Fatty Bobsticks

Diary

In Nagoya, Fatty Bobsticks set out to prove he was nothing like Fat Bob, that soft-bellied legend everyone still whispered about at the dojo bar, and he chose the noblest proving ground he could think of: whittling his own arsenal from raw lumber like the old masters used to. It went about as well as everything else in his life, which is to say the katana snapped on its first swing, the tantō turned out to be shaped suspiciously like a rolling pin, and a passing lumber merchant asked if he was building fence posts or committing seppuku by splinter. Fatty roared that Fat Bob never would have sanded his own shame down to a fine point in public, conveniently ignoring that Fat Bob absolutely would have, then doubled down and vowed on his ancestors and his last bag of shake that he'd become a better man, a disciplined man, a man who finishes what he starts. He has since started a strict new regimen of woodworking at dawn, which by noon becomes day-drinking with the wood shavings, and by dusk becomes loudly explaining to strangers why he is definitely, categorically, nothing like that other guy. The shadow of Fat Bob just grins from the corner booth, unbothered, sipping the same warm sake, watching his sequel argue with a plank.