1842 Oddservations

Occasionally people ask me where I get my ideas. It's pretty simple. Life. Observations of odd things. Oddservations perhaps.
Like the other day a Dutch firm announced a recall of their food product because of salmonella contamination. Their food product? Smoked Salmon. What are the chances?
I just hope the name of the product wasn't Sam and Ella's Smoked Salmon. That would be too weird.
Sometimes I get ideas secondhand. Re-oddservations. I have a friend, let's call him Rick, who has a similar eye for the absurd as I. Occasionally he spots odd things. Like the other day he was in a store and he saw a sign for an item that said, "Waterproof Raingear." Now I suppose there is still that fine distinction in clothes between waterproof and water-resistant. But really. If it's actual raingear you'd assume, with rain being water and all, that it would be waterproof. Otherwise it's just a coat and pants that can stand a little dampness.
He saw a more interesting thing at a food store. The sign in the fish department said "Refreshed Cod." Really? Was the cod tired? Did it just need a little nap and then bingo, it woke up perky?
How perky can a dead fish be?
And how does one refresh a cod? Was it fresh, then frozen, then thawed, then refrozen, and now it's refreshed. Why don't they just call it unappetizing?
Not as bad, I suppose, as the reconstituted pollock they use in those faux shrimp things. That always sounded like something they put through the Star Trek transporter. Beamed down to the supermarket and reconstituted.
I hope the refreshed cod isn't like that. I pray it's an actual filet and not just un-constituted fish bits, reshaped into a cod loaf.
America, ya gotta love it.