WASHINGTON (AD) Staring down a January deadline, President Obama has found a possible solution to holding time trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees: a third option, the Vancouver Olympics.

“Time is of the essence,” said the President, referring in one breath to his campaign promise to close the prison on the military base in Cuba, and the need for fairness of the outcome.
“Many hours of tense but amicable secret meetings have led to this possibility,” he added.

Kahlid Mohamed, sometimes referred to by his initials KSM, shared a good laugh with the President on hearing of the possible outcome. “My middle name isn’t Shred for nothing. I rule in men’s downhill.”

Sir Isaac Newton’s patented Force of Gravity and the terrorist’s girth nodded in tacit agreement at this jab.

“It will all be uphill for people like him,” Obaba replied with a fatherly scowl, “but there may be a hidden advantage to doing it this way. If the temperatures in Vancouver drop low enough, it may add momentum to our spending freeze.”

The image of dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees slipping and sliding down the slopes had federal prosecutors nodding sagely, but civil rights groups were up in arms.

“The idea of having men who have never seen snow their entire lives compete for their freedom in alpine ski events is ludicrous,” the Chairman of the ASPCA shot back.

But there were tempering views as well. Snowboard champion Shaun Beige pointed out that he often practiced on sand dunes in Californa summers. “It is completely fair. The detainees are only competing against the clock.”

“Or the calendar,” one potentially snide but reliable source supplied on condition of anonymity. “After all, these guys know they aren’t in Kansas anymore.”

Unrelated story.

Palin Enters Self in Tidy Bowl Sweeps, Determined To Win!

You can say it started right here. Who will win the Tidy-Bowl Sweepstakes for 2010?

At that real Bowl game, what is it… oh yes I keep forgetting because it is so SUPER. At the start of Super Bowl halftime, February 7, 2010, the winner will be selected from the votes entered in comments on this site. America first! Everyone is a write-in candidate!

You can even vote yourself off the island!

But you can do better, way better. Yeah! Pick the politician or faux public servant of your choice (the one you would rid the planet of if given absolute power) and ENTER. Just type the name, spelled correctly if possible, into a comment below this story and hit the GO button.

We are just using Sarah Palin as an example! Because her appeal is so… unique n stuff.

At the end of the game, a loud flushing sound and fake screams will be heard from one end of the Internet to the other, we will all have a good laff and go about our business, secure in the fact that this is a Freaking Free Country and we have the First Amendment. Yes we do. We got it by sending cereal boxtops to Battle Creek Michigan in prehysterical times.

But now it is time to reveal the source of the unease you feel whenever you see the name… PALIN.

PALIN – L = PAIN

That’s right kiddies, the subliminal message is PAIN. That is the coded message Conservatives are sending to the world and deep into Outer Space. They took the word PAIN and stuck an L smack in the middle as a disguise. And there you are! PAIN for you and your kiddies.

But the irony does not end there! No! Where did they get the L they used for the clever disguise? L is for LEFT of course! Oh the humanity!

When will we get it? Oh, about the time enough of us figure out that some ideas are just plain bad juju.

A Lance Sidesaddle SagaBy Lance Sidesaddle

A pale and merciless sky stretches to infinity over the vast Mogollon Plateau. Towers of summer thunderheads mass on the far horizon, dark undersides laced with ragged lightning. This land is barren, empty, save for two fast ponies rushing down the precarious face of a rugged escarpment, dodging among dark shadows of massive boulders. The lead horse carries two, a sinewy hombre in a black hat and a slim woman in leather with a fringed buckskin skirt. And although she hangs on tightly, she does not want to be with that man, or on that horse.

Their pursuer is a muscular fellow of rugged good looks, tall, capable, a man of heroic stature and unbending intent. Face set in purposeful lines, his squinted eyes seek out ahead for the best place to overtake the fleeing pair. Yah, it’s me, Lance Sidesaddle, defender of the peace, hot on their trail.

I must catch them, and soon, for less than a mile from the dust of Ol’ Paint’s thundering hooves is a sheer drop where the mesa was carved away by glaciers aeons ago. Durn those pesky glaciers. The woman does not want to be on that horse, but at this frantic pace among the rocks, to jump means certain death. The man, facing multiple life sentences for hoss stealin’, stage robbin’, and out-of-season apple bobbin’, has nothing to lose. To this nefarious all-purpose hoodlum of the Southwest, an innocent life means less than zilch. Shady Grady – the unprincipled cad – is not a man. He is a twisted, ugly thing. Bleah.

I see my advantage as our horses hit the flat. Just a hunnert feet from where the mesa ends and the wild blue yonder begins, a small wooden cabin stands. I can just catch them by the time we reach it, and then…

I’ll get to that. For now, I’m aware only of the steady beat of Ol’ Paint’s mighty hooves, an insistent drumbeat across the hard-packed earth. I call on my trusty steed to pick up the pace and he responds magnificently. The gap closes as we near the cabin, but will it be in time?

A sudden distraction, shockingly out of place in this vast and arid wasteland – a beguiling, sensuous aroma. I peer into my lock-box memory but at the moment come up with nada. It’s too far out of context. But as I close in on the fleeing pair, I’m certain of one thing: in the rustic cabin ahead, something yummy’s in the oven.

