|
|
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It's Monday, September 11th, 2, oh, oh, oh and after one more swim across Walden and back w/o drowning, it's time to fly.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Clicky on
the picky--
advance
to page 2.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
photo: Jeff Good
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Rant:
Not only are we getting closer to cloning humans but we are technically doing so already. Scientists in England are permitted to grow fetuses (feti?) in jars for 14 days to use for tissue transplant but then they have to throw them away. (Do the anti-choicers have an opinion on this?) Or they could then conceivably--illegally--plant the fetus in a woman's uterus and try to grow a child. However, British labs are even more closely regulated than ours and Japan is even starting to pay attention, so the reigns are being pulled in, for now. An American scientist was able to set up a cloning lab in Japan before the authorities began to protest; now they're working toward a ban. He can just go elsewhere; there are still plenty of countries left where the attempt to clone humans is legal. In fact, come on--they'd welcome the money it'd bring in. $2.3 mil has so far been spent in Texas (almost a country) to clone a beloved pet dog. A cult called Clonaid has raised the $500k necessary to begin cloning a human for a mourning mother who wants her son's DNA to live out its chromosomal destiny. It will surely cost much more in the end and in order to acheive one genetically solid clone, they'd have to throw out maybe a hundred. But if at first you don't succeed. . . So far the only cloning success (the public knows about) is that sheep Dolly three years ago. Surely they're not telling us something. I'm not sure I find all this so unethical or inhuman, and if I--the average shmoe--don't find it so shocking or weird you can bet some bunch of mad scientists, the ones smart enough to figure out the cloning process, will be reproducing one-sided humans-in-a-dish soon or they are doing it now and not telling. And once it happens it'll start to seem acceptable and miraculous to the masses and the concept of ethics will change and it will be a Brave New World. Really the only difference between this and a test tube baby is the DNA from one person. Nu?
Medical science has now deemed possible the eradication of the monthly mentrual period. Using appropriate doses of hormones in a little pill--that's right, it's really just a reconfiguration of birth control--can reduce your flow to four times a year. Sounds cool when you think about cutting out the pain, the bloating, the mood swings, the urge to dismember loved ones. It's also a way for family planning to gain more widespread acceptance in the face of rising anti-choice sentiment. But isn't it also telling us that we are not right the way we are, that we should be more like men, that we should poison our bodies with more drugs to get ourselves under control? Like the drugs pregnant women took in the 50's because they were told it was for the good of their babies who like themselves ended up with serious health problems, no one knows what side effects may occur 20 years down the road. What do you think?
It's about time Russia accepted NATO's offer of help to get the asphyxiating Russian Navy out of the damn water. And with all the meddling the U.S. likes to do, wouldn't now be an appropriate time to be a nudge? Whatever happens, it's a case of too little, too late. The Rusky officials would rather stand by, the final fading tap-tap-tap proof of the soldiers naively hopeful, speedily waning existence. They'd rather try their personal best as in, "We tried! Well, sort of," whilst oxygen-depleted air squeezes last breaths out of countrymen's painfully pancaking lungs, than risk losing a few sub-aquatic secrets to former adversaries who probably don't even care to sneak a peek. (And you think you're out of breath after that last sentence!) This will go down in history as a preventable tragedy on a catastrophic level. The world stands by as our overseas brethren honorably experience death's untimely imminence. I tried but there just ain't no nice way of saying "healthy young people wait to die." We all know how this one turned out. No big surprise. Should I just shut up now and sweep it under the floorboards? Yeah, on to Harry Potter.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Daily Confessional:
