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According to a recent AP story, "Wild elephants
broke into a cluster of thatched huts, guzzled rice beer fermenting in casks and tore the village apart in a drunken rampage,
trampling four people to death and injuring six…." This tragedy occurred in the village of Prajapatibosti, India, and
points out the dangers inherent in mixing beer and elephants.
Now let us consider the ramifications of cloning
the 23,000-year-old mammoth found nearly perfectly preserved in the frozen tundra of Siberia. Mammoths are distant cousins
of elephants and may have the same predilection for things alcoholic (booze). Glinty-eyed scientists are already rubbing their
hands together feverishly in anticipation of cloning the giant, hairy, smelly beast. Can you imagine the chaos, not to mention
the sheer inconvenience, that would be unleashed if a herd of 14-foot-at-the-shoulder mammoths were to escape from the lab
and go in search alcoholic beverages? "Why would they do this?" you ask. "Mammoths aren't necessarily alcoholic just because
some of their cousins, elephants, are," you might add.
"Well," I answer, "recent genetic studies show
that alcoholism might just be an inherited disease, and since elephants and mammoths share similar genes, well, I think you
get my gist."
My question is, where might these cloning experiments
take place? In Siberia where the mammoth was discovered? Siberia is in the former Soviet Union where vodka is so plentiful
it is used for currency. Peanuts are an expensive commodity in Siberia, so what do you feed a hungry mammoth? Why, fermented
potatoes washed down with liberal dollops of vodka of course!
If the mammoth is duplicated in Scotland, home
of the cloned sheep, Dolly, could not the hairy beast acquire a taste for the native spirit? Might it not then have a few
gallons of single malt, and head out in search of the Loch Ness Monster just to settle who is the baddest dude in the highlands?
I quiver in my kilt to think of it. The sheer disastrous consequences would rival all of the Godzilla versus Rodan, versus
Mothra movies combined!
The town where I reside, Kennewick, Washington,
is part of the Tri-Cities, which also includes Pasco and Richland. Nearby is the much-maligned Hanford nuclear reservation.
Aforementioned Dave Barry recently wrote a column about our problems with radioactive waste. According to Mr. Barry we all
glow in the dark, and like in some 1950's era science-fiction movies we are populated with ants the size and ferocity of alligators.
Fruit flies here resemble pterodactyls. Of course, he did not make this up. We also have numerous secret and nefarious laboratories
where secret experiments are conducted by frizzy-haired scientists wearing thick eyeglasses. One lab is experimenting with
genetically altered tobacco, which will clot blood. But that's another story.
What if the powers that be decide to clone that
Siberian mammoth right here, where radioactivity runs rampant? Instead of being only 14-feet at the shoulder, these behemoths
could reach, well, mammoth proportions! Not much beer is made in this area (although quite a bit is consumed), but this area
produces some of the finest wines in the world (to the French, I say, "Neenerneenerneener")! And we have whole downtown areas
populated with nothing but taverns and cocktail lounges which are left over from the huge construction era of never-completed
nuclear power plants. They were never completed because the workers were too busy drinking to complete them.
If these mammoth mammoths are cloned in the Tri-Cities,
and escape their confines, they'll have easy pickings (tramplings) because, since we all emit a radioactive aura, we are easily
spotted. Oh, the humanity!
I worry about things like this - even if Dave Barry
doesn't.
***
It all started with potato chips. I remember when
you could go to the grocery store and buy a box of potato chips which contained four bags of the crispy, crunchy, salty treats.
Before long, when you opened the box and looked inside, SURPRISE!! There were only three bags. I was too young to consider
any conspiracy theories at that time, especially involving Canada. Does Canada grow potato chips? I don't even know if this
is a Canadian conspiracy, but they're convenient, so what the heck.
I was a bit older when I noticed that bottles of
booze had shrunk in size and sold for the same price as the larger quarts, fifths, half-gallons, etc. The official excuse
was that the U.S. had to convert to the metric system (aha! Canada was already on the metric system by this time), and therefore
we Americans would henceforth have to pay more money for less hooch just like the rest of the world, including Canada. You
could no longer buy a pint of Canadian whiskey - it must be sold in kilometers or milligrams or some-such.
Next came toilet paper. Remember when toilet paper
(tissue for those who are offended by the word “paper”) came in one standard-size roll? Now we have these dinky
little rolls that last for about two-and-a-half usages, and they cost about what the old standard-size roll used to. You can
buy the “double roll,” which is the same as the old standard roll, but it costs twice as much.
