The Summer of Catfish Jackson

Here is my summer plan.

It goes like this: leave a series of small circular patches on my face unshaved. These flocculent circles will grow into long, resplendent whiskers, like those of a catfish. That’s my plan. Look like a catfish. I drafted this list of names to adopt once I look more like a catfish:

Catfish Jackson

Whiskers McNulty

Bottom-Feeding Man Fish

Land-Walking Fish Man

Tuscaloosa Timothy

Of course, the plan ran into some resistance from Cassandra Morningfart, which is the real name of the real girl I’m dating.

Here is how that was resolved.

Cassandra Morningfart: “That would look stupid. And I will not call you Catfish Jackson.”

I then grabbed her mouth and moved it around so she appeared to be talking, and said in a replica of her voice, “Yeah! Try to look like a catfish! I’m on board!”

So after that speed bump, if it can even be called that after the speed and efficiency with which it was overcome, everything is in motion. I will soon look like a catfish. I will think like a catfish. I will eat like a catfish. I will worship catfish deities. I will ‘like’ statuses that my catfish friends post on Facebook. I will attend funerals and weddings for catfish. I will read catfish literature. This blog may start to lean towards the sympathies of catfish politics and catfish-lifestyle issues (can you believe catfish have a similar Bruce Jenner type controversy going on ‘down here?’ (‘down here’ is what we in the catfish world refer to what humans know as ‘underwater’)). I have already begun lining my apartment floors with mud and decomposed plant matter. I can now hold my breath for almost 20 seconds.

The transition is in full effect, as it were.

Catfish Jackson, signing off.

P.S. I’m not officially ‘signing off,’ for I cannot officially live ‘down here,’ (underwater) because that would kill me, so I will still have full access to human internet and many other amenities while I’m ‘up there,’ until the government (rightly) begins funding human-gill growing research programs.

Summer

Here are my ideas so far:

-Walk naked through the outfield during a Twins game. You see, generations of streakers have the formula wrong. When you’re running, you give off the impression that you are doing something illegal. But if I hop out of the bleachers out there in left field, naked as a newborn, and confidently strut through the assembly of players all the way over to the stands behind the first-base line, people will just assume that I’m supposed to be there. I might use a flesh-colored body suit à la George Costanza. That is still up for debate.

-Walk naked through a Fourth of July Parade. Again with the nudity, right? Well, as I saunter along with the floats and bands and what-not, eventually the shocked crowd will come to realize that my nakedness is a metaphor for the birth of America. You see, back in ’76, 1776 that is, what was this great nation other than a naked baby? It came shooting out of The Mother of Modern Society, out into the world, covered in the disgusting viscera of afterbirth, ready to take on whatever Earth decided to throw at it. To arrest me for paying tribute to that would be nothing less than treason.

-Tube down the Root River in Lanesboro without clothing. The last two years I’ve done it, I have slathered myself in ridiculous amounts of sunscreen, only to emerge from the water looking like a freaking apple. Might as well try to achieve a uniform burn all over instead of having unsightly tan lines.

-Compose an entire Blog post in the nude. Check that off the list right now. This summer is already looking up.

-Maybe try to get a higher paying job so I can buy more clothes.

Well, it looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me. Here’s the Blong. Some of that laid-back killer Cali hip-hop. Ugly Duckling – Left Behind.

The Summer

Well, it’s the first day of summer. I’m preachin to the choir here, right?! Never really understood what that saying means. Is the choir not supposed to get preached to, or what is going on with that? But yeah, I’ve got some big stuff planned in my personal life for this warmest of the temperate seasons.

-Through a chain of wacky mishaps, I will somehow acquire a dog. We will undoubtedly hate each other at first, with him ripping my couch to shreds, and me beating him without mercy for hours at a time. Of course I’m kidding about beating him, I’ll probably just not feed him for a few days. Or shave all his hair off. Animals always look so sad when they have no hair. As the summer wears on, we will eventually become the best of friends through a series of montages set to the classic tune “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” by War. Then at the end of summer he’ll get hit by a car or kidnapped or something that isn’t my fault, because hey, I’m going to have more important things to do than take care of some dog that deliberately destroyed my couch.

-While hiking in the woods, I’ll probably find a dead body face-down in a creek, and maybe just kind of poke it with a stick for a while.

-Get a job flipping burgers at the mall, start up a fling with the hot girl that works at the frozen yogurt (or, Frogurt) stand, and have my still-beating heart ripped out of my chest when she goes back to college in August and does the entire football team.

-I’m sure at some point I’ll end up at some type of summer camp with a bunch of misfits, and after a giant food-fight in the chow hall, an incident involving the filthy latrines, and probably some more montages, we’ll beat the athletic kids at a game of flag football or something.

Busy summer right? Actually I’m willing to bet that I could probably accomplish all of this in about 90 minutes if I really tried.

Here’s the Blong. I love this video. Have a wonderful summer everyone!