At the last instant, Grady veers his mount sharply, directly into the cabin’s dark open doorway. I gasp – this is idiocy, suicide! The girl’s scream is torn away on the wind. The horse and riders are swallowed whole and vanish. For me there is no choice, for heroically follow I must. Ol’ Paint re-doubles his stride, plunging fiercely toward the pitch-black opening. I think I see movement inside, and ready my lariat for the capture. First I’ll yank Grady roughly to the ground, then the girl will fling herself into my manly arms, her tears of gratitude anointing my weathered face.

This moment of forgivable hubris evaporates with a soft pop as my trusty horse suddenly, from a full gallop, sits down, puts on the brakes, skids to a stop, comes to an abrupt halt, et cetera. I have a momentary split second to form the quizzical thought: And what about me?

The three laws of motion authored by Sir Issac Newton in the seventeenth century dole out my fate. An object in motion tends to remain in motion.

Me = Object.

Helpless, I remain in motion, right between Ol’ Paint’s pointy ears, perfectly through the uprights like a game-winning field goal in the fourth quarter. I glimpse a noncommittal shrug from the noble steed as I fly past and into the cabin’s darkened interior, falling, falling, falling…

Everything. Goes. Into. Slow. Motion. I drift downward, prepared for a bone-shattering impact followed by an eternity of inky blackness. No matter. It will be worthwhile if I can save the girl. But I feel myself, as in a dream, make soft contact with what seems to be a long wooden table. My body in slo-mo drapes itself comfortably into a chair and across the cool surface in a friendly way, as if I’d been sleeping face-down for half the afternoon. A heavenly aroma graces my nostrils, an aroma that can waft only from a plate of Grandmother Sidesaddle’s chocolate chip cookies. Grandma, is that you?

I open my eyes, and see books. Bright lights, clumps of people with curious faces, and books. Thousands of books, shelves of books that stretch into the hazy distance in all directions, and right before me, a plate of perfect cookies!

Slowly I raise my head, disoriented, searching the eyes of the silent onlookers, looking in vain for Shady Grady and the girl. But no matter. My eyes fall to the glorious plate. MMM – mmm! I sit up alertly and extend a questing hand…

Mz. Maven Bookwhiz of the Preskitt Public Library adroitly snatches the plate away, bearing the life-giving confections out of my reach and to a place of repose in the staff lounge. She tosses a stern reminder over her shoulder.

“You were snoring, Mr. Slapswaddle. Silence in Your Public Library. Please.”

A chorus of giggles rises from the hushed assemblage as they begin to drift away to the other tables. I hear someone’s whispered remark, “She tried everything to wake that inflated putz. Cookies. How brilliant!”

I ignore the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and quiz myself: What Am I Doing In My Public Library? No matter. I rise from my chair, resolute, once again a figure of authority, totally in command.

“Nothing to see here folks. It’s over. Return to your homes.”

Muffled sniggers and shushing sounds from the vigilant staff follow me outside. I sit on a bench and take stock. It’s a beautiful day in Preskitt, town that I love. But no wonder I fell asleep – it’s the middle of the afternoon! And I, defender of the peace, prowl by night. What am I doing up at this hour? And then it hits me like an impertinent flash flood.

I was staking out the library to discover the criminal perpetrator behind an overdue book. Any one of Preskitt’s two-bit hoodlums could be responsible. These vermin are after the book because of an upcoming lecture by a noted detective, announced in the Yavapai College adult ed catalogue:

Apprehend your inner sleuth!

Visiting lecturer and noted case-solver, Shirley I. Buttinsky, will talk about admission to her Hard-boiled School of Detection. One session only, Dancing Divots Golf Club. Bring yourself up-to-date on Modern Methods to Foil the Criminal Mind. Prerequisite: Hard Boiled Crime Detection for Dimwits, by Ace Beagle, available at Preskitt Public Library.

Having met Mz. Buttinsky once at a lecture in Fargo, I am obviously far too advanced to spend time in such a class, but my sidekick powers awoke from their slumbers as I read the ad, and informed me politely that all the hoods in town will be there. Why? They will be thinkin’ they need to think like the forces of Good are thinkin’ – such as the cops, school crossing guards, and li’l ole me.

The Ace Beagle book is indeed a classic, and valuable. Pluswhich, anyone who studies its pages would know how to work it either way – good guy, bad guy. I’d been pleasantly surprised that Your Public Library boasts a copy. I’d come to peruse the book, but some Devious Perpetrator had got there first, lifted the valuable tome from the Crimestoppers section, and skipped, spoiling the class for everyone else. How antisocial. Hard-boiled Crime Detection for Dimwits is not for dummies.

But no matter. The class is tonight, I must obey the hour. I walk swiftly to my trusty truck Ol’ Paint in Preskitt’s totally up-to-date parking structure, and head off in the gathering dusk.

It is full dark when I reach the mucho-swanko Dancing Divots Golf Club. A slender crescent moon hangs over the black rim of distant hills. Nice meeting room close to the front desk, should hold about a dozen students. Or villains-in-waiting. I’m strategically early. I want to take the roll personally, it will read like a who’s who of nefarious local bad people. Hmm, I say to myself: Self, you must be a little too early, because you’re the only one in the swank meeting room. So I’m sitting here entertaining me with various crime-foiling methods and this interloper lopes in with a vacuum cleaner.

