A Fish Called Wilma

Wanna hear a story?

So I have this fish. Her name is Wilma. She is 2 years old.

(Flashback: I had two fish my freshman year named Fred and Ginger. Then Ginger died. But then just having a fish named Fred was super lame, so I got him a rebound wife named Wilma. Well, then Fred died. So now I have Wilma.)

Now you're all caught up.

So Wilma's always been a little . . . odd. Like she's always done this thing where she lies on the bottom of the tank all the time.

. . . I didn't say it was an interesting thing.

But then when I went to feed her, she'd get all excited and swim around. It's by far the most exciting thing fish do. Fish suck.

So, the thing is . . . Wilma's been sort of dying for the past 2 months. She just kinda flops around on the bottom of the tank. Sometimes she tries to swim to the top, mustering everything she's got to reach the surface, but eventually she just floats back down to the bottom like that feather from Forrest Gump. It's really quite pathetic.

Last weekend I brought her home for Thanksgiving because doing the opposite would have been animal cruelty. Also because I guess I "love" her, blah blah blah whatever. When I got home I thought, "You know what, self? I'm gonna clean Wilma's fish tank. Cos I'm a pet parent. And as such, I'm responsible!"

So I did. But very little changed. I mean her water was less poopy, but her demeanor remained apathetic and exponentially morbid.

I came back to Knoxville on Sunday, clean sad fish in tow.

And you know what happened?

I left that stupid fish in the car overnight, and she died.

Black Friday Eve

Stressed Out Zombie Face

There are 3 things in this lovely world that turn me into a cannibalistic hate monster who is generally very unpleasant to be around.

1. People who say "Oh I love this part" when I'm watching a movie
2. The first 15 minutes I'm awake
3. Impending deadlines

When deadlines get me really stressed out, I get mean. Like real mean.

Which brings me to my point . . .

I had several massive assignments due the past two weeks, and it made me crazy. Let's just say that my failure to behave like an adult has a multitude of arms that extend across the far reaches of my personality. This includes (but is not limited to) an inability to budget time or money, a reluctancy to wash my pants after each wear, and a total misreading of the movie Charlie Wilson's War.

(Sidenote: it wasn't so much a misreading of Charlie Wilson's War as it was falling asleep.)

Basically, this is all just a fancy way of excusing my nasty demeanor these past few weeks and apologizing to all who stepped unknowingly in my path.

When a deadline approaches, the first thing to go is sleep.

I pulled 2 very unpleasant all-nighters in the library over the course of 2 weeks, and, let me just say, I now have a very clear understanding of what lack of sleep does to me:

This wondrous brain that God hath blessed me with becomes a gloopy mess of tapioca pudding and cheese fries. I lose all ability to function as a productive human being and slide through the world like a misinformed tree slug.

The morning after that dreadful night in the library stacks is a bit fuzzy. I remember snippets, scattered clips of my life that smear through my mind.

I do remember feeling like someone had stuffed cotton balls in every hole in my face.

I remember discovering I had left the library without retrieving anything I went there to print.

I remember being in a constant state of shivers from some mixture of fatigue, hunger, cold, and giddiness.

And I remember coming back home and laughing too hard that "Titanic" was almost called "Planet Ice."

But the rest is lost forever.

If ever there were an argument for the existence of zombies, this is it.

Lesser Known Bestsellers

Memoirs of a Busy Person

EnvironMENTALism

When humans finally go paperless, I have faith we'll find new reasons to cut down trees.

In the future, televisions will have antennas again.

Home alone

Followed closely by washing my face then looking up in the mirror.