Tank Update #6...State Of The Blog...Hello, Germany!...

The tank had become a weird green organism. The sheet of slime was everywhere, draping up off the rocks onto the glass surface of the tank. The fish were rarely seen.  I wasn't sure how many were still alive.  I knew I had to change the water and clean out the algae or they would all die, and that would be a monumental defeat for me, seeing as the whole purpose of keeping the fish tank was supposed to be some kind of Winter Blues Therapy I had set up for myself last year.  Now it was Winter again and the tank was nearly defunct.  I knew I had a scheduled vacation coming up, but my little fish didn't deserve to wait that long.  Urgency, these days, seems to be the only motivational process that can really grab my attention.  Yes, I am aware of the obvious metaphor...

One Sunday I started swishing the net around to draw the fish out from under the rocks, where they had been hiding in a lethargic stupor, and all seven of them appeared.  At least I wasn't scooping out dead ones.  I put some clean well water from the tap into a big stainless steel pot and placed the little Dace and "Shiners", for lack of a real name for them, into it.  What a weird thing for them, I would think, to be in an environment one minute, then suddenly scooped up and put into a very different one that resembled nothing they had ever experienced.  The water was undoubtedly cleaner than what they came out of, but it didn't move.  Visually, it was just a silver-gray featureless space.  They camped out in that pot for the next couple of hours.  Next I set up a siphon tube in the tank and ran all of the water out the window onto the lawn as snow began accumulating.  I took all of the larger rocks to the sink and scrubbed the green slime off them with an aquarium scrub pad, put all the gravel in a strainer and rinsed the shit out of it.  The rocks ended up arranged differently than they were before, less aesthetically pleasing to me, but placed to provide lots of nooks and spaces for the fish to sleep in.  I put the gravel in, then cleaned the filter and pump and filled the tank with water up to a level several inches higher than it was at its most decrepit state.

Once back in their tank, the fish were energized and active again.  The rocks were in a completely different arrangement than before, and I had moved the filter further down toward the right side of the tank.  This means that even the current made by the filter would flow differently than before, so they were really in a completely different environment than before. Yet another foreign world for them.  How odd it must have been.  Soon enough they became accustomed to it and I'm sure they appreciate the oxygenated, ammonia-free water.  It looks clean and cool.  Since moving the filter, the water that spills into the tank from it streams down onto a pile of rocks that I had placed in such a way as to create a little cave for the fish.  The top stone is about the size of a pack of cards with a flat surface and it is on about a forty-five degree angle.  There must be a nice current running up this rock from low in the front of the tank up the rock and toward the back.  The fish, sometimes three lined-up in a row, like to park their bellies on the rock facing the current and just let the water flow into their gills.  It's good to see them enjoying their environment again.

It's getting near the time to go down to the river and see if we can get some new additions to the tank.  I'm hoping for a little baby Bluegill, or a crayfish...

Before I started this blog just over a year ago, I looked at some other people's blogs.  You go to one blog, and then at the top of the page is a link that randomly sends you to the "next blog".  I saw countless blogs where the blogger would post that they were really sorry they hadn't posted in a long, long time, and that they were going to resume blogging in earnest from now on.  Almost to a one, the date of the post was more than a year old!  I hoped that I would not follow that suit with my blog, and while I have been a bit absent for a while now, I know I have a backlog of topics to cover.  I'll get to them in due time.  I am, after all, a champion procrastinator.  To be fair, though, I have had a surprising burst of enthusiasm for some other of my pursuits lately, and they have prevented me from sinking too far into an easy chair.   Coming out of Winter is a good thing.  I was almost at a point of no return.  I tend to go a bit cuckoo in the winter.  Anyway, the post you are reading now was begun several weeks ago, before my vacation, then it just languished for a while.  This evening I resolved to finish this one.  Actually, I had to split it into two different posts--the next one will deal with the vacation I finished a week ago, and this one necessarily must cover a little development I noticed when I looked at my stats...