He’s got a nerve, this one, opens his fat yap and says, “Scuse me, buddy. Gotta sweep.”

I clear my throat. “Isn’t this the Hard-boiled Crime Detection lecture?”

“They moved it because of the turnout. Main auditorium down the hall.”

I amble on down to the auditorium. Man! Packed to the rafters it is, a hubbub of furtive conversation amid the exchange of sly winks and nods. I was right, this is Grand-larceny Central Station.

Preparing her materials on the small stage, a charming woman, quite a figure for a legendary crime-solver. Wow. Her off-pink pantsuit is tight in all the right places. Long auburn hair flows over smartly-padded shoulders with the luxuriant sheen of a caramel apple. Her glistening lips approach the microphone, delicately shaping the elegant words, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…,” thus proving she can count higher than your average sound engineer.

I clamp down on the fleeting thought that I’d like to invite her out for miniature golf and a chili dog, and focus on a glaring fact: when I met the legendary crime-solver in Fargo eight years ago she was gray-haired, a bit zaftig, and past sixty. So I can’t help wondering: exactly whom is this impostor, anyhow?

The last seat is taken, I’m forced to stand at the back of the hall. However this works to my advantage, I can see every one of Preskitt’s neer-do-wells, including – yes, there he is – Shady Grady, perched in a chair by the door directly beneath a big black hat. He’s hunched protectively over something bulky in his lap. Can it be? It certainly can. A library book! My sidekick powers tell me it’s either overdue or illegally purloined. But that distinction will have to wait.

The satin voice of the super-glam Mz. Buttinsky floats from the PA system.

“Uno, dos, tres, quattro, cinco, seis, siete…”

With a small smile, she clears her ladylike throat and begins her lecture. In seconds the crowd is raptly attentive, attentively rapt, totally in her thrall, clinging to every silken syllable she softly speaks. She moves through the basics: hunches, intelligent guesswork, clues, forensics. For an impostor, her talk is nicely paced. She slinks to and fro, fro and to. After about ten minutes, she throws a few puzzlers to the audience.

“Alright everyone,” Mz. Buttinsky, or whoever, continues, “here’s a situation for you. Suppose you are the teller of a bank, let’s say Bank One. Someone comes to your window and hands you a note which says, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be free… oops wrong note. Which says: give me all your dough. Then you notice the note is written on a Bank Two deposit slip. What do you do?”

Shifty Sam raises his hand, “I know, I know. Tell him to fill out a Bank One withdrawal slip or go back to Bank Two.”

“Very good. Yes sir, you at the back.”

I already have my hand up. “Actually, for your information, no self-respecting bank robber would waste their time holding up that bank. They sent me a letter admitting they have insufficient funds.”

A chorus of agreement transforms into muffled titters. The lecturer smiles coyly and continues.

“Now suppose you are a bank manager. You arrive at work this fine morning and see a long chain attached to one of your ATMs. What do you do?”

This time Shady Grady gets his hand up first. “Look at the other end of the chain. If there’s a bumper attached to it, then – ”

“Right,” I interject commandingly. “Then advertise the bumper and the chain for sale, cheap. The crooks will call you.” I fold my arms confidently, trying not to appear too smug. Let them chew on that for awhile.

Mz. Buttinsky throws a pert feminine scowl my way. Grady turns around and says petulantly, “No fair, my hand was up. What I was going to say is, look on the bumper and write down the license plate to tell the heat, er, I mean, the nice policemen.”

“Very good, class,” Mz. Buttinsky beams at Grady. The injustice! If only she knew?but on she goes. “Now we will have a break in the lecture, during which all of you will write a short exam.”

Groans, and the usual shuffling as test papers are handed out, pens are borrowed, assorted attendees dash for assorted rest rooms. Mz. Buttinsky announces that we have thirty minutes, and departs the stage. All heads bend to the task of completing the short exam. It’s quite simple for me, I reminisce over my long and illustrious career as I read it through. Then I hit my worst nightmare: an essay question. Write a concise short essay on cleanliness, mystery, and religion.

I throw down my pencil in disgust, thinking ‘Holy Smoke, I haven’t had a bath in 35 years, how can you expect me to remember now?’

Without warning, my super-sleuth intuition nudges my elbow and I look up. A-ha! Our Mr. Shady Grady is not in his seat! And our fair instructress is likewise nowhere to be seen. Undetected, I slip out the rear exit.

Outside, all is dark. And quiet. Too-o-o-o quiet. But I hear distant, whispered voices, and can barely discern two figures standing near a shadowy row of golf carts in a pool of dark. As I creep stealthily toward them in the dimness, my foot encounters a discarded Atkins Shake. The empty can rolls toward the furtive pair, rattling and bouncing against the curb. Abruptly the two leap into a golf cart and whirr away on the path toward the first tee.

I, too, leap upon a waiting vehicle.

