season, finding alternate forms of employment for the bees to keep them from doing what Nature intended them to do, forming and requiring attendance at a 12 step program, requiring the bees to buy carbon credits to offset the loss of honey, but as no one in America understands how carbon credits work this is beyond a stupid idea, and finally, locking them in their hives. It is our own personal opinion that we have a long way to go before we can bring closure to this problem.

Right now all we can do is watch and wait. Oh, you can pick up the occasional drunken bee and put it back on the flower but that only compounds the problem. You know what it’s going to do as soon as it regains consciousness. It’s going to hit that nectar again and then you have a 911 problem on your hand. What we do here at The Institute is gather up the ripped little buggers and take then to the bee ward in our dispensary. There they are placed into little bee-sized beds, and  sometimes held down with little restraints to keep their little wings safe. Then they are given fluids and massive dosages of vitamin B-12 and if they recover they’re sent on their way, hopefully with a new understanding of the risks involved in consuming too much nectar. It’s expensive, time-consuming and delicate work but we feel that in doing so we’ve helped Mother Nature and gained like huge karma points. Also we get our pick of the new honey crop. So if you see an unconscious bee or one that is spinning around uncontrollably pick it up and fix it. You’ll be a better person for it.

The Dangers Of Hiking Thru The Woods

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As many of you know *The Institute works closely with the Fish and Game departments of the various states here in America and elsewhere, as well as other Government agencies such as the Minerals Management services, the U.S. board of Geological Names, The Government Office of Procurements and Waste Disposal, the NSA, The Office in Charge of Telling People Important Stuff, The Department of Defense, The Office of Watching Movies to Find and Censor the Dirty Parts, The Office of Maritime Hijinks, The FBI, NCIS, The Mod Squad, The Government Office of Officially Forgiving People for Minor Offenses if They Weren’t Too Bad to Begin With, and the National Hikers Advisory Committee to name just a few.

It’s this last one, The National Hikers Advisory Committee, that we have been dealing with mostly these last few months. As you might have heard it can be very dangerous hiking in our National, State and International forests. So we are putting out our annual Hikers Advisory. The image above is a perfect example of some of the dangers the unwary hiker faces in the woods. As you can see there are fallen trees everywhere and they can pose a problem for those who aren’t smart or agile enough to pick up their feet when they’re hiking. Tripping hazards are rampant and there is always the risk of catching a sleeve on one of those sharp-tipped branches sticking out all over the place and ripping that new down jacket. Those puppies are expensive and you could be faced with huge repair bills or the humiliation of repairing them with duct tape which would indicate you can’t afford to get it repaired professionally. Either way it spells loser.

Also the forest is filled completely with trees and they all look alike. It is very easy to look around and get all over dizzy of a sudden and not know where you are. This leads to being lost and that leads to expensive search and rescue missions to find you and by then you are tired and thirsty and all out of sorts. You’ve had the same underwear on for eleven days and you’ve missed Jerry Springer. Todays show was on Lesbian Midgets Who Love Jane Fonda But Cheat with Male Strippers, Then Lie About It, (not that there is anything wrong with Lesbians, even really short ones) and you forgot to set your DVR.

There are birds that will sit and wait for you to enter the forest, then make alluring bird calls so you look up trying to find them and wrap your snoz around one of those trees the woods are full of that we mentioned earlier, and you’ll probably bust your Ray-Bans or get a nasty lump on your forehead. Our friend did that and got a lump on her forehead the size of a toaster. If that happens many times your baseball cap won’t fit anymore and that leaves your head and shoulders completely unprotected from the elements or worse.

There are plenty of dangers like this out in the woods and we have touched on just the most important ones. There’s more that you’ll probably find on your own or they’ll find you, so we won’t bother you with the minor stuff. We just wanted to cover the big ones. Our advice to you regarding hiking in the Woods is just don’t do it. Go to the mall instead, get a hamburger and a supersized jug of pop. Leave the hiking to those who are familiar with the woods and can recognize its dangers, or better yet to the people you don’t like. Send them out on a hiking trip. Tell them it’ll do them good and then make up some excuse why you can’t go along. That’s our advice and we hope you take it to heart. As always we here at The Institute want you to be safe, not sorry. Watch for further bulletins as we work diligently to protect you and yours from the ever-present dangers of the world. Remember, Be Careful out there.

