Attribution: Pos, Robert H, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog reports that on one of his “past patrols” the keeper recalled the days when newspaper make-up was done by hand, by linotype operators who used innocuous filler items to lock in a page for printing.
The operators obviously kept one-liners handy and used them repeatedly. One such item in the keepers memory was “Fish sleep with their eyes open,” which would not only appear multiple times in the same issue, but unfailingly in issue after issue.
This went on so long that an editor finally reached his tolerance level and stormed into the back shop, shouting obscenities and ordering that he did not ever want to see “Fish sleep with their eyes open” in his newspaper again and if he did, heads would roll.
The keeper was only peripherally involved, but remembering the occasion moved him to announce to Phyllis that even in a high-tech world, fish still sleep with their eyes open which is a handy fact to remember.
Or maybe not!
