Cork and Recoil

Maybe the Titans of Town Talk didn’t think things through thoroughly enough when they proposed National Get It Off Your Chest Day a few days ago.Faithful followers of our intergalactically renowned Torque and Recoil senate campaign apparently took us at our word – exclaiming in highly excited tones their feelings about everything from the Iraq situation, to why the dandelions in their yard are their neighbors’ fault, to why the trouble with kids these days is (1) other kids, and (2) Empty-V.We must admit that we didn’t anticipate the number of responses, pouring forth in such a cascade of emotional emotions.– This is torque: We asked you to get it off your chest.– This is recoil: The Body Politic did, in excruciating numbers.While we appreciate your input, we need to express a feeling of our own.In the immortal words of the great Mark Twain, ‘”Shuttup,” he explained.’On the heels of National Get It Off Your Chest Day – a poorly conceived idea, we’re now engaged in our first campaign backpedalling.Today we propose “National Cork Your Pie Hole Day.”Let us make this perfectly clear – we don’t care how you feel. We’re not interested in forming a support group for beleaguered bemoaners. We understand that it was the ancient Greeks who invented philosophy, democracy, beer and tragic theater – which all tend to attract people with time on their hands.But as a matter of where you live, no one from the Vail Valley is eligible to cry the blues. No one’s life is so bad that they get to sing, “I be gonna throw mahseff in the ribba and drown.”First of all, our “ribba” isn’t deep enough.Beyond that, you live in one of the greatest places in the greatest country on Earth. We’re richer, better fed, better educated and healthier than any other civilization in this planet’s history.

The best place and time to have ever lived is right here and right now.It’s like this: Any day you wake up in America, especially the Eagle County part of America, and don’t have a white chalk outline around your body, IT’S A GREAT DAY!For those in the rest of the country, though, National Cork Your Pie Hole Day is an opportunity for at least a few moments of blessed silence.For this one day, anyone spouting blather can be told “Cork your pie hole!” And for that one brief, blessed day, the blather-spouter has to comply. Of course, if there are adversaries spouting blather at each other, both parties can invoke the corking rule.Put into context, if, say, Eagle County political partisans start blathering at each other over some partisan silliness, both could invoke the “cork it” rule. Alternately, anyone attending the meeting at which the blather broke out could stand up and, in a deep, calmly assured voice, bellow, “Cork it, the both of you!”The silence would indeed be golden.”Wyrick for Senate:Let Freedom Rip!”Remember, “If It Has Torque, Recoil, Compression, Makes a Big Bang or Shoots a Big Bullet, It’s Cool and Americans Need More Of It.”Happy anniversaryHappy wedding anniversary to Gabriella Matus, from your husband, who didn’t really forget this glorious occasion, we swear. If he had this wouldn’t be in today’s paper. He says you’re what love looks like.