A dark star-flecked sky stretches to velvet infinity over the Dancing Divots Golf Club. Towers of summer thunderheads mass on the far horizon like stacked bagels. The darkened greensward is barren, empty, save for two vehicles lumbering along the smoothly-paved cart path, dodging between the arcs of spray cast by ominous sprinkler heads that pop from the turf and squirt menacingly in all directions. The lead vehicle, a golf cart, carries two, a sinewy hombre in a black hat and a slim woman in a smart pantsuit. I think I hear the smart pantsuit reciting T.S. Eliot, but the words are torn away on the wind. Although she hangs on tightly, she does not want to be with that man, or on that golf cart. Or. Does. She. Really?

Their pursuer is a hefty fellow of once-rugged good looks, formerly of heroic stature. Face set in purposeful lines as he tries to control his roaring vehicle, this man’s eyes squint through billows of smoke for the best place to overtake the fleeing pair. Yah, you got it – me. Kaff kaff.

In the rush to pursue these evildoers from the parking lot, I’d leapt astride the last in a lineup of shadowy vehicles. I thought I’d copped a small airplane – stubby shapes protrude from the sides at a rakish angle – but actually it’s a three-bank lawn mower. Bravely I accept the hand Blind Fate has dealt me. This will surely be an epic struggle – noisy, smoky internal combustion versus silent, clean electric power – if I can avoid slicing myself to ribbons in the process.

I must catch them, and soon, for less than a chip shot from my wildly whirling blades is a sheer drop where the cart path was shorn away by developers hours ago. Durn those pesky developers. The woman Shirley surely does not want to be on that cart, but fleeing between the hissing sprinklers at eleven miles per hour, to jump would mean certain drench. Facing multiple slaps on the wrist, the teacher-impressin’, up-stagin’, library-book robbin’ driver has nothing to lose. To this nefarious all-purpose hoodlum of the Southwest, an overdue book means less than zilch. Shady Grady – the unprincipled cad – is not a man, he is a twisted, ugly thing. Most likely with a twelve handicap. Bleah.

But hark! Borne on the otherwise-fragrant evening breeze, a sudden olfactory disturbance, shockingly out of place in this lush golfer’s paradise. I rummage through my mental lock-box and come up with – yes, there it is! A porta-toidy. I can just catch them by the time we reach it, and then…

I’ll get to that. For now, I’m only aware of the mower’s powerful motor, the hum of the studded tires on pavement, the insistent sharp sibilance of the menacing metallic blades. I drive my foot more roughly against the pedal, calling on my trusty steed to pick up the pace and it responds magnificently: a quarter-RPM more. The gap closes as we near the porta-johnny, but will it be in time?

Then Grady makes a deadly blunder. He sees the muddy ditch and veers off the paved surface, up the gently sloping green. The conveyance slows to a virtual halt, its rear wheel spinning against the slick grass in soggy futility. And in that instant, I pounce.

I drive my smoking, whirling contraption gently but firmly against the golf cart’s nose, and their machine begins sliding backward. Both of them are standing now, frantic, looking for a way to jump clear, but there is no escape. Grady finally makes his move and leaps from the cart, backward, away from the gnashing blades. But he fails to see that I have fiendishly pushed them hard against the dark opening of the porta-biffy. He vanishes from sight with a blood-curdling yell of anger and resignation that fades from hearing.

I shut off the motor and all is still, save for the hissing sprinklers and distant curses echoing from beneath Grady’s big black hat, discarded and alone on the porta-pooty’s seat. The woman is standing in the golf cart, clutching the roof. Even in the faint starlight I can see she’s lovely. Take away the circumstances – her foul foul plot, her impersonation, the stolen library book – and I could see asking her out for a bowl of chili. Sorry toots, I have a mission.

“Alright, Mz. Impostor, or whomever you may be,” I snarl with unshaven masculine innuendo. “I need to see Your Library Card.”

Sadly, she can only shake her head. That clinches is – without a Library Card, my last hope for her is inexorably dashed.

“Alright, then hand over the book. Your clever little game is up.”

She bats her false eyelashes coquettishly, but her heart’s not really in it. Meekly, she extends a large heavy-ish object into my waiting hands. I flip on my patented Lance Sidesaddle Spy-Lite, and my eyes behold the sacred cover. The title alone speaks volumes: Hard-boiled Crime Detection for Dimwits, by Ace Beagle.

Car headlights rake across the green, coming downhill toward us through the blackness. The flashing reds and blues atop the white cars give the impression a birthday cake is floating toward me through the night.

In seconds we are surrounded. Detective Nabster approaches.

“Sidesaddle! What have you got?”

“Arrest her, Frank. She’s impersonating the famous detective.”

“Which one?”

“Shirley I. Buttinsky.”

“No, really, you were doing fine.”

“Anyhoo, she enlisted Shady Grady to steal this valuable book from Your Public Library. A con for a con. You’ll find him under that hat in there.”

It is over within minutes. The pert pretender gives me an assortment of hard-boiled looks as she’s led away in handcuffs. The smart pantsuit merely snubs me. I don’t mind. But I do begin to wonder – why is it whenever I meet someone I really like, she’s about to be arrested?

The disingenuous duo is placed in separate patrol cars. Soon the birthday cakes recede over the rise and I am once again alone in the dark. Alone that is, except for Detective Nabster’s parting words ringing in my ears:

Nice work, Sidesaddle.

