Steve the Betta is Dead

Long after i have been returned to the soil and stars from which i am made, and long after the lounge has been dug up or discovered in the ether by the remnants of civilization, where it will be printed out and bound, studied and debated, some will scream that these are the holy diatribes of an ancient shaman ( maybe someday i'm gonna print all this out and hand it to a shrink just for kicks) and others will vehentely disagree and argue that they are nothing more than the rantings and ravings of a drug-addled shut-in, what those in the future will say what those in the past referred to as a "basket case", this post here i'm guessing will most definitely be ammunition for the latter...

Now it's not bad enough that i'm halfway to being a crazy cat lady type, the examples are scattered through the posts of the last nine fucking years, fucking that right there should give some glimpse into my mental state, nine years of this non-sense? Sisyphus ain't got shit on me, but i'm now lamenting the loss of Nick Disaster's Betta, a Betta named Steve, if you want to know what your offspring were into at any given time just let them name the pets, dog or cat or cricket or frog or fish, but don't get me wrong, i've flushed many a fish in the last few years but Steve was different, a bright red and blue Betta, named of course for a character from Minecraft i know next to nothing about but who i'm sure Nick Disaster could fill you in on, and so it was with great sadness that i watched my trusty Betta slip slowly into the death grip over the last few days, then into the watery abyss known as the toilet...

Millenia from now as the scholars pour over these missives they will begin to piece things together, of course being thought of as the next messiah is a bit of a drag but what the fuck will i care? one of the things they will see i'm sure are recurring themes and bits and phrases from songs, like that line from "Summertime Rolls" about feeding the animals, i'm not sure how smart the average Betta is but i'm pretty sure that Steve was smarter than the average Betta, he used to get happy when he saw me (like i'm the fucking fish whisperer) cuz that usually meant he was getting fed, he'd swim to the corner where i dropped his food in and hang about, of course i know the whole Pavlov's dog thing but that's a dog and this is a fish, i didn't ring a bell and all that Steve could see was some unkept sideburns and nose hair and scruff, therefore i don't give a fuck i'm gonna believe that Steve was my friend, that he was happy to see me, and yeah i know what you're thinking, "shit, how much weed exactly does old El Kono smoke", and the answer would be more than some and less than others, he sounds like he's off his nut, prattling on about a fish...

You see i have this thing for Bettas, the fighting fish, the way the males can't get anywhere near each other without fighting to the death but how if left alone or with other happy little fish and lady Bettas they just float about all blissful and shit, there's something to be said for solitude, i used to stand and gaze at Steve and think that maybe Steve, the fucker, had it all sussed, sure one could say that he was in a cage/tank and that sometimes the water got a little dirtier than he liked but he had a plant for a bit and a fucking Easter Island stone head to swim around, nobody really fucked with him and he got fed on the regular, the only thing he lacked was a little female Betta company but he never complained, good fuckin' gig if you can get it methinks...

And of course the head shrinkers will all be gnashing their teeth and shouting that it's all some sort of metaphoric projection, that I am Steve and Steve is I, and they could be wrong or they could be right, solitude is my salvation, i prize it even though it is not in great supply and when it's most easily found i'm usually the most blatantly stoned, it ends with a sore back on a hard futon in a cold room, or is that a metaphor for a dirty tank? fuck it i don't know maybe it's nothing more than i like to gaze at colorful fish, of course Freud and Jung and their ilk would say it can't be that simple and Gautama would say it is, and the Dude would say that maybe the fish tied the room together, and taken in consort it would be an amalgamation of gibberish about a long dead fish... but in the future when this is unearthed from the virtual soil and the remnants of humankind toil over it's meaning i am hoping they realize that all it means it to be nice to each other, how fucking vanilla is that, it's the easiest to grasp, we humans are not brightest lot, just be fucking cool... and take care of the fish and cats and plants, cuz believe me, you'll miss them when they're gone...