August 20, 2019

The fish tube.



I found that through "The Nihilistic Euphoria of the Fish Tube" by Rachel Riederer (in The New Yorker). Excerpt:
For a couple of days, Twitter could not stop thinking about the fish tube or imagining what the voyage must be like for the cannoned salmon. Some have cast it as a jaunty adventure, as when set to the theme song from “DuckTales,” but others have conjured it as an aquatic trauma. As the writer and editor Tyler Coates tweeted, “imagine if you were a fish and this shit happened to you.” The most compelling visions of the fish tube have a note of nihilistic euphoria, as in the rewritten Smashing Pumpkins lyric “despite all my lube / i’m still just a fish in a tube,” or as crystallized by the cartoonist and illustrator Matt Lubchansky, who tweeted, “stick my disgusting body into that fish tube and fire me into the goddamned sun!!! let’s GO”...

One imagines that the fish [feels greatly disturbed]. Yet is there not a strange peace to be found in surrendering to whatever chaos has plucked you from your personal mental river? A salmon in a tube can do nothing but relax while physics does the work.... Twitter-scrolling and life itself can sometimes feel akin to being throttled through some strange and endless pneumatic tube—would that all our journeys could resolve so gently.
How did this writer get that far and not say the internet is "a series of tubes"?! Did you know "A Series of Tubes" has its own Wikipedia page?

60 comments:

Known Unknown said...

How about an Asylum Seeker Tube for The Wall?

Laslo Spatula said...

"The Nihilistic Euphoria of the Fish Tube" sounds like a Japanese-to-English translation of a Marxist Feminist sex manual.

I am Laslo.

Bob Boyd said...

Imagine what it must be like to be fighting for your life while being dragged around by a giant hook through your face.

CJinPA said...

Poor Sen. Ted Stevens. Distinguished career. Wrongly prosecuted, prosecutorial misconduct, conviction overturned. Dies in plane crash. Remembered the "Series of Tubes" guy.

BarrySanders20 said...

They cull out the deplorables.

John henry said...

Its a fish, people! How long a memory do they have? How long will the trauma last?

Looks like a pretty cool amusement park ride though. Can it be scaled up?

My other question is how they get the fish in the tube. Looks like a lot of work to catch the fish, transport them to the tube then manhandle them in. OTOH, it's government work so probably pays pretty well.

I don't see why they can't put a giant funnel at the bottom end, paint a big picture of a worm inside. Fish sees the worm, goes to investigate and WHOOOOOSH!!!! The fish is thinking WTF? and how do I get back to the funnel. I want to do that again.

Three liddle fiddies in the iddy biddy poo and they fam and they fam all over the dam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaJ-Ou5gTdw

John Henry

rehajm said...

Yah. Try getting tricked into thinking that barbless hook was a grasshopper then end up in a boat, drop off the hook and get stuck when you flop under the seat. That there’s trauma for ya.

rehajm said...

Whatyaya call a fish with no eyes?


Fssssshhh.

Yancey Ward said...

How many people are employed loading the fish into the tubes?

rehajm said...

If your reality is the hydrodynamics of a raging river a fish tube seems pretty relaxing

John henry said...

Here's my favorite animal amusement park ride

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvXPYMJMIlw

Automated chicken catcher

John Henry

John henry said...

Blogger Yancey Ward said...

How many people are employed loading the fish into the tubes?

It's a govt job so probably twice as many as are needed.

John Henry

tim maguire said...

The fish has no clue what's happening or what is supposed to happen. If it survives the journey (and it looks like they do), then it will forget about the trauma faster than I can type this comment.

BTW, if it requires all these people and equipment, feeding fish into the tube one at a time and propping it up so they can run through it smoothly, how can it be cheaper than ladders?

Michael K said...

It's just a better fish ladder. Have you watched one of those ?

Big Mike said...

@John Henry, only twice? Governments haven’t been that efficient since Mussolini made the trains run on time (using summary executions).

Drago said...

Perhaps we could combine fish counseling with LLR-lefty counseling to secure significant group rate savings.

Wince said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
traditionalguy said...

Now if they will add a Chips tube they can feed the world.

