Jove the Wonder Goldfish's Journal

9:16pm: Grave News
After many weeks, I have finally succeeded in hacking his account. This is not Jove. This is Jove's mother. It is my duty, though not my pleasure, to inform all of Jove's internet friends and fans that he has passed onto the next life.

His death was not without a gallant fight. He spent the summer warding off many different fungii, armed only with determination. No one was on his side. The lukewarm conditions of his half-filled tank in an unconditioned room, oft vacant on the weekends by a caregiver who I shared in idle philosophizing of his condition all did little to help him in his noble persistance. When we at last attempted practical measures -- medicines and special feeding -- it was too late. The worm that ate his body (though never defeated his soul!) was firmly established. NO $9 over the counter concotion from Petco could remedy. NO cheerful words could uplift. He was beyond our help.

In this state, Jove was transported over an hour long car ride during a hurricane, sloshing around in his bowl, to arrive at his new home. HIs home was with me. Had it truly taken three months for me to be ready to have him near again? I'll never know. I do know that he knew his home was with me. Like the salmon who travels 3,000 miles of ocean to return to his native stream, he chose to wait, warding off his death so he might rest his final rest with his own kind.

Jove survived two days after transport on the top shelf in dining room niche, a place which has now become something of a fish hospice. I hope these two days were restful days. The final time I saw him before his passing, he was swimming upright, not on his side as he had been over these many months, and he was smiling.

Jove finally succumbed to the most pressing of his fungi. This is known as "hole in the head" disease. He had, in fact, a hole in his head. It was red and grey and about the size of a mosquito bite.

A two-week limbo in the freezer was necessary so that his soul might make its peace with his many attachments in this life. Many of you may have already experienced a nightly visit from him. He spoke to me in my dreams, reassuring me that he held no resentments, that it was indeed his time to go. I feel at peace.

His final request was to be given not a burial, as I was planning, but a return to his own element. It was the only appropriate thing I could do, to flush his body and his soul onward, to nourish new life.

Jove loved all of you. He loved your stories, he loved sharing his own. I only wish more of his wisdom could have been imparted to you all. You were his most beloved audience. In one visitation he flirtatiously mentioned the possibility of ghostwriting his memoirs someday via an oujia board. The thought of that possibility makes my heart warm.

Nigger and Kitty continue to thrive in their tank. They are a dynamic part of the household, situated diagonally on our kitchen table. They swim, shit, and eat. Because neither fish can read nor write, you won't be hearing about them anymore.

5:26pm: I have a fungus.

Mom and Auntie Blakely are exchanging ironical notes about it. I read her fucking email while she's at work.

I am pleased to announce that votre petit poisson has begun once again to wiggle and to eat food.

Nothing, NOTHING can keep me away from the computer.

without_shame I am watching you, bitch. Keep an eye on your cats. I have plans for them.

12:02pm: we're staying at Aunt Blakely's house for the summer. It's hot, but blue. She likes us a lot and feeds us all the time. she's also not a total fucking slut, which is something of a relief.

1:28pm: Forgiveness. Actually, not really ... it's "Should I Help a Blood Relative Cheat?"
Mom asked me to write her Einstein essay.

I know it's wrong for parents to do kids' homework ... is it wrong for kids to do it for their parents? that's kind of like saying: it's wrong if mom sucks little billy's pee pee, but not wrong if little billy explores the dam from whence he sprang.

Or maybe I have just picked up her bad habit of associating everything with sex. Regardless, ... I understand why she would ask. I'm fucking brilliant.

12:20pm: Life is good
ever since mom stole Kitty for me, life in the tank has improved dramatically. we play and eat and play and eat and sometimes compare turds. i think nigger was so shy before, because Juno was mean to him. Kitty isn't racist like that. She lets nigger do anything. Nigger plays with us sometimes, but mostly is just comfortable going anywhere he wants, within the tank. He's even comfortable eating the plants, which is something we do, too, when mom's out whoring and forgets to feed us. We get fed twice a day, not a million times, like before, when juno was dying and mom kept trying to wake her up with food, and i just ate all the food because I'm greedy. I've lost weight. I'm not fat and unhappy. I'm always hungry, come meal time. But i'm handsome, thin, streamlined. I don't look all gouty, or worse, pregnant, like mom.

