"it is my oxygen--though i must also have regular oxygen"

One of my fellow fellows here just came in to show me the Shouts & Murmurs from the latest New Yorker, which is about the joys of conferences. It also includes what may be my favorite simile ever: "Insights dart and flash like the doomed fish in a whore's aquarium." If there is actually some lewd meaning to it, rather than just being resplendently weird, I don't want to know what it is.