textfiles/magazines/HOE/hoe-1034.txt

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     $$     .d""b. .d""b.                  HOE E'ZINE #1034
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     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$ss$$            "Fish; And The Near Imminent
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$                  Death of The Fourth One"
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$  $$                by Liberty [3/8/00]
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     $$  $$ "TssT" "TssT"

	fish.

	nothing good has ever come of a college student having pet fish.
 ever.  they are a wonderful excuse for procrastination, and they die.
 often.

	fuck fish, right in the ear.

	speaking of which, fish don't even fuck.  they lay eggs.  what fun.

	so, being a college freshman, second semester, always in search of
 a better source of procrastination, i buy two fish from meijer at one am
 on a saturday night/sunday morning.  granted, that may have been my first
 mistake.  the meijer part.

	i bought trippy fish and goth fish, aptly named because they were
 a half-red-delta-neon-guppy and a black molly.  the guppy's tail was
 iridescent and the molly was bigger, brooding, and black.  thus the
 names.  got a little dinky less-than-1/2-gallon bowl and a plastic plant.
 this was saturday night.

	monday afternoon i go to the real pet store.. jack's aquarium..
 get blue rocks for the bottom of the tank, and buy a third fish.. i told
 the people i needed an algae eater, and they suggested a cory-catfish
 instead of one of those suckerfish because i had a small unfiltered bowl.
 i name him poop-eating fish and chunk him in the bowl with the other two.
 i don't really like poop-eating fish, he's kind of ugly and mean, but he's
 only there to eat trippy and goth's poop so its okay.

	tuesday night, while i'm out to dinner with one of my friends,
 trippy fish bites it.  gives up the ghost.  kicks the bucket.  out and out
 croaks.  time of death: less than five days in my room.  my very catholic
 roommate runs and gets her friend from across the hall because its all
 floating and bloated-ish.  she's out of the room maybe three minutes, and
 when she comes back, they're looking around my desk for the net when
 poop-eating fish darts to the top of the bowl and starts head-butting the
 very dead trippy fish.  by the time they can get the net in there to get
 trippy out, he's already missing an eyeball.  they give trippy his last
 rites and flush him.  in the words of my roommate, "It was the most
 disturbing thing I have ever seen.  Ever.  That fish, the ugly catfish
 one, is just plain evil.  Evil, I tell you, evil."

	thursday night, disturbed by recent events, i bought a $15 one
 gallon, filtered, heated hexatank, and another half-red-delta-neon-guppy.
 his tail is not as iridescent but his body is more cool, and his name
 becomes not-so-trippy fish.  A little morbid, one might say, but what the
 fuck.  it's a fish, it doesn't know its name.

	so i transport goth and the evil evil poop-eating fish into the new
 tank, and add not-so-trippy to the mix.

	monday morning, before i go to class, not-so-trippy is kind of
 swimming sideways.  i rock the tank a little to try and get water flowing
 through his gills, but to no avail.  time of death: less than four days
 in my room.  i didn't go all the way down the hallway to flush this wanker,
 either.  no funeral.  just pull out the drain stopper in my sink, plop him
 in, run some water, put it back, and go to class.  maybe guppies just
 can't live in dorm rooms.. maybe it's a chemical imbalance.  i could deal
 with that.  i wasn't as fond of not-so-trippy as i was of trippy, so it
 wasn't a big deal.

	THAT SAME DAY, around ten or eleven monday night, goth fish is
 looking kind of funny, very yellow around his gills, just sitting blah on
 the bottom of the tank.  i mention it to my roommate, we're both peering
 down at him, and i kind of bump the tank to see if he'll move, and he
 slowly floats to the top.  "cuhrrist!" i yell, forgetting that it bugs
 her when i say that. "everything DIES!"

	so we fish (hehe...fish.. i kill me) him out and i stick him in a
 cup and take him down to the bathroom at the end of the hall and flush
 him and stand around down there a few minutes so she'll think i'm
 actually giving him a funeral or whathaveyou.

	it is now the following monday, and that bastard poop-eating fish
 keeps giving me evil looks and whispering things and lurking around and
 generally being evil and not dying.

	he's not dead!  he's the only one i really didn't care about one
 way or the other.  i just bought the fucker so he would eat the *real*
 fish's poop and the algae and keep the tank clean for THEM.

	poop-eating fish has become the bane of my existence.  he has
 stolen my will to live and i fucking want it back.

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 [ (c) HOE E'ZINE -- http://www.hoe.nu      HOE #1034, BY LIBERTY - 3/8/00 ]