Thursday, March 29, 2012

Thoughtless Thursday (updated)

I'm too giddy about the way Buckner Verrilli has handled the barrycare arguments to think straight.  Which means I have not thoughts of my own and the only thing I can do is poach ideas from other blogs.  Dunno why nobody has thought of doing that before... 

Amongst my little circle of blog buddies, there has been a lot of talk about fishing.  Maybe it is the spring in the air that calls us to the great outdoors.  Maybe it is the fear that the trout I pull out of the creek will be all I have to live on after I pay my 'lectric bill and put gas in the car.  Either way, this discussion of fishing hearkens to mind the very first fish I ever caught...


mature adults, like me, may actually remember this ad when it aired on one of our 13 available
cable channels, and most of those 13 were useless and they all went off-air around midnight
and we had no remote except "get up and change the channel!" and get off my lawn uphill both
ways in the snow.

The title says "1973" which puts me right at the same vintage as this junior baloney broker.  In fact, that could be me, except it is well documented that I can't sing and I had the mom-approved V05 greasy slicked-back hairdo (to tame the cowlicks) at that age.  I say "could have been me" because my first fish was caught off a similar dock using a nearly identical toy fishin' pole.  It was a perch ("perch" is an Native American word meaning "useless fish that likes to swallow your hook so you have to rip its innards out to get it off the line") not much bigger than my child-sized hand.  I have photographic evidence to back this claim - but trust me, it isn't terribly impressive.  This modest beginning has led to a lifelong love affair with fishing.  I love it so much I actually go fishing once every five years or so.  Then I just get pissed and go to Skippers.

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Science! is still preoccupied with global warming and what to do about it.  They put forward a series of suggestions, intended as examples of the sorts of human engineering measures that people could voluntarily adopt. These include:
-Induce intolerance to red meat (think lactose intolerance), since livestock farming accounts for a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions.

OK, you've lost me already. Wait... that would mean more burgers and steaks and bacon for ME. Maybe this plan has merit after all.

-Make humans smaller to reduce the amount of energy we each need to consume. This could be done by selecting smaller embryos through preimplantation genetic diagnosis, a technique already in use to screen for genetic diseases. “Human engineering could therefore give people the choice between having a greater number of smaller children or a smaller number of larger children,” they write.

You go ahead and have a bunch of little kids.  I'll have the big kids that beat your little kids up and take their lunch money.  Then they'll grow up and be in the NFL.  I'll never have to work again.  Besides, if I were shrunk to a more energy efficient size, I'd need an elevator to get into my big gas hoggy SUV.  And I wouldn't be able to see over the dashboard, so I might accidentally run over a bunch of miniature Critical Mass cyclists.  Hold on a sec, that "problem" has a certain appeal to it.

-Reduce birthrates by making people smarter, since higher cognitive ability appears linked to lower birthrates. This could be achieved through a variety of means, including better schooling, electrical stimulation of the brain and drugs designed to improve cognitive ability, they propose.

"Take the pill and enter The Matrix" is what they're trying to say.

-Treat people with hormones, such as oxytocin, to make us more altruistic and empathetic.

Aw geez. Their idea of "improving" humanity is to reduce us to a bunch of miniature vegan drug-addled empaths with wires coming out of our heads.  Dear Science, if you are going to piddle away grant money on "improving" humanity, why doncha actually, you know, improve humanity?  How 'bout you splice some chlorophyll genes into us, so when I get hungry I can just lay down in the sun for a while?  What's the matter with that idea?  Then Cameron can use union-member green people in his sequel to Avatar instead of those ludicrously expensive CGI smurfs he used in the first one.

Better still, why not graft some electric eel genes into us?  Think of the money we could save by not having to give each cop a tazer!  We could feed all the homeless and house all the hungry with all that extra dough!  And when people get in a fight it would make cool zappy noises like those black/white guys who hated each other in the original Star Trek. (Which I used to watch, as a child, on one of those 13 available cable channels).

Oooh... Another idea!  What about bio-luminescent genes from fireflies?  We could glow and no longer need those [bleep]ing CFL light bulbs.  Much energy savings!  We could huddle all the #occutards around a solar panel, and they'd become useful for the first time in their lives!

As Instapundit might say, faster please!

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Oh, almost forgot:  The highest exemplar of poetry ever penned in the Queen's English.

