epgarbage

 Those of you who haven't seen David Mamet's 2000 film "State and Main" might want to dig out and load up the VCR this weekend.  It's about how the arrival of a Hollywood film crew ruins the values of a rural Vermont community.  Except maybe the town was already less than idyllic before outside influences corrupted it, or maybe everyone has a few more skeletons in their closet than their cornpone image suggests. The announcement yesterday of town administrator Frank Lancaster's less than imminent departure had some residents scratching their heads, especially since at the most recent meeting the town council was involved with laying the groundwork for his review (his rehiring, indeed, the reupping of his six figure salary was a mere formality), but anyone who noticed the weight gain and increasingly slouching body habitus of the man starting two years ago knew something was up.  It's a horrible job, having to pretend to like the people you serve, but ...

"Codes are good.  Codes are necessary."  Once you see these proposed talking points, you can rest assured nothing of value is going to come from the meeting between building contractors and town staff tomorrow, except to make it clear yet again who holds the power in that particular relationship. The contractors, who were hesitant enough to speak at the last town board meeting for fear of reprisal, are now going to clam up completely.  If you wanted to hear honest opinions, you should have been at the Mayor's Chat.  Everything subsequent to that, especially everything subsequent to the part where more than one contractor was calling for a certain town administrator's head, has been a massive "How do we pretend to be listening while keeping things status quo?" campaign.  The "facilitator" is the new-fangled way to pretend.  Maybe Nicolas Maduro has a great facilitator when his Venezuelan subjects beg for milk and medicine.  Maybe the contracto...

Just so it is clear the recall group did indeed schedule a petition signing at the Estes Valley Library for Friday, 22 February 2019, here is the cached Trail article (online version), which has since been modified to read "The first scheduled signature collection is to be determined." instead of what formerly served as the next-to-last sentence. What remains, sadly, is the instructional sentence beginning with "Anyone signing a petition must be registered voters [sic]..."  This will severely hamper the recall effort.  If  "anyone", which is always an indefinite singular pronoun, must be a "registered voters", everyone is thus disqualified , unless they are conjoined, and not temporarily.

What, praytell, is this? Is the Estes Valley Library a participant in the Walker/Jirsa recall, an accidental participant, an innocent bystander, or what?  If they were duped into hosting an event policy prevents them from hosting, why provide helpful directions to where the emigrants limped off?  Do these districts (remember, they are not town entities, and have giant walls between themselves and the town hall, almost like cones of silence or hermetically sealed bell jars) communicate with each other?  Do they advance either others' causes? Because if it were me, and I had accidentally allowed a group into my building that policy didn't allow me to book, because I had been duped or someone on my staff had been duped, I sure as hell wouldn't be providing helpful directions on where to go instead.  A "Not Here" would appear to suffice.

Now this is breaking news.  Naturally there will be alcohol.  Plenty of alcohol. These kind of jokes write themselves: "Can I go, mom?  Can I go?" "Axe your father." Leisure throwers.  Is that another term for "parolees"? Are you cut out to be an axe manufacturer?  Are you a chip off the old block?

Especially get it right behind the ears, because R. Kelly, the guy who was declared innocent, right, so of course he couldn't possibly be a sex offender and serial urinator, right? is suddenly facing more charges from a society that can no longer stick its head in the sand and allow powerful men to escape justice for abusing underage girls.  Where have we heard that one before?  Oh right, outside Rustic Mountain Charm, the 4chan go-to.

Yesterday morning, the Recall website indicated petition signing would take place in the Hondius room of the Estes Valley Library.  Today, that information has been "updated" to reflect a change in venue I'm a bit stumped.  Had the group not already booked the Hondius Room?  Did the library not allow petition signing as an activity, but the community center does? Or perhaps a simpler explanation:  Is the Recall Group that dumb they forgot to actually book the Hondius Room prior to releasing this schedule?

Now there are two The one other guy in the group with actual musical chops.  Like Karen Carpenter, he started out on the glock.  Unlike Karen Carpenter, his voice sounded like a cat caught in a mangle.                                                                     Here's a video treat from Tork and the boys

Global warming is snow in February in Las Vegas.  Nevada.  Which barely ever gets rain.  Ever. Cloud seeding is currently allowed throughout the United States, for those with enough money or stupidity to pay for it.  But human-caused moisture in Las Vegas is frowned upon, and should immediately be outlawed.  Pass the Green New Deal and keep Las Vegas water free, except for the giant fountains outside Bellagio.  Those are cool. This global warming thingy can be confusing.  Sometimes even I get confused:  Should it be more hottie, or more coolie?

I've been on vacation with my family, enjoying a brief respite from the cold.  But now it's time to step out of the shadows.