I’ll have them engraved on my arm forthwith. Grateful yet manly tears well in my eyes. At last, a gram of respect from the local gendarmes – and he actually pronounced my name correctly!

Once again I allow myself to feel the warm glow of satisfaction, the sense of lending a helping hand, the humble pride of the unsung hero. The girl is gone, but her devious plan has been foiled. Preskitt, the town I love, will pass another night in peaceful dreams. Mz. Bookwhiz at Your Public Library will be grateful to get the Ace Beagle volume back. MMM-mmm! I can almost smell that plate of cookies.

My single spur chimes a contented rhythm as I climb the rise, heading for my trusty truck in the peaceful Arizona night.

Autonomous art glass panel designed in Adobe Illustrator. 72 inches wide and 24 inches high. Works as an interior space divider. Framed in flat iron. Collection of Sherri Zysk.

This is a pair of free-hanging panels designed in Adobe Illustrator. As shown the pair is about 31 inches high and 72 inches wide. Works as an interior space divider. Framed in brass.

Does your Toyota Remember Who It Can Turn To? Toyota Recall Announcement Turns Up Memory Difficulties In Some Models

NEW YORK — Toyota has announced that 2.3 million vehicles have developed memory problems. This recall failure affects some of America’s most popular cars. Toyota recently stated it will stop making those models while it works to remember how to fix the problem.

Wow.

But to make matters even more confusing to your Toyota, most cars having this recall issue were already involved in an earlier, unrelated problem involving gas pedals sticking on floor mats. Your Toyota will become insecure if it thinks it is doing something wrong.

What can you do to help your Toyota?

1. First, be calm if your Toyota does not remember who you are. Becoming excited can have negative effects on your Toyota, like forgetting to slow down.
   
2. Express your love and admiration for your Toyota in this difficult time in its young life.
3. Mention counselling. Your Toyota may first rebel at the thought of seeing a shrink, so take your time.
4. Talk about the old times. Many Toyotas have better recollection of events that happened earlier in their lives. It will build confidence if the two of you can just talk. Drive by the showroom where you first met. It will bring many pleasureable connections.
5. Know the risks. Approximately 50% of Toyota owners with recall problems will become clinically depressed, but there are many resources to help both the owner and the Toyota. One place to start is the FAA, or Feline Altzheimer’s Association. They have tips and small food treats.
6. Reassure your Toyota. Let it know it is loved and can continue to live at home during treatment.

This memory problem affects specific RAV4, Corolla, Matrix, Avalon, Highlander, Tundra, Sequoia, and some Camrys. None of those snooty Lexus or uppity Scion models are involved. They remember who their owners are!

That Steve Jobs is poised to take a tablet today could be Silicon Valley‘s worst-kept secret. An Apple tablet has been speculated on for months, certainly well before Apple invited the press to San Francisco Wednesday to “Come see our latest source of gastric distress.”

If the burbling rumors indeed turn out to be true, and indeed they might or might not, a multimedia-rich Aspirin tablet, taken internally, could have the same mammoth effect on publishing and media as the iPod and iTunes had on digital music. What’s more, the iPad, iSlate, iDon’tKnow, or ‘whatever’ Apple’s new device is called could bring fresh heartburn into a tablet market that’s barely seen a burp until now.

The dastardly secret is, and you heard it here first, is that it REALLY IS a “tablet”. Yes, you swallow it. Hook, line, and sinker.

Then, your vision becomes equipped with a HUD display. Just like in the mining center control room of Avatar. Just like in the situation room of Minority Report.

You can see the projected screen (on the inside of your eyeballs) but no one else can. Just like in Virtual Reality, you reach out and gesture at the visual illusion to control it.

The rumor that Tablet users look like sleepwalkers groping their way down the streets of Silly Valley is completely unfounded. They are just looking for the damn off switch, which is mentioned in the 3134-page user manual. The user manual was out of print at press time.

CONCORD, N.H. – First the Old Man, now the Big Wind. New Hampshire’s Mount Washington has lost its distinction as the site of the fastest wind gust ever recorded on Earth, officials at the Mount Washington Observatory said Tuesday.

The concession came three days after Sarah Palin delivered the Real State of the Union Address at a Krispy Kreme shop in Wheel Barrow, Alaska.

That also tops the 231 mph record set atop Mount Washington on April 12, 1934.

What else really needs to be said? What we are witnessing here is a true American Statesman spinning the bearings off an anamometer. This is what real windbags are all about.

After months, GM finally sells a SaaB

DETROIT (AP) — They said it Couldn’t Be Done! U.S. auto giant General Motors Co. has defied the current downturn of the U.S. automobile market by selling the cutest little runabout ever — this baby-blue Saab 96, which has hung around a New Jersey showroom since 1961.

GM signed a deal Tuesday to sell the Saab (pronounced S-O-B) to Spyker Cars NV for $74 million in cash plus $326 million worth of preferred shares.

Pundits called it the most expensive car ever sold on the planet, more expensive than the ATV Tree-Killer in James Cameron’s Avatar. But hey, that was on Pandora.

The sale is a possible lifeline for GM.

But don’t hold your breath! Times being what they are, the finance companies have to get into the act. So… the deal hinges on a $550 million loan from the European Investment Bank.

