I took a luxurious couple of weeks off from work at the end of the year.  During that time I managed to clean out some really old papers from my filing cabinet.  (As a brief aside, I have owned this filing cabinet since I was about twelve.  I received it as a gift.  That I requested.  My mom will probably confirm this is true in the comments below.  I swear it did not seem odd at the time that a twelve-year old wanted a filing cabinet for Christmas.  Why, yes, I was a somewhat awkward and bookish kid, why do you ask)?  It felt really good to clean out the filing cabinet, so now I’m going to do the same thing with the crevices in my brain that store odd bits of thinking that I find amusing but could never quite get around to turning into a blog post.

This year we attended a “trick or treat” style festival at our kids’ school.  One young lad was dressed head to toe, including a mask, in a hazardous materials (haz-mat) outfit.  Just for fun, Laura asked him about his costume.  He replied (with a muffled mask voice), “I think I’m a spas-mat, but you’d have to ask my mom.”  Indeed.

Am I the only person in the world who when he hears the word “Budapest” immediately thinks of an insect infestation of Chinese religious statuary?

This paragraph is actually written to one specific young lady.  I don’t know her name.  I stood behind her in a line at a Nashville water park, waiting to return my locker key and win back my five dollar deposit.  In the course of a one-minute wait, I learned that her boyfriend, who at the time was engaged in a spirited and profane discussion with park employees, was named Chuck.  After Chuck departed the scene, his girlfriend apologetically explained to the employees that he was “only like that” when he had been drinking, which is also when he assumes his alter ego named “Chuck Nasty.”  I might add that after listening in context, I am fully confident that “Chuck Nasty” is an endearing moniker bestowed upon Chuck by Chuck.  I am also supremely confident that Chuck finds the whole “Chuck Nasty” concept more entertaining and clever than anybody who has met him, will ever meet him, or is generally sentient.  So I just wanted to drop this note in here on the off chance that the young lady might ever Google “Chuck Nasty” and stumble across this.  I have some important advice for her:  “You seem like a sweet, beautiful young lady.  Please, run.  Far.  Just run.  Off you go now.”

I have heard there is a method of cooking called “fusion,” in which two different types of cooking are combined (e.g. barbecue pizza).  I offer this next concept free for the taking for any entrepreneurial types, as a goodwill offering from my blog as a sincere attempt to improve economic conditions worldwide:  catfish sushi.

There is a similar concept to “fusion” cooking in the sports world.  You may be familiar with the biathlon, which is an Olympic event in which folks from snow-intensive countries race around on cross-country skis and pause periodically to fire weapons.  I can only presume (because I refuse to do the research) that the sport was founded when two guys named Lars and Sven got into an argument about whether “fight” or “flight” was the best way to escape a polar bear, and then their friends chose to honor their memories by combining both of their failed techniques into a goofy sport.  There is also a sport called “speed golf” which combines running and hockey.  (Just kidding – it actually combines running and curling).  I confess that my idea for a new sport is a blatant rip-off of speed golf, but I think it could be even bigger.  I’d call it “Fast-Bassin’.”  If you can imagine a bass fishing tournament mashed up with a 10K race, you pretty much get the idea.

One more sports idea while I’m on a roll.  Many distance runners are now equipped with GPS devices that they can wear like a watch.  Such devices tell them how far they’ve run, how fast, where they’ve wandered off to in a lactic-acid-induced stupor, etc.  So my idea is to host a high-school cross country meet in a huge fenced-in area.  The catch is that there would be a starting line but no finish line.  And no defined course.  The kids would each be outfitted with GPS devices linked back to a central computer.  After the gun fires, the first kid to travel 5K wins.  They would look like a bunch of gaunt free-range chickens just racing around out there.  I have raced in maybe seventy cross-country meets, and I’m telling you running in one of these every year would have been GREAT.

There is a commercial on TV in which some company brags about how all their cheeses are “hand crafted” or some such.  And while I appreciate artisan-ship as much as the next guy, the next time I’m staring at the cheese aisle in the grocery, I’m going to see that company’s logo and think, “I wonder how many craftsmen actually touched that cheese, and how strictly do they adhere to their company’s hand-washing policy?”  I’m going to imagine some sweaty worker’s thumbprint embedded in that cheese.  Now maybe at home I’d prefer a hand-crafted grilled cheese sandwich, but we’re talking about mass produced products here.  If John Henry taught us anything, it’s that sometimes using a machine isn’t such a bad idea.

OK.  That’s all for cleaning out the mental filing cabinet.  Talk to you again soon.  Happy 2011!