The Blog provides you with statistics as to how many views you get, and from where in the World people are reading your writings.   Normally I get a small handful of views a week.  Nothing special.  I don't really promote it or bug people to read it.  I'm intrigued that people in many countries have read it.  I wonder if the views are the result of Google searches for the words "salmon" and/or "river".  I suspect that "salmon"  results in most of the views coming from Russia.  I get the most views from the U. S., then Russia, then Germany.  Sportsmen looking for good salmon fishing rivers, I'm sure, may be disappointed when they arrive at my blog and find these posts about Grammar Policing, Hunter Thompson, some fictional jerkwater town called Pediddleville, and my aquarium.  So it was with some surprise that I found that in the last week I have had nearly two dozen views from Germany!  What could have spurred that on?

The last post was an article called "Pondering Hollywood", which was about a trend I noticed about the way movies and TV shows get their titles--more nerdly Grammar Policing.   It sat there on the blog for several weeks, getting a small number of views as usual.  I guess the word "Hollywood" was not much of a draw, even during the time close to the Oscars.  During that time I kept editing the post because I kept coming across new titles I wanted to add into the text, then it occurred to me that I neglected to consider a ripe segment of the entertainment industry that I was not well-versed in, so I added a post script to the post that contained THE word that apparently dozens of people in Germany were looking for--PORN!  Hello, Germany, you horny wankers!  Let's see how many hits I get after this one...

Pondering Hollywood

Family Discharge, We've Gotta Stop Him, Toddler Thieves, Where In The World Is My Clownfish Son?, The Unlikely Student, He's A Recluse

Ever hear of any of these films?  No, they're not obscure Indie films or foreign films translated into English. They are well-known films that were released with much more trendy titles.  They all may have had working titles similar to these, but it's easy to imagine the execs at the movie production companies suggesting more catchy titles for greater potential returns on their investments.

In the Seventies you may recall movies and maybe a few TV shows with titles meant to inspire Intrigue, let's say.  The Eiger Sanction. The Andromeda Strain.  The Amityville Horror.  The Rockford Files. There was a play called The Thudpucker Proxy.  The grammatical structure of the title is the word "The" plus a proper noun, often some character's last name, then another noun, but a concept noun rather than an object noun. There are some more recent examples of this:  The Shawshank Redemption, and the entire Bourne series, but that formula is not as common anymore.  It has, in fact, morphed into a newer formula.

I first noticed this new apparent trend in 2001, when checking the movie listings, I saw that there were two movies in theaters concurrently called Kissing Jessica Stein and Saving Silverman, that began with a verbal noun, or gerund,  then a proper noun, usually a character's  name.  Saving Silverman  even had the added cutesy saleability of alliteration, and I remembered the year before a film called Finding Forrester.  This got me thinking, and I started to remember several films like this.  As far as I can reckon, this trend in film titling began in 1983 with a movie called Educating Rita.  In 1987 there was Raising Arizona, and Driving Miss Daisy in 1989.  In 1992 we had Raising Cain and Educating Peter.  1993 saw the release of Killing Zoe and Boxing Helena.  Leaving Las Vegas came out in 1995, Chasing Amy in 1997, and 1998 saw the release of Waking Ned Devine and Saving Private Ryan.  1999 was the year that saw probably the most extreme (possibly parody) use of "the formula": Being John Malkovich.  It is almost as if the formula had gained such influence on the collective consciousness that a title such as this was inevitable--rather than an action taken toward a character,  actually BEING the character!  In the 21st Century we had the three films already mentioned, then Finding Nemo in 2003.  This trend in movies started to trail off at this point. Perhaps the movie moghuls sensed a coming glut and eased out of it, though 2008 had Forgetting Sarah Marshall and 2009 had Facing Ali.  The trend by now was migrating into other media.   

After Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss had a short-lived sitcom called Watching Ellie.  Other shows are Raising Hope, Saving Hope, Finding Bigfoot, Flipping Vegas, Flipping Boston, and Breaking Amish. Breaking Bad qualifies on a technicality because although the word "bad" is an adjective, in this context it is being presented as a concept, which is proper noun-ish.  It has infected band names--Flogging Molly, Breaking Benjamin, and Walking Elliot.  Books--Renting Lacy, Catching Fire, and Killing Lincoln, which was recently adapted to a TV docudrama.  A Blog--Kissing Suzy Kolber--and you can bet there are myriad blogs on the internets that use "the Formula". 

