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Show A2 The Emery County Review, Tuesday, May 27, 2008 The News Off The Beaten Path MUG SHOT D E DA Z LIGHTER SIDE Praying to the Fish Gods One Last Assignment James L. Davis There are basically four ways to look at fishing: Fishing as relaxation; fishing as a sport; fishing as a nap; and last but not least: Fishing as a religion. When I fish, I go in an attempt to fish and relax. All I need is a lake, a fishing pole, something to drink and a nice spot where I can sit and relax. Of course, when I do this I invariably fall asleep, which for me is a natural byproduct of relaxation. It is one of the reasons why I try and stay stressed when I am driving because if I am relaxed and driving I would advise you stay off the road, for your own protection. I fall asleep when I fish because actually catching a fish is only a small part of my plan. In reality if the fish are biting then after a time they interfere with my relaxing. For this reason I have been known to remove the bait from my hook. Fishing as a sport I must confess to not really understanding, perhaps it’s because I have a pretty narrow view of sporting events. To me, the only way that you can truly call fishing a sport is if the opposing side (aka: the fish) have an equal opportunity to win. On all of the television fishing shows that I have watched I have seen a great many professional fishermen giving tips on how to catch the big ones. They will hold up their fish, which always more closely resemble whales to me, and talk of the great sport of fishing. If I ever caught a fish the size they show on the sportsmen shows I would probably still be screaming, partly from excitement but in all probability a little bit from fear. A fish that size might not like having a hook in its mouth. One thing I have yet to see on those TV shows is a fish holding up one of the fishermen. So, if the fish had a chance of actually catching the fisherman, then I could go along with the concept of fishing as a sport. Fishing as a religion I have never experienced, but I have known many people who are followers of this religion, fanatically so. One of my old friends might even be considered a high priest in this religion. All you have to do is mention fish, and you begin to see his eyes glaze over as he enters some strange meditative state. His conscious mind wanders off to different times and places where the only thing there is to do is fish. He usually mumbles incoherently while in this state and if it were not for the drool that follows the mumbling, it might be more enjoyable to watch. Sometimes I help revive him from his trance by making sounds like a walrus. Fishermen do not like walruses because they are naturally better at fishing. When he is back in the conscious world, this follower of the Church of Fishing will begin to speak to you in tongues. Well, OK, it’s probably really not speaking in tongues, it might be Japanese. But I think it’s just English spoken with such excitement that the average person cannot adequately keep up with the flow of words. I have a theory that what my friend is doing when he speaks so rapidly and enthusiastically about fishing is reciting a litany, a prayer to the Mighty Fish Gods to please transport him away from work and to anyplace where there is water, fish and a fishing pole. Once I even entertained the thought of accompanying him on a fishing trip, but after careful consideration decided it might not be in my best interest. If, by chance, the fish are not biting, then my friend might be looking for a sacrifice to offer to the fish gods. Besides the four ways to look at fishing I mentioned earlier, there is one other, subcategory which can apply to all of the other three. This subcategory is called: Fishing With Your Children. Now fishing with your children differs from all other forms of fishing for one important reason, and it is this: When you fish with your children you don’t actually fish. You fix their lines, you fix their poles, you tell them to stay out of the water, but you don’t actually fish. When I was young my dad took me fishing with him, once. After hooking my coat, my dad’s arm, my brother’s lip and two little kids who happened to be walking by at an inopportune time, my dad sent me to the other side of the lake to fish. That was the first and last time I ever went fishing with him. While I was gone on the other side of the lake I believe my dad made sacrifices of some kind to the Fish Gods to curse me for ruining his fishing trip. It worked, apparently, because my own children have taken my abilities to ruin a simple fishing trip and expanded upon them to the point where fishing is no longer an easy way to get a nap in the middle of the afternoon, but an exercise in mind numbing terror about what body part might be impaled by your child’s fishing hook. I would pray to the Fish Gods for forgiveness, but I’m afraid they might want some sort of sacrifice. Students gave themselves one last assignment of extreme importance during the last week of school, namely, to get as many signatures in their yearbooks as possible. The next trick was to make sure that no parent actually had the chance to read any of the comments in the year books. Photo by Casey Wood Chuck Shepherd Lead Story -- A provision in Switzerland’s constitution recognizes the “dignity” of “animals, plants and other organisms,” and a federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Gene Technology declared in an April report that vegetation has “inherent worth” and that humans cannot exercise “absolute ownership” over it but must treat it morally, measured case-by-case. For example, the committee said a farmer’s mowing his field is acceptable, but not the arbitrary severing of a wildflower’s bloom. The committee would permit genetic engineering of flora, since plants would still retain the “autonomy” to reproduce on their own. Can’t Possibly Be True -- After officials in Batu, a tourist town in East Java in Indonesia, asked its massage parlors to make clear to customers that they are not houses of prostitution, one parlor owner created uniform pants for his women with a padlockable zipper, and “locks in” each masseuse in front