One of my favorite things about The West Wing was the attention to detail. If you watched the show, and especially if you’ve watched the special features on the dvds, you know that schedules actually had schedule information, and that when they needed a bill or any other document, there was real text for them to look at. And there was CJ’s goldfish. (Gail) It’s not so much that the fish remained on her desk from the time it was given to her to the end of the season, as that – and you couldn’t always see it – the aquarium was always decorated for the season.

Which brings us to today’s QotD:
Question 14:
Suppose you have a 50-gallon aquarium in your home. How will you creatively decorate it for the fish this holiday season?

I’ve never really been a fan of fish-as-pets. In fact, my philosophy has always been that fish are furniture, but if I had an aquarium, I’d certainly decorate it. After all, my dogs wear bandannas in their signature colors (blue for Zorro, red for Cleo) on special occasions, and they have their own Christmas stockings, in which Santa generally leaves bully sticks or pig’s ears.

The question then, is how would I decorate it. Well, I’m fairly certain you cannot convince fish to wear tiny Santa hats, but I do know that a wide variety of tiny aquarium ornaments exist. How cool would it be to have a sleigh pulled by eight seahorses, and a Santa sporting a Neptunian trident? How much fun to have white gravel along the bottom, so that the inside of the aquarium looked like a snow globe.

I could, of course get one of those aquarium screens that looks like a snowy sky, but really, less is more.

And the sleigh…that’s really the thing I’d want to see.

If, you know, I ever had fish.