Looney Tunes

I've been looking for a therapist ever since my fish died. You know how hard it is to find a good therapist. Or maybe you don't. Well bully for you.

It's not that I need a therapist to deal with my fish's death, I've got binders full of drugs for that. It's that my fish WAS my therapist. When she finally gave up the ghost and swam into the light, she left me upstream without a paddle.

All I can say is, thank the gods for Netflix streaming. "Celebrity Rehab" got me through. Turns out Heidi Fleiss and Dennis Rodman were just what the doctor ordered. Who knew? And last summer, when my dog was so sick? Fuhgeddaboutid! "Mob Wives" to the rescue. If anyone knows how to stay cool in a crisis, it's those girls.

The thing about therapists — whether you find them streaming at 4 a.m. or at the bottom of a fishtank — is they help put things in perspective.

So what if your daughter has started her own inhouse piercing and tattoing salon in her bedroom? You've got Felix Baumgartner of Austria, LIVE! on YouTube, parachuting from a hot air balloon toward Roswell, New Mexico, 24 miles below on Planet Earth.

Twenty-four fucking miles!! He made it in under ten minutes, free-falling through half of it. Which pretty much describes my approach to life. Likewise:

"Sometimes we have to get really high to see how small we are!" Thus spake Fearless Felix upon landing. I wouldn't touch that one with a 24-mile pole. Or Austrian, for that matter.

So what if one of the preschoolers you teach leaked Number Two onto the big alphabet rug? From Q to U? "Prison Wives" will calm you down.

So what if your peer group is beginning to be heavily featured in the obituaries? Since when did you start reading the obituaries? What the fuck are you doing admitting you read the obituaries? Who needs an intervention, you've got "Paranormal Witness, Season One."

Put a space in "therapist," you have "the rapist." A therapist once pointed that out to me. I wasn't "seeing" this therapist, I just "saw" her at a party. I quickly put a space between us.

That's about the time my addiction to "Dallas" went into overdrive. Of course this was waaay before Modern Life, in the days of tube TVs and $900 VCRs and video rental stores that required a lien on your firstborn male offspring before granting you an account. In those days, "streaming" meant meeting at the Cedar Lake narrows to get stoned and watch minnows.

Ever an eye on their market, Netflix provides a hefty dose of nostalgia for us Boomers, so we can revisit our Booming childhoods and hang out with the Ricardos and the Andersons and the Cleavers until we're done jonesing for the Glory Days for another few hours. Never let it be said the engineers of Modern Life aren't sensitive to the needs of their elders. After all, they wouldn't be here if it wasn't for us. Well, some of us. I myself never managed to increase the surplus population, a fact which, over the years, has in turns made me feel anguished, really really motherfucking lucky, and/or hungover.

So as far as The Election goes? Sheriff Taylor is standing between me and all the madness. They don't even allow politics in Mayberry, they think it's some sort of communicable disease. Ain't gonna argue with that one, Goober. And when I just can't stomach another eyeful of Aint Bea and her homespun amplitude, I stream on over to New Rochelle and check in on the streamlined Petries. My "Oh, Ro-ob!" is bloody spot-on, if I don't say so. I've been known to use it on my husband when I can't for the life of me remember whose house it is I'm not cleaning.

Which reminds me. I've got "Extreme Hoarders" cued up, gotta book. I've got my cell phone on vibrate just in case I get a call from one of the plethora of mental health clinics I've left messages at, or from "Aquarium World." That's the orphanage where I adopted my recently deceased therapist. And you know how hard it is to find a good fish.

Food Chain

I was all set to post about Mitt Romney being an alien lifeform from 75 million years ago who invaded the body he currently inhabits and remains programmed to infiltrate all available space and mindfuck us to Kingdom Come, but then my fish died.

I realized my description of Mitt is also a description of Tom Cruise, and it occurred to me they might actually be volcanically related, chosen by Xenu the Mindfuck Emperor to rule and accumulate wealth for a thousand lifetimes, or until Kingdom Comes, but then I found my fish floating gills up at the top of the tank and things went downhill from there.

It's a big tank. Which is what X the ME said to Mitt the day the volcano blew, before giving him his instructions:

"Thou shalt go forth and multiply, both in spawn and offshore accounts, as it is written now and shall be forevermore, and thou shalt swim to the top of the tank and never ever look down, I mean, all those wriggly little schools of evolutionary detritus? Ew!"

I had it in the corner of my brain that's still functional to beg the simple question: WHY THE FUCK? Given that one of the candidates is a known Body Snatcher, not to mention Shape Shifter, not to mention Bald-Faced Prevaricator, why the fuck is this mindfucking election so close??? But there was the little matter of that other body turning in a slow circle like a miniature air mattress beneath the tube light, and all bets were off.

*   *   *

My fish was one memorable fish. A real fish's fish. I liked to think of it as female, though I never really knew. She was twenty years old. Twenty years! 

That's about how long we've been infiltrated by that other known Body Snatcher, Michele Bachmann, who was born in a manger, raised in poverty of intellect, got married and moved to Stepford, where she went on to discover her Life's True Purpose, i.e., to conquer and destroy rational thought for all time whilst maintaining a perfect flip and crease-free lips. We like to think of her as female, but we'll never really know.