Wince said...

Twitter could not stop thinking about the fish tube or imagining what the voyage must be like for the cannoned salmon.

Those salmon all look alike, don't they? Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich...

"I have been to the dark side and seen a world that no man should see!"

Anonymous said...

"How long a memory do they have? How long will the trauma last?"

Don't they all die after spawning? Or is that another Disney lie, like the lemmings?

madAsHell said...

What next?? Bass-O-Matic??

pacwest said...

Let's see. The salmon can beat itself against the rocks as it tries again and again to swim up the falls, hoping a bear doesn't snatch them out of midair, or take the ride on the elevator. Clueless.

Quayle said...

White tube supremacy, no doubt.

Freeman Hunt said...

As it goes through the tube, the third valve in its trumpet brain might be activated. But not to worry: when the ride ends, all three valves will go back to activating.

Fernandinande said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nonapod said...

I'd like one for humans. How about a vast network of vacuum tubes that can shoot people around a city at terrifying speeds.

Fernandinande said...

A deplorable woman goes to the doctor because she can't get pregnant, and her friend asks her what the doctor said.

"The doctor say I got a fish in my tubes and if I ever have a baby it'll be a mackerel."

gilbar said...

"the system can also Cull out non-native species that harm the habitat"
I think the word for this is: Ethnic Cleansing, or GENOCIDE

We only want Favored salmonids in our waters. . . DEATH to any immigrants! DEATH to any hybrids!

gilbar said...

madAsHell said... What next?? Bass-O-Matic??

mmmm that's Good Bass!

gilbar said...

wow that's terrific Good Bass

Anonymous said...

Blogger Nonapod said...
I'd like one for humans. How about a vast network of vacuum tubes that can shoot people around a city at terrifying speeds.


Now I've got the theme song for Futurama stuck in my head.

Lincolntf said...

There's a Herring Run near my family's Cape Cod cottage. When we were kids, we would always go down in the Spring and help the herring up the small series of waterfalls they had to navigate to get to their freshwater breeding pond. It was weird, because while we were helping the fish up by hand or by net, other people were there with 5-gallon pails gathering them for food or bait. We hated the bucket people. After age 9 or 10 we would occasionally knock their semi-full buckets back iinto the stream. They'd get so pissed, but we'd play the "duh, we're only kids running around" card. Google Brewster Grist Mill Herring Run to see the place I'm talking about.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

Of course the transfer rate is slowed by all the fish that go back and do it again

rehajm said...

It's a govt job so probably twice as many as are needed.

If they ever were, solutions that cost finite amounts of money are not part of government's agenda anymore. Expect this thing to disappear.

MikeR said...

Hyperloop. We are watching our future.

virgil xenophon said...

SO...we get to watch the fish compliments of the inner tubes?

rehajm said...

What is this Cheddar anywys? It looks like the Dynamite! of financial news, or something...

Paul Ciotti said...

Was there an explanation how this works? What propels the fish the tube?

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"If your reality is the hydrodynamics of a raging river a fish tube seems pretty relaxing"

It must be a pretty elemental life. Crazy how Progs expect all of earthly existence to be White, middle-class and suburban.

Infinite Monkeys said...

What about the bears that are waiting at the waterfall for slow salmon? Is there no empathy for them?

Beasts of England said...

Looks like an ‘E’ ticket ride to me!! 🐠

tim in vermont said...

"Crazy how Progs expect all of earthly existence to be White, middle-class and suburban.”

In a world that was created by a loving God that made the planet just this temperature and climate for us and made men and women exactly the same, except the parts that are visibly different, I could go on, a world that was created by a God that thought of all of his creatures as Goldilocks, the one progs think we live in, of course!

tim in vermont said...

If we can imagine what it would be like to buy Greenland, I guess that progs can imagine what a fish with a brain smaller than a pea is “thinking."

Rob said...

We've heard speculation that we're all living in the Matrix. But in a larger sense, in a metaphysical sense, aren't we all in a fish tube? At the mercy of forces we don't understand and can't control, propelled into a future we not only don't know but can't begin to comprehend.

