It's been a rather hectic week since my last blog post; the start of quail season (no birds), the continuation of duck season (a few more birds, including the year's first greenhead and greenwing), getting ready for the deer gun opener in two days ("No horn porn and if it's brown it's down. Or gray. Or whatever" is this year's theme), the need to shoot a turkey before the fall season ends in a few days, a sick child, a sick wife, trying to get one story finished and sent off, travel for another F&S assignment, some news of pending work changes and the work involved in said changes, trying not to forget to clean the shower so as to avoid the weekly beating from the wife and seemingly dozens of other distractions, all of them blog-worthy.

But will I write about them? No, (at least not yet). So in lieu of all that I'll just make a dick joke instead...

Tuesday found me on the road on a story assignment, so I spent Tuesday night in ye old home town before continuing on the next morning. So naturally I hit all the used book stores searching for literary trash and treasure, as I always do when I find myself in a university town with a plethora of good used bookshops.

Most of them know me, or at least know who I am and what I generally look for, and as I walked into one particular shop owned by a sweet old marmishy-looking spinster, she jumped up and said (Verbatim. I am not making this up) "Hey, I bet you'd like a mighty nice clapstick, wouldn't you?"

I froze, taken aback at this most intimate and personal of questions, and it took me a second to realize she was talking about Peter Hathaway Capstick, famous churner of purple-prosed African hunting adventure of sometimes dubious authenticity.

"I don't see many Clapsticks any more, but this one's really nice and I thought of you," she said. I bit down, hard, on my lower lip to keep from laughing. The smartass in me ached, nay, longed, to reply "I used to have one of those, but penicillin cleared it up nicely."

But of course, I didn't. And though I have no idea why she got it in her head that it was "Clapstick" I didn't correct her for fear of offending. What else could I do?

So I came home with the Clapstick. Now my wife is gonna kill me...


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