By Tim Sanders

Sometimes, despite the tireless efforts of our dedicated staff–consisting of my dachshund and myself–we here at the Sanders Institute of Humor Studies and Ear Wax Removal miss critical stories which occur right in our own backyard. Okay, so maybe Thorsby, Alabama isn’t exactly our own backyard. But it is in Alabama, and it does indeed contain several backyards; probably some with automobiles on blocks.

According to a June 25 Birmingham News article by Michael Tomberlin, on June 22 an 80-foot span of the roof of the new Cedar Grove Methodist Church near Thorsby collapsed. Fortunately, according to pastor Jeff Carroll, God "chose to let it come down on a Thursday evening when nobody was there." Unfortunately, the Almighty didn’t advise Carroll and his volunteers about architects and building codes. When Carroll and his congregation designed and built their new house of worship, they hadn’t bothered with building permits and official approval by "state entities" because of the congregation’s strong belief in the separation of church and state. "If the state and the church are separate," Carroll said, "I don’t understand why they think they’ve got jurisdiction."

I like this story, because it gives an altogether new and really goofy slant to the old separation of church and state debate. We here at the Sanders Institute apologize for neglecting this two-month-old story. And we promise that the next time there is a case involving the separation of a Methodist church and its roof due to a convoluted interpretation of that separation of church and state phrase from Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to a group of Connecticut Baptists, we’ll get right on it. We at the Institute are confident that neither Jefferson nor those Baptists had any concern for a bunch of wacky Methodists and their defective roofs. The Baptists were too busy practicing not dancing, and Jefferson was ... too busy.

But just so you know we have been looking at serious issues here at the Sanders Institute, our intrepid research staff has learned of a dilemma even more distressing than that posed by randomly collapsing Methodist church roofs. It involves sports, sort of. The sport it involves was once simply a pleasant diversion, a way of calming your nerves, getting in touch with your inner self, interacting with your environment, and procuring a few fish to fry in the process. That’s right, I’m talking about slipping a few packages of frozen cod into your pants and bolting out of your local Super Wal-Mart without a) setting off the alarms or b) freezing your entire seafood section.

I am only kidding. What I’m talking about, of course, is fishing. I’ve loved fishing since I was a kid, but to me it’s never been a competitive sport–unless you call trying to outwit a bluegill with a brain the size of Adam Sandler’s a sport. No, I’ve always considered fishing simply recreational.

But now professional fishermen crisscross the country, competing in tournaments which pay big money. They use powerful outboards and electric trolling motors attached to sophisticated bass boats equipped with full color electronic GPS fish finders, heated, cushioned seats, fully-cooled live wells, and rods and platinum-plated reels which cost more than your average pickup truck and can fire a $200 lure 500 yards with the flick of a wrist. Some of these tournament pros earn over half-a-million dollars a year. FOR FISHING!

And if that weren’t bad enough, now there is something called fantasy fishing. Fantasy fishing is even further removed from normal, old-fashioned sitting-on-the-riverbank with your buddy and a can of worms fishing. In fantasy fishing, not only do you not fish, you don’t even watch other guys fish.

That’s right, according to a July 21, 2006 article in Reveries Magazine, fantasy fishing is now all the rage, and people who’ve never even wet a line or got worm slime in their noses (don’t ask) are selecting their favorite professional fishermen based on tournament records and fishing caps, pretending to sponsor them, pretending that their pros are fishing in a pretend fantasy fishing tournament, pretending to analyze the weather conditions and water depth and temperature at the make-believe lake where they are pretending to compete, and then hoping that their pretend fishermen can finish in the top five with other real pretend fishing pros.

I’m not exactly clear on how all of this fantasy fishing stuff works, nor am I clear on the more well-established rules of fantasy football, baseball, or basketball. What I do know is that there are a lot of athletically-impaired guys who could never play ball like the pros on TV. I, for example, couldn’t even compete in women’s beach volleyball, although I love watching the girls show off their athleticism when they dive for what they call a dig and then gracefully shake the sand out of their skimpy little outfits. At any rate, it makes sense that guys who can’t play women’s beach volleyball, or pro football, or baseball, and who could never, ever, manage or coach such activities, might want to play fantasy sports. But anybody with the use of at least one arm can fish. I can fish, for Pete’s sake. Fantasy fishing makes as much sense as fantasy checkers.

And yes, the research here at the Institute goes on. The other night my wife found some interesting information she thought might do me some good. We were lying in bed at the time, and I was almost asleep, so I’m still not sure which magazine she was reading. What she said was, "In Massachusetts it is illegal to put trousers on a goat."

I verified this information on the Internet the next morning. There was no explanation for that particular law, other than the fact that it was passed in Massachusetts, where they are always doing goofy things like electing Senator Edward Kennedy (who, at least during press conferences, is exempt from the no-trousers law). Perhaps, at some point in the distant past, somebody in the Bay State had dressed his goat in trousers–probably using extra long suspenders–and offended the general populace by taking him either to church, or grocery shopping, or to the local roller rink. Or it may have had something to do with a cruel fraternity prank and a blind date gone terribly wrong. Whatever the case, I doubt that legislation like that would’ve been passed without good reason.

I hope this will put and end to all of those complaints about sloppy research and poor documentation here at the Sanders Institute. We do not make up news, we just occasionally forget where it came from.