Saturday, December 12, 2009

My Fish


It seems that an inordinate amount of people who, er, come across this blog are entertained by animals. It is to these gentle people that I would now like to make my Saturday address. My "weekend report", if you will.

I have a fish. He (and he's undoubtedly a he, for reasons that will become clear later) is a Siamese Fighting Fish. The water he swims in (which will become clear later, when I change it) should best resemble a stagnant pond in Thailand, according to the literature I've been able to scare up from my local library (The Internet).

Aside from his preposterous designation -- he is a fish, yes, but he is neither Siamese in appearance, nor does he ever seem to fight anything -- he has no name. This is because we inherited him from a friend of Brigitte, and he, like most fish, never was quite given a name. We've decided that when I go get Tai-chan on Tuesday and bring him back from Japan that he will come up with a suitable name for the fish, but last night in a video chat the first offerings were not encouraging.

"Dog," said Tai-chan disingenuously, as if testing our patience.

"Tai-chan, 'Dog' is Not a Name For a Fish," we pointed out quite firmly.

I, of course, want to name the fish something like "Gill" or "Hugh Trevor-Roper III", Brigitte wants to name him something like "Mezzaluna' (I know he's male -- I had him DNA tested behind Brigitte's back last week) but the fish himself just floats there, defying anyone's efforts to name him. I knew fish basically didn't have much of a personality, but this is ridiculous.

Now I'm thinking "Gunga Din," because he does seem to have some of that brooding, Yul Brynner-like personality (without the baldness, of course) but I guess this is one thing that will have to be left to the fates.

"Dog." Come to think of it, not so bad after all.

2 comments:

  1. Have you tried waving something red in front of his bowl? He will think it's another male and start displaying his fins!

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  2. I'll scare up a copy of Mao's Little Red Book that entertained me as a child.

    That should get his fighting spirit going.

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