RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

Keeping Tabs: talking fish proven wrong

Way back in 2003, just before the start of the Iraq War, news of a talking carp “splashed” across headlines around the world. (haha)

But seriously, this was the story:

The scene is New York’s New Square Fish Market. The players are a Christian a Jew and a fish. Just as the Christian is about turn the carp into gefilte fish, it starts shouting out prophetic messages in Hebrew. The Jewish guy hears the fish, understands his message (Repent! The end is near!) and freaks out. The fish then identifies himself as a recently deceased hascidic local. The Christian, assuming the fish is the devil, kills it.

At this point, things get hazy, but I’m guessing that the fish was eaten during a seder in Queens.

But anyway, the story is picked up by the New York Times, the BBC and a ton of other news outlets. Since then, the carp has faded into obscurity. And with good reason. Fish or not, here we are. (Here’s the BBC link.)

The war in Iraq is clearly a clusterfuck, but end of the world it isn’t. I guess there’s still plenty of time for the world to end. In captivity, a carp can live for close to 4 decades. You’d just think that if he was saying the end is near, the end would have been nearer. I guess what I’m trying to say is:

I believe that the spirit of a dead man can inhabit a carp and spew messages in a NY fish market, but I don’t trust him any more than any living man.