Cleaning out the Notebook

I keep a little notebook in my car in which to jot down ideas I get while driving.  I do quite a bit of driving, and instead of concentrating on traffic or road signs or speedometers or police sirens, I allow my mind to drift over facts and ideas both great and small. I ruminate, cogitate, consider and contemplate while my left turn signal blinks away. Then, upon coming to a red light, I pull out the notebook and jot down a few sentence fragments or key words in order to save what my mind has wrought. My intention is to later turn these fragments into Fishbrick gold.  Unfortunately, what is written all too hastily in my notebook does not always jog my memory, and I'm left trying to figure out just what it was I was trying to convey.  And it's not just because my handwriting is awful or that the color of crayon I've used is hard to read.  It probably has more to do with the dreamlike state of mind I was in when I wrote down these fleeting thoughts, coupled with a memory devastated by years of television watching and poor nutrition.  Nonetheless, I will try to mine the nuggets of gold hidden in these scribbled notes and pass them on to you, my long-suffering reader(s).

Hot pizza mouth  Not sure what I meant to say here.  I think it must have something to do with the fact that pizza generally goes in one's mouth and is usually eaten while still hot.  Not a great start.  Let's move on.

Stop labeling everybody  What I believe I meant here is that some tee shirts have labels that irritate the back of the neck.  Hardly seems worth mentioning.

Back on the glod standard  This one has to do, I think, with the quality of glod being too variable these days and the need to adhere to a uniform standard in its production.  I forget what glod is, though.

Free market is so much better  The idea here could be that some of the grocery stores in town charge too much for their food and there should be something created like Cleveland's West Side Market, only it wouldn't require any payment for its produce.  I don't know what I was thinking.  That seems like a formula for disaster to me.  Next.

Believe 10 reasons  Here we may be considering the idea that I believe 10 reasons.  But reasons for what I cannot recall.  Probably would have made a thought-provoking read.

Sandwich! Sandwich! Sandwich!  I don't know if I was thinking about the celebrated Earl of Sandwich, to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude, or if I was simply feeling a tad hungry at the time.  My guess is that it had nothing to do with the Earl.  

Slush fund disgrace  A slush is something you can get at some ice cream stands.  It's a tasty treat for sure.  Maybe the point here is that parents should not bankroll their children's hankering for such unhealthy snacks.  I'm not sure why such a thought would have occurred to me, but it must have.

Evolution debate  Here the idea may have been to chronicle the history of the formal debate, citing examples such as the Lincoln-Douglas debates and perhaps contrasting it with the format and quality of today's political debates.  Sounds like really dry stuff.  Why would I write about that?

Democracy is not ralph  The handwriting on this note was not great.  Maybe the point here was that Ralph does not represent the average man, or that Ralph was not elected on the up and up.  There is nothing worse than a crooked election, as you know.  But I don't remember who the hell Ralph is.

Where are the trash cans?  This one was probably a lot deeper than the question indicates.  Trash cans is a metaphor for something.  Just kind of fill in the blanks and there you have the makings of an important idea.  It makes one think.

Just give me ten good men  I may have had an idea about forming a football team.  But why?  

Hobnobbing with aliens among us   This could have been a very interesting piece about learning to speak Spanish or something.  I suppose that's a good thing, but I don't know why I would want to write a blog about it.  

I'm getting rid of that stupid notebook.

Blank Spaces

Now that all the hubbub has died down concerning my last post about Christmas music at CVS, I can start my newest blog entry with an unnecessarily long sentence, like the one you are currently reading as you find yourself feeling more and more impatient in your approach to the much anticipated period, exclamation point or question mark, the pined-for punctuation heralding the end of the sentence, which, mercifully, comes now (though delayed, unfortunately for the reader, by the inclusion of some claptrap enclosed within parentheses).

Having disposed of that mess, let us continue on and greet the new year with a new blog entry. I am trying something different this year. From here on, I shall transition from the end of one sentence to the beginning of the next with only one blank space. Apparently such is the cool thing to do these days. Up until the current century, it was universally considered proper in formal prose such as term papers, magazine articles, books, and greeting cards to always end a sentence with two blank spaces. These days, however, the winds of change have blown in a new way of doing things: it is now acceptable to use but one space after a sentence. And, as the world around them crumbles into dust, Academia and the world of publishing are embroiled in the turmoil this change has caused. Vehement arguments are put forward by the two schools of thought in this controversy, each side submitting their respective arguments in long, formal jeremiads, each side shooting the number of blanks it deems proper to get their point across.