This may not go through, as a secretary at the giant automaker was recently found to have accepted a donut from her boss on the way into work last Thursday, which may violate the new caps on executive bonuses.

But who will drive the World’s Most Expensive Car? Word on the street (literally imprinted into the sidewalk on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame) is that automotive enthusiast Jay Leno may hand over the Tonight Show to Senator Joe Lieberman so he can spend quality time with the frisky runabout.

A Lance Sidesaddle Saga


By Lance Sidesaddle

When it begins to turn chilly in the Old West, when autumn starts its long decline into winter, when civilized folks become a bit rushed, preoccupied, a little less polite – to me it feels kinda like the Fall of Western Civilization. A coolish November afternoon on Courthouse Plaza turns its leaf-strewn face toward sundown. Sure, work is done for most honest Preskitt folks, but my job as defender of the peace is just about to commence.

Yah, you’ve heard of me – Lance Sidesaddle, private detective. Student of all principles of deduction. And this week I’m taking a refresher course on a hum-dinger – cause and defect.

For some reason I don’t go straight to my office this night. I have a sneaky seventh sense suggesting something suspicious. So I cruise around aimlessly, paying attention, soaking up clues like a biscuit in gravy. I see a bunch of random things: a spy thriller movie with double-takeout popcorn at the Prescott Valley Harkins, a furtive green pickup running the red on Lee Boulevard, two dudes sitting ominously in a big black crew cab in front of Kendall’s on the Plaza. To the ordinary intellect, these things would not appear connected. But to my sidekick powers –

From somewhere, a horse neighs nervously. I duck involuntarily and look around. Although this is usually not a good sign, this time I can relax, cuz there she is, a nice little roan with a hand-tooled saddle, hitched to the rail betwixt Bucky’s Bean Bag and The Worm. This is the only spot on Whiskey Row with a hitchin’ post anymore. Stores all closed along Montezuma, her rider’s prolly glugging down a beer up the block. I give her some popcorn from my bag before headin’ on up to my office in this fleabag hotel overlooking the Plaza.

I know something’s wrong the moment I enter the long corridor. Light spills into the dingy hallway from my open office door. A radio turned low plays the D-backs at home against the Padres. My radio. I stand in the doorway. Two plainclothes lounge in my chairs, one with a couple of his big feet on my desk. The other one’s asleep.

“Where you been, Widewaddle?” the awake cop asks. “You’re usually on time.”

“I plead the fifth,” I say handsomely.

Sleepy cop wakes up enough to roll his eyes in exasperation.

“Soapsaddle, you’re confined to your office for the night,” says Awake cop. “We’re trying to wrap up a case and don’t need any of your – help.”

Sleepy cop chuckles. “Yeah, we don’t need your professional findings from Court TV.”

Both of them stand, making for the door.

“If you hear of anything let us know.” Sleepy cop hands me a crisp white card.

Awake cop says, “Frank, let’s get a latte. You’re on autopilot.”

Sleepy cop waves it away in a ‘whatever’ gesture, and they’re off into the night.

I pocket his card. I’m just brushing the dirt from my desktop when the phone rings. A shrill, harsh, grating sound. Nagging, familiar. Reluctantly I pick it up, and even before I hear the voice, I know. It’s her. I get an instant mental flash of a tall woman in faded jeans, a stained work shirt with bunched-up sleeves, ropy-muscled arms flipping a yearling to the dirt of a Wyoming branding pen.

Women are complicated, which is an established fact. And Montana is a complicated woman. A long trail of evidence attests to this phenomenon of nature: the lumps on my noggin from her cast-iron skillet, the scars on my calf from her trained attack ferret, the multiple contusions on my male ego. What we had was more than a fling, but it didn’t last. All I have is the fading memory of what might have been. She has her occasional phone calls to remind me of how deeply she was disappointed – by me, the Village Idiot of the Universe.

“Montana,” I mutter in surprised confusion. “How are – “

“Don’t start with me, you lout. I need that casserole dish my auntie Alice gave me.”

Typical of Montana, she hadn’t actually moved out. Her stuff is still neatly arrayed throughout my singlewide beyond the ridge. Her stuff? Most of it is our wedding presents. She just phones me every so often to ask – actually it’s more of a demand – that I send one of her valued possessions. She was moving out via DHL in slow, painful degrees. Our relationship hasn’t been great for a long time, and now it’s like the Voyage of the Demand.

“Casserole dish?”

“Have you gained weight?” She demands. She assumes I’ll send the dish with no further discussion. Unfortunately, we both know she’s right. Now she’s on to Eternal Topic A, my weight.

“Um, I – “

“You sound heavy. You’ve gained again. Does the scale come around to your ZIP code yet?”

“Um, er -“

I know she wants to keep it short because she’s calling from the Central Stranded Time Zone. Her abrupt goodbye is typical, vintage Montana: “Hint for the month, Lance, stop being you. Send that dish A-SAP. Sap.”

Click.

“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind,” I remind her softly, far too late.

I take stock of our conversation. I’d got in 13 syllables, three commas, two sub-vocalizations, zero complete sentences, and no clauses. Aside from her P.O. Box, I don’t know where Montana’s at anymore. But I’d have to ride to Fargo and turn around quick to get on her good side. Two glorious, unforgettable weeks of matrimony, during which time my goal had devolved from comprehension to getting out with a whole skin.