Trends like this are interesting.  A film called The Rita Education, though awkward sounding, might have prevented this trend!   The Taking Of Pelham 1-2-3 has been re-made twice years later as a TV movie and then in 2009 as a big-screen release, and the urge to call it Taking Pelham was resisted.  The popular comedy There's Something About Mary could have possibly been called Stalking Mary, but the urge was most probably quashed by its inappropriateness.  Was Spielberg encouraged to call his film Saving Private Ryan rather than The Last Son or Family Discharge?  It's interesting that as the formula moved into TV from movies, it seems that the formula lends itself even better to reality series and blogs than to films because of the ongoing nature of those formats.  Then again, it could be that it's just familiarity and saturation.

Naturally the formula can now become something to ignore or forget about since it is so ingrained in our consciousness.  It took me a long time to get around to finally saying something about it.  Right now the more annoying Hollywood trend deals with subject matter rather than title structure formulas--the fact that nearly every other film or TV show these days is about Vampires, Werewolves, and/or Zombies!  Breaking Dawn, anyone?  In the name of all that is Holy, come up with something original!

Post script:  After posting this entry I have edited it several times, usually to add in a new title I have found or remembered.  Now, though, I have to add a whole new segment, spurred on by the announcement that Vice President Joe Biden has begun a new "audio series" called Being Biden.  Yes, this bandwagon has even been jumped onto by the Vice President.  I failed to mention earlier that I see the gerund-proper noun-titles in numerous segments on news shows.   Another thought I had was that there is another segment of the film/video industry that I did not touch on in the original post: Porn.  I won't take the time to research it now, and clearly you can see that it's not an area I am in the habit of viewing, but I'm certain there must be many Pornos that make use of the formula.  I can only guess--Doing Denise?  Teasing Tiffany?  Fellating Fellini?--I can only guess.  I have a relatively clean hard drive.  I've tried the Internets a small handful of times, but I just don't have the interest in it to get past the creepy feeling that a digital record of that viewing is being stored somewhere, identifying me as a consumer of Porn, and I don't think I have ever watched an internet porno to its "completion".  It just creeps me out too much.  I do not have a voyeuristic "need", shall we say.  I have more important and interesting things to occupy my time with than to watch internet pornos.

Post post script:  Another movie title popped into my head recently, and it predates Educating Rita from 1983 as my claimed start of the trend.  Eating Raoul came out in 1982.

Vintage Violence

Since the trouncing the Republican party received in the 2012 election, all these TV political pundits keep doing is saying the party needs to do this or that to regain their diminishing support.  They have to embrace minorities (um, ick!), they have to learn to compromise, they have to be responsive to women's concerns, et cetera.  I say to these pundits, stop!  Let them commit their political suicide!  But then again, the more you suggest they need to change, the less they will change.  That's just their nature, so maybe I'm wrong.  Keep it up, pundits.

This debate over gun control is a prime example.  They will not budge, and the more they are asked to budge, the more loony they get.  Wayne LaPierre is Asshole of the Year, as far as I'm concerned.  This jerk had barely any respect for the pain the people of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut have experienced, living through the most horrifying damage a community can face, when La Pierre appeared on Meet the Press with David Gregory.  Gregory is not even the most left-leaning of the press he could have talked with, but on this day Gregory was grilling LaPierre pretty good, trying to get him to admit that if Lanza had been unable to obtain large capacity magazines, he might not have been able to butcher as many people.  He would not concede it.  In fact, I don't know if anybody else caught it, but he even, in a subtle way, threatened Gregory's life.  He started saying that the solution was to have armed guards at the schools, which is ridiculous but predictable, and in a quick aside mentioned that he noticed that they don't have armed guards at the NBC studios.  Do you think that agitated gun owners, afraid that the Black President is going to take away their firearms, might become unhinged seeing their gun mentor being treated in this way by the "evil, liberal media", and now knowing that there are no guards at 30 Rock, might possibly decide to start shooting up "the problem"?  This is the caliber (pun intended) of person we have to deal with all across the board in this country now, and all of those Republicans are in lock-step.

