Holy Frack!

The scene: Nebraska.  The dilemma: a radioactive tar sands field on fire.  The actors: unfortunate amateur thespians whose bus overheated on the way from Minneapolis to the Missoula Barn Theater.

Traveling in the bustling oil-spoiled area can be dangerous to anyone but drug dealers & pimps, but seventeen intrepid reporters, armed only with fully-charged iPhones, attempted one day last winter to set the record straight or at the very least set a record for straight men.

Fracking, or, as it is commonly known in the oil industry, "anal earth rape," continues to promote the economies of the areas in which it is used, as well as enriching the pocketbooks of the thirteen white men who own the World Oil Cabal, while also hastening the imminent demise of all life on earth.  Professor of Fracking at the University of North Dakota, Fracksburg, told the Associated Press in a strangely drooly manner that "This is the answer to all our prayers.  Have you been to North Dakota?  Now we're getting wi-fi!  & it's all thanks to fracking!  Frack you, tar sands!"

Meanwhile, the sixteen journalists, after mourning the loss of one of their own to a spectacular parked RV accident, decide to walk the length of the proposed Keystone Pipeline because it is the shortest way to get to their motel.  Environmentalists accompany them, &, in a surprising turn, mug them near the railyard & steal all their microphones.  One camera operator who is there recalls, "So much graffiti...  All that graffiti on the trains...  I used to love trains, I used to love graffiti...  But there's just so much.  Also, hobo prostitutes.  So many hobo prostitutes with prosthetics!"

It's far too early to say when it's far too late for people who once wished to watch the glacier in Glacier National Park melt away to reveal lots & lots of oil, but for this fiercely independent state, which will never suck as much as South Dakota, the attention it is now getting, from the media, from oil company moguls, from Alexander Payne, from a couple of attractive teenage tourists driving through Kearney, is ensuring that for the near-future, the entire state will, for once, have something to talk about.

UPDATE: the Minneapolis "Corny Shakespeare Players" hitched a ride with a trucker named Louise, who frankly believed that Christopher Marlowe wrote all Shakespeare's plays, & made it to Missoula in time to perform their "mash-up" All's Well That Ends Hamlet to a drowsy Tuesday night audience of seventeen, with only twelve of them being volunteers at the Barn Theater.

Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Sonnet

Methinks it's time to visit the dentist;
My teeth feel odd & in need of a clean.
Too long cavities my mouth have menaced -
My teeth should have a mien of glean & sheen.
What's this? Oh no! The doc's office has closed!
I must now look up my insurance plan -
This is not something to which I'm disposed:
Visiting dentists to find the best man
Or woman - I know, there's plenty of them;
But my hygienist I think I'll miss most.
Her hands treated me like jeweler does gem,
In her work she was happily engrossed.
My teeth feel weird, enamel to socket -
I'd hate to have to pay out of pocket!