Naturally I’d rather not dwell on the fact that I was right and you was horribly wrong … actually I would, but I’d exhaust the subject of my presumed greatness in about three seconds.
Just long enough for your next tired exhale …
Now every recruitment drive to enlist them thick-witted kids of yours into the ranks of Outdoorsmen, highlights our collective shortcomings as parents and teachers, as due to our inability to pay down our mortgage, they’re now known as “Generation Stuck.”
What’s so damning is in addition to their feet under your table well into their thirties, you’ve had twice as long to teach them respect for the Woods and fly fishing as your Dad, and whiffed horribly …
But Generation Y has become Generation Why Bother. The Great Recession and the still weak economy make the trend toward risk aversion worse. Children raised during recessions ultimately take fewer risks with their investments and their jobs. Even when the recession passes, they don’t strive as hard to find new jobs, and they hang on to lousy jobs longer.
– via the BusinessInsider.com
… me, I was only thinking we should recruit alternate-lifestyle anglers hoping to spare you the microscope of public opinion and scorn. I recognized that the tone deaf little weasel that shares your name is expert in joysticks, Hellfire missiles, and targeting Toyota trucks filled with insurgents, only he can’t hold down a job long enough to buy his next video game …
Sure. My little funny generated plenty of hushed whispers and death threats, but that Politically Correct Lightning bolt of Death, intent on cleaving me from topknot to breastbone, ain’t going to happen. Political Correctness was invented so you didn’t have to take a stand on any subject at a cocktail party, nor did you have to reveal you’d never read Dickens, Henry James*, and the only Conrad you knew swaggered his way through Baa Baa Black Sheep …
(*yuck)
Odd, the way you turn the screws on us and we get a yuck?
Must be the understatement thing.
What was that saying about blind pigs? Occasionally, …
Never made sense to me (not much does)… seeing as pigs hunt by smell.
I’ve been nagged by Mr. Conrad much of my life…grew up with “The Wild Wild West” (the real one), watched “Man Called Sloane” in college (with the faux classic Excalibur he drove and unforgettable Torque, an assistant with a detachable hand that could be replaced by guns and other tools), dallied with “High Mountain Rangers” and the family affair titled “High Sierra Search and Rescue” – only many years later to find myself grabbing lunch in a little sandwich shop in Murphys, Calif., at a table watched over by an autographed photo of Jim West hisself. Now he pops up again. But the signs were there, we just didn’t see it coming…the quick descent went from the macho Ray-o-Vac challenge, “I dare ya to knock this off…come on, I dare ya.” to the cute pink Energizer bunny.
It’s my understanding that alternate-lifestyle anglers are fishers of -Men- in the biblical sense. Off-hand, would you care to suggest a reel that can compete on the same level as Toscaninni?
Can we get back to Steven Z’s trout now?
Conrad, Dickens, James, Dumas, and even Shakespeare. Most of the current crop of youngers don’t even know that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the Barsoom potboilers that “John Carter” is based upon.
And then there’s hand writing, “Do I have to use cursive to sign a check?” I rest my case.
Let’s go fishin’ … See ya at the the creek!
@Patrick – the part I like most is how Mssr Conrad never had to wear pants with rear pockets – despite his many roles.
I’d guess it didn’t show his hindquarters in a macho fashion.