They've done it to themselves, though they try to blame "the Liberal Media", which is anything but.  The Media, in case there is any doubt, is owned by people and corporations with lots of money.  Unfortunately it is not in the best interest of their profit margin to be all that "Liberal".  Yes, Republicans have done it to themselves by screeching the "Liberal Media" myth for so many years through Fox News and all that talk radio.  Case in point: Glenn Beck.  It is well-known to people in Conneticut that in his earlier days in local Connecticut radio that Beck was a notorious coke-head.  An addict.  Addicts are known to do or say anything to get what they want.  Is it a stretch to believe he is the way he is because he is beholden to be by some rich entity who may have helped him out of the mess he made of his life?  Or Limbaugh.  It has always mystified me how intelligent people on TV could knowingly say wrong things.  What's their motivation?  Who are they protecting?  Themselves in some sick way, I suppose.

So the way it has gone is that through the screeching of these Right-Wingers in the Media and their willing cheerleaders in the Republican Party, all other Media has been forced, to try to avoid being labelled biased, to always offer the most crazy, unpalatable viewpoints as balance, no matter how wrong they may be, even often leaving it as the last word on many segments on the news.  What this has done is make the debate so UNBALANCED that as many Democrats get more conservative, the Republicans have to oppose things that they may have supported years ago.  If a Democrat supports it, they MUST oppose it, to the ridiculous extent that we see Mitch McConnell filibustering his own bill!

That's right, Republicans, keep on digging in.  That pile of detritus so conveniently placed right next to the hole you're in is looking awfully inviting...

It's The End Of The World As We Know It, And We're Still Here...

New Year's Day, in the Year of Our Lord, Two Thousand and Thirteen, A. D.

It seemed to me that Terrence McKenna really had something there with his Temporal Resonance Theory, at least from my own perspective.  Indeed, things really seemed to be accelerating toward some kind of Cosmic Collision at least in terms of my own life.  All things would be hyper-interconnected at the Zero point of the Time-Wave Continuum, December 21st, 2012, and passing that point would be a transformation so profound, it would mean "the end of History" according to McKenna.  He didn't say "End Of The World", which made it more believable to me.  So there was no massive Earthquake/Tsunami causing "The Earth Changes".  No collapse of the US Economy (not yet, anyway).   No Rogue Nation setting off a nuclear device and World War Three. No revelation that Aliens have been engineering our Evolution and our Society for Millennia. No implosion of The Milky Way.  No Zombie Apocalypse.  No Apocalypse...

From my standpoint, I almost wished for one or more of these things to happen--to shake things up.  I was locked in a lot of waiting, a lot of "riding it out" as the day approached, and some kind of massive change might have been a welcome thing in my book.  Let's see, I was nineteen in seniority away from being laid off from my job.  This scenario caused extreme anxiety as I grappled with the prospect of a very uncertain 2013, and the choice of taking a severance package that might have led to a nice winter off from working outside in the elements, followed by the very real uncertainty of finding a new job.  When I considered leaving this Hell-Hole, I was filled with inner Peace and optimism of finding a real career that I would (Heaven forbid) actually enjoy, but it always came back to the fact that it was very risky and I have a family to support.  It felt like being denied parole.

Pediddleville is not far from Newtown, Connecticut, where one of the most awful things in History just recently occurred.  That one certainly played into the sinking feeling, as if the psycho killer was trying to accelerate his own twisted version of End-Times.  It certainly doesn't at this point seem like it will enact positive change, just more debate and obfuscation leading to an impasse...

Let's not forget the extremely weird Presidential race we endured this year.  This shameful spectacle we had to witness only reinforced the notion that we were heading toward Doom, especially if Romney was going to be elected.  I've said before that a CEO is no more trustworthy than your garden-variety junkie street hustler, and with the machinations at hand--Fox News Propaganda Machine, Super-PAC money, The Koch Brothers and other sinister tycoons, Gerrymandering and Karl Rove, and knowing of past voting machine shenanigans--I was convinced that Romney was going to win.  Even though the campaign the Republicans ran on was offensive to the extreme for most people regardless of Race or economics, I was convinced he was going to win.  It was very discouraging, because Greed and Racism, in my book, are always, ultimately, supposed to be defeated.

Even Obama's win has not been uplifting, as the Nation now battles this "fiscal cliff" debate.  It's the same old cluster-fuck that plagued the Election cycle.   A good old Tabula Rasa might have been better.