Sometimes after work on Saturdays at the vegan bakery in Los Angeles, I inhale the exhaust-filled air and run to Burger King. ("They" say balance in life is important.) C'mon by, have an animal- and dairy-free, possibly roach-infested (ok, so not totally animal-free), tofu-based muffin and see Peter MacNichol from Ally McBeal walking his little dogs up the street. (Looks like he's been to Burger King, too. Unsolicited advice to Peter: leave Calista's leftovers on her plate!) Oh, and congratulations on your Emmy nomination! In Beantown for the summer, on reprieve from the intoxicating toxicity of the Land of La. Wonder if they miss me out there? (Yes, I'm sure my cats miss me very much.) Funny how when you're in LA the rest of the world seems not to exist. I'm not sure I can go back now. Even if I wanted to. Which I halfway don't. See, I did this feature (nothing scandalous, you) that really sucks and I don't look good in brown and if I return it'll have to be with a brown paper bag over my head. Don't worry Mill, I'm not talking about your film. It's a different one. Yours is gonna take all the honors at Sundance, my psychic friend told me so! Just when you think you have found a trustworthy soul, WHAM! Yet another psycho bitch has duped you again. Is it me, you ponder? Am I the bad seed? It's not that deep. Allow me to lean on the reassuring wisdom of some early President who said, "One good friend in life is much, two are many, three are hardly possible." I guess offensive, threatening emails come with the territory when you wear your feelings on your floorboards, like so much fungus from beneath. Whomever sent that one to me, and I'm pretty sure I know who y'are, you are lower than the earthcrawlers beneath the slime beneath the fungus beneath the floorboards. To steal someone's signature identity and make anonymous kindergarten-level sexual overtures is beyond pathetic, it is abusive, slanderous and low. It's time your parents told you you're retarded! (No offense to retarded people! Some of them are my best friends. It's true!) Is there some pattern to the fact that I keep seeking apprenticeship with cartoon characters? Does it matter? Maybe not in the cosmic sense but it might be a sign of dementia. Friday will help decide which prong to follow. The one going left or the one going right. As a friend (albeit a friend in a cult) used to say, "Everything is as it should be. All is right with the world. The universe is in perfect order and harmony. " Good advice. (Given just before he drank the Kool Aid.) If I see one more Savagardener281boy in baggy draggy cargos (just what are those pockets for anyway?) or one more Christ-in-a-gorilla-wannabe in tight flared muddies, I will most certainly puke. When did Sears become cool and clothes the trailblazers wore three years ago get so coopted and mass-produced? Is it that Boston is just catching on late as usual (following the trends like the rest of the zombie nation) or can we blame the clothing corporations that hired the $10,000 a week producers who hired the $15,000 a week directors who hired the $800 a day wardrobe stylists with the $25,000 budgets on the latest Kitch-in-Sink videos for planting what's hip to throw your cash at in the developing minds of our preprogrammed youth. If it's uniforms we're going to wear, why not just throw on utilitarian coveralls and have done with it? Well, that wouldn't keep us living high on the credit bovine in a disposable income economy, now would it? Anti-fashion rules. Boston's feeling small and stifling now but still unbeatable for a good clean bike ride or swim. Also it's inhabitants, being of the herd mentality and rhythmic in their living of the life, make great subject fodder for stories you just can't get in LA. Ah, but you still gotta go there to tell them tales if you want anyone to listen. Don't you? And is there life after LA? Very big thanks to the rock genie who most generously gave of his time and felingual abilities to care for my furbies. As Barry Manilow most eloquently crooned, we are "just two ships that pass in the night and we smile as we say it's all right." Love to the king. Love from Chin Chin and Kitty Carlisle. Peetaaaaah!!! Cigarette!! How you, Peeeetah? Eeeeeeee!!! I wanna say sumthin'--I like yaw shirt, Petah. It's nice. Yawr nice, Peetah. I like you, Peetah. Yawr nice. Eeeeeeeeeee! Bye, Peetah. I'll miss you. You my friend. Michelle will take care you and be yawr girlfriend and Delois let you scratch her neck even though it's not right. And Jeffrey Brown will hold his poop good. Kathy get married, you be best man for Joe. Get married in a church, Peteh. An' everyone be there for the rides on Sattdays!!! Goobye, Peeteh. See you. Have good time. I come back take care you and do fun things and be yawr friend fah-eva. Aaaaeeeeeeee!! Cigarette!!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
caught in the spokes of the search engine.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| page created with Easy Designer |