Would that the conflict were limited to the shooting of blanks, or just the written word. In fact, the debate has become so rancorous, I am told, that sporadic violence has broken out around the world.  There have been fist fights, hair pulling, gun battles, bomb throwings, flaming bags of dog manure left on front porches all in the cause of proper formatting. Interestingly, it is a little-known fact in the West that the recent upheavals in the Middle East began with two high school teachers in Egypt arguing on this matter of the blank spaces. I kid you not. The media have simply added their inevitable spin to the story to make it seem the people there are fighting for sweeping political and social change. Conspiracy theory? Do a little research yourself. Look at the facts before you dismiss me as being some kind of nut. Meanwhile, it might be a good idea to buy some ammo and a few days worth of supplies in case this thing gets out of hand here in America.

Happy New Year.

The Holiday Season at CVS

     Well, (never start an essay with well unless you are writing about an actual well) the Holiday Season has officially started.  Do you want to know how I know?  By the Christmas music I have been hearing at the local CVS drug stores for the past 11 weeks.  That's how I know.  When I hear Neil Diamond singing about Frosty the Red Nosed Reindeer while I peruse the shoelace selection in aisle 3, I know that October is almost half over and soon it will be Christmas time.  It gives me a real jolly holiday feeling.
      Because when I think of Christmas, the first thing that comes to mind is the great love that emanates from CVS corporate headquarters in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, pouring over me like harsh fluorescent light. And when I am bathed in fluorescent light, surrounded by overpriced Chinese child labor-made stuffed animals, overpriced wax-flavored holiday candy, bland greeting cards, and ten thousand commonplace, yet overpriced big-box drug store items, the first thing that comes to my mind is Christmas.
     The truth is that, quite aside from its being crassly commercial, completely insincere and borderline sinister, this forced holidayesque atmosphere they are attempting to create with the help of Barbra Streisand, the Carpenters, Gene Autry and myriad other musical greats and near greats is totally unnecessary because it is far too early for the true CVS Pharmacy Christmas shopper.
     Because, really, does anybody do their Christmas shopping at CVS or other such mega-pharmacies in the middle of autumn?  No.  The people who shop at CVS for Christmas are the ones who wait until 4PM on December 24th and rush over there and load their shopping carts with whatever they can grab:  book lights and foot massagers, nose hair trimmers and coffee mugs, wind-up flashlights and wart remover.  They then elbow aside all the other procrastinating losers, and make a beeline to the nearly picked-clean wrapping paper department, grabbing a few of the less ugly rolls of holiday paper. It doesn't even matter, at that point, what holiday is indicated on the paper; they'll take birthday paper, Easter paper, Arbor Day paper, whatever's left.  Then it's to the long checkout lines, where they can still pick up a few CVS gift cards for their hard-to-shop-for loved ones, and out the door with their newfound treasure.
    So why don't the good folks at the big building in Woonsocket, RI change their Christmas music policy and hold off playing it until Christmas Eve?  That way, I think, it will be so much more meaningful to their desperate Christmas shoppers.  And in the meantime, when I go in there for my daily flu shot, I won't have to listen to the stuff.