On other fronts, I have been plagued by car problems, money problems, motivational problems, Time-management problems, to the point that I have felt debilitated by it. Christmas didn't and doesn't ever, help.  I have the same old New Year's resolutions, left over from last year to try to tackle, and right about now, I'm just not feeling it.  What I feel now, after the Zero date, is not so much inspiration or a sense of something new beginning, but a very flat, stagnant feeling.  Fuck it.  Just move on.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  That great new career will just drop into your lap.  Or the bastards will have a change of heart and suddenly start being nice to you.   Oh Yes...

So, far from the 2012 thing being a new start, it feels like the most nothing of nothings has actually happened.  Salmon River flowing nicely now as my fish enjoy another easy winter.  Pediddleville 2013.

Scattered Thoughts...Tank Update #5...12-21-2012

Things are freaky/weird right now.  I got the feeling something big, not the End of the World, but something, is going to happen.  Terrence McKenna had a theory he called Temporal Resonance that seemed to show a wave pattern in the Time-Space Continuum.  Novelty, or interconnectedness, plotted over the time wave seemed to reveal repetition of the wave over periods of linear time that would resonate.  For instance, the beginning of the Dark Ages had a wave pattern that resonates with the Reagan Administration...

Anyway, according to his calculations, December twenty-first, 2012, the Winter Solstice, the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, is supposed to be where the wave finally reaches Zero, or maximum resonance.

Is it just me, or isn't everything speeding up and transforming?

Or maybe the Earth WILL align with the Sun and the Galactic Axis and some kind of gravitational sling-shot action will propel us into the Sun, then the Sun itself will be pulled into the super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.   Might be fun...

Anyway, the fish tank has been stable for a while now.  There are still five Dace and two of the other kind.  One of the two full-grown Dace has developed some kind of growth on its head.  I thought it was Ich, so I did a treatment, but the growth remains.  It looks like the meat is oozing out of the skin.  Like I said before, the Dace live in a Pediddleville all their own...

River Snorkeling...Communion With The Trout...Big Mamma And The Snapper...The Best Place On Earth...

It is now nearing Thanksgiving, and recent rains have raised the water level in Salmon River, but the drought made it very low all summer.  The drought hadn't been nearly as bad as in other parts of the country, but river snorkeling was pretty uninspiring this past summer.  Why not finally get around to the piece I've been meaning to write since the beginning?

One of the blessings of my life is the fact that I live about one minute away from the best place on Earth.  This one-sixteenth of a mile stretch of Salmon River is one of my favorite places on Earth, undoubtedly. It's been my favorite swimming spot since my teenage years.   Long ago there was a mill dam in this place, stretched across the river at the point where a natural formation of one giant continuous piece of bedrock has about a four foot step.  There must have been quite a pond above the dam, with that big flat rock comprising the bottom.  Now in place of the dam is a cascade that when running strongly is a fabulous back massager.  If you lean back even more while sitting on a rock step, you can make the water stream over you head, creating an air pocket behind the water that you can sit in and breathe underwater indefinitely.

Just below the cascades is a pool with an angled flat rock bottom, here and there pocked with potholes bored out by the endless water flow.  It's a great place to cool off effortlessly.  There are no loose rocks on the bottom like in the rest of the river, so scrapes and bruises and twisted ankles are less likely.  The bedrock then emerges above the water level to form a big open slab.  If you go there after the sun is down, even if the air is cool, you can feel the heat radiating from within the rock, stored up from the day's sun-baking.  I can lay there feeling the warmth and hearing the water, and be relaxed beyond relaxed.  This with the sound of the flowing water is way better than any relaxation tape.  Conversely during heatwaves, this place has been a Godsend.  I work outside, so the heat really depletes my energy.  Often at these times swimming cools you off, but if it's too hot the effect wears off rapidly, even if you retreat to air conditioning.  The river, on the other hand, fixes you up good.  I will go there after work and just submerge myself in the water, letting the current take away the heat, until I reach the point of self-induced hypothermia.  It makes the rest of the evening comfortable.

