The Reef Tank

A quick little update about my systems over at www.thereeftank.com's blog. You can read about what I'm up to now on the blog right here.

- Josh

Very sad news

My oldest fish, a bala shark I purchased sometime in the spring of 2004, has been critically injured for reasons unknown. This morning I found him stuck to an aquaclear filter intake. The area behind his head is lacerated in what appears to be damage from the sharp filter screen. A healthy fish does not get caught in a filter so I don't know what happened; there are no signs of bites or damage from the other fish, and the bala has always been left alone.

He's quarantined now in a 1 gallon net at the top of the tank. He's floating upside down but still breathing. He's pulled through with some serious damage before to his fins, but this is extreme. Imagine your back and chest catching the flak from a pipe bomb with deep cuts to all your extremities.

Times like these I always wonder if I had bought some silver dollars on Saturday then this may not have happened.

joshday.com

I need... suction cups!

That's right, I'm in dire need of some suction cups for my canister filter intakes, outtakes, as well as my heaters.

Suction cups harden over time. They harden even faster in water. Hard plastic becomes cracked or more malleable, no longer clamping along the filter tubes. In saltwater this happens even faster.

I refuse to pay up to $2 for a suction cup. And I refuse to pay even more for the magnetic cups--if they packaged their products better, say, zoomed offered 3 and 6 unit packages for magnetic cups at 20 or 30 dollars, that would be reasonable. Because you won't have to replace cups ever again.

Went to Lowes and an office store today for suction cups. They didn't even have suction cups.

I'm going to try to track down some suction cups online. The tough part will be guesstimating if they'll be able to accept the clamps, most of which are still usable.

In other news... my spotted mandarin, which replaced the seahorse, appears to eat mysis, like the seahorse. At least he's doing his best at it. Roe, cyclops, and Arctipods are not to his liking, unfortunately.

I'm going to get three silver dollars as dithers to curve the aggression of my largest oscar. In regards to that tank... the fish don't seem to be hurting, other than my smaller oscar who's always bullied, so I'm not going to test for ammonia and ruin the party there.

In other news, food network is still in the frozen absess of the ninth ring of hell. I'd love it if a real cooking channel rose up and knocked them off the air once and for all... of course after poaching the few remains of talent food network still has.

Josh
joshday.com

Not another food network rant

It's been a year and a half since corporate Food Network shitcanned their hallmark cooking show, Emeril Live.

Come back in time with me to December, 2007.

We'd moved from our little basement level apartment with terraced gardens and a cozy deck in Asheville, NC and it was our first winter as homeowners. My wife Leah was 7 months pregnant. Our television and living area was in what's now our dining room, soon to be moved downstairs to a fully renovated den with ship's cabin beadboard and dark stained molding.

And the station formerly about food and cooking had reached its apex years ago and was well on its steady, but not yet tailspinning, decline.

The plane was out of fuel but it was coasting. Certainly losing altitude, but nowhere near a plunge. Midair refueling was still possible -- dangerous and unlikely, but possible.

All that changed when the announcement was made that Emeril Live was being culled.

At the time, this meant little to me. I wasn't really watching TV and I don't even remember if we had cable. I read the news online somewhere and, with a lot of queasiness, I thought, Eh, they'll move up Rachel Ray or give her another show. Maybe Alton Brown.

If only I'd known what was to come...

If only I'd known Rachel Ray's insipid, crappy shows were merely the tip of the berg, the minuscule cancer cell on the nose that was the only visible beacon of the raging lymphatic destruction that was tearing through the body, then I would've known real fear and loathing of what was to come to a channel that was once about making food.

To imagine that one day Rachel would actually be an acceptable venue for watching food preparation and real cooking, that this screeching, loathsome, no-talent fattie with the nail-on-the-chalkboard personality and the smoker's voice to back it up would in a year and a half be watchable would have unconditionally, absolutely blown my mind.

And that's what it's come to.

Do you watch food network now? Do you have any idea how fucking far we've gone down Colonel Kurtz's river into the unadulterated, pulsing heart of horror?

Reality TV, my friends. That's what the corporate chairmen at Food TV are serving up -- not just on the menu, but it's the complimentary appetizer, the tap water in the cool, perspiring glass with obligatory lemon wedge, the silver cutlery, the condiments and drink & dessert list, the decor, and the entire goddamn restaurant.

Dipshits "compete" to become "The Next Food Network Star." The quietly abrasive moron from the iditioc Ace of Cakes has ascended the corporate cooking ladder, having a couple, three shows about knife throwing or what kinds of sexual acts you can do with icing or some such thing probably even more insane/ridiculous. Gaydown w/ No # 1 asshole Bobby Flay goes to a whole new level of dickdom -- imagine his embarassing display and antics on Japan's Iron Chef tuned up to reality TV standards. The New York poser/fake southern belle Paula Dean has an Emeril Live like show called Paula's Party; there's a counter at the bottom of the screen for how many times she drawls out the word "ya'll." Chefs get dropped off by helicopter in nameless bayous to fellate alligators before binging their way to New Orleans for the ultimate crawfish boil orgy.

You get the picture.

To even watch a show about cooking you have to tune in during the morning. Even there malignant reality TV has metastasized.

And the wacking of Emeril Live was the milestone where salvation or damnation was no longer a choice; Food TV did not repent on its deathbed, and there is no question the television entity once about showing how to cook good and fun foods is charbroiling eternally in hell.

In honor of my old buddy Emeril, I'd like to duke you this excerpt from Julia Child's old PBS cooking show. Warning: the show is actually about cooking and food preparation. I know you once knew what that was about, but it's been so long...

Emeril is whipping up an awesome looking shrimp etouffee and a classic New Orleans crab boil. He's practically a baby in the video, so be ready for that shocker.

Emeril... man. They may have killed your show and relegated your neutered ass on Essence of Emeril to preschool hours, they may have taken you away from our hearts and minds, they may have pissed on your grave by giving your timeslot to Who Wants to Be the Next Food Network Top Chef, but we'll always have Doc Gibbs. We'll always have the recipes, the memories, the uncomfortable laughter you brought us when you showed up drunk on set. And that's something... that's something they can't take away.

Emeril, this one's for you, babe.

http://www.pbs.org/video/video/1094273768

The show was filmed in 1993. In happier, more sober times.

My God, how far we've fallen.

Josh
http://joshday.com

anticlimactic postscript: actually the year in our lives I was referring to was 2006, December, not 2007. Let's just say we were there in spirit for Emeril in 2006 when it was actually 2007. Makes a much better story that way.