Dreams come true.

When opportunity knocks you’d better drop what you are doing and answer that door and right now, knock, knock, knocking is a very handsome plus-sized model in a stylish jaunty beanie. Very punk rock tee. The knock is extra loud, thanks to the many rings that adorn his salchichas. Impossible to miss. The rhythm reminiscent of T.S.O.L.’s Sound of Laughter.

You’d better drop what you are doing and answer because you just might, just may, just could get to be Ashton Gogganses’ second hand.

His senior editor.

Oh not so fast. You think the last hire just raised a delicate French hand and was allowed to sit in the presence of greatness?

No.

And we must go directly to the source for more. To a Stab job offer.

Put Your Thinkin’ Caps On, Kids: Here’s Your Homework:

1. The Nike/Hurley sale is perhaps the biggest surf industry story of the last decade. How would you cover it, what stories would you want to read?

2. You can interview one current A-List surfer. Who do you call and what questions do you ask?

3. Pick two products from brands that you think would be good fits for Stab’s audience, and give us 150-300 words about each.

4. Grab your two favorite short surf clips from the last year from YouTube or Vimeo, and give us a 300-word write up for a post on our site.

5. Send a one-page cover letter and single page resume to: [email protected]

I would have failed the first question, even though Ashton will likely win a Pulitzer for his wall-to-wall coverage of the “biggest surf industry story of the last decade,” as I would have accidentally answered, “You should look into Hurley’s new beard oil offering as yours was feeling very rough when I last felt…”

It would have been a lie, a pure vicious lie.

Ashton’s beard felt as soft as a chinchilla. As potently delicious as cotton candy and any man, any woman, who has the honor, the privilege, will count themselves lucky.

But that’s why I am completely undeserving of the senior editor title for, you see, I am a sick man. … I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors.

Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand.

Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can’t explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot “pay out” the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well–let it get worse!

My diseased liver and I will also never be Stab’s next executive editor.

Go, dear reader. Run to the light and bring venti white chocolate cremé frapaccino on your first day.

But also, Ashton will be reading these comments so you will be very well served to post Cliff’s Notes version here.

Pick two products etc.

Out of the water for at least a day. Maybe two.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, in America. Just another Manic Monday in Australia. And though surfers are not typically football fans the two do share one love. One glorious passion.

Guacamole.

The avocado-based delicacy is one of the most common foods at Super Bowl parties where men grow fat and loud, women grow loud and fat and everyone turns into comedians, riffing on the television commercials that are also supposed to be funny.

Well, as you know, I was on a historically unprecedented ironman streak, having surfed six days in a row. It ended today. With Super Bowl Sunday on the horizon I thought, “I bet Big Bear will be empty….”

Southern California’s local ski area is a complete dump but my daughter is a complete ripper and any chance I can get her on any hill I take.

So there we were driving north as the sun peeked over the horizon, illuminating the inland valleys sad and depressing, daughter playing Roblox on her phone, me listening to NPR when a story regarding “Avocado Hand Injury” came on.

I turned the volume up.

Is it your turn to make the guacamole at the Super Bowl party this year?

If so, be careful. You don’t want to join the thousands of people who’ve ended up in an emergency room for avocado-related injuries.

“These injuries are exceedingly common,” says Dr. Matt Aizpuru of the Mayo Clinic.

Aizpuru is the co-author of a 2019 study published in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine that found that as avocado comsumption has gone up in America, so too have avocado-related knife injuries.

He and his colleagues looked at emergency room data and found that between 1998 and 2017 an estimated 50,413 people paid a visit to the emergency room for an avocado-related knife mishap. Aizpuru says that in 1998, there were around 650 such injuries. By 2017, there were nearly 6,000, close to a 10-fold increase.

The most common demographic injured were 23 to 39-year old women, according to the study, and injuries were most common on the left — and likely non-dominant — hands of patients.

“Whew. 23 to 39-year old women…” I thought while turning the volume back down. “…Not us surfers.”

But then my mind flashed to my recently broken ironman streak and I swear over fifty percent of the surfing population these days is 23 – 39-year old women.

Shark attacks may be trending down in the near future, as men vacate the lineup, but will Avocado Hand Injury be trending up?

More as the story develops.