Oddly Enough Blog
News, but not the serious kind
Head out on the highway, take a swordfish with you…
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Blog Guy, I know you’re an expert on the animal kingdom, and I want you to settle a bet about swordfish with my step-son’s biology teacher. This teacher says that while swordfish are indeed fish, they do not travel by swimming.
Pay up, the teacher is right.
As you can see in this photo, swordfish travel on the back of motorcycles and motorbikes.
This is why swordfish have made noticeably more progress in the past hundred years than in their first 16 million years, when they mostly just floated around and waited for the internal combustion engine.
I really had no idea, Blog Guy. But how do the motorcycle riders know where to go to pick them up?
They are kept in big holding pens in the water.
Can’t the swordfish break out of the pens?
No, the pen is mightier than the sword.
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A Somali boy carries sword fish as he rides on a motorcycle taxi in southern Mogadishu, August 16, 2010. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
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Yes! You’ll be happy too, after you visit Dave’s seafood and goat cave emporium.
Plenty of free scooter and helicopter gunship parking right out front.
It’s a tuna!
As usual, your cutting remarks slash straight to the point, BG. You sure are sharp today.
Mr. B, I know you’re fishing for compliments here but I’ll take the bait: that last line is reel funny.
I was considering the same, AI79. Where is the sword part?
Nice one Nosmo. We are actually thinking of opening a face bar also…
Think about it. Anybody out there willing to invest?
As an incentive, consider that a society that condones this: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/world/ asia/17stoning.html?_r=1&src=tptw will be all about slipping a dollar into a burqa to see some face.
I did once Spin. Seemed like a nice guppy so I let it hitch a ride. Then I started getting poked in the back and I didn’t appreciate having a hole in my leather jacket. Or skin. Or lung. So I pulled off and told it “That’s it chum, this is as far as I take you!”
Lesson learned, never let anyone with anything sharp on them sit behind you on a motorcycle.
I agree with Al79 and MamaC326, them’s ain’t no swordfishes.
Hey Mr. B. can you open up a Goofey Face and Doughnut Museum next to Dave’s Seafood and Goat Cave Emporium? How awesome would that be??
Sure looks like tuna to me!
I did go through Spearfish, SD on my way to the Rally in Sturgis. Saw a little scooter running around like the one in the picture, too. Had to give props for the sheer chutzpa of the rider!
@lala … Ha! Ha!
I had fish tacos for lunch.
Is this the African version of the well known South East Asian game of ‘How many people can you fit on a moped?’
I hake fish puns. I can’t believe I had to read them in a plaice like this.
Watch out on the right! And, I agree, that looks like tuna, not swordfish – unless they removed the “sword”?
They weren’t mine, Crow. I was only responsible for Pen is mightier than the sword, which is word play, not a pun….
And let’s not forget fish puns are good for us, according to the U.S. Sturgeon-General….
That’s right Blog Guy, blame salmon else. For cod’s sake man…
Crow, I’m just too witty. That’s always been the albacore I wear around my neck….
I have to perch on the bench and sit this one out.
Holy mackerel, I almost missed one whale of a blog! I thought something smelt fishy but I won’t carp about it.
“Don’t be a bullhead; take the bait and join the Oddly Enough Blog.” There’s a sucker, I mean fan, born every minute.
Shra, I just got the new commenter notice, too. Maybe the voices are getting their own chance to voice their opinions!
Dave – oh, I would send the dollar if it would give some of those young people a safe place to go. Little voice will keep quiet now and go dance to imaginary music for all that is good and beautiful in the world. Promised one of my friends I’d do that.
Doc, scoot over… the fishiness of this blog is getting to me..
LOL yeah good heading this time
Unca: invisible hug to you!
BG: would a goat face taco also get a place in the Goofy Face Museum? That could work out so well for Dave.
Smiles to everyone.
REO Speedwagon was right. You can tune a piano. You can also tune a bass guitar. I like to play the scales on both. And read my favorite novel by Mark Twain, Huck Finn. And that’s all for now, since Shra has had it up to the gills with fishy humor and I have piles to go before I sleep.
Unca, correct me if I’m wrong, but I bet you had a go-carp when you were a kid.
I’m not sure how much more fish wordplay I can trout out, Spin. You caught me with your last post — hook, line, and sinker.
“This is the dawning of the age of … aquarium!”
Any more fish humor spawning out there? Or is that metaphor too [chortle] ichy?
Very good, Spin, but you’ve only egged me on.
Isn’t there a poem about caviar by A.E. Housman, “With Roe My Heart Is Laden”?
One of my assistants has asked me to repeat things a couple of times today (true, dat.) I think she may be losing her herring. I have a pile of rubber bands on my desk. Next time she asked me to repeat something, I think I’ll snapper.