So I was going to write about Michele, too, in a perfect segue, if not a perfect flip, but then my 20-year-old plecostomus bought the farm.

When we first adopted the pleco she was 3 inches long. About the size of Mitt's dick. Or is it Michele's? Our tank is a 55-gallon, and our new adoptee soon began filling all available space. Unlike Mitt's and Michele's brains. Or dicks for that matter. We grouped a couple of gnarly boulders at the bottom of the tank, in amongst the plastic fronds and flora, and The Buick, as we soon began calling our little spawn, spent much of her spare time parked between them — her garage.

Plecos are the quintessential bottom feeders, so Mitt wouldn't be aware of their existence. If Mitt has any fish, rest assured they hover near the top of the tank, not to mention the food chain, and probably eat their young. As far as I know, Mitt has never eaten his young. That little peccadillo would've been swift-boated ages ago. If they ever get in the way of things, Mitt simply bungees them to the roof of the Beemer and keeps on driving.

*   *   *

"It's the end of an era," my husband said, when The Buick left her garage for the last time and swam toward the light. She would've made it all the way but for the glass ceiling.

And what an era it was. Man, woman, birth, death, love, lust, infinity. To paraphrase Ben Casey. Any of you Thetans out there remember Ben Casey? I preferred him to Dr. Kildare, who was a bit too "tidy" for my tastes, in the same way that George was my favorite Beatle. I adored the way BC the MD couldn't be bothered to button the top buttons of his doctor shirt, leaving it to flap manfully as he went about his doctorly day.

But back to the pleco. I had her for one third of my life. One-mindfucking-third! Here's to its being a fourth. Make that a fifth. With a beer chaser.

My fish was a chaser. She spent about a third of her life chasing her own tail, that's how humongous she eventually grew. Close to a foot. A foot! That's how big Paul Ryan says his dick is. She spent another third of her life sucking algae off the walls of the tank, and when not otherwise engaged, she slept. At least I thought of it as sleep. It was probably more like a state of suspended animation.

Which is the state Mitt's in 47% of the time. He was programmed that way. You're not likely to catch him leaping around on couches like his overly-caffeinated cousin Tom, nosireebob. Mitt has a mask to worry about. It's velcroed to his sideburns. Wouldn't want his face to fall off in the middle of a debate or anything. He should be thankful his name isn't Pinocchio.

My face fell when I discovered The Buick at the top of the tank. This in addition to the freefall it's been in for the last decade or three, you just can't win. I had only the previous day been forced, once again, to resort to what has become a tried-and-true parental mantra when it comes to reigning in erstwhile behavior on my daughter's part:

"Don't forget I have a fish that's older than you," I warned, trying not to blink.

It's just not going to carry the same weight to say I have plants that predate her. Knowing my daughter, she'll accuse me of putting her at the level of plantlife, and we'll never dig our way out of that one.

*   *   *

Did you know fish don't have eyelids? It's one of the first things I learned in fishkeeping. I used to have staredowns with my pleco, late at night, when I couldn't sleep. I'd pull a chair up next to the tank and lock eyes with her in the murky half-light, while she stared back unblinking from the shadows of her garage, until finally my head would begin to nod and my eyelids would begin to droop and I'd float back up to my bed.

Forget Dr. Phil. I had my own personal in-house hypnotherapist. My shrink in the drink, so to speak. Alas, no more. It's gonna be looney tunes around here for me, for sure, from now on in.

Speaking of which, back to The Election. Let me repeat, all you Right to Plantlifers, lest your eyelids were closed the last time around:

GIVEN THAT ONE OF THE CANDIDATES IS A KNOWN BODY SNATCHER, NOT TO MENTION SHAPE SHIFTER, NOT TO MENTION BALD-FACED PREVARICATOR, WHY THE FUCK IS THIS MINDFUCKING ELECTION SO CLOSE???

It begs other questions...

Who the fuck are all these humanoids who will actually vote for this BS? Who the fuck would pick Paul Ryan as a running mate? What the fuck are they running from and will Paul Ryan make it in under two hours? How the fuck do these guys run at all with their pants on fire? What the fuck kind of throwback would name a kid Willard? How the fuck do you get "Mitt" out of "Willard"? Better yet, how the fuck do you get M/W the BS out of his current body and throw him the fuck back into the volcano?

And last but not least...

Is it just me, Jim Bob, or did y'all notice a distinct color scheme at the Republican National Convention? Does the word "whitey" mean anything to y'all? Was M/W the BS actually weaned on Chlorox, as rumor has it?

Okay, okay, taking a break, calling a temporary truce. Jaysus. It's exhausting.

After all, I have a memorial service to host. After which, on account of eras are crashing down around me even as I rage, and in honor of yet another lost pack member, I'm going to drown my sorrows and drink like a fish. With whom, hopefully, I won't be sleeping anytime soon. If you haven't already heard, all you fellow scum-sucking algae-eating bottom-dwellers out there, there's a war going on. Our country needs us.

The Buick

1992 - 2012

R.I.P.