Elizabeth Esther

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The Story of Goatfish & The Flatulent Fishmongers

*Editor's Note (oh, wait. I'm the editor. Heh.) Do not take this post seriously. There is no deeper message. Sometimes writing nonsense is fun. Sometimes fun is its own reward. Amen and Ah-meen.* I like to ponder the deeper things in life like why a goatfish is called a goatfish when clearly he looks more like a Confucius-Fish. Somebody please call the taxidermist or etymologist or whoever the puck comes up with these names and tell them to fix this thing. Stat.

I simply can't live in a world where Confucius-Fishes have to answer to racially-motivated (or is it specielly motivated?) misnomers. Specielly. It comes from the root word species which rhymes with feces, which is precisely how a Goatfish feels when it is called a Goatfish.

And no, actually, a goatfish by any other name would NOT stink as badly mainly because Confucius ascribed to the philosophy of deodorant, duh. And as any good fishmonger will tell you--a fish that smells like a fish isn't fresh. FRESH FISH, this is what we're after. Fresh fish, which has no opposite in fear.

Although, frankly, fearful fishmongers frequently flatulate so there has to be some sort of fear in that. What? You've never heard of fearfully flatulating fishmongers? Come now. It's called FFFF syndrome, everyone knows that. Mind ye the suffering fishmongers art mighty pershnickety about you getting this correctly, arrgh. (Do fishmongers say arrrrgh or is that strictly a pirate thing? Because, honestly, this whole rampant overuse of arrrgh must be addressed).

Arrgh. It's overused. It's ubiquitous. It's one of those ridiculously adjectival words that connotes a romanticized lifestyle of ribald, raunchy ravagery. Yes, ravagery. The root word is savagery but when you mate Savagery with Ravishing you birth a little bastard child called Ravagery.

Ravagery, he was a total disappointment to his parents, of course. Ravagery was an exhausting little bastard, if you must know. He was forever getting into scabies and scurvy and bringing home the clap. Ravishing, his mother, tried to put a positive spin on these endearing little "oopsy-daisies"--as she called them.

She refused to call it scurvy, preferring rather the euphemism: Gingivally-Challenged. As for the scabies, she cooed over those "cute little critters." But the clap. Well, the euphemism for the clap was the clap so Ravishing was forced to call it by its anatomically correct name: Gonorrhea. Well, Gone Or See Ya is what Ravagery's father called it one minute before he kicked poor Ravagery out into the fishmongering streets.

To wreak his reckless revenge, Ravagery went arrrghing around town whence he happened upon a hapless fish floundering in the flatulent fishmonger's stall. It was an odd looking fish with a little beard. Ravagery dubbed it "Goatfish."

You see? This is what happens when words like Savagery and Ravishing make babies. They produce children like Ravagery who go around demeaning, de-naming and denigrating perfectly philosophical Confucius-Fish.

Something really needs to be done about this. I demand a moratorium on the word Goatfish, especially in rap songs. Yo.

Go fish, however. That can stay.