of the client at the beginning of a session. Other parlor owners have followed along. A local women’s group representative complained that it is the customers, not the women, who need restraining. -- In April the Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome (which last year created a watch made from remnants of the Titanic) introduced the “Day&Night” watch, which unfortunately does not provide a reading of the hour or the minute. Though it retails for about $300,000, it tells only whether it is “day” or “night” (using a complex measurement of the Earth’s gravity). CEO Yvan Arpa said studies show that two-thirds of rich people “don’t (use) their watch to tell what time it is” anyway. Anyone can buy a watch that tells time, he told a Reuters reporter, but only a “truly discerning customer” can buy The Duplex NEWS OF THE WEIRD one that doesn’t. -- Progressive Mullahs: The Iranian government, treating addicts as people who need help rather than as criminals, agreed in April to install vending machines offering inexpensive syringes (at about 5 cents each) in five city welfare shelters in order to keep addicts from sharing needles and spreading AIDS and hepatitis. Iran blames its festering drug problem on its common border with opiumproducing Afghanistan. -- Women Certainly Are Different From Men: Sara Tucholsky, all 5-foot-2 of her, marshaled her strength for her first-ever fence-clearing home run in April, which would have given her Western Oregon University softball team the lead against favored Central Washington, except that she tore a ligament rounding first base. Since she was unable to move, by rule she (actually, a pinch-runner) would have had to remain at first base instead of circling the bases, but two Central Washington players picked Tucholsky up and carried her around the bases to allow her to get credit for the home run. “You deserve it,” one opponent said. “You hit it over the fence.” Kindness hurt; Central Washington lost, 4-2, and was eliminated from the playoffs. Inexplicable -- In April, according to police in Fort Pierce, Fla., Amity Joy Doss, 24, grabbed a young McDonald’s employee by her shirt to emphasize her dissatisfaction with service and demanded to the manager that she be fired. A call was made to police, and Doss wandered outside, climbed a tree, hung upside down by bended knee for a while, then descended and lay down on the hood of her car before re-entering the restaurant and asking if the girl had been fired yet. She was arrested on several charges. -- A 2007 decision of New York City’s Civil Service Commission reinstated a police officer even though NYPD has ruled him unfit for duty, in large part because he admitted to a “fear of dead people,” which the department had thought would make his job difficult. (However, in March 2008, a New York City judge overturned the commission ruling.) -- Angelique Vandeberg, 28, was arrested in May in Sheboygan, Wis., and charged with felony child abuse after her 8-year-old daughter reported that Vandeberg had intentionally shot her in the leg with a BB gun, leaving her unable to walk without difficulty, in order to win a $1 bet with her boyfriend. (Police said alcohol was involved.) It’s Good to Be a British Prisoner (continued) (1) A high-ranking official in Britain’s prison guards union said in a radio interview in April that the jails are so understaffed and poorly managed that in one (Everthorpe Prison, East Yorkshire), drug dealers actually put up ladders at night and come over the walls in order to sell drugs, and inmates routinely comment that drugs are easier to get inside than on the street. (2) The British government in January acknowledged that inmates in 2007 had been awarded the equivalent of over $250,000 in education “maintenance” grants, intended to provide such expenses as room and board for recipients of education loans. (The ministers said they would soon close that loophole.) Fetishes on Parade (1) CNN TV personality Richard Quest was arrested in New York City’s Central Park after curfew in April, with drugs in his pocket and a rope around his neck tied to his genitals, according to a New York Post report (which had no explanation of the purpose of the rope). (2) Firefighters responding to a burning house in Crystal Lake, Ill., in April were told by three people fleeing that another man was in the basement, chained by the neck to a post. When rescued, the man denied that anything was wrong. Said the deputy police chief, “We’re not really sure what everyone’s relationship in this is,” and consequently no one was charged. Least Competent Criminals -- Poor Ride-Management Plans: (1) Two teenagers were arrested in March and charged with highway shooting sprees near Waynesboro and Charlottesville, Va., that shut down Interstate 64 for six hours. Surveillance video suggested the perps got away in a 1974 AMC Gremlin, and the only one in the area belongs to the 19-year-old. (2) Three men were arrested in New Orleans in February and charged with possession of almost two pounds of marijuana after police were called to a car on fire, which they said started when the men stashed their dope under the hood, and it overheated. -- Recurring Themes: (1) Mr. Cash Burch, 24, was arrested in Waterloo, Iowa, in April after he broke into a truck and tried to start it but apparently ran down the battery doing so, which triggered a theft-prevention device that locked the doors, trapping him inside, where he was waiting when police arrived. (2) Justin MacGilfrey, 19, was arrested in February for the attempted robbery of a Circle K convenience store in Daytona Beach, Fla. The clerk had chased him from the store when he realized that MacGilfrey’s only “weapon” was a pretend gun he made using his finger and thumb. The Aristocrats! Officials at Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City, Philippines, apologized in April on behalf of at least six doctors and other personnel for laughing raucously during surgery and making a party video (that was later uploaded to YouTube) of the operating-room removal of a perfume canister from the anus of a male patient. Copyright 2008 Chuck Shepherd Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate. By Glenn McCoy |
