spoon hoard plundered

The residents of Ouray, CO, awoke this morning to find their drawers and cupboards emptied of spoons. The world-famous Museum of Spoon and Utensils, which occupies an Art Deco building in the hamlet’s quaint downtown, sits all but empty, most of its collection gone.

Local police deputy Yolanda Esperanza said that foul play had been ruled out early in her investigation of the matter. “There were no signs of forced entry, anywhere,” she said, scanning the area in bewilderment from the Ouray Overlook. “Who, or what, would want all those spoons?”

Archival records located in the town library tell of a similar instance, in 1887, during which large quantities of buttons vanished, seemingly overnight. “Given the large-scale mining activities in this area,” the newspaper reads, “superstitious locals have been attributing the recent thefts to a mountain sprite, or kobold, scared aboveground by blasting dynamite.”

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

take the piss

The sprite her long fingers they do seldom miss yet all she doth want is for to take the piss. She'll take it from women and take it from men and then turn right back around and take it again. Her aim is to learn how to tell funny tales about foolish humans and elusive whales but all of her thieving has just been a waste that leaves a few yellow stains up on her face. She'll keep on piss-taking and struggling though the ways of us humans to study and know and hers is a turbulent and stinky wake as long as she's chasing that wily piss-take.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on tunnel-sprites

Come witness the mystery with us below, down under the howling wind and blinding snow. We're speaking of tunnel-sprites, mischievous things, who move by silently and fly without wings. Their presence we recognize in broken jars, in base-of-neck tickles and static-filled tunes, in portends foreboding and feelings of doom, in yellowish pricks of light that look like stars. Now unwary travelers they lead astray, to starve in a dead-end far from light of day, now turned-around toddlers they shower with care, and lead them to safety straight back to warm lairs. Their stories reach far back, to times long since passed, their legends are sung about and set in glass. To please the sprites heap up some fresh apple-skin, upon a cave's doorstep, where homesteads begin, and set out a saucer of honey and wine, next morning the serving-plates empty you'll find. The sprites can be brutal, but sometimes they help, if lost and in trouble just call out or yelp, then let go of worry, selfishness, and spite, close eyes and sit calmly and wait for a sprite. But if one is angry or jealous or crass, if planning to capture or disrupt the flow, of tunnel-sprite glory then this one should know, that these little creatures of minuscule mass, will quickly abandon, confuse, and confound, and leave one for dead very deep underground.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