Blue Fish Canoe has traumatic experience with the general public

About once a year I become overwhelmed with a sense of patriotic duty and I eat fast food. (Go ahead. Gasp. And depending on your socio-economic-o-cultural leanings you may gasp at either the high frequency or low frequency of my fast food dining. Have your gasp and read on…)

This year I spontaneously chose Church’s Chicken, which is a nondenominational Brooklyn ghetto version of KFC and surprisingly the owners of the url, www.churchs.com. I wanted to exchange my money for a piece of chicken and a drink and be on my way. Of course this proved to be impossible. I could only order from a matrix of Value Meals with muffins, potato wedges, French Fries, chicken bits, and drinks from medium to bathtub sized. All meals cost in total over $5 and ended in weird non-whole number sums (eg. $5.72, $6.36 + tax), which was more than I wanted to spend—I could get real food for those sums. I brought my dilemma to the Church’s employee who, judging from his accent and look, may have been a recent immigrant from Africa. He told me of a secret value meal that allowed me to get a piece of chicken and a muffin for $3.21 if I agreed not to get a drink. I accepted. Just before he rang up the $3.21 he asked me if I wanted to Juraso-size the drink that I did not order. Then, despite the whole premise of this exchange resulted from not wanting a drink, a white woman’s voice came from nowhere and asked me the same question, if I wanted to Juraso-size the drink. The voice interrupted me as I was talking to the employee and totally freaked me out. It took me a second to get my bearings, but when I did I realized the voice was in fact not a white woman, but the cash register itself interrupting me. I declined the offer from the cash register.

I got my food and began to eat. I soon discovered the non-drink value meal was not a value meal at all, but a challenge-meal. Church’s chicken and muffins are 50% salt and nearly impossible to eat without a drink. I can only attempt to describe how dehydrating this experience was, but imagine having only a pile of extra salty pretzels to eat after a night of beer drinking after say, crossing the Sahara. For some reason I was determine to win the challenge-meal and I persevered. I finished learning a valuable lesson about turning down offers from cash registers. Looking back on it, I can say the chicken left me slightly nauseous and with a nagging taste in my mouth similar to what one might experience after licking a high school chemistry class beaker. The chemistry beaker flavor is now in its third day of persistence, but I must admit, at first the chicken tasted really good.

New Bar

About a month ago, my neighbor pointed out a new bar was opening up near us. Our neighborhood is in dire need of a new watering hole. All our spots either lack pool tables, or play terrible live bands, or have gone Eurotrash with bizarre purple lighting, metal chairs, and a constant stream of trance (when will trace die?) Now, horrifyingly, construction on the new bar has stopped. I’m willing to donate free time to get the place up and running in a Jimmy Carter, Spring Break over summer kind of way. I just spoke to my neighbor at the super market and he’s in. If anyone else wants pick up the old hammer and nail, contact me. (Some prior experience with these tools is not needed, and as of yet, undiscovered within our group.)

New Swing

I’ve revamped my swing in the off season. I was having trouble getting the bat head around last year and I found myself sending a lot of balls into the opposite field without much power. My new approach is to shorten my swing and imagine myself chopping down on the ball (thanks to hitting coach Corn Chips and Pie). Hopefully, I’ll be able to pull some more pitches in the odd picnic softball game or backyard waffle ball game I may play in this summer.

Toussaint jailed, Bluefish Canoe confined to carpet

I had my most recent argument over the justifiability of the transit strike last night. It was with a girl who I yelled at as she was leaving an otherwise very pleasant dinner party. She felt transit workers shouldn’t be making as much money as her with her education and important position at the Department of Health. I pointed out her problem should be with her boss, as opposed to supporting others getting screwed to somehow improve the relative worth of her own salary. I also brought up my standard under-reported point that the TWU has every reason to oppose changes to its pension plan because the city openly spends workers pension money (or “monies”—the term favored by moron city officials) on whatever the city feels like assuming they can pay it back later, and now, of course, they may not be able to repay future workers. Subsequently, I got drunk and stoned and passed out on my friend’s floor after the contents of my stomach had demanded immediate exit—I may not be the best spokesperson for the cause though it’s valid nonetheless. In a short time Roger Toussaint will be going to jail for 10 days for leading the strike. Here’s what Toussaint had to say about the sentence. As always he carried himself like a gentleman.

