[In aquariums, fish] were extricated from their natural habitat, relocated into an artificial one, and subordinated to the implicit scopophilia of display. This separation of things from their original — or, in some cases, attributed — context and functions made them into commodities, increasingly susceptible to the projection of cultural desires and anxieties.

— Celeste Olalquiaga, The Artificial Kingdom

On a miserable January day last year, I made a list — garbage bags, laundry detergent, socks (black), goldfish food — and headed for Wal-Mart. Normally, shopping at Wal-Mart is about as attractive to me as a tailgate party, because I’m a snob. But something about the grey sky, the wet cold, and the fact that Wal-Mart had successfully driven all the local independent pet stores out of business made me crave a colourful, lurid, trashy experience, ideally with plenty of shrieking children.

The Wal-Mart was packed, of course, the children were high on off-gassing plastic, and the “Seasonal” aisle was loaded with cheap red and pink Valentine’s crap. Perfect. In the pets section, the tanks were glittering with hundreds of bright orange, yellow, scarlet, and white goldfish. I watched them swim in circles, bob for non-existent fish kibble, and bite each other. Entranced by the silky beauty of long, fanned fins, I forgot to buy the damned food for my own motley school of fat, fading, urine-coloured carp.

But when I came back the next day, the tanks were empty, drained of water and life. I asked a pimply clerk where the fish had gone and she shrugged, then made a toilet-flushing sound, a flat whoosh. All that beauty, all those tiny, hungry, bug-eyed lives, gone. (Wal-Mart, of course, denies disposing of unsold fish. While I can’t be sure that the teenage clerk knew what she was talking about, I …

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