In Defense of the Gentleman

     For years I have been noticing a misuse of the word gentleman, particularly by police department personnel describing crimes and criminals to the news media.  Here is a typical example of what one such spokesman might say in an interview for the local television news:
"The gentleman climbed onto the roof of the building and proceeded to climb down the chimney to try to gain entry.  He got stuck about half way down.  The gentleman proceeded to yell obscenities as loud as he could until passersby heard him and called 911.  After we rescued him we found illegal drugs in his possession.  The gentleman is being booked for possession, drunk and disorderly, attempted breaking and entering, and he has warrants for several prior offenses."
     Now I don't think behavior of this type warrants the use of the term gentleman.  When I think of a gentleman, I picture a well dressed man having dinner in a fine restaurant with his matronly, jewel-bedecked wife. His top hat and evening gloves have been set aside by the subservient wait staff; his monocle glints with the light of the crystal chandelier.  His ivory-handled walking stick leans in the corner behind him; his spats and high-necked collar bespeak class and sophistication.  After dinner, he and his wife stroll to the theater as he smokes his cigar.  She is wearing a sable coat and he a cashmere topcoat to keep out the evening chill.
      Is this really the type of person who would strip down to his acid-washed jeans and shimmy down a chimney with a pocket full of meth and liquor on his breath?  Would he so quickly cast aside his social standing and his prestige in the business world to boost a few car stereos at 3AM?  Are we to believe that upon leaving the theater he made an excuse to his wife, sent her home in a hansom cab and went across town to wallow in an underworld of petty crime and criminal mischief, like a cut-rate Mr Hyde?  No, I think we can safely assume that our gentleman would do no such thing.  He is no reverse Santa Claus.  He didn't build his empire by going down chimneys and stealing other people's property.
     But, just as sure I am that the man inside the chimney is not wearing a shirt, I am equally sure that the next police spokesman I see on TV will refer to him as a gentleman.  They do it all the time. Just watch the news and pay attention to the first police spokesman you hear describing the latest criminal incident.  He will invariably mischaracterize the culprit as a gentleman.   It bothers me because it not just imprecise, but incorrect.  The correct term in the case above would be a word like individual or perpetrator, or suspect or fellow, or guy or dirtbag, sleazeball, dim bulb, criminal, lowlife, genius, ignoramus, or any of 20 other words.  The shirtless guy stuck in the chimney is anything in the world but a gentleman.
      Any time a police spokesman refers to a perpetrator as a gentleman, he should have to personally apologize to all the esteemed gentlemen in cashmere overcoats and top hats who have earned the appellation of gentleman by their hard work, gracious bearing, generosity, and clean, white spats.

Big changes at Fishbrick.

I just added some widgets or gidgets or wadgets to the blog to make it blend in more with other modern blogs.  I now have a list of my followers (shout out to Monica); there is a place for enthusiastic readers to click now if they want to share my glittering insights with their Twitter followers or Facebook friends.  I have added a poll question for Monica to answer.  I've also slightly changed the title font and size and darkened the background color of the blog..  All of these changes were easy to do.  What I cannot do is fix the white block around my fishbrick such that it doesn't block the right hand side of the border.  It looks stupid.  But I cannot change it.  Maybe next week's poll question can be about stupid design flaws in my blog's layout.  I will think of a way to phrase it meanwhile.  In the meantime, here are some interesting links:

Monkeys in hats
Remove gum from your hair
Giants
Amazing octopus video

Suggested Olympic Events

The Vancouver Winter Olympiad continues in the tropical climes of British Columbia.  We all have our favorite moments at these olympics.  I personally enjoy watching the hair dye on Al Michaels' head, and also the downhill skating is great.  But most of the sports exhibited at the olympics are events that most Americans do not or cannot participate in.  I mean, when was the last time you and your so-called friends went out for a night of curling or ski jumping.  In fact, have you ever met a person or met a person who met a person who knew somebody who curls?  Such people are as plentiful as leftover beers at one of my one-man parties.  I think the Winter Olympics (am I right to use capital letters?) should include winter sports that the average joe (should I use a small letter?) can relate to.  Consequently, I have made a short list of events that I think ought to be included in the next Winter Olympics. 

• The windshield scrape.  Participants are timed while they scrape thick ice off their windshields using a cheap, five inch long, Chinese-made ice scraper that they purchased at a drugstore.
• The fall on ice and nonchalant recovery.  Participants are judged in how quickly they can get up from a nasty slip on the ice and act like they never fell.  Extra points are awarded for convincing the judges that there is no severe pain..
• The driveway shovel race.  Participants are made to shovel heavy, wet snow sufficiently to allow their cars to back out of the driveway.  The object is to shovel the least amount of snow that will allow the car to be dislodged from the driveway.
• Icicle dodge.  Participants stand under five foot icicles and must dive out the way of certain death as random icicles are thrown down upon them.
• Gas bill cursing.  Participants are judged on how they react to astronomically high cold weather gas bills.  Points are awarded for decibel level and creativity. 
• The jogger slalom.  Participants drive their cars down a simulated snow-covered city street and avoid  joggers who feel they must run in sub-zero weather on narrow snow-covered streets.
• The snow shovel fling.  Participants must shovel a 50 yard driveway in their pajamas.  When they have finished, an Olympic snow plow proceeds down the street and deposits an eight foot high pile of snow at the base of the driveway.  Participants are judged on how far they can throw their shovels toward the retreating snow plow.  Style points can be earned for creative curse words, guttural wails of agony, and for sobbing.  Genuine tears are a plus.