Just a few yards down river, after a section of rocky rapids, it opens up into a larger, deeper section that is also good for river swimming.  You can swim in parts of this area without knuckle scraping.  Here, with mask and snorkel, you can see the full spectrum of fish life found in the river, including small and largemouth bass, bluegills, sunfish, suckers, salmon parr, eels, and stocked trout--Rainbow, Brown, Brook, and Tiger Trout (a hybrid produced by fertilizing brown trout eggs with brook trout sperm with stunning patterns on its body).  It's a wide section where the water is slower-moving, but it is easy to locate where the current winds through.  I like to dive to the bottom, hold onto a rock, and just hang there in the current, feeling the awesome power of the moving water.  It's like my nervous system is plugged directly into the energy flow of the planet.  In psychophysiological terms, it's my Happy Place...

I wonder why I don't see other people snorkeling in the river.  I sometimes get self-conscious about what others might be thinking--"Who is that lunatic snorkeling in there?"  "What's there to see?"  Some people wouldn't think of snorkeling anywhere but some tropical island with crystal blue clear water and neon-colored fish, but I find it weird that more people are not interested in seeing what's under the water they're swimming in.  There's plenty to see, albeit New England drab, and it's very intersting to me.  On a practical level fishermen could really see where the good holes are, and what lives in them.

All that aside, I suppose many people just lack the kind of spiritual connection that I have with the river.  Sure, I'm aware that there are fly fishermen who are spiritual about their quest for the trout--knowing the water conditions, the feeding habits, the weather influence, Zen and such things, but I'm talking about being IN it.  Last year was the first year my wife and I felt that our sons were old enough to go there safely.  My older son Owen is old enough to be able to go snorkeling, and he likes it, and that just warms my heart.  A couple of times a few years ago I had snorkeled down sections of the river, say from the State forest down to Comstock Covered Bridge, or South of the bridge down to Leesville Dam.  One time last year we were at the river, and I figured we'd go home soon because I was getting a chill, but Ellen suggested Owen and I snorkel down to the bridge and she and  Emmet would drive down and meet us there.  Though I was cold, I jumped at the chance to spend more time in the water, making my way downstream exploring the river with my son.  Sometimes you float on the surface, letting the current propel you as you scan the underwater landscape. Other times your belly scrapes the rocks, and you have to stand up and wade a bit.  We made our way down, his hand grasping my ankle at all times.  I'd stop here and there to point out fish or various holes.  It was great to be sharing that experience with him.  A chip off the old bedrock.

One time we were there and Owen stepped on a rock that moved.  He looked down and got a look at it, then sprang out of the water.  It was a big snapping turtle.  I read on the internets that they are quite vicious on land, but underwater in their element they shy away from humans and rarely bite, unless they are provoked.  We'd see it now and then, parked on the bottom like a prehistoric gargoyle, or at times it would surface for air, and you'd see the bubbles rising all around it on the surface.   One time I was snorkeling and saw it directly in front of me at about two yards away.  I stopped and stood there looking at it, refracted sunlight mottling its bubbly face.  It stayed for a while and looked at me.  I started to move to the right, and as I moved, the turtle also moved so we both moved to the right around the same circle, all the while keeping an eye on each other.  After about 180 degrees the turtle broke from the circle and swam off.

One day I arrived home from work and Owen told me he'd been there earlier and had seen this giant fish in the swimming hole, and couldn't figure out what kind it was.  He had fife and drum corps practice that night, so after dinner I went down there myself.  Sure enough, I saw the fish.  It was about two feet long, and surely the biggest fish I'd ever seen in the river.  It swam around evasively in the pool, with me all the while trying to get a good look at it.   It had a curious-looking rounded-off tail and was very fat.   It would swim and sort of almost tip over when it took a turn, like it's fins were not strong enough to control its mass.  Finally I was able to identify it--it was a trout!  It was so hard to recognize because it was so fat, but the markings, the comparative size of the eyes and shape of the head--it had to be a monster trout.  Must have been brood stock released into the river from the stocking program.  She was probably Mother to most of the trout in the river, grown fat on easy food for years until she stopped producing eggs.  It was really funny to watch how uncoordinated she was in the natural environment of the river. She was used to swimming in a round tank for most of her life.   The varying depths and rock obstacles appeared to be foreign to her.  I named her "Big Mamma".