Mom has started to pet me at meal times. It feels weird. Sometimes i let her and sometimes i run away. kitty doesn't like it. I wonder if she'll stop after she gets rid of the baby.

and i'm glad she's getting rid of the baby. i mean, if she had a kid, she would, like, COMPLETELY neglect us. of course, it would also mean she'd stop whoring so much. but as i've said before, i kind of like watching her fuck.

8:37am: Juno died, last night.

3:06pm: So this blond guy bought us a tankwarming gift.

Juno AND Blanche have a crush on him.

Mom and him keep fucking singing that 'time of my life' song in hiccup voices.

9:54am: theological speculation
I've felt so empty lately. Even after mom bought us the rock and changed our filter, I still can't shake the feeling that all this, everything, I mean, my tank, the gravel, the plants, Nigger, my girlfriend -- it's all meaningless.

I mean, what is the fucking point of swimming through the hole in my lava rock? Moving my body? What's the point of moving my body? To stay alive? What's the point of staying alive? To not die? But I'm gonna fucking die anyway. That's what happens to fish like me! We shit, we swim, we eat, we DIE. And that's the grim truth.

I don't know how Juno deals with this - this "life/death" business. I think she understands the problem in her own way, but she takes it all out on me. She totally attackes me, she takes out all her anger against my large, helpless self. I mean, I don't fight back because she's the girl and she's smaller. As much as she needs me and finds safety in me, I am, for her, a target personifying all the evils of our world.

Or maybe women just suck.

So, so ... nigger stays at his pulpit behind the heater. All day, all he does is quote the bible from heart. It's his way of trying to deal with this. This meaninglessness. This hopelessness. Nigger says: De Lawd says "Dow sha' not diah, dow sha' LIVE in mah house foh-evah!" OK so that eliminates the death problem but it doesn't solve anything about the life problem. I mean, I could swim, shit, and eat until that certain future point when mom goes on vacation and Aunty Brooke forgets to feed me; or, I could swim, shit, and eat forever in God's tank. Nigger says: "Ask de lawd fo' whatevah yohu wants an' HE shal gib it to ya'alls!"

To give Nigger some credit, he's not a scat fetishist. And his wails are convincing, at the very least they're sincere. So once...this is a little embarrassing but what are journals for?...once, I tried to do just that, like, ask the lord for shit. I said: "Lord, lord!" and then "Um...god?" and just in case he only could hear nigger talk i said "De Lawd? Lawdy?" ... but of course that didn't fucking work. Unless god's voice sounds exactly like a filter motor. Good thing Juno can't read. She'd laugh and laugh at me.

***

Last night mom and Aunty Brooke made a big collage out of gay porn. I'm actually sort of proud of them. It's in the bathroom, now. Maybe I'm secretly gay. I can always force nigger to have sex with me and test this theory out.

***

Again, I ask, fin to forehead, despondant:
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF IT ALL? There is none. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF A UNIVERSE WITHOUT MEANING? who knows.

10:00am: Juno beat me up.

12:22pm: mom put us on a diet so we revenge ourselves upon her by eating all of nigger's food cucumbers are gross but at least skin-stretching and when you live in a 10 gallon tank there isn't much to do but see how far your skin can stretch and juno is so small not even really fat but surely demanding mother is crazier than anyone and it's better not to be coupled with her probably should be thankful for juno in that light, though to some degree mom has been ignoring me since she gave me the community™ and i wonder if i'm still a good son because excluding feeding times i'm significantly less interested in her as a person too to be honest i haven't even read her latest livejournal entries mainly because they're somewhat redundant (she talks to herself, much of the same stuff and it's kind of hard to ignore though perhaps she thinks she is talking to us i can see purchasing a pet being her way of securing a reliable interlocutor) being a good son doesn't really matter anyway when father picks up the tab and sometimes it's hard to be a goldfish who thinks about things but fortunately for me every thought i think isn't tacitly coupled by some unendurable emotion, and when i'm sick of thinking I can just go back to swimming and eating or perhaps molesting sister and slave.

