Equine Group Charges Biden Accuser With "Horsenapping"

 An equine advocacy group, Believe The Horses (BTH) is asking the Democratic Party investigate horse kidnapping charges against Biden accuser Tara Reade.

San Jose Inside was one of the first news outlets to report the alleged kidnapping.

“We demand that our voices be finally heard,” said the group’s founder and spokeshorse Mister Ed. “For decades humans like Reade have gotten away with this kind of behavior with impunity because nobody listens when horses talk.”

BTH alleges that Reade kidnapped a horse named Charm from an equine rescue organization without the horse’s consent. Charm says emphatically that she did not give Reade consent and was deeply upset by Reade’s assumption that she, Charm, wanted to be adopted by the human.

When questioned, Reade said that Charm had given hoofed consent, but that she didn’t keep a copy.

“We demand an non-partisan investigation of these charges,” said Ed. “Charm was taken advantage of by a human who used her position as a verbal biped to force herself on a quadruped without the resources to fight back.”

Ed also said that his group was investigating Vladimir Putin’s equine relationships, calling widely distributed photos of the Russian leader on horseback "disturbing," and "at least suggesting sado-masochism." Reade has expressed admiration for Putin and some suspect a connection.

The Democratic Party had no comment. Donald Trump tweeted, "FAK NUWS trying to smeer a desent womin. #gratestprezadintevr."

#BelieveTheHorses

City Takes Action Against Alleged "Candidates"

Trigger warning: Satire Ahead

Santa Clara City Hall filed complaints with the FPPC this week about residents who have pulled papers to run for City Council.

"We did our due diligence in this matter," said the City Manager.

"We hired Dewey Cheatum and Howe, the California arm of the Internet Research Agency, to investigate credible allegations of electoral ambition on the part of these individuals. DC&H found clear evidence that at least two known troublemakers were planning campaigns."

"This was never intended by our charter," explained the City Clerk. 

"The charter provides for elections when they are necessary — for example, if Council Members disagree with our great mayor. Elections were never intended to allow random people to run for Council."

The FPPC has yet to respond, although an official there, speaking on the condition of anonymity, commented that it was just another example of what the official called, "Santa Clara Looney Tunes."

"They are constantly sending us specious complaints. Right now the paper is useful in the face of the toilet paper shortage."

The City Clerk also said that the City is investigating the false narratives published by local news outlets.

"The First Amendment was never intended to allow newspapers to promote so-called 'elections,'" the Clerk said. "It's just another example of how Hillary Clinton and her space alien army living under Levi's Stadium are trying to take over Santa Clara."

The City was also investigating whether it could publish city legal notices in the Weekly World News, the Clerk said, until it was discovered the supermarket tabloid had gone out of business in 2007. "We were interested because of their fair and balanced Batboy coverage." 

City  Announces Progress on Day-Lengthening Initiative

At last night's Santa Clara City Council meeting, the City Manager announced that the City has made substantial progress in the City Council's goal of lengthening daylight hours.

"We can confidently say that the day is longer today than it was in December," said the City Manager. "We have done our due diligence and monitored KPIs and can state that we have definitely been able to add three hours of daylight. We're optimistic that we will be adding another two hours by mid-June."

The City Manager thanked City staff for their hard work in meeting the Council's goal. "I can say that staff put in a lot of late hours working on this. I also want to thank our consultant Magick Results for their outstanding work in achieving these stretch goals."

The City Council also passed a $500,000 contract amendment for MR to work on the Council's Rain Making initiative.

Welcome Literary Yuletide

Christmas is a time for many of our favorite stories. And when you say "Christmas story," the next thought for readers is Charles Dickens' (1812 – 1870) Christmas Carol.

Dickens was very much the "man who invented Christmas" as we know it today with his story of Scrooge and the three ghosts. So as you re-read that favorite, complement it with Les Standiford's, The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits.

It isn't only Christmas Carol that cements Dickens' place in the canon of Christmas. He wrote many stories and essays about Christmas. One essay in particular, What Christmas is As We Grow Older, captures just what it is that Christmas — and all the world's holidays celebrating the mystery of light out of darkness — make eternally present:

"Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath the holly! We know you, and have not outlived you yet. Welcome, old projects and old loves, however fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us. Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you real, thanks to Heaven!"

Over the years I've discovered other tributes to the holiday of "all that was ever real to our hearts." Here are some I recommend to lovers of holiday sentiment.

One of the loveliest Christmas tales I've found is Zona Gale's (1874 - 1938) Christmas: A Story. A native of Wisconsin, Gale was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Miss Lulu Bett in 1921. Gale's writing is graceful and touching without being flowery or maudlin.

"Christmas: A Story" takes place in Old Trail Town where the shutdown of its only employer causes residents to cancel Christmas. But Christmas comes all the same, in the form of a child who comes to Mary Chavah, who has learned from hard experience not to expect much from life, and who, in making a home for her motherless nephew, brings Christmas to the whole town.

Another Christmas story of the American prairie is Cyrus Townsend Brady's (1861 – 1920) novella A Christmas When The West Was Young. The bittersweet story is about a heartsick couple struggling to make it through the prairie winter. Like Gale's story, the harshness of prairie life is a character in the story, and like Gale's story, a child brings Christmas when they least expect it.

Anthony Trollope's (1815 -1882) novella Christmas at Thompson Hall is a plum pudding of a Victorian Christmas tale, with an element of farce, but all ends well even if — horrors! — that includes a married lady finding herself in a strange man's hotel bedroom. It's published in a collection with seven other charming Christmas stories by Trollope.

Mystery, too, finds a home at Christmas, and Louisa May Alcott's (1832 – 1888) story The Abbot's Ghost or Maurice Traherne's Temptation by puts a pleasant shiver in the holiday.

As Little Women's devoted fans know, Jo March (Alcott's alter ego) wrote romantic plays and sensation stories, which Alcott wrote in real life. The Abbot's Ghost is an example of the Victorian sensation story crafted by a master of narrative and dialog.

As a final bonbon for the season, treat yourself to Robert Benchley's (1869 – 1945) parody of Charles Dickens, titled Christmas Afternoon and which begins:

"What an afternoon! There never was such an afternoon since the world began…In the first place there was the ennui, and such ennui as it was! A heavy, overpowering ennui…a dragging devitalizing ennui which carried with it a retinue of yawns, snarls and thinly veiled insults, and which ended in ruptures in the clan spirit serious enough to last throughout the glad new year."

Benchley's piece is in his collection "Of All Things" and in Dwight McDonald's "Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm — and After."

"Parodies" also includes H.L. Mencken's Declaration of Independence in American, and Ring Lardner's theater of the absurd parody, I Gaspiri (The Upholsterers). Give it to yourself as a gift this Christmas.

Many of these works are available for free at Gutenberg.org, and at very low cost on Kindle and Nook. Many are available as free audio books at Librivox.org.

And of course, they can always be found at a public library near you.

Carolyn Schuk (c) 2019