The Year in Fishbrick

It's time for the annual year-end review of Fishbrick. It has, of course, been a hectic year here at Fishbrick, filled with highs and lows, controversy, laughs, information and hubris. I must say it was probably the most interesting year in the history of Fishbrick, and, as difficult as it was, I'd probably do it again (although it would probably kill me). So, without further McGoo, let us relive some of the highlights in this year of Fishbrick.

January
The new year started out with a bang in typical Fishbrick fashion with my ten-thousand word attack on pears, the upshot being that I hate pears. I'm still getting hate emails from the zealots at the National Pear Board. They'll never change my mind.

In most years, that would be enough for one month, but I felt particularly energized after the pear piece and posted a short satire on the mentally ill. I was, to say the least, surprised at how many people seemed to take umbrage with my ridicule of so-called 'defenseless' people. Come on folks. Get serious. Are there really no computers or typewriters in the loony bins?

Like all of America, I got caught up in the euphoria of the Barack Obama inuaguration. So, naturally I contributed to the media frenzy with my article about the number of fat people I saw in the Inauguration crowd. If memory serves me correctly, the percentage of fat people in the crowd was about normal. I think that says a lot about Obama supporters.

February
The shortest month of the year was a slow month here at Fishbrick, due primarily to the injuries I sustained in a vicious attack by a crazed, pear-wielding Obama supporter. I never did figure out just what his beef was, but he's got to be one of my least favorite brothers-in-law.

At the end of the month, sufficiently recovered from my injuries to sit down again, I posted an ode to the egg, nature's perfect egg-shaped food. This hard-hitting expose was recognized by the Egg Board of Canada with one of their coveted Yolkee Awards. They partially paid my airfare to Saskatoon, where they hold their awards banquet. The Yolkee Award is quite a heavy little trophy for its size, and owing to that fact, and the fact that I had eaten the egg-themed dinner without the benefit of a napkin, which somebody stole from me, the trophy slipped from my buttery fingers as I accepted the award and it broke the foot of the emcee. His subsequent shrieks of pain drowned out the first ten minutes of my acceptance speech. But it's all good.

March
March was supposed to be the month wherein I ate nothing except canned chili for 31 days and give daily updates on my condition for the blog. The experiment did not go well, for by day four I had to do all my blogging from the toilet. It turned out to be a big waste of time anyway because, as loyal Fishbrick readers already know, due to technical issues none of my updates made it to the blog. Four weeks of violent gastrointestinal turmoil for nothing.

April
I couldn't actually move any of my limbs for the first three weeks of April, owing to the previous month's experiment. I did post one blog entry at the end of the month about bed sores. I don't think anybody read it.

May
By May Day I felt on top of the world again. I posted a well-received article about how cute kittens are, which I followed up with a less well-received article poking fun at stutterers. People are hard to figure sometimes.

May's Fishbrick output was cut short abruptly when the gosh-darned Yolkee Award fell off the mantel while I was taking down the Christmas stockings, hitting me on the back of my head and, ironically, raising a bump about the size of an egg. The subsequent double vision and nausea prevented my posting anything on the blog for the next few weeks.

June
June is a-bustin' out all over, and unfortunately, so was my front tooth after a particularly violent sneeze. It was a freak occurence, not likely to happen again in this lifetime.

After getting that taken care of, and listening to a stern lecture about gum disease from my stuttering dentist (tee-hee), I was ready for blogging again. My first and most controversial article of the month concerned Barack Obama's propensity to whistle the letter s at the end of words. The controversy had to do with my adamant support of that whistled s and the desire to see more of our political figures employ that particular speech enhancement.

I also that month wrote about my abortive attempt to obtain a part in a local community theater play. I still feel a pang of guilt every time I drive by the smoldering ruins of that place. But once they rebuild, I fully intend to audition there again, of course this time without the pyrotechnics.

July
Fishbrick's highlight for the month of July has got to be the posting about not wearing flannel during the summer. People loved the insights and fresh perspectives of that blog post. I rode the crest of that wave for a while.

July was also the month for me to take the old laptop to the baseball game, to try my hand at amateur sportswriting. Unfortunately an errant fly ball in one fell swoop took out both the laptop and my new front tooth, so the sportswriting experiment had to be put on hold for a while.
The worst of that was having to see my stuttering dentist again and not laugh while he has his hands in my mouth.

August
This was going to be the month I wrote about how eager I was for the return of NFL football and the possible resurgence of the Cleveland Browns as contenders in the AFC North. However, the Fishbrick football preview never happened because the stupid Yolkee Award rolled off the mantel, simultaneously smashing to smithereens both my new laptop and my glass-top coffee table. If I never see Saskatoon again, it'll be too soon.