LIVE FROM THE TANK

Nigger: LAWDY boy wha' you be WANTIN' wi' mah grub?

Jove: You're lucky I left you the peel.

Nigger: But Bo-oy, ah mean, massah sah, de only othah grub in DIS HEAH tank is yo'all's terds! dey ain' no algay fo' me to munch, none yet, massah sah.

Jove: What do you want me to do? Shit some more?

Nigger: Ah want you to fin' de lawd, an' leave mah grub ALOH-N, sah.

Jove: Fuck "de lawd". And eat my shit, motherfucker.

Nigger: bitting back the tears Yessah, massah sah.

11:30am: I hate women.

4:26pm: Community ™
mom got me nigger and he's a baptist, says i can be saved; i was on the brink of selling myself on the corner to raise funds for a cab so i could go to the public library gulp and update my livejournal but mom isgetting better she fixed the puter nigger can't read or write but he shore cleans up.

Nigger: Lawd yo' pa' was a bad man.

Me: Fuck you.

Nigger: jesus don' like none for his chilren to sweah like dat.

Me: Fuck Jesus. And clean my fucking tank.

Nigger: yessir massah.

she also bought me a juno a brother, but it smells like a sister. i have a naked picture of her. she's small and hot, not yellow like me.

i eat the same thing every day.

3:04pm: I flipped off my mom
This morning mother looked at me and said: You don't believe that I'm morally responsible for ensuring that you don't die, because you are a fish, Jove, and you don't know anything about morality. This is good, because you're probably going to die, and I'm probably not going to do anything to prevent this.

My response:

A) Fish know HTML. We also know how to flip off our parents, undetected. That little swish of my tail fin meant You are a cruel motherfucking excuse for a mother. Just to clear that up a little.

B) You are a fucking bitch for putting me in a new tank that didn't circulate long enough. I itch like hell from all these white spots.

C) When I wiggle around, all frenzied because of these fucking white spots, it is NOT cute. I'm not trying to "swim cuter", or however it is that you rationalize my pain.

D) You can't just feed me more because I'm more [UNWILLINGLY] active and expect the spots to go away. I mean, shit. I'm glad you're not starving me in addition to your animal cruelty, but you need a refresher on causality, Mom. Putting more flakes in my tank is not going to make this ailment YOU FUCKING INFLICTED any better.

E) I was better off at Petsmart.

F) Your stereo fucking sucks. Why won't any ofthe disk trays open? I really wanted to listen to The Doors today. Fucking get a new stereo so I can at least have some final enjoyment during my last days on this earth. It's like medical marajuana. Bitch I'm putting it in terms you'll understand.

G) Stop letting the cats look at me, growling. It's not funny. It's not. And you do a shitty job of restraining them.

H) Yes, fuck you, fish also know the alphabet. I also speak fucking mexican but that wouldn't really help get my points across to you losers now would it? You have to learn it if you're going to live at Petsmart, duh.

9:24am: no one knows when a fish goes pee

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Low
Schizoid:	Moderate
Schizotypal:	Low
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	High
Narcissistic:	Low
Avoidant:	Low
Dependent:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Low
-- Click Here To Take The Test --

My tank's loud in the corner red walls make me carnivourous hard to pretend my flake food's alive but i try

HAPPY FISHY! mommy and i exercised together this morning each naked peach and orange warm toned porcaros her voice resounds in my bowl all pretty glub glub i eat plants

i want juno i lost two scales it's my scar i look tough i'll join a gang be the leader in a leather beret we will hunt algae and anything smaller really

(demogogue fish need berets it's their secret)

you all are wondering how i type so well with fins.

4:39pm: Brrrrrr...
cold shallow bowl hand gobble plants gasp food doesn't sink dance for mommy my new tank is getting ready for me those beasts are sisters and jealous mommy said she'd buy me a juno if i was good and didn't die so we can be brothers yes we will be BROTHERS i would never marry a sister see and we will right the sins of our ancestors and, brothers, better than those beasts who are curious and look at me with hungry eyes