Life is Like Fishing...everytime you turn around someone is trying to hook you!

Here little fishy fishy...

Here in the real world, with my two feet on the ground, I often feel like the fish. It's a little bit of a role reversal and maybe that's why I like fishing so much it gives me the chance to do the hooking! Speaking of hooking part of the reason I was inspired to write this entry was the fact that I was just in Las Vegas. Everywhere I turned someone or something was trying to lure me in to giving them my money! "Hey you! Check this out, put your money in here, I can show you a great time but I need $2,000. Go wait in that line or give me $100 and you're in. DAM you hot, let's hang out...but I need your money." I felt like a 3 inch sucker fish in a giant pool filled with 9 pound hungry bucketmouth fatties.

Vegas knows how to seduce you and finesse you into a money spending daze like no where else in the world. If I was a lure designer I would travel to Vegas to study the many ways they use to lure people in, get them to bite and bring them to the boat. Is it the flashy lights? The color red which you see everywhere, the margaritas in the foot long plastic cups, the amount of walking you do to get anywhere, the water fountains, pirate shows, bars that do not close, the beautiful women in bikinis smiling at you making you feel like Burt Reynolds or a combination of all those things, whatever it is it works.

Anglerfishes are members of the teleost order Lophiiformes. They are bony fishes named for their characteristic mode of predation, wherein a fleshy growth from the fish's head (the esca or illicium) acts as a lure; this is considered analogous to angling. Doesn't the angler fish remind you of Las Vegas and we are represented my little nemo. "Get out of there it's a trap!"

In a way it's depressing because you want to think people are being nice to you because they are genuinely interested in who you are, but you begin to realize everyone is after the small 6 and 3/16 inch green things in your wallet. Call it paranoia, but that is how I felt. It's definitely not just Vegas the rest of the world is this way as well and I have come to accept it. Money makes the world go round, it is just ever more apparent in Vegas where everything is bigger and magnified! I am glad to be out of sin city and have a chance to go fishing, where I am more comfortable being the hooker then the hookie.

Skyman out.

References:
Froese, Rainer, and Daniel Pauly, eds. (2006). "Lophiiformes" in FishBase. February 2006 version.