Category: Random Crap

It was four years ago today I lauded my legendary red eye tetra Cedric and his tankmates for their survival despite my astoundingly poor job of taking care of them and the aquarium.

Cedric, as you know, lived in my tank for an astounding four years and seven months, right up until about 23 months ago he swam off to fishy heaven. Nonetheless, his spirit lives on, that spectacular little fish who hung on to an admittedly boring life inside a little five-gallon aquarium, for such a long time. None of my other fish have done that!

Or, actually…

My serpae tetra Ash is about to beat that record! Cedric lived in my tank for 4 years and 214 days, the exact same amount of time it has been since my sister brought me Ash on my birthday in 2006, along with other serpae tetras Quigley and Templeton, plus sunset molly Pyro. Pyro died only a couple months later. Lost Quigley sometime last year. Last February, when the big ass Superbowl weekend blizzard knocked out our electricity for 30 hours, this meant my house went that long without heat, and as such the fish tank got really cold, killing my algae eater Stripe, and nearly killing Ash and Templeton, though once the heat was back on, they were fine again after a bit. Except Templeton died a few weeks later. Ash was all alone until May when I got another algae eater, Aurelius. So now it’s just the two of them.

Congrats, Ash! For your resilience under the care of someone like me, who should probably never ever be in charge of any living thing.

We’ve all heard the story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. Which is why it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that I’m about to recite it.

Boy is left to watch over some sheep or villagers or whatever, to alert them if a hungry wolf comes by intending to eat them all up. Well, being a smartass, he cries “Wolf!” one night just to troll the villagers, and they figure how he’s screwing with them and kick his ass. The next night, he’s patrolling once more, and again trolls the villagers by screaming that there is a wolf coming, only for them to find no wolf and get pissed again. On the third night, because it’s always the third time in any of these stories that the interesting thing happens, he is out patrolling again and he actually does see a wolf. Oh shit! So he cries “Wolf!” to the villagers, who tell him to STFU and that they’re not falling for it again. So the wolf eats the boy and all the villagers. The end.

The moral of the story? Well, there are two. No, neither is the one you’ve always been taught is the moral. In the two possible real morals to this story, those villagers are fucking stupid.

First moral: If you cannot trust your alarm system, get a different one. Otherwise, if you’re going to ignore it anyway, what good is it? So the idiot villagers should have sent someone else to watch for the wolf.

Second moral: Even a liar sometimes tells the truth!

As demonstrated so nicely in the US Acres segment “The Wolf Who Cried Boy”. 🙂

If you’re a doctor or a lawyer, congrats, because you’re the right type of person and are automatically a professional success.

I guess.

If you’re one of those two, congrats, because your family and friends will actually be proud of you and boast about you.

You’re a doctor or a lawyer, so that means you’re rich! ZOMG!

That’s why it’s so sad when kids die. Had they lived and grown up they could have become doctors or lawyers.

That’s why it’s so sad when kids fall into drug use and screw up their schooling. If they had stayed clean, they could have become doctors or lawyers.

That’s why no one is nearly as worried about adult drug use, because they’re already too old to become doctors or lawyers apparently. Unless they are already.

I mean, why else would you go to college? Why else would you major in biology or political science? What, are you just going to be some loser who works in a cubicle? Please. Unless your college years led to medical or law school, they were a waste of time and money.

That’s why you’re horrified to find yourself in a mediocre office job at age 45. You aren’t a doctor or a lawyer, so your life has never been successful.

If your mother thought you’d be anything but a doctor or a lawyer, she would have aborted you even if she were a staunch pro-lifer.

Failing scores on the MCAT and LSAT are a leading cause of suicide.

When you tell your second grade teacher what you want to be when you grow up, and your answer is anything other than doctor or lawyer, don’t be surprised when she and all your subsequent teachers seem to stop noticing you exist, while the kid sitting next to you wanting to take over his father’s law firm is the star pupil, and the teacher always grins sweetly at the girl across the room who dreams of working magic in the operating room.

Look at all those kids on the honor roll, especially the ones with asterisks next to their names, denoting their straight A’s. If anything other than medicine or law is on their horizon, oh what a tragic waste of talent!

If you’re a girl, well, that’s okay if you didn’t manage to be a doctor or a lawyer, so long as you marry one. Wait, you mean you didn’t marry a doctor or a lawyer? You aren’t going to get married at all? GASP! Failure!

We must help ghetto kids get an education, so they can grow up to be doctors or lawyers. The ones who don’t can stay there and rot.

We must never forget the disastrous attacks of September 11, 2001. After all, many doctors and lawyers perished.

Normally, this is where I’d mention that today is Epiphany, the last day of the 2008 Christmas season, and all that jazz, but there’s something else that bears a mention.

Because, sometime yesterday, my little red eye tetra friend Cedric, after four years and seven months, finally swam off to fishy heaven. 🙁

Weird to think of how long it’s been. I got him only just over a year after I graduated from college. I had only just recently gotten into NYRA, and it was two months before I became a paid member and joined the forums. When I got him, I hadn’t even worked yet. Through all the NYRA stuff and all the various jobs I’ve had and other little adventures, Cedric was always right there in the tank, swimming around, his bright red eyes searching for whatever.
Continue reading “Red Eyes Are Shut”