Wipe my inside elbow with a disinfectant swab, and shunt it into my fucking bloodpipes.Ī couple of weeks ago, when Alice Bee called me over to her desk to show me a trailer for Biotope, I thought I’d found heaven. I want three hundred strains of near-identical tetra. I want that deeply sobre, joyless strain of simulation that comes from the heart of Europe I want to choose which species of cryptocorene plant to populate my tank with, which filter medium to put in which model of Eheim external pump. I spent most of December in a gorgeous fugue state with Megaquarium, but even that was too abstract - too simplistic - for my darkest appetites. Which is all to say, you better bloody believe I’m ready for a hyper-realistic aquarium simulation on PC. To know that I had managed to pass the curse along through another threshing of DNA made me well happy, and seemed to neatly honour his memory. I was elated much of my life has been consumed by an obsession with watery things, and aquariums in particular, thanks in no small part to the childhood actions of my fish-obsessed father. Unfortunately she was pointing out a shrimp, but hey - it’s the thought that counts. She was pointing into the shimmery blue interior of the new aquarium in our bedroom, and she said “fish”. Recently, my eleven month old daughter said her first word.