Too damn many staid and conventional posts for my comfort, it’s lonely out here on the lunatic fringe, but we’re used to it.

When is a fisherman not a predator? When he’s shopping for groceries. A fat target lolling gracefully in the current, pinching cantaloupes and inspecting meat, oblivious to the fact that he is being stalked, his every move calculated…

I’m unpacking gear and damp stuff from the car, I glance down while hanging waders, and have to recoil in total fear, the bastard got me again. Dammit.

I’m looking at a 20-pack of Cottonelle toilet paper, sheathed in a second festive wrapper to hide both label and “hook”. I took the bait like some bovine, a victim of the sale aisle – finning comfortably sipping groceries, and then some grinning evil  Madison Avenue SOB set hook on me.

Those of you under age 23, Cottonelle is the only toilet paper refused by gasoline companies, as the employee mortality rate was considered unacceptable. Special embossing ensures your backside is raw after the third pass, and you bleed to death with prolonged usage. A 20 pack is the toilet paper equivalent of a double amputation.

I always saw myself as a skilled angler, yet I fear Cottonelle’s marketing director. I know he is a fly fisherman too, he studies my feeding pattern, is canny in the life cycle of male grocery shoppers – how we pretend to know stuff in the vegetable aisle, (so the feminine of the species thinks we cook) and preys on us specifically.

Sure, we make great sport of them Madison Avenue swells and their feeble attempts at fishing, but who has the last laugh?

Me, I’m grimacing.

Technorati Tags: Cottonelle, raw flesh, wish I was 20 again

I promised myself that after 100 posts I would draw a breath and see what was memorable, what worked, and attempt to restore order to the carnage in my wake.

Memorable was tough, as most of the parts I remember are the glaring misspellings, the missing punctuation, and the pedantic oratory of a fellow used to sniping from the sidelines, not featured center stage.

What worked is a mystery, I giggled at a couple of things after re-reading them, but mostly I blushed, violating every rule in Strunk and White, and then flailing about, with the Collected Works of William Shakespeare in no jeopardy of being unseated anytime soon.

Here’s what I know about you; most of your browsing occurs at work, you live in the US, and you don’t say much.

Here’s what I have found out; writing is bloody hard work, and pulling creativity out of thin air is the hardest of all. It is more fun to pull the author’s chin whiskers, than be the author.

I’ve attempted to throw a wide loop and cover as many fly fishing topics as I could to see what sparked interest. The results are standard Brownliner fare, muddy and unclear.

Here is your opportunity to stand up and be counted; what did you like, what didn’t you like, what do you want to see more of…grab a big handful of whiskers and yank – help me mold the next 100 posts.