The problem with clones: clonez, clonez, clonez ...

“Of all the things that should be cloned, the one we need most will probably be replicated last.”

HELLO, DOLLY!

Scientists, with all the best intentions, are getting on the cloning band wagon.  Dolly the sheep, hundreds of mice and rats and who knows what other species have been cloned in labs around the world.

Now embryonic and adult stem cell researchers are threatening to clone human beings.  Of course, they are cloaking their attempts to clone humans in the shroud of satisfying the situation of couples who are faced with infertility on the one hand and the desire to have children on the other.

WHERE WILL IT LEAD?

With that foot in the door, and the experience with embryonic and adult stem cell manipulation, the researchers can branch out into other areas.  Such as cloning individual organs to replace infected, damaged or injured parts and pieces of the human body.  Some feel that there is a real need for more (cloned) hearts and livers and lungs because of the shortage of donor organs.   The transplant surgeons have too many patients who need their heart or kidney or liver or lung replaced.  Being frustrated with the need for organs (and the chance to make quite a lot of money doing the complicated and dangerous transplant surgery), they see cloning of parts and pieces as a veritable mother lode of organs they can use to put people back together.

CLONE HEARTS IF YOU LIKE ... BUTT FIRST

While I quite agree with the surgeons that "a chance to cut is a chance to cure," I take issue with the fact that cloning efforts should be focused on hearts, kidneys, livers and lungs at the beginning.  We can do those later. Butt first, we should look at the pain, misery, work-loss-days and decrement in daily performance caused by a problem far more common than heart, kidney, liver and lung disease combined.  I am, of course, talking about hemorrhoids, hemorrhoidectomy and rectal cloning.

The first organ cloning we should get behind (so to speak) is rectal cloning.    This should not be the tail end of the cloning story.  It should be the place we start.  The first organ we clone, the Royal Rectum.  The appellation, of course, comes from the type of pain in the ass that hemorrhoids cause us all, a Royal Pain if there ever was one.

Rectal cloning should begin with the very best adult (or embryonic) stem cells, which would insure a flawless product.  With that flawless organ as the goal we can proceed to do two things at the same time: 1.  we can relieve the pain and discomfort that thousands of folks have to endure on a daily basis; and, 2.  we can create Truth where only Innuendo and Supposition were present in the past by actually turning certain people into the Perfect Assholes they were formerly accused of being.

WHAT TO DO IF THE RESEARCH FAILS

Even if the initial research fails, it can easily be flushed incommodiously, allowing assignment of someone else to carry on the movement.   Any failures to clone the perfect rectum will probably end up being the butt of many jokes.  However, in the end, assuredly, success will be achieved and the researchers will get the last laugh on those who dumped on them.

The successes might include cloning the rectum of some tight-ass, anal- retentive accountant and transplanting it into a patient with chronic diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome, thus avoiding embarrassing public loss of control.  (This is called Locked Bowel Syndrome; the variation where the bowel is locked in the open position.)

For patients with chronic constipation, (Locked Bowel, locked in the closed position), perhaps the cloned rectum of a large, African bull elephant would afford the patient a permanently free and open passage for a lifetime of ease and enjoyment at stool.

One waxes ecstatic at the possibilities for those folks with excess intestinal gas.  When one considers the rhapsodic output of a flatogenic patient equipped with a rectum cloned from, say, a tuba player or perhaps the business end of a former clarinetist, oboist or bass saxophone player. All of this leads to a mild depression when one realizes that, with the bodily tissues of Spike Jones and the City Slickers legally and permanently out of reach , we are seeing the rise of cloning at a time when many of the really creative opportunities have been missed.

Personally, having suffered from hemorrhoids myself, and having endured the post-op pain, I lament the fact that I missed the chance to have a replacement cloned from the rectum of Victor Borge.  Then I, too, could go "Phut! Psst! Phut!" (from his performance of audible punctuation of the  typewriter song).

CLONUS PROHIBIUS

There have been a few suggestions about rectal cloning that I think should be rejected out of hand.   For instance, the hunter who wanted a rectum cloned from the larynx of a duck so he could continue uninterrupted, to call the birds while sitting in the blind drinking beer and eating beans and weenies.