The Jammys

It's time. This Thursday is the sixth annual Jammy awards, an award show for Jam Bands. All the jammers will be there, including remaining members of the Dead, members of Phish, the String Cheese Incident, Moe, and some drummers from Africa displayed like museum exhibits. Remember, if you are at the show and anyone questions your dankness pause and then announce "the system is so fucked up, man... People are just going to revolt... Man… When the war breaks out I’ll be living in a cave in Colorado, strumming a homemade string instrument, and politely asking a bear poop if I can eat it [then bob your head knowingly agreeing with your own comment]."

In the tradition of this genre, the Jammies have been known to go from 8:00 to early in the morning. I would gladly dine on said bear poop rather than attend.

Politico Graphs

For those fellow political graph lovers I recommend this site (sometimes I don't know which word to attach the hyper link to--is it obvious?)

Prof. Tom's

The baseball season is on and turned up to 11. A friend of mine, Mike Murphy, predicts the Brewers will surprise everyone and win their division. I predict nothing outside the usual tears, conflicts with befuddled significant others, and all around unholy waste of time.

Rumor has it that a new ex-pat Sox bar called Professor Tom's has displaced the Riviera as a home-away-from-home for Sox fans in NYC. I hear it’s owned by a former Riviera bartender who walked out of his job in the West Village after the Yankee fan owner of the Riviera torn down a pro Red Sox banner. If this is true, it is a tremendous story--a coup d'etat of the first order. If it’s BS concocted by the owner of Professor Tom’s to drum up business or just fuck with people, then I respect it even more.

Sox

A lot people have been approaching me and offering their congratulations recently and I must say I appreciate it. I assume they’re referring to the Red Sox early lead in the AL East (although some say they’re talking about the engagement or grad school etc…) Again thank you. Red Sox = 5 and 1 and first place. Yankees = 2 and 4 AKA last place. David Ortiz just signed a 4 year contract extension, and Bluefishcanoe doesn’t fear fame either (thinly veiled snotty comment directed towards CornChipsandPie).

Questionpro

I don’t totally comprehend what this means, but the podcast now has a corporate sponsor, questionpro. Questionpro is software that helps one create online questionnaires, and is in fact the only software I would ever dream of using for such a task.

Cheney Resignation Pool Rises Again

I can't tell if it's the new format or if this is just riotous news cycle, but the nytimes.com has been on fire today. The Tiktaalic (your welcome), bird flu in Scottish foul, new parts of the Bible discovered (Judas was cool?), and now Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff and right hand hack, testifies that Bush via Cheney okayed the leaking of classified information. Evidence directly linking Bush to the leak after all Bush’s pledges to sniff out the real leaker—what a day!

Bush has a way out though. Scooter testified that Cheney suggested to him that Bush gave a green light on leaking classified information; not that Bush contacted Scooter directly. Cheney and Bush can say that Cheney had misinformed Libby regarding permission from Bush. Thus Cheney takes some responsibility for the disgrace, Cheney steps down and joins Ollie North as hero of right wing psychopaths, and Greg K. wins the Cheney Resignation Pool. It’s not over yet but this is undoubtedly the perfectly cooked, medium rare, steak from Peter Luger with sides of creamed spinach and German potatoes of Cheney Resignation Pool tips.

Oil Can Update

The Can will be pitching for the Nashua, NH, Pride this season after avoiding jail time on assault charges. The manager for the Pride, former Red Sox manager, Butch Hobson, personally worked to bring the Can aboard. We can contrast Boyd with Doc Gooden who faces jail time for using coke (yes of course Gooden still has 86).

All indications seem to suggest Oil Can will continue to refer to himself in the third person during interviews. For example:

I am the Can, and I'm going to come right at you with my best [stuff]. If you can hit, I want to see how far Bo Jackson can hit the Oil Can.

- Oil Can Boyd after giving up a 500 ft homerun to Bo Jackson

Kyle's Job

The podcast is now fully operational: http://kylesjob.net/.