I’m giggling while reading a tirade on whether hair extensions and hippie chicks should be mutually exclusive, and though both are taking a considerable beating, the unthinkable occurs to me …

Fly tiers and dry fly fishermen are the only folks complaining over the loss of Grizzly hackle. Dry flies being tougher to tie than bead-headed-anything suggests my loyalties could be purchased …

Is it possible that the dry fly, and the idolaters and devil worshipers that exalt them above all else, are the source of angling’s bad press and should be cast out so they can lie with snakes and vermin of like (base) nature?

Sure it’s archaic and harsh, but there’s considerable evidence to support such a fanciful conclusion.

Think of all those distant relatives gazing at you in hushed expectation as you open your Christmas gifts, and how you’re forced to gush superlatives over; cut glass highballs featuring Cahills and Adams, ties festooned with March Brown and Fanwing Coachman, and cute but useless leather coasters featuring Humpies, Elk Hair Caddis, and the Rat Faced McDougal.

… most of which will never grace your fly box, you’ll never fish nor recognize, other than it’s something lacking the familiar bead head, and therefore sinks like crap …

All you really wanted was a slot car set, a new rod, a subscription to the Drake, or an AK-47 –  but Grandma is a couple of time zones away and the nice man sold her them drink coasters instead …

Think snooty old guys and their down-the-nose grimace when shown newly purchased composite rods, synthetic flies, and plastic creels. Think clubhouse shunning and the coldest of shoulders should you mistake the lowly Caddis as a viable food group – equal perhaps, even to Mayflies …

Think chickens raised in isolated airless closets, their only companion being the curses of Mr. Whiting, and the promise of dismemberment in a  cloud of downy agony…

“We are informed that you visited the conditions in which the roosters are confined and killed for their feathers,” wrote PETA Foundation General Counsel Jeffrey S. Kerr. These conditions include confining roosters to solitary cages stacked one on top of the other in noisy, windowless sheds until the birds are finally gassed and skinned. Mr. Whiting admits that he and his workers abuse the birds, even hurling them across the barn.

– via PETA

Surely it’s rarified turf belonging to ancient Field & Stream issues, pipe tobacco, rough hewn porches, toddies, and Ben Gay, none of which has survived to present day – being the yuppie Outdoor accoutrements of your Dad, not the 5 Hour Energy crowd of today.

As we’ve been dismantling the equally sacred “Match the Hatch” mantra for some time, I’m thinking it may be time to purge the fedora, aromatic pipe, Mr. Aberchrombie and Mr. Fitch, and the notion that visible is more cultured – when it’s merely suited for those whose reflexes rival a Mastadon …

I remember reading of Milk Fed Veal, never again was I able to look a calf in the eye.

Times change, and the old ways are rethought or simply discarded. Now, I simply idle in the parking lot while Ronald McDonald stares at them soft brown eyes before clubbing the little prick senseless.