TUESDAY — I have just bested my personal best banana fest: 22 bananas for dinner. Four bunches. They were brown and splotched, so they were extra cheap, but I prefer ’em brown and splotched. And cheap.

With that many bananas, tomorrow’s poop is going to be smooth as… well, banana sauce.

♦ ♦ ♦

As always on Tuesdays, no work, and somehow I’m not invited to the Rotary Club meetings, so there’s nothing to report. For something to write, I considered delving deep into some of my insecurities, phobias, and deepest darkest secrets, but — some other time. I’m banana-bloated and just not in the mood.

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WEDNESDAY — Today was a most peculiar day at the fishing hole. As happens about half the time, a city schmuck with a clipboard came by to check the business license. It’s the same license it always is, but they always want to check it again, just in case it’s changed.

Today he also scrutinized the fish display, very, very closely, like a cop checking to see if there was cocaine hidden inside the fish or something. I stared at the schmuck, but couldn’t guess what he was doing or why, so that’s what I said: “No cocaine in there, I promise.”

He didn’t laugh or even smile, because he’s the city guy with a clipboard, and they never smile. Instead he announced that we’d have to stop selling the Darwin fish. It’s not hand-made, and anything that’s not made by hand right here in Berkeley is illegal to sell at a sidewalk sales stand.

I replied with something clever like, “Are you serious?” and guess what? He was serious.

Don’t tell anyone, but it’s true: We don’t make the Darwin fish. We buy Darwin fish from a Darwin fish factory, and sell ’em at a marked-up price. This is capitalism.

One of the free speech vendors — the sellers who don’t have a license, don’t have to prove that their merch is handmade, and don’t endure daily inspections by the clipboard schmuck — had complained to the clipboard schmuck. That free speech vendor sells the same manufactured Darwin fish, alongside all his “Smash the state” buttons and “The best government is no government” t-shirts, and says we’re cutting into his business.

And what wry commentary could I write to top the irony of a “free speech” anarchist using the city’s laws to enforce his business monopoly on manufactured Darwin fish?

Gotta say, though, that the free speech vendor who finked us out wasn’t Umberto. Umberto has too much class and integrity to do that, and anyway, he doesn’t sell the Darwin fish. (He has one, though. He bought it from me.)

Gotta also say, we do make all our other fish, out of flexible mylar that’s printed to our specs, right here in Berkeley, and then scissored by me between ringing up customers on Telegraph.

But yeah, the Darwin fish is different. It’s hard plastic, three-dimensional, and like I said, very obviously factory-made. Nail me to a cross, we’ve been violating the rules.

In my opinion our hand-made fish are funnier, but Darwin is the most famous fish. People have seen Darwin fish already, wonder where they can buy one, and when they see our fish stand they come over. Sometimes they buy Darwin, but more often they buy the LSD fish or Dali fish or Anti-Christ fish or Prozac fish or Kiss My Ass fish. Darwin isn’t in our top five best-selling fish, but it is the fish that brings people to the table, so banning Darwin is going to hurt the fish stand. Might even put us out of business.

The clipboard schmuck was watching me, though, so I put all our manufactured Darwins into my backpack until he’d walked away.

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When the day was done, I called Jay and told her that Darwin’s been declared contraband. She’s smart, and instantly thought of something I hadn’t: We buy the Darwin stickers manufactured, but about half the Darwins we sell are magnets — after we add the magnetic backing ourselves, right here in Berkeley.

Jay said she’d stop by City Hall tomorrow and make that argument, but neither of us think it’s likely a winner.

“You know,” I said, “we wouldn’t have this problem if we didn’t have a license — if we were another free speech table on Telegraph.”

The reason the free speech vendors can bypass all the rules is that they’ve declared their merchandise political. The Supreme Court has sorta said that the Constitution sorta says that the government sorta can’t regulate political speech, and our fish are sorta political, aren’t they?

Jay and I talked it over, and while she’s at City Hall tomorrow, explaining how we magnetize Darwin, I’ll be talking to Umberto, to find out if there’s any downside to being unlicensed.

The only negative I know of is, he can’t reserve a space on the Ave. If a licensed vendor claims the spot he’s in, Umberto gets booted and has to pack up and find a different space. But hell, that’s happened to me, even with a license.

Jay owns the fish stand, so it’ll be her decision, but: I would love to rip the city’s permit and license to confetti, and proudly sell the Darwin fish again, maybe under a “Banned in Berkeley” banner.

♦ ♦ ♦

In other news, as predicted, nothing’s smoother than a poop that’s mostly yesterday’s bananas.

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