September
No activity this month for Fishbrick as I could never get access to a computer terminal at the library. And I had some great plans, too. I wanted to post something to commemorate Spittoon Appreciation Day, and I also wanted to post my annual rumination on the arrival of autumn and the return to my house of the bats.

October
Under an assumed name I won a part in a play at another local theater. I thrilled the Fishbrick loyalists with tales of behind the scenes life in the theater. I wrote of how the actor's life is not all glamour and applause and that my having to clean out the bathrooms and take out the trash there is typical stuff we do; of how putting up with the withering criticisms of the director, the smirking and ridicule of fellow cast members and physical and mental torment from the wardrobe lady is par for the course in an actor's experience. It would have been all worth it, of course, to finally appear on stage and dazzle the audiences with my acting prowess, but I never got a chance to get on stage, as one night I fell or was pushed down the stairs while delivering sandwiches and coffee to the cast and crew. Lucky for them they already had a guy doing my part in rehearsal.

November
November was a month to remember for Fishbrick. It started with another article about pears and how awful they are. More hate mail from the National Pear Board.

My next notable posting was about how my surgically repaired front tooth causes me to whistle whenever I say s. People were very sympathetic to my plight. And President Obama himself dropped me a message of commiseration.

Fishbrick's yearly Thanksgiving Day article was about how canned chili is an excellent replacement for turkey for those who are tired of doing the same old thing every year. I was actually able to pour the chili into a mold and thus serve canned chili that was more or less shaped like turkey. I received some enthusiastic comments from some of my readers, who generally tend to be more gustatorily sophisticated than the average Joe.

December
The arrival of winter usually entails the building of fires in my fireplace. And this year was no exception. I always like to post articles on Fishbrick about fire safety and the proper way to build and maintain a nice fire. However, as I was building my first fire of the year in early December the Yolkee Award slipped from its moorings and fell directly onto my left hand, which was at the time reaching for the poker. I know for a fact that I screamed louder and longer than the Yolkee Award presenter did at the banquet. But the upshot is that I am having to type everything with one hand, so I have necessarily cut back on blogging this month.

All in all it has been a splendid year for Fishbrick and me. I hope next year is as varied and interesting as '09 was. And I hope you come and visit this blog just as often as you need to.

Booster Seats!

Alright then, I believe I have come up with a new topic. It took me awhile to decide, but after extensive consultation with my astrologer, I have decided to write about the following subject.


The Ohio General ASSembly has just passed a new law requiring booster seats in vehicles for children under 4 feet 9 inches tall. This is to make up for the deficiencies inherent in the current design of automobile lap and shoulder belts for people of small stature. It's about time! It's hard to believe any Ohioan has survived into adulthood without there being such a law in the past. How different our history would have been if the intrepid pioneers of America's past had had booster seats in their covered wagons and Model T's.
Now, with this long-awaited law, if you are stopped for some reason by an officer of the law and your child is booster seatless, you can be fined from $25 to $75. The added expense and inconvenience of the new mandate for parents and people who occasionally drive kids is offset by the potential gains to be made by those who buy stock in booster seat-producing companies. I'm sure that now in China there is great jubilation among lead miners who will be mining the material which the factories will be using to make the new booster seats.

But is a simple booster seat sufficient humiliation -- er, protection-- for grammar school kids? Can't our wonderful, benevolent, all-wise and underpaid legislators mandate more rigorous measures to ensure our children's well-being and happiness as we drive them to and fro upon Ohio's non-pockmarked roads and highways? I think so. I hope so. I foresee a time when Officer Friendly, in pulling over an Ohio citizen for having a slightly dimmed license plate light or for going 40 in a 35 mph zone, will be able to cite the driver for more than just the lack of a booster seat. I hope to see a time when the irresponsible parent can be penalized for not dressing the child in flame retardant underwear and socks, for failing to equip the child with a Chinese-made crash helmet, for not providing each child under 4 foot 9 with a SafeCitizen Sippy Cup, for the youngster not wearing a hard rubber mouth guard to protect his or her vulnerable teeth, for not encasing the kids in bubble wrap and filling the back seat with styrofoam peanuts to help cushion the jarring of the inevitable traffic mishap. Such a time, unfortunately has not yet arrived in Ohio, but with more hard work by citizen activists and lazy politicians, that time will come.