P.S. We forgot ticks. There’s ticks out in those woods and if you think vampires are bad you haven’t been covered in hundreds of ticks just bloating up, sucking up your blood, giggling to each other as they drain you dry. They will get on you even if you haven’t done anything wrong and then bite you. The only way to get them off you is hold a lighted match up their rear ends until they fall off. Of course that is dangerous in this dry climate we’re experiencing. The Forestry department, a division of the USDA hates it when you drop burning ticks all over the forest floor and they will cite you if they find out about it. It’s better to avoid ticks whenever possible. OK then, Just saying.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

Labor Day 2015

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Labor day, one of our most beloved and looked-forward to holidays, was created to celebrate the first Monday in September. It was created out of love and compassion for the working people in America by labor barons who were trying to suck up to the working class, so they would go out and buy stuff without taking time off from work, because they were like, on holiday. This benefitted the little guy and the labor barons as well due to the fact that they both got what they wanted. The workers got more stuff and the barons got the money made off the sale. So… Win-win.

Grover Cleveland, our 22nd and 24 President of the United States, he took the 23rd term off to celebrate Labor Day, created Labor Day in 1894 at the behest of a bunch of New York labor guys who wanted to show the working classes how much clout they had so they’d join their Unions. It was supposed to be celebrated in May but Grover, feeling rather peckish for some reason, and wanting to display that he was his own man, decided to have it in September, mainly because he liked September and there weren’t any holidays in that month at that time.

Like any sitting President, Grover had his ups and downs. As a politician and more importantly a President, he was for “Anything Good” and was steadfastly opposed to “Anything Bad” consequently he was much adored by the people that liked him. So much so that he was the fifth guy selected for Mt. Rushmore but was ultimately rejected because he was too “jowly” and would take up too much room. Plus they would have needed a foothill just for his moustache alone, which they didn’t have, and according to the engineers and architects spearheading this project they couldn’t bring in. This was a bitter disappointment for President Cleveland and his supporters, but everyone else just kind of shrugged it off and went about their business. They had work to do.

So, there you have it. Labor Day. All you workaholics, take heed. Stop working for today, unless you’re one of the people who are supposed to work to balance this whole thing out and make it work, and go out and buy something, anything, whether you need it or not. That’s what this holiday is all about. Be American, go forth and spend your money so other people can work and make the stuff to replace what you’ve just bought. They’ll make money, you’ll have stuff and America will be great again. Do your part. Make this a great Labor Day. Grover would be proud. Enjoy your Labor Day.

The Final Frontier

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We have received just under a zillion letters asking about The Institutes ongoing space program. Rather than post each one here we have chosen one letter out of the overstuffed mailbags left leaning on the gate post down at the bottom of the hill. It is from one of our many admirers in Oasis, New Mexico.

“Dear  Director, I just wanted to thank you for the lovely weekend we had. You were so gallant, bringing flowers, wine, reserving our table at Arby’s. I still remember the emergency room visit due to the carbon monoxide leak you had  in the jeep. I’m sorry you almost died but then we shouldn’t have been parked that far out of town. I’m writing this letter because I think we have a “little’ problem as I have not been visited by Mother’s natures gift to women in three months and thought you should (Note: The beginning of this note has been redacted due to its personal nature and continues below regarding our Space program.)

I know you have been working really hard on getting the launch vehicle ready for its maiden flight. I hope my small donation of welding the gantry, it was my first real welding experience since I graduated from County Tech, I gave you helps in your efforts to explore space and its time continuum thingy you talked about. That spark that started the fire and burned down the control center was unfortunate, but those things happen when you weld in knee-high grass. You were good about it though. You seemed so smart. That ‘s why I decided to let you (Note: Sorry, didn’t catch that the first time I reread this.)