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UPDATE: Oh, almost forgot this gem from the local paper:

VAMPIRE ON THE GREYHOUND?: 5:45 p.m. 508 S.W. Monroe Ave. A 14-year-old girl called Corvallis police to say that while traveling from Eugene to Portland, she stopped in Eugene and had a strange interaction with a man. The man reportedly approached her, told her it was her birthday, hugged her and bit her neck. She told police she had a small bite mark on her neck but was otherwise uninjured. She then rode the bus with the man to Portland and did not report it until she got to Portland and told her sister about the incident. The girl described the man as a black male in his 20s, wearing a blue “I Carly” shirt.


A black vampire in a blue "I Carly" shirt.  Dude.

16 comments:

  1. Jeez. You just couldn't make that science-stuff up could ya? Unless you were a screen-writer for bad, bad, bad B-grade sci-fi movies and even those weren't as bad as what you quoted. They had additional value as fodder for MST3K, too.

    In re: poetry. Green's was best.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Inno, in The Year Of Our Lord 1973, I was a Freshman in High School. I started Freshman year with a cast on my left leg (broke it at the skating rink), and all 7 of my classes in a 6 period schedule were on the 3rd floor of the 3 buildings (out of rotation). 1973 sucked for me.

    DAMN! I remember that commercial!

    We did not yet have "cable" in Bossier City, Louisiana (we got it in 1978...I know, because Daddy owned a TV & Appliance store).

    We only had an antenna in 1973, and a little brother that we could order to go stand next to the TV, and hold the left rabbit ear, stick his left leg out, and let us watch Captain Kangaroo before school...then wash, rinse, repeat, so that we could look at The Afternoon Movie on KTBS after school.

    We only had 3 channels (when the weather was good...just 2 when it rained).

    My baby brother sucked, so we beat him up when it rained.

    Bless his heart, he still loves us all. Don't know why.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yep, that kid would be about my age, give or take maybe a year.

    And I remember having 4, and sometimes 5 channels (the Big Three, one independent on UHF, and PBS.

    ReplyDelete
  4. At least that vampire dude wasn't wearing a hoodie.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Am I being blinded by the science, or just the stupid?

    ReplyDelete
  6. They've not gone that far in Portland yet (give 'em time...) though the city website does advise that meat should be considered a side-dish. Bless their pointy little heads, that's what they're paid to do - tell us how to eat.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I really like your chlorophyll gene splice idea!

    And that Star Trek episode -- Frank Gorshin in a body suit

    ReplyDelete
  8. http://www.youtube.com/theyoutubecollection - you gotta hand it to the wizards over there!

    ReplyDelete
  9. And a great ad: http://maxredline.typepad.com/maxredline/2012/03/happy-april-1.html

    ReplyDelete
  10. Inno, I read this yesterday but I was so choked up by the poem that I couldn't comment at the time. I'm better now. Buck's comment is pretty close to what I was thinking. This science stuff is so bad that the absolute worst Science Fiction writers would have rejected it. But I can see it getting into a B movie...maybe.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Perch fishing. Yes, most of us consider these critters to be nothing more than an annoyance. Irksome. Useless.

    On the contrary: the trick is volume. And catching them is a piece o' cake, as these fish are dumber than an Obama voter (and that's saying something). Dedicate some serious time to cathcing a few hundred of these babies, and simply filleting their little sides. Whip up some Krusteaz batter, dip the tiny fillets in them and fry them in some Crisco, a little salt and pepper when they come out of the pan.

    Trust me, ain't nothing better than a few hundred perch for dinner.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Black Male in iCarly t-shirtApril 3, 2012 at 8:31 PM

    MMMMM... what a tasty morsel she was toooooo. And just for calling me black and NOT African American and for spelling it I Carly not iCarly, I'll just take a bite out of you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Black Male in iCarly t-shirt's boyfriendApril 3, 2012 at 8:36 PM

      (severe lisp) Don't be fooled folkss, my boy wouldn't do ssuch a thing unless he felt frightened, by ssay a 14 year old girl.

      Delete
  13. Hi Inno, I thought they had wierdo's out here! I hope that girl didn't get rabies from the bite.
    Stay away from occupods! Happy Spring.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Straggler comment, but I got to get it off my chest, Inno. Can't believe you have all those perch up in Oregon. But, well...I guess its been over 200 years now, they could'a migrated by now. Yep, I'm talking about the Louisiana Perches...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Velcro! Long time no see! And, as puns go, that one rocks. I think that is the first time I have actually liked a pun.

      Delete

Family-friendly phrasing heartily encouraged.

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