Tag Archives: Russia

Lost Our Lease

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We lost our lease. That’s right, we woke up the other morning and there was a Cease and Desist, Immediate Evacuation of Premises, Get the Hell Out notice scotch taped to the front gate of The Institute, right where everybody could see it. We thought it was a joke at first. I mean who serves one of those on bright yellow legal pad paper written in black magic marker to an organization (**The Institute) of our stature. They didn’t even use a lot of Scotch tape. One little measly piece stuck to the flange of our *front gate padlock, the second largest in the world by the way, we’d a got the first largest but it was simply too big and the freight to have it airlifted here was out of our budget, we could have watched one full year of DIRECTV (Total package including HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, the works) for what it cost to send just the key.

A couple of our interns from the Pavlovo Arts College No. 23, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia made it for us in exchange for The Institute allowing them to work here under assumed names to escape being sent to some gulag way the hell north where the sun not only doesn’t shine, but draws heat away from the earth in a particularly commie way. Since our padlock alone weighs 916lbs. and is 56.8 in. × 41.3 in. × 10.2 in. including the key we thought we were safe from any process servers, errant bondsmen, Amway sales persons, ex’s, those who deliver religious pamphlets to your door under the guise of saying they like you, census takers, unwanted visitors, some wanted visitors that we’re not real happy with right now, lawyers except ours, rabbis, priests, clergy from unaffiliated churches with really weird names, people who just want to come in and have a glass of water, those who are not pure of heart, puppy haters and general riff-raff.

But noooo, the notice was sent by our government, that’s right, the one that we cheerfully and with full malice a forethought voted in last time. We mean you must have because we sure as hell didn’t. We had what should be an ironclad lease made with Teddy Roosevelt himself back in the days when a Presidents word meant something.

The lease said and I quote ” These guys who forthwith and in perpetuity, hereinafter known as The Institute shall have and hold for the next millennium the right to hold a huge giant p-pot of land there in the mountains with any buildings, corals, parking garages, intern camps, The Big House, helipads, farm implements of unusual design, and anything else their clever little minds can come up with for as long as the sun may shine and the grass may grow and people can walk free upon the land without interference of any cheesy government body. So help us, and I mean really, Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, President of the United States and any other place we can get using that new Manifest Destiny thing.”

So you can see how we were confused not to mention vexed as to why we were being summarily kicked off our property. I mean we’re tax payers, sort of. We got rights. We called our attorney who unfortunately was getting his nails done and hasn’t gotten back to us yet with a frantic plea to buy us some time. That was last Tuesday and now we’re heading into the holiday and I’m sure the whole darn office down at Acme Law firm and Tractor Repair is taking the next week off, so we had to get packing and hit the steps. We mean if Teddy Roosevelt’s word isn’t good anymore, what is, we ask you. In trying to contact the present administration to perhaps get some assistance, even our Russian friends sent an email but all we got back was a tweet saying “Did you vote for us? huh? Well, Didya? Hope you like that new refrigerator box.” “the ‘Loser'” being understood. So in the meantime we are sort of thankful for that refrigerator box and the space under the North College Ave. bridge we get to set it in.

There’s more to this story and we’ll be disclosing that information as soon as we figure out how to work this Sterno stove and refrigerator box warmer and get some wholesome cat food in our stomachs. That’s not even addressing the problem of how to hook-up our Wi-Fi. We are a little worried about our staff. Make that ex-staff. The last time we saw them they were milling around the pieces of our lock that had been cut off by the Sheriffs department down at the front gate. Things were pretty chaotic what with dozens of empty acetylene bottles from torching the padlock laying around and various organizations checking ID’s and chasing after those individuals racing off into the sagebrush and hiding under vehicles and so on. Small sad lines of not only unpaid but now unemployed interns shuffling off single file in various directions where towns and villages were known to exist. That was pretty pitiful we got to say.

But we’ve been in tough spots before. It hasn’t always been Peaches and Cream for the Institute. We’ve been kicked in the Fuon Bwey Bweys before and we’ve gotten up and staggered off into the bushes and puked our guts out. So that parts not new. The one thing we’ve got going for us is that you can not keep a good Institute down. And we’re the best damn Institute you’re going to find. To paraphrase Woody Guthrie who wrote a song for the Ladies Auxiliary one time and we adopted it and changed all the words so we wouldn’t have to pay royalties on it. Here’s our semi-non-official version

Here’s our version

Oh, The Institute
It’s a good Institute.
‘Bout the best damn Institute
That you ever did see.
If you need an Institute,
See the director’s Institute.
It’s the Director’s Institute.  (Pretty good, right?)

OK, Here we presented Woody’s version to show you how much we improved it

Oh, the Ladies’ Auxiliary
It’s a good auxiliary.
‘Bout the best auxiliary
That you ever did see.
If you need an auxiliary,
See the Ladies’ Auxiliary.
It’s the Ladies’ Auxiliary (Link to Woody’s version so you can hear how great it is) https://youtu.be/cvnxdLptWZA?list=RDcvnxdLptWZA

*Our front gate padlock before it was destroyed by bad government people trying to curb our ability to be as ridiculous as we want to be .

** 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.

Bryce Canyon Forest

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Bryce Xmas0116

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.