Estes Truth is back.  This is now its fourth reincarnation, most likely resurrected to address the recall, maybe sell some T-shirts or signs related to a call for action in the process, something that doesn't involve actually having to appear in person during public comment, or running for office. What a joke.  Change is not a $5 t-shirt, change is spending actual money and putting actual skin in the game to advocate for a cause 24 hours a day, not just when it is convenient. Ultimately, who cares about blogs and websites that come and go as the wind blows, or when another trip or hobby needs to be financed?  We all know where the real traffic goes, and recognize those who are gadflies just to be gadflies.

Who's up for recalling the remaining trustees?  Let's add all the current hospital board while we're at it.

Actual partial transcript:  "and those hats are beautiful, by the way...true...some day, they are going to appreciate us all...And I'm going to Vietnam...to Hanoi..." And yet, his crowd is eating it up.

I love how the organizers of the latest recall dated it "Recall 2019".  This is to distinguish it from "Recall 2017", which went nowhere, and "Recall 2018", which was all the rich folks on Dry Gulch discovering they couldn't raise $15,000 between them, but the 2017 joke actually did result in various conflicted individuals being dropped like hot potatoes from the VEP board, and others humping away from Estes with their tail between their equine (ass) legs.  One of your current trustees, Carlie Bangs, had close friends behind the 2017 recall.  And we all marvel at how Grand Junction benefits daily from that special brand of Forgery magic.  Perhaps Kevin Conrad can find new lodging in Cheyenne Wells, or Del Norte. Good luck and God bless, "Recall 2019" committee.  You complain about commercial developments in residential neighborhoods, yet place your names proudly on a list to honor a racist along Wonderview Ave.  Maybe every year every tr...

Why are detectives in Estes Park bothering to download child pornography, when they can just go outside Charley's store, look up, and see a child pornographer?

A few posts back, I speculated whether "leadership@estes.org" was a way for various town officials to circumvent the email bulletin board, and communicate with each other without having these pesky communications end up as a matter of public record.  Transparency buried under layers of soot-black, in other words. Today, an email to "leadership@estes.org" was returned as undeliverable, when previously, emails to this address went right through. So if you weren't doing anything wrong, why act as if you were doing something wrong? Inquiring minds want to know.  It's not like "leadership@estes.org" was equivalent to a picture of a shirtless individual holding his phone in his left hand wearing tight black cargo pants or shorts.

Too bad the forensic audit didn't end up with the completely justifiable recommendation to throw the entire VEP staff in jail, along with Lowell Richardson and those morons behind the recall.  How do you justify spending $180,000 in one year on Facebook advertising?  Backbone Media should rename themselves Screwpee Media, because they took our 2% pillow tax to bed, rode it hard, and then dog walked it to the curb.

More will be revealed about this story, but currently it makes very little sense. William McDonough, who lives on a farm near where the CROMA (Colorado Rockies Old-time Music Association) festival is held every year, kidnapped a liquor store employee in Berthoud under the guise of needing a ride because his car was out of gas. Mr. McDonough's home, according to voting records, is over10 miles from Berthoud.  Why you agree to give someone a ride when a gas station is 100 feet away from the liquor store where you work is beyond me, but why you then allow them to drive your car because "they know where they are going" is doubly inexplicable. So somehow kidnapper and victim end up in a Sheraton in downtown Denver (two blocks from the Denver city/county building), where he disrupts an ongoing sorority function being held in the hotel ballroom. Why, if you really have kidnapped someone, would you draw attention to yourself by disrupting a random event being held in t...

Is the same stuff Estes Park should be wringing its hands about regarding F.O. Stanley's sordid past. Except the Virginia governor probably wasn't actually in the KKK I wonder how many board members behind the efforts to raise money to preserve the "historic Stanley home" have ever visited a plantation in the South, or donned blackface for a Halloween/cocktail/Lions Club party, or are currently white?

http://www.eptrail.com/ci_32423057/update-regarding-epics-interest-and-ability-complete-rocky How many trustees lost re-election bids or friends because they had no interest in destroying the Riverside parking lot for a pipe dream?  How many trustees and candidates rode the "popular" wave of ramming an unnecessary Performing Arts Center down the community's throat because it was the "trendy/cocktail party conversation" thing to do?  All you need to advance in this community is a crazy idea and one crazy individual (Theresa Maria, where are you?) to proclaim that whatever is being proposed in "the most important project since DIA". Man, you EPIC folks ought to be taken into the town square and flogged. And Patrick, you agreed to give the FOSH funds to Al "Mint Chip" Milano for what, so he could have a one-year salary to produce three hand-drawn slides?