Endless Sky
Today my last surviving goldfish Mac was given away to one of my mom's friends. Our plecostomus Plec went with him. Mac was a good fish, about three years old. He never got seriously ill, which was more his doing than mine. As stupid as it sounds, I'll miss him a lot. We threw the fishtank out today too, which smelled horribly because of the algae that had grown out of control. He'll be in a good home, with another goldfish. My mom said that Mac was nuzzled under Plec's fin in the container they were being transported in. I'm just glad that they didn't get damaged at all--my first goldfish Manny was bumped around so much when we had him in the car that he probably had some sort of brain or internal organ damage, and he had such swim bladder issues that he died a couple of weeks after.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people insist that goldfish, or any animal really, are stupid. It's been scientifically proven that a goldfish not only has a memory of up to three months, but can tell time and be trained. If you've ever seen those videos on YouTube about a goldfish "playing" soccer, that's not faked. A man trained goldfish to do tricks through positive training methods, and as far as I know the fish actually likes it, because training means treats. When I was in high school and consistently fed my fish every day at the same time, they would be waiting under the hood flap for me to drop the food in. They recognized that when the hood flap was up, it meant it was time for breakfast.
Another one of my peeves is the thinking that fish are "throwaway" pets. I bought my fish medicine when they were sick, fed them peas when they had swim bladder problems. And you know what? It was worth it. Fish can feel pain. Isn't it horrifying to think that something is hurting or ill, but can't even give that pain voice? Maybe I'm over-opinionated about this. I don't know. As stupid as it might seem, I loved my fish. I couldn't dispose of their bodies when they died--my mom had to do it every time. At least now Mac and Plec will have a home that will care about them, and hopefully they can live a good long time there. Fish can also live ten years or more--a few years ago a goldfish in England lived to be 40. Yeah, 40. And he was from a carnival.
For right now, I don't think I'm going to get another fish for a few more years. It's expensive, and frustrating.
At the moment I have the first page of a comic I'm calling Endless Sky on my desk. Clouds that look good are embarrassingly hard for me to draw, and I'm not sure if I want to ink it or pencil shade it, since it's on Bristol. The comic will be silent, and detail the adventures of an airship used for scouting and tagging dragons. The world they inhabit utilizes giant birds for riding, who have the intelligence of five year-olds and can mimic bits of human speech. I had this idea back in school to do a full exhibit of a downed airship, complete with a model of the ship, anatomy llustrations of the birds, a captain's log (done in a made-up language), clothing, and personal effects. Everything would have museum documentation and speculations by the curators in the descriptions. One particular part of it would be the stained, bloody, and dirt-encrusted waistcoat of the captain. A lot of the items would be burned and stained horribly from the crash. Something else I've been thinking about is more ethnically diverse steampunk, so I've been idly designing/thinking about sky pirates as done by the Chinese, and some Middle Eastern/Indian stuff too.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people insist that goldfish, or any animal really, are stupid. It's been scientifically proven that a goldfish not only has a memory of up to three months, but can tell time and be trained. If you've ever seen those videos on YouTube about a goldfish "playing" soccer, that's not faked. A man trained goldfish to do tricks through positive training methods, and as far as I know the fish actually likes it, because training means treats. When I was in high school and consistently fed my fish every day at the same time, they would be waiting under the hood flap for me to drop the food in. They recognized that when the hood flap was up, it meant it was time for breakfast.
Another one of my peeves is the thinking that fish are "throwaway" pets. I bought my fish medicine when they were sick, fed them peas when they had swim bladder problems. And you know what? It was worth it. Fish can feel pain. Isn't it horrifying to think that something is hurting or ill, but can't even give that pain voice? Maybe I'm over-opinionated about this. I don't know. As stupid as it might seem, I loved my fish. I couldn't dispose of their bodies when they died--my mom had to do it every time. At least now Mac and Plec will have a home that will care about them, and hopefully they can live a good long time there. Fish can also live ten years or more--a few years ago a goldfish in England lived to be 40. Yeah, 40. And he was from a carnival.
For right now, I don't think I'm going to get another fish for a few more years. It's expensive, and frustrating.
At the moment I have the first page of a comic I'm calling Endless Sky on my desk. Clouds that look good are embarrassingly hard for me to draw, and I'm not sure if I want to ink it or pencil shade it, since it's on Bristol. The comic will be silent, and detail the adventures of an airship used for scouting and tagging dragons. The world they inhabit utilizes giant birds for riding, who have the intelligence of five year-olds and can mimic bits of human speech. I had this idea back in school to do a full exhibit of a downed airship, complete with a model of the ship, anatomy llustrations of the birds, a captain's log (done in a made-up language), clothing, and personal effects. Everything would have museum documentation and speculations by the curators in the descriptions. One particular part of it would be the stained, bloody, and dirt-encrusted waistcoat of the captain. A lot of the items would be burned and stained horribly from the crash. Something else I've been thinking about is more ethnically diverse steampunk, so I've been idly designing/thinking about sky pirates as done by the Chinese, and some Middle Eastern/Indian stuff too.