You guys simply rock… \m/
I believe all of you are at the wrong blog. You wanted to visit the extremely popular blog of my Reuters colleague Felix Salmon.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/20 10/08/18/how-much-is-treasurys-housing-g uarantee-worth/
I don’t think so, Baz. Mr. Salmon’s blog seems educational. And the last thing we want is a school.
Gar, but I despise AE Housman. There are much betta poets out there. And these dace, is he really relevant?
Housman I have to be in the right mood for. I think most of his poems are jokes, and by that I mean AEH meant them to be jokes.
Take “To an Athlete Dying Young,” for example. (Quoted from memory, so no warranty on the accuracy of the quotaitons). Many scholars today view that as a Romantic celebration of death, the Romantic escape to an ideal world from the imperfect actual.
But look at some lines: “Now you will not swell the rout / Of lads that wore their honors out / Runners whom reknown outran / And the anme died before the man.” He praises the young man for dying and not running the race (with reknown) the lad knows he can’t win. But the athletic code requires that athletes play the game they can’t win, not say “I’m not going to play; I’ll lose.”
Or the lines: “And silence sounds no worse than cheers / After earth has stopped the ears.” This is a viserally troubling image, which is a Housman joke if I ever saw one.
Many people take his poetry quite seriously, either as a romantic poet or based upon interpretations underpropped by their perception of his personal life.
I find the evolution of his reputation as a romantic poet fascinating; his poetry I can take or leave. His relevance? Depends upon how one views his poetry. But I’m in your camp, CG, I question his relevance, and there are so many poets I would rather read.
Like the Blog Guy, for example.
Uhhh…. what are we talking about here? Poets?
What show did that come from Spin?
I’ll be honest Doc; what annoys me most about Housman is that he wrote “A Shropshire Lad” but he came from Herefordshire. Do you know “Prose Poem Towards a Definition of Itself” by Brian Patten ?
Housman? Shropshire Lad? You guys are playing with fire if Shra is reading this, especially if she’s near an electrical outlet.
Mmm, fire….
CG, I do recall “Prose Poem,” I think. What poetry should do in public?
You know, one reason I left academia is I didn’t want to be a literary scholar. I went into that line of work to teach at a private liberal arts college, like where I went to undergrad. But I ended up seduced by a large state university, where teaching was not very important.
One term I taught one class at my undergrad college. And I saw what I had lost sight of. It was an epiphany. And then came the reincarnation.
Now, I seem to be a literary scholar in recovery, and I do slip from time to time, it seems. I will admit that one year I read all of Housman’s published poems. Some I found very intriguing, like “Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now.” I find the metaphors in that poem brilliant.
I do think that many of his poems are misunderstood. His poetry is still relevant, though, for those whose heart are laden with fish eggs!
Oh, crap, back to work.
I’ll be honest Doc; what annoys me most about Housman is that he wrote “A Shropshire Lad” but he came from Herefordshire…
Crow, does it also annoy you that Keats wrote “Ode on a Grecian Urn” when he wasn’t even Greek?
Mr B; not unless he pretends to be Greek in that, which I don’t remember. Or just implies Greekness so that the gormless general public assume it.
Doc; take of its clothes and wave to the nearest person in sight. Has the work of Henry Normal made it to the US ?
Wow…. I just cant figure out WHO to zap first!
Shra, rapid-fire mode, at your discretion…
Ps. Just make sure you keep that thing pointed in the right direction!! Or, better yet, let stand right behind you, just in case.-
Oh, lighten up, ya’ll. Everyone on this Blog should be familiar with these lines by Housman:
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where, 30
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, 35
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet, 40
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.
CG, I don’t know about Henry Normal. The name sounds familiar. But, since my reincarnation, my pleasure reading has been somewhat restricted, and I seldom watch TV.
My pleasure reading lately has been books like the 2008 National Electric Code, Recent Developments in Cabinetry, and The Stone Builder’s Primer. I also read a book on the Shuffle basketball continuous-motion offense, which I may use for my team. That was a great book. It explored the Classic Shuffle, with which I was familiar, and recent innovations with the offense. I was enthralled.
I guess I did read The Bad Kitty Lounge and The Last Striptease, two thumping good novels by my friend Michael Wiley, a FB friend, too, if you want to check him out. And a book on the American Mound Building Indian Tribes, which I read before a week-long road trip visiting some of the mounds discussed in the book. I also read a number of books on the American Civil War for a vacation touring the battlefields.
I wish I had more time to read.
One of my favorites, Doc, especially the way he integrates the numbers 30, 35 and 40 in such a clever way that most people never get it….