I sit. Make a mental note to pack up Aunt Alice’s casserole dish. Okay, I think, the cops want me to stay in tonight. Don’t need my help. Well. How can I irritate Bad People while chained to my beat-up oak desk?

A shuffling in the corridor. I hark my ears and wait. The figure that appears is from about 100 years ago: bearded, wearing a weathered brown felt hat, scarred leather vest over a shirt of unknown color, a once-red kerchief, dark-stained chaps, rough-out boots. Except for the guy’s expression, I coulda been lookin’ in a mirror. His face has a haunted look, on the ragged fringe of hope. You see that too much these days.

“Mr. Sidesaddle,” the guy says. It’s not a question.

I nod, gesturing at my beat-up guest chair. “Sit,” I say. We sit.

“Muh friends say you’re a great detective, say you find things for people.”

I clamp down on my urge to agree with him and magnanimously pontificate. My sidekick powers tell me this guy wants something. Something important. But I know right off it’s going to be hard for me to find.

The dude is nodding. “They say you have the gift,” says he.

Well of course the guy is right, tied up with a lovely bow it is, but instinct for a change keeps the zip on my lip.

“Need ta get hooked up,” says the stranger. “They say ya sometimes need help.”

I get it. A job. I give him an A for approach. At least he buttered me up first, a good trait in any employee. But what to say?

“Well,” says I, “most of us can use a little help, some of the time. What kinda help were you thinkin’?”

Fella muses a bit, then says straight out, “Solvin’, figurin’, cogitatin’ clues.”

Hmmm. Here’s a guy about whom I know nada, not asking to sweep the floor, but suggesting he’s ready to park right atop my own little food chain. For an instant, I think if he can keep Montana off my neck, then he can have my job, my office, the works. Except for Ol’ Paint, my trusty truck.

But our serene rapport is curtailed by frantic sirens that fill the night, distant, drawing swiftly closer. We step into the corridor and peer out the dark window. A rosy glow paints the sky above the Hysterical District. My studies of cause and defect are giving me an instant twitch to head down the stairs, but I remember I’m grounded. Looking out as flashing reds dash noisily through the darkened streets of our fair little burg, I turn to the guy.

“Okay. I get your drift. There’s not a lot of moolah in this racket, but sometimes I can use a good paid hand.” I notice his face lights up a notch when I hit the word paid. There are a couple of things I do need, like…

“Like tonight. Amble on over to the noise smoke and confusion there, come back and tell me what you see. They’re gonna wanna know what started the fire. Get the plate number of a big black crew cab if you see one. Dark windows, two guys. Ditto for a green Chevy pickup. This here’s on account. I’ll be here till sunup.”

I fish out a twenty and hand it to him folded up small. He nods, says seeyalaterthanks, and heads on down the hall.

“Oh yeah,” I call after him. “Take the plastic trash bucket out of the Men’s and give that little roan some water, if she’s still there.”

The guy’s hat brim dips and he continues on. From where I sit back in my office I can hear the bucket filling and his bootheels fade down to silence as he hits the street. Carramba. Never got his name. No matter. If he comes back he has a job. Sort of. If he doesn’t then at least he took a handout with a scrap of dignity.

I sit there and again I’m thinking of Montana, our conversation, all her stuff stowed neatly in my singlewide. Mattra fakt, all my stuff, the stuff she didn’t choose to want to look at, is in the tin shed out back. Note to self: rearrange castle, in a manor of speaking. I think, maybe I should just ship it all to her. Then I think twice: it would take durn near two years’ wages to do that. I think thrice: maybe I should just start a fire…

Then I notice that’s twice in under a minute I thought about running away from my problems. What am I really going to do?

Fire. Burning my humble abode and all her stuff would indeed get me somewhat off the hook, but the word turns my thoughts to the blaze a few blocks yonder. That’s when my sidekick powers wake up from their nap and deliver me a single word: friction. Okay, it dawns on me, if I was thinkin’ that, someone else was thinkin’ that. The owner. So that’s solved, but how to pin it on the owner when I’m grounded for being too helpful?

Things are just starting to gel when my shiny new assistant shows up. He’s carrying two paper cups of what smells like hot coffee.

“Where’d you get java? All the barista bars close up before six.”

“Fire Department had their pot on. Built right into the side of the truck.”

I nod and sip. My assistant goes on.

“Won’t believe this, but that little hoss got a parking ticket. She was thirsty all right. I’m takin’ her another bucket in a minute. But first here’s what I saw over there. Big place, old-timer, nice one, too bad. Completely done for. Saw both of yer trucks, here’s the tags.”

He lays down a slip of paper with two license numbers written in a neat, solid hand. Reaching into his vest pocket, he thunks a small object onto my desktop. Cell phone.

“Feller pushin’ me outta the way, one of the fellers from the black rig. That’s his. Strayed somehow into my hand. Thought it might be something you can use.”

