chris's fish died here at work and he seems down. everyone else was mean to the fish (not to its face mostly, just made fun and tapped on the glass) but i always came to see it and i think chris appreciated that for some reason. i've never seen him look so down before. this is one of those things that makes me sad out of all proportion to the scale of the incident, like when i made katy think she was wrong about kansas bordering colorado or when my brother saved his allowance for months and bought a toy that he didn't end up liking when he was maybe ten. there is something really devastating about people wanting something small and having it denied them. it's so little to ask, and in a way it's sad on its own that such little things are so important. all he wanted was to take care of a fish.

the fact that chris brought that fish in to live on his desk at work reminds me of a book by phillip k. dick where the animals have almost all died because of nuclear fallout and people will do anything to get one to take care of. if they can't afford real animals, they buy robotic fakes and care for them just the same while feeling secretly ashamed that they don't have a real one. it's all so sad, and in the book it's this need to care for something small, even if the owner knows it's not really alive, that distinguishes humans from androids that have evolved to equal humans in everything except empathy. i usually don't like science fiction, but that book was interesting because underneath the bizarre setting and the crazy plot (it was the basis for the movie bladerunner) i think it was mostly about what he thinks it means to be human, and that seems to be the need to believe in things that aren't real, and the irrational individual desire to protect other living things from harm opposed with the compulsively cold and destructive drive of human society. it's so sad because you end up with these isolated points of warmth lost in an incredibly bleak, empty background. i think it is a very good book, even though there is nothing special about the way it is written.