Finally, there are a couple of peripheral cloning areas that I think should be addressed before going in for hearts et al.  One is ear canal hair.  I think it should be cloned and transplanted to the heads of bald men. It obviously grows better than what was up there in the first place.   The second thing is Beer Bellies.  They should be cloned and grafted on to young girls with Anorexia Nervosa.  It would give them a "full figure" and might possibly help them beat their disease in one fell swoop. 

Finally, I believe we should clone all kinds of skin, white skin, brown skin,  yellow skin, black skin, and red skin.  Making skin of all colors available to anyone and everyone would allow each person to be whatever color he or she wanted to be.  That, in turn, would let everyone who changed skin color begin to understand that we are all the same underneath, we all have problems and none of us are really any better or worse than anyone else. (The skin cloning should be "reversible," so when the person comes to his or her senses they can revert to their original form and carry on as originally  intended.)

THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF CLONING

Last, but definitely not least, when we have perfected the cloning of all these completely insignificant organs, parts and pieces, we should turn our efforts to the One, Final Thing that really needs to be cloned over and over until we have an unlimited supply of it freely available: Common Sense.

Gotta go! (Gotta go! [clone])

Why I Don't Listen To TV Commercials

Sub-title: Coincidental Foretelling of Improvements in TiVo

My favorite button on our TV remote is the "mute" button.  For years I have been using it to stop car salesmen from yelling about the fact that I am just about to miss my very last, life-long chance to save $300 on the purchase of a $12,000 vehicle.  Of course, that was 20 years ago that I could have saved $300.  Now, the economy being what it is I am shouted at and told I can save $300 on the same vehicle, which now costs $65,500 dollars.

To avoid the pain of such a great loss ($300) and the constant reminder that I am a moron for passing up the chance to save a buck, I became a chronic, repetitive, almost compulsive user of the "Mute" button.

Over the years I have often thought that I would be happy to send $200 - $300 dollars (assuming I was smart enough to have saved that much by buying a new car) to the fellow who first thought of enhancing the TV Remote functions by adding the Mute button.  I only gave up on the idea when I finally decided that this genius, whoever he is, used to be a low-level employee of some Japanese TV manufacturing company and he has long-since gone to his great reward in whatever Heaven Orientals go to when the batteries in their personal Remote Control fail and none of their buttons work any more.  But I still think of him when I "stick a sock" in the mouth of the latest pitch man by pressing the mute button, the mute button created by The Honorable Mr. Mute-subishi, a great Jap if there ever was one.

With the passage of time, I have begun to realize that I am now using the Mute-subishi Button for a whole series of different reasons.  It used to be just for the elimination of extraneous, chaotic and irritating  noise.  Now I Mute-subishi the content because I have determined that to listen to it will change the way I view everything and everybody in my life.

For instance, I have started to mute the Caltrate™ commercials.  I notice that, since becoming aware of how susceptible women of all ages are to the scourge of osteoporosis, I have a hard time watching women, young and old alike, playing sports where they might fall down or walking up or down steps, or getting in and out of  cars, especially SUVs where they have to climb up or climb down, making it likely they will slip on or off the running board and break a hip or worse.

I find I am now unable to comfortably ride public transportation like subways or buses, having seen how distracted the constipated black female bus driver is in that prominent laxative commercial.  What if she is the constipated bus driver I get when I decide to go shopping downtown and have to get there on her bus.  Who knows what she will run in to or where we might all end up if she is in so much gastrointestinal distress that she misses the turn or doesn't see the locomotive coming down the railroad tracks.  It's just too much to risk.

Squirming people seem to be everywhere, now that I have been so careless as to watch all those hemorrhoid preparations commercials.  Every time someone squirms in a church pew or at a movie theater, every time I see a person in a restaurant adjusting his bottom on the chair cushion, seeking a more comfortable arrangement of his gluteus maximus, I feel as if I am privy to a personal, intimate condition of his (or hers) about which I should know nothing, as someone else's buttocks is really none of my business.  So I am faced with averting my eyes from yet another group in society, The Seated Butt Wigglers.