He watches real quiet while I fire the thing up and page through the incoming and outgoing call history. There’s one number right away catches my eye, phoned several times over the last couple weeks, also at 6:10 p.m. this very evening. The number echoes around in the vault of my lock-box memory, and hooks up with a name: Shady Grady. Preskitt’s nefarious all-purpose hoodlum. Shinola! I’d been trying to pin something on that clown for a couple years… Then I think there’s another baggage I’m about to get rid of.

“Okay, you did good. Feel like taking on another job?”

Guy sips his coffee and nods.

“By the way,” I say, “I didn’t get your name.”

“Lucas.”

I take out a piece of my letterhead and start sketching a map that will get him to my place. All of a sudden, this old tune starts playing, durned if it doesn’t sound like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans singing, “Happy Trails to Yoooo.”

I look at my radio. Nope, still has the ball game on. I look at Lucas, and he ain’t singing, we’re just looking at each other kinda blank. Then our eyes drop to the cell phone on my desk. Gol durn thing is playin’ like a juke box. On a hunch, I answer it.

“Yup.” I turn up the ball game nice and loud, hoping the noise will disguise my golden voice.

Guy comes on the other end, a growl I recognize.

“Things done. I’m ready for my end. Where and when?”

I have to think a bit. “Little gazebo in the Plaza, around midnight,” I mumble, hoping it sounds reasonable

“Ga-zee-bo – Whut’s that?”

“Little round bandstand. Across from the Palace.”

“Midnight,” the voice says, then silence.

Shady Grady. I’m sure it’s him. I fold the phone up and Lucas and I just look at each other. He’s got a smirk on, in a minute we’re just kinda grinning at each other.

I turn my attention back to my sketched map. “Okay, what I need is you head out to Yakking Boulders Ranch – my spread – and take out anything that looks like a woman bought it. Everything. Chafing dishes, casseroles, punch sets, the works. There’s some empty boxes in the shed. Box it up and sit it on the porch. We’ll load up when I get there around daybreak. Then you’ll find a way to sell it and we’ll split the cash.” I have about a week to come up with something to tell Montana, but the way the dude’s eyebrows go up says ‘attaboy’ nice and strong.

He studies my hastily-drawn map. I hear him softly mutter something about a ‘durn long walk.’ Right, how stupid of me. Hmmm. I don’t want to send him off in Ol’ Paint, I’d have no ride myself. Then I get an idea.

I walk downstairs and into the night, keeping my eyes peeled for any cops about. An orange moon hangs in a stratum of gray smoke in the trees around the Plaza, the cool air sniffs of burnt wood. Only a few cars stand silent along the Row. The little roan is still hitched up, she’s looking across at Courthouse Plaza. Sure enough there’s a parking ticket stuck in her bridle. She looks lonesome, probably hungry, probably about to get towed. The rosy glow has just about faded from the winter sky. I turn around to look for Lucas, he’s just coming along with the water.

The horse sticks her nose in and slurps noisily. I watch Lucas for a minute, holding the bucket for the horse.

“You ride?” I ask. He doesn’t look up, only nods. The answer comes to me just as plain as if I’d heard it a thousand times. I gesture at my map in his fist.

“Use the horse, Luke.”

Lucas nods, hands me the empty bucket. He unhitches the reins and leads the roan into the street. He checks the cinch, then swings up into the saddle. With a nod he’s off. The clip-clop of hooves seems an echo from earlier times as the familiar silhouette of horse and rider fades up Montezuma along the darkened street front. I’m about to shout after him, ‘stay away from the dark side,’ but the street’s in full moonlight so I shut up.

Back at my desk I finger the little cell phone, flipping through the calls. Several calls to and from Grady over the last weeks. Now I know. It’s time to employ my studies of cause and defect. First I’m going to cause, then I’m going to defect – right out of here and over the hill.

Taking the crisp white card from my vest, I pick up my desk phone.

“Nabster,” the guy answers. Lots of noise in the background, engines and the shouts of men.

“Detective Nabster, this is Sidesaddle.”

“I hope you haven’t left your office, Slapsaddle?”

But I cut him off. “You on Mt. Vernon?”

“Yah. What of it?”

“I know what started your fire. And I think I know who.”

There is a pause. “I’m listening.”

“Friction.”

“Friction? You klutz, this was arson.”

“Right you are, Detective. Friction. In this case it’s the mortgage rubbing up against the insurance policy. And I think I know how to find your bad boy.” I tell the nice officer I scheduled him a midnight rendezvous in the gazebo. “If you want more, look under that bench in front of Annalina’s for a little present.”

“Little present.”

“Yeah. And one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Can I leave now?”

I lock up and head down to the street. In front of the restaurant, I fold up the cell phone, slip in Luke’s note with the license numbers, and stash it beneath the sidewalk bench. I head around the block toward Preskitt’s fab new parking structure, thinking about the night, Montana, the fire – everything. Alone as usual in the dark, I feel the warm glow of satisfaction, the sense of lending a helping hand, the humble pride of the unsung hero. The devious plan hadn’t been foiled, exactly, but the bad boys will have to go away for a while. Happy Trails to Yoooo. Preskitt, town that I love, will pass another night in restful slumber.

The twin pipes of Ol’ Paint burble contentedly as I cruise the quiet streets of my little town, up Montezuma and around the big bend, heading for Yakking Boulders Ranch, just beyond the ridge.