R.I.P. Midas the Goldfish

Midas the Goldfish died of presumably natural causes on Tuesday. He had been a part of our tank for quite a while. He was the lone survivor of one supply of feeder fish we bought for the Captain probably two years ago now. He was the oldtimer when the new oscars moved in, though they eventually outgrew him. He mostly just scavenged off the bits that fell out of the oscars' mouths, darting around making his "o-face."

Luna gets lasered

Nooobody knows...

Bitch goes to jail
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Rummy and Luna

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Lunavision

Rummy goes to the pound

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The lair

Spiny orb weavers seem to follow us everywhere. Honestly before the westgate house I never saw them so regularly. In Dripping we had those big long-legged garden spiders, but I don't remember these black and white crab-looking things. They make some cool webs though.
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more R&R

What's the word, turd?

I went to a tournament at Battleforge Games last weekend. There's a write up on my 40kology blog.

Books: I recently finished Imperial Life in the Emerald City, an inside look at Bremer's coalition provisional authority that set up in a big palace in Baghdad's green zone at the beginning of the occupation and proceeded to spend buttloads of money while accomplishing next to jack shit and many times making the situation worse. It was shocking, depressing, etcetera. A blissfully naive effort to create an insta capitalist democracy in what sounds like a backwards, corrupt(ed) dump. Oh well, launch all zigs. For great justice. Thereafter I read Vonnegut's Jailbird, which was good, but not especially funny or memorable. Now I'm reading Bluebeard which so far feels about the same. Both are told from first-person, both are loaded with coincidence and irony, and both feature playful little digs at different elements in American culture. Labor and economics in Jailbird, art and literature in Bluebeard. At least, that's my early take.

Movies: It's been a while since I reviewed any movies, let me play catch-up here and spin a few quick ones:

Daria: Is It Fall Yet? - Lame. I netflixed it for some goddamn reason, forgetting that we'd actually watched it already. It wasn't any better the secondtime around.

Flags of Our Fathers - OK, but it's no das Boot.

Land of the Dead - Decent, definitely in the idiom of his earlier movies (e.g. Day of the Dead). Some interesting innovations in zombie mythos.

Pan's Labyrinth - Meh. What was with all the big hoopla about this one?

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days - Definitely worth watching, depressing but very tense and dramatic.

28 Weeks Later - OK sequel to my current favorite zombie movie. Very violent, sometimes a little too extreme for extreme's sake.

Smokin' Aces - Meh. Who shot what now?

TV: Lost had the best 2007 season finale, hands down. Can't wait for the next season to begin. Heroes wrapped up fairly nicely, maybe a tad anticlimatic. The Shield and The Riches final episodes were both kinda lame, nothing really revelatory or cliffhangery. My current netflixed HBO series is The Wire. I'm nearing the end of the first season and it is fucking great. I can't believe the person that just got shot just got shot! Fuck!

Beer: Real Ale keeps me coming back for more Rio Blanco Pale Ale and Fireman's #4. Damn!

Fish: We picked up a couple new Oscars, very little but already showing the same kind of bossy, fearless personality as their predecessor. Behold, Romulus and Remus.

R.I.P. Captain

Damn, the Captain died suddenly today. Just sank to the bottom and stopped moving. He wasn't acting all that strangely before. Dad said he was about 7 years old, I read they can live up to 15 years old, who knows what happened. Things had been status quo pretty much since we got him last year, and the water conditions were ok when we tested it recently. The skipper and the other two little ones are still alive. Bummer, he was a cool fish. And heavy! In the pursuit of study in marine/aquatic biology, I've been around my fair share of dead fish, but still it was more than a little disturbing to dispose of his remains. He had a lot of character.