At times I have been there when no one else was there.  I like that because I don't get concerned about what they might think, and I can really get into the experience.  After work one day I went there and had the place to myself.  I started wading into the swimming hole, put on my mask and bent over to put my face in the water to look around.  I noticed there were a lot of trout in the hole.  They were all lined up near the bottom, hanging in the current facing upstream, letting the water stream through their gills.  There were so many of them, some nice Rainbows about sixteen inches long, Brookies and Browns ten to twelve inches, and a couple of Tiger Trout.  Big Mamma would lumber around on the outskirts of the school.  I noticed the trout really didn't seem to mind me being there if I didn't make any quick moves.  They must have recently stocked these fish--I tried to estimate how many there were, and I figured at least two hundred.  Then I noticed that behind me in the path where I had entered the pool, it had all filled in with fish--I was completely surrounded by hundreds of fish!  It was transcendental!  We were all together in this pool just meditating on the current, going with the flow...

As the summer wore on the number dwindled as they were caught, or moved to other locations in the river.   Big Mamma must have been caught by some surprised angler who took her home to eat, because she was not seen after a certain point.  Neither she nor the Snapping Turtle have been seen this past year at the swimming hole.  The river continues the relentless flow as the year wanes toward winter, and now I watch my little trout-looking Dace in my home aquarium and think of Big Mamma.

Tank Update #4: Aquarium Equilibrium...The Green Slime Abates...Hell Or Pediddleville...State Of The Blog...

I am now again considering getting some new fish, maybe only a few.  After the mass death in the tank, the number of fish has been stable at seven now for weeks.  Ich infected the tank and confounded me because it affected both the older and the newer tank residents.  Did the parasite that causes Ich come in with the new fish, or was it just beginning in the tank before the new ones were introduced?  Of the original batch of Dace, only Queen Dace and one Henchman remain, and he almost died.  Of the newer batch of fish there are three Dace and the two "others", who are growing fast on their goldfish flake diet.  The Ich treatment successfully stopped the deaths, and also seems to have stopped, or even reversed the growth of the blue-green algae bloom that was covering everything.  I still need to do a good cleaning and water change.  The pollywogs have not been seen for a while and I assume they starved or were killed by the Ich treatment.

The last several weeks have seen ramped-up frustration, and it takes a heavy toll on my motivation and attitude. Conditions at my workplace have become almost unbearable due to the evil shit-heads who run it.  If you are familiar with the book "Catch -22" by Joseph Heller, you may be able to understand.  I have always been a reliable, diligent worker, yet bean-counting little shits with MBA's have implemented a measurement/ranking system just inches off from what Hell must be like that somehow makes me look bad.  I never had this problem until this system was implemented, so it's obvious what's going on.  The company's sheer callous disregard for anything other than inflated profits approaches the ridiculous.  At a time when supposedly everybody is hurting, these fuckers are raking it in.  No matter how hard I try, it is a losing battle against a stacked deck.

I mention this because one reason I have this fish tank with fish from my beloved Salmon River is for stress relief, primarily stress from my job.  It is also why I write this Blog.  My creative output has always been something that I have used to measure how successfully I am navigating through life.   The job sucks the energy out of me, and despite the plans I often make to work on this or that after work, family obligations, and just "being there" are easy distractions.  Also I am a champion procrastinator.  Yes, I know I should be doing Yoga or some other theraputic method, but I see the hazard of the methods themselves becoming roadblocks to doing the things I want to get done.  These things take Time I don't have, and Energy I don't have.  I'd really just rather write and play music than work toward being able to do those things, and I know it is imperative that I get my ass out of this debacle that is my occupation or it will simply never happen.  For instance, there is one Blog post that has been languishing in my mind since I started this thing.  In fact, it is one of the first things I wanted to write, but the subject matter has been too big and important for me to ever complete it.  It is now about half-done in draft, and should be the very next post here.

No more writing about writers writing!  

I have been keeping a low profile--I have only told a small handful of people that this Blog exists, but after I publish the next post, I think I will go much more public.  I do get a kick out of seeing that I have had visits from people in Russia (I'm big in Russia!) Germany, Austria, United Kingdom, Macedonia, Latvia, Ukraine, and France.