Remember the message of the dolphins in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as they left Earth before it was demolished: "So long, and thanks for all the fish." We are in the fish tube. We are the fish.

Gabriel said...

For nearly 20 years now, Juvenile Fish Transportation Program trucks have been hauling salmon around dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.

Gabriel said...

This link is the Army Corp of Engineers fish transportation barge. Some barges can transport 75,000 pounds of fish.

David53 said...

Imagine there's no dams
It's easy if you try
No men to eat us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the fishies
Living for today

Imagine there's no people
It isn't hard to do
No one to kill and eat you
And no pollution too
Imagine all the fishies
Living life in peace

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no more fish tubes
I wonder if you can
No need for help in breeding
A brotherhood of fish
Imagine all the fishies
Sharing all the world

gilbar said...

Paul Ciotti said...
Was there an explanation how this works? What propels the fish the tube?

I've yet to hear one, but; i assumptions:

there's a vacuum (low pressure) holes along the sides that draw in air
the fish (semi) stops the hole, and the air behind him (or her) accelerates the fish past the holes;
once the fish is past the holes, the air behind equalizes the air pressure
Inertia carries the fish up and over the top
the fish slides down the bottom

The fish doesn't get sucked back up the other side, 'cause the entry hole is open (1 fish at a time)

gilbar said...

Infinite Monkeys said...
What about the bears that are waiting at the waterfall for slow salmon? Is there no empathy for them?

this is just to replace fish ladders over hydro dams; no bears allowed on Army Corps property
The fish will still need to jump over rapids, waterfalls, small dams; where the bears judge their abilities

langford peel said...

You would have more fun sticking your dick in a cotton gin than in Withney.

Doug said...

This system helps native fish pass over dams in seconds rather than days.
Every fish that comes out the other end: "WTF!"

gilbar said...

Every fish that comes out the other end: "WTF!"
as apposed to riding a barge? Fish live their lives in a state of confusion

how'd that fly get there?
OW! something is PULLING me!! OUCH! my mouth!! my mouth!!!
Oh NO! a Giant MAMMAL! Must thrash and try to escape!! Thrash! Thrash!
Whew! SOMEHOW! that sticky thing fell out of my mouth; JUST as that mammal used those forceps
HURRAY! SOMEHOW! i was able to leap clear of that mammal; now i'll swim over, and hide next to these feet. I wonder where that mammal went?

Maillard Reactionary said...

The nihilistic euphoria of The New Yorker.

Fish deal with turbulent flow all the time. If you're designed to swim upstream in fast-moving water to your spawning area, it's probably all in a day's work. They might even enjoy being able to relax a bit while getting closer to their destination, instead of having to fight gravity and moving water for every inch (2.54 cm).

But here I am, like the New Yorker writer, imagining that I can imagine the experience of a fish.

Maybe we should just evaluate the relative success rate of the fish at spawning, compared to other methods we've devised of getting them around our renewable energy resources.

The system looks like it probably works, but will be a maintenance headache. Are the taxpayers up for this, to keep their dams and still have their fish?

tim in vermont said...

I wonder how one of these would work for a seven foot lake sturgeon?

Rich, NYC said...

For the sake of efficiency, they should shoot those salmon right into those little round cans.

Static Ping said...

I always approve when inventions remind me of Action Park.

gadfly said...

Perhaps cannoned salmon could be blast frozen raw in the tube to preserve the "just caught" taste which would beat canned salmon cooked in a pressure canner. But I suppose that a filleting machine will have to be invented to use in this one-pass freezing process.

PluralThumb said...

I would loosely agree with the series of tubes. The television has so called channels. Having a 1,000 channels in modern times is common but an overdose of input for me personally. The internet can easily have another 1,000 per a so called channel. Unlike television an internet mediator may be compared to the wizard of Oz, but usually the format is somewhat similar to TV or book publishing. Stress alert anytime I beg to be shot through a tube into the sun. Just saying.

Largo said...

I think I'm gonna be sad.
I think it's today.
The food that I've always had
Is going away.

They've got a ticket to ride.

[Sung by Bears.]

Largo said...

Did you know that if you play "Helter Skelter" backwards you can hear the fish talking?. It's true. I swear.