Coffee used to come in three-pound cans. Now you
get about three ounces (4.53 kilomoles) for about what you used to pay for 48 good old American ounces. It comes in the same
size can though, so you're not supposed to notice that you're being ripped off. Juan Valdez has quite a racket going there.
Maybe it's due time we declared war on Columbia as well as Canada. I'll ask Dave what he thinks.
Now, here I am wandering through the grocery store
the other day, and I thought it might be time to buy bleach. I went looking for the familiar plastic gallon jugs of the relatively
cheap Safeway brand of chlorine bleach - and what do I find??!! The jugs now hold only three quarts (1.76 nanoralphs) instead
of four! They sell for the same price as the gallon containers! They didn't even try to disguise this idiotic scheme by putting
the smaller amount of bleach in the original-size container like they did with coffee. I can just see some 23-year-old
marketing whiz saying, “Uh, yup Uncle Fred, this here is a dandy idea. We'll just put three quarts of bleach in these
cute, littler bottles and charge the same price and nobody will know the difference.” What? Are we having a bleach shortage
like the recent gasoline “shortage?”
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Musings
of a Radioactive Mind |
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I grew up on a farm, so the following headline was no great surprise to me: Scientists
say humans are more like turkeys than previously believed. The article, by The Knight-Ridder news service, says we Homo
sapiens are genetically related to turkeys, chickens and other fowl creatures. In fact, we may be more likened to the chicken
than to the mouse! So the old question, "Are you a man or a mouse?" may be moot, and the statement, "I dare you. You're chicken,"
may be more appropriate.
The discovery of our close genetic link to birds may help explain the gang mentality
so prevalent in today's society. Birds run (or fly) in gangs called "flocks," except crows, which gather in "murders." Maybe
early crow observers knew about this link between our fine-feathered friends and human gangs long before scientists had an
inkling as to what was going on. That would not surprise me, as scientists are notoriously slow on the uptake.
As I said, I grew up on a farm. We had about 3,000 chickens, and one year someone in
our family decided it would be a good thing to raise a gang of turkeys. As they grew into turkey adolescence, one male, or
"tom" became dominant, and assumed the role of gang leader. I was only nine or 10 years old, and my physical presence was
not very imposing. I had already had problems with young human dominant males in Little League with names like "Bird" Norris
and Gary "Duckmire." One day I found myself surrounded by turkeys, wing-to-wing in a tight circle, trapping me. The gang leader,
which outweighed me by a good 40 or 50 pounds, strutted into the circle and proceeded to leap at my puny chest several times.
Being a chicken, I did the only thing that came to mind - I yelled bloody murder for my mother, who rescued me by shooing
the "gansta turkeys" off. This same kind of behavior was observed recently in Eagan, Minnesota when three gobblers started
hanging out at a school bus stop, harassing passersby and chasing kids, pecking at them as they boarded the bus. Gang behavior
at its foulest (or fowlest)!
Chickens are known to peck weaker hens to death, apparently just because they can.
And woe to the lone rooster which finds itself in a flock of 3,000 chickens. He's a dead duck! This may be where we get the
term, "henpecked." It also demonstrates where female gangs with names like "The Debs," "Vicious Mamas," or the "Pleasantville
Bridge Club."
In school, we all knew of gangs of "popular" kids called cliques. These were usually
comprised of athletes or pretty cheerleaders who interacted, and whose sole purpose was to exclude the rest of us. I formed
a gang in high school, the only purpose of which was to have someone to smoke cigarettes with and exclude athletes and pretty
cheerleaders. Pretty dumb, huh? Especially the part about excluding pretty cheerleaders. I was the dominant male in this gang
because I was the only one who had access to a car on Friday nights.
Gang graffiti was passed down to us from the birds. Note the territorial markings on
your car after you have parked it under a tree or power line. My mother often found turkey graffiti on her nice clean laundry
after hanging it outside to dry. She had many derogatory things to say about gangs of turkeys, which I will not repeat here.
So, the next time you are alarmed by a gang of juvenile miscreants hanging around a
street corner, remember that they are birdbrains, and that "birds of a feather flock together." And, you'll be able to enjoy
that next dinner of roast turkey or chicken knowing what happens to even the toughest bird.
***
Want more musings, rants or raves? Click here to go to my BLOG.
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