I went over to discuss the matter with him at once.

Bert has been selling fountain pens at his White Flint Mall shop since 1985. I’ve been buying pens from there since 2004 -- some my wife knows about, some she doesn’t. (The beauty of our marriage is that I sometimes perjure myself when it comes to pens, and I assume she behaves likewise with shoes. We are happily married.)

He is swimming in Chesapeake Bay. His name is Diamond Jim. Seen him?

He is a striped bass with a special tag, and if you catch him before June 30 you will have more than just a plate full of dinner.

You will have $10,000.

The number of Maryland families who need government help to make ends meet has reached record levels.

More than 700,000 people receive food assistance, the most in state history. A record 70,000 people depend on emergency cash assistance. And the demand for the state’s child care subsidy program has caused officials to impose an indefinite freeze on new applicants.

According to some funny and etymological reporting by the Baltimore Sun, the following are words you will never see on a Maryland license plate, as specified by the state’s Objectionable Plate List:

HEROIN

What I’ve seen so far of the protests surrounding the G-8 Summit at Camp David:

About three dozen people and one dog occupied a community room at the Frederick County Public Library early Friday morning for a daylong series of talks entitled the “People’s Summit.” Nearly a dozen reporters and photographers joined them, either staying or quickly leaving.

Let’s pause from the hullabaloo over social networking, the big Facebook IPO tomorrow, the big news (in some circles) that Aaron Sorkin (he of “The Social Network” fame) will write the definitive movie about Steve Jobs. Let’s pause from obsessive checking of our Facebook pages. Let’s pause from posting pictures. Let’s pause from tweeting. Let’s look up from our smartphones.

But if I were forced to choose a word to describe how I felt about what happened to Betty Potts and her husband Buddy, whose combined ages are 163, it would be this one: Fury.

This is what she wrote: “Want to know what we really want for Mother’s Day? We want to get away from you. All of you.”

COLLEGE PARK — The 2012 Preakness will feature Grammy Award-winning artists, all-you-can-drink beer, and a “party manimal” with a unicorn-man sidekick.

Prisons are fascinating places.

I like visiting them — not to stay very long, but to report on life behind bars. I’ve spent some time doing that in Maryland prisons. Not long ago, I reported on prison librarians and a prison news program which uses inmates as broadcasters.

Drivers who park in two spots.

You’ve seen them straddling two spaces at Costco, the movie theater, the coffee shop, any lot with easy-to-see white lines — two wheels in one spot, two wheels in the other. I’d hate to see my blood pressure level when spotting these cars. They drive me insane.

I have been asked some strange questions by my boss — “Do you want to write a story about your life as a slob?” — but I cannot think of a single request as bizarre as asking for a Facebook password.

Prince George’s police think the victim of a home invasion Monday in Adelphi might have slipped up when he called 911.

“He took my weed,” the man reported. “And took my rent money.”