Zirealism

Okay.

In the future, all decisions will be made by a triumvirate of talking bass.

Looks like a rappelling robot-insect with a blow torch for a tail, attacking an overfiend Sea Bass.

Disturbing.

Hindus are fond of big juicy white grubs, perhaps bass like them, too. I was surprised that some fish like purple sugar-cured salmon eggs better than cheese salmon eggs. Some trout are fond of canned corn niblets. But nothing brings them damn fish to the surface like a stick of DuPont 90%! Ka-blooooie!

...but a catastrophic spill of Organophosphates is better!

One result of the drought here is that the tidal Potomac River has become somewhat saline in parts resulting in porpoises swimming up the river from the Chesapeake Bay. Looking up porpoises, I found that what I had bee calling "spinner dolhins" that I had chasing my fishing boat off the Oregon coast are actually Dall's Porpoises, they are black and white sort of like orcas but smaller.

like a shrimp

Who is doing the talking? Is it the shrimp? That seems hard becuase he has been impailed. Is it the fisherman? Thats more likly but less funny. Or is it the fish? If so, does he have a split personality, or does he just refer to himself in the thrid person? The questions one comes up with when readying thingsihate.

note that the worm's whorish come-ons will actually only result in its own demise... if you think about it neither of them can help themselves... so who's being cruel? i blame the fisherman, a.k.a. God. or the media. or l. ron hubbard, or whatever your higher power/excuse for human nature might be.

and say, where's jacques kitsch? and who's this fascinating chap mr. quackenbush who's suddenly appeared? how odd

Kitsch has morphed into Mr. Quackenbush. I think that the next morph will be to Quarkenbosch, which fulfills my needs for teutonic tekkiness. But for the moment, Mr. Quackenbush makes me grin; a character in-development.

Should we have some sort of memorial service for Mr. Kitsch?

So, Darkness, you're a charcoal man, eh? I suppose it fits the name and all. I accept your challenge. I will meet you at high noon tomorrow by the Lewis Carroll statue in Central Park. No pencils. Charcoal.

The charcoal guys, they call the carbonieri. No, don't cry for me, Argentina.

Ha! Well, I don't know nothing about no carbonieri, but the Carabinieri of Italy are polizia I wouldn't want to face with just a piece of charcoal. For those who don't know, I think they're named after the historical fact that they were issued carbines.

I laugh because my trip to Italy with a group of my father's art students was the last time I wielded charcoal on a daily basis, and also because it was my introduction to the Carabinieri. Literally as I stepped off the plane and into customs, one of them waved me away from my group (probably not liking the all-black BDU-and-beret look I had unwisely adopted for that day, which probably made me look like a poster-boy for Basque seperatism or something.) Only some quick footwork on my father's part convinced them I should not, in fact, be detained for a full cavity search or something. I laugh about this now, but then I think about it, and the memory of being waved away or toward ANYTHING with the muzzle of a fully-automatic snub-nose machine gun - the unofficial mark of the Carabinieri - by someone wearing a rather snappy uniform induces a queasy, clenching feeling in the pit of one's belly. If we equipped New York police like this, for example, I think the crime rate would plummet.

i always find mediterranean police kind of scary... not because they're intimidating, but because they're twitchy, poorly-shaven youths with silly, ill-fitting valet parking uniforms and firearms. just the white leather holsters and epaulets and junk the italian police have... i get the feeling i'm being policed by hormone-filled Napoleonic soldiers itching to pillage something. U.S. cops are physically gigantic but far more predictable in comparison.

I find it much more a source of spine-icing terror when I am stopped by inevitably clean-shaven, weight-lifting, mirror-shaded, jackbooted State Police on the NJ Turnpike. In bright sunshine it suddenly feels like you're in a dark alley in which you have been told that, somewhere, there is a rabid dog.

The carbonieri were more than the suppliers of fuel for heat and cooking, they were also sort of a benevolent association. They sold to those who could afford to buy, but they gave free fuel and food to widows and orphans, and those upon hard times. Because they were sooty fellows, the mark of being under the protection of the carbonieri was a black handprint on your door.

It's not the impaled shrimp luring them both to their untimely demise (although at that point, what's the shrimp got to lose? May as well take a bad-ass bass down with him.). It's the carp's own id talking to him, that part inside all of us that beckons us to do thing we know are harmful. It's the voice the junkie hears in the alleys, the drunk hears at the bar, and the thingsihate poster hears at the keyboard. Smooth, seductive, whispering gently in our ears while her long red-painted fingernails stroke the backs of our next, saying, "Come on, you know you want it." Powerless, we succumb. One more hit, one more drink, just one more post. Oh, yes, that's it. Then darkness.

Not "backs of our next," backs of our NECKS. Sounds close though.

this is a pots about torlling!?!?

Maybe if the fisherman was using a net. So to speak.

Real men catch fish using only the strength of will and psychic force.

And beer. You never been fishing?

I'm drowning worms!

What about the old saying "the carbon is mightier than the carbine?"

i had a teacher last year named mr quackenbush for a science course
.....

Why wasn't he DOCTOR QUACKENBUSH, or PROFESSOR Q.

Have you ever noticed what happens when you hold down both shift keys to type an upper case letter?

got your credit in a mess? call 1-800-get a mess

that's my favorite song

FISH ARE FUNNY!

I may have a have a short attention span but I