Author: Dick

What’s next in your meal, Rollie Fingers? 

What is going on with all these fingers turning up in people’s foods? First it was the infamous “chili finger” at Wendy’s in California. More recently, Brandon Fizer accidentally lopped off the top of his finger while working with a mixing machine in a dessert shop in North Carolina. A customer found the digital prize in his custard and refuses to give it back. Apparently, the finger is pointing its way toward a lawsuit against the shop.

I wonder if any restaurant will have the sense of humor or the guts to do something with this recent spate of finger food? Will someone’s menu include “Anna’s Chili-covered Chicken Fingers?” (Chicken really don’t have fingers, you know) The entree would be quite a tribute for Anna Ayala, who found the finger in Wendy’s and was arrested for allegedly perpetrating a hoax. I don’t know if any food item has ever been named for Rollie Fingers, the baseball hall of fame pitcher from the 70s whose handlebar mustache appeared as if it lived in a different area code.

I can certainly understand fingers or parts of fingers being accidentally introduced into foods at restaurants. With some of the cutlery and machinery you really have to keep on your toes to keep all your fingers. I have fantasized being a chef, but I probably would be the one without all 10 of his fingers. I don’t know how many times I have sliced myself open while chopping something. My cookbooks look like a crime scene.

It’s pretty mean that the guy who got the finger with his custard, one Clarence Stowers, didn’t give it back once he was notified that it belonged to the 23-year-old Fizer. From what I gather, doctors could have re-attached the part.

Yeah, I know it’s not pleasant to find anything floating about in your food. I certainly would have demanded free custard from that shop from then on — provided of course if I could ever eat custard again.

But you know, in the grand scheme of things, there are a lot worse things you could find in your restaurant order than a finger. You could find a small nuclear bomb in your taco salad, for instance, and perhaps jostling it around with your spoon could take out that entire side of town. Or perhaps you might finally find Jimmy Hoffa in your pasta primavera. Now that wouldn’t be pleasant.

Just look on the bright side. Smile, smile, smile and keep your hands where I can see them.

Willie: Ask not for who the road tolls 

My heroes have always been long-haired, scruffy musicians, who don’t much give a damn. Take Willie Nelson. He’s an all-American hero. Came up from poverty and church singing in Abbott, Texas, screwed up most of his life, sings like Bob Dylan swallowed tree frogs, plays an old, beat up guitar that was probably found on Noah’s ark, but still turns out some of the most soulful music this side of Nacogdoches. He’s lost his ass to the IRS, found it again, got busted in Hewitt, but for reasons that he’d rather not disclose (to paraphrase “Me and Paul”) and now he shows his real mettle by telling the state of Texas to stick their toll roads where nothing good grows.

State Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos of Austin proposed that the new toll road around his fair city be named the “Willie Nelson Turnpike.” But Nelson, through his lawyer, reportedly declined the offer saying such a gesture didn’t exactly fit his style or “world view.” I think I may have read that he also didn’t relish the idea of people cussing his name every time they have to pay tolls to use the road. Willie chalks it all up to politics, which is about the only reason anyone ever names a road after someone.

Even though I wrote in the newspapers quite a bit about Gov. Rick’s “Trans Texas Corridor” proposal, which would let private companies build and own their own roads, I still don’t know enough about the details to determine if its good or if it is crooked (those usually are the choices when it comes to government contracts). A lot of the plan is heavily dependent on toll roads and if that’s the future, it kind of makes you wonder what the hell the state and federal government has been doing with your tax-funded highway dollars all these years. And no, I’m not just now wondering that!

It’s nice to hear about someone not getting caught up in flattery and his own celebrity, especially when the gesture involves a project that could potentially have us all shedding dollar bills like rattlesnake skins.

