{"id":1333,"date":"2018-06-13T13:02:10","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T20:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=1333"},"modified":"2018-06-13T13:02:10","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T20:02:10","slug":"dreams-dashed-evil-translucent-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=1333","title":{"rendered":"How My Dreams Were Dashed By Evil Translucent Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My daughter attends my alma mater, Oregon State University.\u00a0 My most recent visit to OSU found me wandering past a building and a particularly disturbing memory popped into my head.\u00a0 When I attended OSU, this building\u2019s basement contained something you would expect to find at an esteemed institution of higher education \u2014 classrooms, faculty offices, and, of course, a \u201cchamber of horrors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let me explain.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the spring of 1982, and a friend tells me about an extremely lucrative job opportunity.\u00a0 \u201cLucrative\u201d in the sense that it paid at least ten cents over minimum wage.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t just \u201cdirt poor\u201d then. \u00a0Don\u2019t be crazy \u2014 I couldn\u2019t afford dirt.\u00a0 But this job not only paid well, it INCLUDED room and board.\u00a0 I had struck gold!\u00a0 Dollar signs floated in my head.<\/p>\n

The job title was Fishing Vessel Observer.\u00a0 The US government was hiring people to live on foreign fishing boats to make sure they weren\u2019t taking the wrong kinds of fish.\u00a0 This was the perfect job for me!\u00a0 Mind you, I had never lived on a boat, never been on the \u201chigh seas,\u201d nor could I speak any language other than the Alsea Public School version of English. \u00a0Nevertheless, I was overflowing with confidence.\u00a0 What an adventure!\u00a0 What stories to tell!<\/p>\n

This is when I learned something that created an inkling of concern \u2014 my dream job, the one that would pay so much cash and offer such adventure \u2014 required passing a test<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This test, it turned out, involved correctly identifying different North Pacific fish species.\u00a0 How hard could it be?\u00a0 Only time, and a deep desire to suppress the physiological pain, have dulled my memory, but suffice it to say, here is how this ugly chapter came to a heart wrenching end.<\/p>\n

I went to the designated building on OSU\u2019s campus and walked down the steps to the basement.\u00a0 I had a pencil and the test sheet which contained a list of fish species.\u00a0 Names of fish I never knew existed.\u00a0 Reams of different fish.\u00a0 Fish with unpronounceable, incomprehensible, scientific names.\u00a0 Maybe they were Greek fish.\u00a0 Many sounded Greek, that, or maybe Klingon.<\/p>\n

Awaiting me in that dank fluorescent basement were row upon row of jars.\u00a0 Each jar contained a fish floating in fish embalming fluid.\u00a0 They looked like they had been floating in those jars for a while, say, since the 1850\u2019s. Long enough that they had lost any color and become translucent. \u00a0Their skeleton\u2019s shined through them like X-rays.\u00a0 AND, to my great shock and gut-wrenching disappointment, EVERY fish looked EXACTLY alike.<\/p>\n

I took a slow lap around the room, and paused to reflect on the gravity of my situation.\u00a0 Then I set my test sheet down and quietly made my escape, never again to visit this \u201cchamber of horrors.\u201d<\/p>\n

And now, I thought as strolled by, I bet they\u2019re all still down there \u2014 floating.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

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______________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

Also-<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Check out these great books:<\/p>\n

The Lawyer\u2019s Song: Navigating the legal wilderness<\/em><\/strong> at \u2013<\/p>\n

https:\/\/buff.ly\/2K41Tax<\/p>\n

Seven Rules for the College Playground –<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/buff.ly\/2IqXxgn<\/p>\n

Seven Secrets You Need to Know to Hire the Right Lawyer –<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/buff.ly\/2roFIov<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My daughter attends my alma mater, Oregon State University.\u00a0 My most recent visit to OSU found me wandering past a building and a particularly disturbing memory popped into my head.\u00a0 When I attended OSU, this building\u2019s basement contained something you would expect to find at an esteemed institution of higher education \u2014 classrooms, faculty offices, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[704,427,681,703],"class_list":["post-1333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-dirt-poor","tag-oregon-state-university","tag-osu","tag-translucent-fish"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1333"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1339,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333\/revisions\/1339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}