I drove by the Space Port the other day and noticed that part of the gantry, is that the right word?, had fallen down, I guess I should have ‘tacked’ it more, that’s welding talk, hon, and one of the letters in America was crooked. When are you coming back down here to work on it? We really, really need to talk, I think that our little problem (Note: the rest of the letter doesn’t pertain to our Space program so I’m just going to leave it off. She ends with,)

I miss you terribly and hope that your extra government funding comes through so you can send this ship up into the heavens. I’m thinking about your offer to be the first woman in space from New Mexico and the honor that would be but I’m a little concerned about the rust around the  engine compartment, is that supposed to be there? Hoping to see you soon, and I mean soon, yours truly,

Spacey in New Mexico.”

Well, we don’t have an answer for Spacey as she obvious has us confused with some other space ship builder and cosmos explorer. Unfortunately we get letters like this periodically but that’s the price of fame. We hope everything works out ok for her and she finds the right space explorer to help her with her problems. But I have no recollection of anyone in New Mexico named Spacey and now that I look more closely at the picture I think that isn’t even our space vehicle. Ours had USA on the side, I remember, our letters were the really neat wooden ones with the routed edges because we got a deal on them from Home Depot, not those plastic cheap ones they used for America on this spaceship, and it was pointed up more. Anyway thank you for all your cards and letters and remember to include us in your last bequests when you make out  your will. We could use the funding for more programs like this one.

Bryce Canyon Forest

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I’ve been meaning to show you the forest at Bryce Canyon National Park for a long time. It won’t take very long because this is it. Yup, all of it. 10 trees. And three of them are dead. You would think with all the taxes we pay to maintain our national parks that they could afford a few more trees. Jeez, Home Depot and Wal-Mart have sales all the time. In fact Home Depot has a Black Hills Spruce Evergreen in its own pot for 7.97, and a Cleveland Select Pear tree for 89.98, and a one quart Canadian Hemlock Christmas tree for 6 bucks on sale. Even Lowes has a 3-gal Southern Magnolia that will grow to 80′ for 24.95 and it comes with a three-year guarantee.

I mean, this is just embarrassing. To have one of our showpiece National parks with its own National forest and it only has 10 trees. You have got to be kidding. I guarantee if you go to Russia right this minute and look at their biggest National park, Siberia, they have over a gazillion billion quadrillion trees. They have so many they cut them down just for fun. They have a whole village called Bogorodskoe, I am not making this up, devoted to making wooden toys out of trees for like the last 600 years and they’re nowhere close to running out of trees. You’d have a hard time making a good supply of toothpicks out of our 10 trees.

OK, I didn’t mean to go off like that, it’s just whenever I see injustice I have to stand up and call a Ponderosa a Ponderosa. This is a national embarrassment and no one seems to be concerned about it. And to make matters worse, as if that could happen, I’ve been told that the big timber companies are lobbying Washington right now to log in Bryce Canyon. That’s right, to log in Bryce canyon. They feel with the price of lumber being what it is they can go in there with their big logging trucks and bulldozers and their hairy lumberjacks with their gang-saws and lunch buckets and take out those 10 trees and make a profit. Well I don’t know if that scares you, it scares the hell out of me.

We don’t even have any owls, spotted or otherwise, that like to live in these trees here in Bryce because they are too far apart. Owls want togetherness and neighbors to hoot at. So if those timber companies win we don’t even have an excuse to try and save those trees. I’m glad I got a picture of the forest when I did. Who knows how long it will be before there won’t be even those 10 trees to photograph. If things keep heading this way before you know it we’ll be friends with the Cubans again. No, that’s probably going too far, I mean, that could never happen.

Wish I had better news folk, but we call them like we see ’em here at *The Institute. If this makes you mad go to Home Depot or Lowes and buy a tree. Any kind of tree. Ship it to Bryce and say “Plant it.” maybe they’ll get the message. We can’t let those ex-commies have all the glory. Let’s make America great again.

*Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Never mind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.