I came back from an hour’s walk and was going to check my e-mail before I took a shower. Then I was overcome by an attack of RSS. What is RSS? I don’t really know for sure. The acronym is not even very lucid. Here is how my RSS platform, FeedBurner explains it:

“RSS” stands for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, and/or Rockdale, Sandow, and Southern (Railroad) (if you trust the good folks at AcronymFinder.com Really Simple Syndication is probably the most widely agreed-upon choice. As far as we are concerned, all three acronyms do an inadequate job of describing what RSS actually is: RSS is a standard for publishing regular updates to web-based content.

I’ll say the acronyms do an inadequate job. But I got to reading about RSS, and putting off that shower I so badly need, because it appears from what I read that RSS is the best thing since Al Gore invented the Internet. It beats me. I don’t know if it is comparable to HDTV or cassettes making the 8-track obsolete. All that technology and I still don’t have my own flying car! And I don’t know about this RSS hocus-pocus. But I’ll read more about it and see if makes me any younger and/or better looking. In the meantime, I know that taking that shower will at least make me smell better.

Would you give an old catfish a hand? 

I was checking out some river in Arkansas last year and came across a mysterious road sign that I had forgotten until today. It said: “No Noodling.”

I wondered what the hell that meant, but never thought to ask anyone. It all came back to me today when I saw story about how the state of Missouri is establishing an experimental noodling season this summer. Noodling is handfishing. It’s actually legal in a few states including parts of Arkansas and in Oklahoma. I read the Georgia Legislature is considering legalization of noodling. The “sport” is called hogging in some places. Why it is called noodling is lost to history “but it is speculated that it comes from the slippery nature of the catfish, which can feel like a wet noodle,” according to Discover the Outdoors

My first recollection of anyone even talking about handfishing was about eight years ago when I was eating jambalaya and drinking beer with a bunch of older Cajun men in Vinton, La. One of the fellows hailed from somewhere exotic like Ville Platte or along the Bayou Lafourche. He told about how, as a kid, he would jump into the bayou and stick his hand in an underwater stump then pull up a big old catfish. I wish I could recount the story word-for-word as it was quite colorful.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but just sticking your hand in an underwater stump sounds quite insane if not downright dangerous. Basically, noodling uses your hand for catfish bait. And some of those old cats can weigh 100 pounds or more. But it nonetheless seems to be a sport some want to engage in, maybe after some 20 beers, or a snootful of “Jesus in a Jar,” as one acquaintance used to call hooch.

Missouri’s experimental season imposes a bag limit of five catfish a day that are more than 22 inches long. Can you imagine using your hands to catch five catfish almost two-feet long in one day? It will be interesting to see down the road the number of old fishermen around those Missouri rivers who will bear the nickname “Stumpy.”

Al Edwards: Democratic donkey or bipartisan jackass? 

No attempt I can make at absurdity can match the stellar heights of ridiculousness reached Tuesday night by the Texas House of Representatives. A vote of 65-56 passed a bill that would ban cheerleaders from performing in sexually suggestive ways. That state legislative body has fast-tracked itself past what was once merely a governmental chamber of petty thievery and buffoonery to establishing itself as the Texas House of Imbeciles.

Rep. Al Edwards, D-Houston, the grand wazoo of House imbeciles and author of the bill, apparently believes butt-shaking high school cheerleaders constitute a major threat to Texas society. I guess one thing cheerleaders can be thankful for is the bill would only ban such routines. Edwards has sponsored legislation in the past that called for whacking off fingers of drug dealers.

Definition of what constitutes such offensive displays would be derived from the approach used by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to define obscenity in a landmark 1964 ruling. Stewart said, and I am paraphrasing here, he couldn’t tell obscenity from Oreos. “But I know it when I see it,” he said, meaning obscenity. I don’t know that we’ve actually succeeded in appointing a justice to the Supreme Court who is too stupid to know what an Oreo is. But I digress and am sure some would argue the point.

It isn’t a sure bet the Texas Senate will pass Edwards’ bill. Although that body also has its problems, the Senate does not normally go to such extreme lengths to exhibit pride in doltishness. But I’m sure even some of the Senate’s members will give it the old college try.