Talking about intimate knowledge brings to mind the topic of feminine hygiene spray and the even more intimate topic of feminine napkins, with or without wings.  And, while we are at it, the topic of adult incontinence diapers. These are, I am sure, all good products and the patients who need to use them are eternally grateful that some factory somewhere (just NIMBY, I hope) makes this stuff.  My quarrel is not with the products, but with the public announcement, right in the middle of an engrossing TV show when I have finally achieved that blissful state called "a willing suspension of disbelief."  I have found a character I can identify with, he is (unlike me, except in my fantasies) young, handsome, strong, powerful, confident and about to succeed at the most impossible task, when my attention is shattered by the too-real need to prevent leaking all over your jodhpurs by wearing diapers, which you thought you had out-grown in childhood.  That experience is like someone taking your brain out of the top of your head and shoving it in to the crotch of the person on the TV screen who is about to pee in their pants.   And it sticks with me to the point that I wonder, when I am walking through the halls of the hospital or the mall or the grocery store, who is wearing adult diapers right now in this place?  The guy in front of me, the lady who is picking rutabagas and turnips out of the vegetable case, the person down the hall who, I can see clearly, is walking with a funny tight-ass, mincing step because why? Because the Velcro fastener on each side is about to let go and let his diaper start to creep down his pant leg?  Or because it is all bunched up in his crack and he would really like to reach up and give it a good yank to relieve his "full feeling" back there?  It's the fault of the commercials that I think of stuff like this.   The advertisers who have told me about all these far-too-personal problems have ruined my ability to enjoy almost any situation where I can see people walking funny, squirming in their seats or being distracted by their own physiology.

Some of the worst commercials are those that deal with gaseous bloating & flatus production, or avoidance thereof.  I can barely stand to catch a glimpse of a big, fat person, who has just polished off the third heaping plate of food at the local Golden Corral All-You-Can Eat Til It Looks Like You Will Explode Buffet.  First they burp.  Then they "pat the fat" and roll up on one cheek or the other, and whether I can hear or smell anything or not is immaterial, I just KNOW what they are doing and so do you, because you have watched those commercials, too.

You may not think that the commercials about Lipitor and other anti-cholesterol drugs would be any thing but good.  However, my viewpoint has changed so much, because of Lipitor, that I no longer watch any pro football game where the team is being coached by Dan Reeves (a definitely dated reference) because I am afraid when they come out after half-time he will have had a heart attack in the locker room and "not be there."

Toilet paper commercials are another bane of my existence.  I see a roll of toilet paper now and I am overcome with sadness for Mr. Whipple, because he had retired and now they have dragged his ass  back to the TV screen to tout bun wad  ... and isn't that a great way to spend your Golden Years?   From there it is not a very far throw to wondering if anyone's butt really cares if that stuff is "quilted" or not. Speaking on behalf of all the  people going into restrooms at this moment, I think quilting takes a back seat (no pun intended) to whether there IS or IS NOT any paper, quilted or not, on the roll when we get ready to use it.

I could go on about stool softeners, foot fungus medicines (do you think the guy next to you in the country club locker room has it and will give it to you?), and the milk of magnesia commercials, but I would just like to end with irritable bladder.  Personally, I dislike irritation of any kind, but bladder irritation seems especially disgusting, not as an entity, but as a topic of public discussion.  Among other things, awareness of bladder irritation as a common problem in the general population is very, very frightening.  This is especially true if we are talking about foreign Taxi Cab Drivers, who, by and large seem to be borderline hysterical anyway, totally distracted by their highly intellectual assessment of our idiotic political system and their God-Given Duty to verbally analyze, criticize and polemicise about it while they are (or should be) navigating their way in and around all the maniacal people pursuing their own destruction with a high-speed vengeance.  To even think for a second that the would-be NASCAR idiot shepherding your taxi through traffic has, on top of his cultural and ethnic and emotional problems, a spastic urinary bladder that is taking up a vital part of his concentration is the crowning blow.  When I realized that I would never be able to ride in another taxi without coming close to a nervous breakdown, I decided that I absolutely could not listen to or watch one more commercial. 

The Covert Pavlovian nature of the box had finally become crystal clear to me: it was not only delivering sensationalism and calling it news, or disgusting tripe and calling it entertainment and "specials" that never were and never will be.  It was also sensitizing me to the point where, instead of seeing the beauty and intellect of my fellow human beings, I was seeing only what was going on in their colon, around their rectum, in between their toes and in the spastic muscles of their urinary bladder. Having decided that I will no longer neither listen to nor watch commercials, I am setting out for Japan in a few weeks to find Mr. Mute-subishi to get him to create a new, custom Remote Control based on my idea: a button that blanks the screen for 15- or 30- or 60-seconds at a time so I don't have to hear or see another commercial again.  I hope Mr. Whipple doesn't get his feelings hurt, but one more exposure to quilted bun wad and I might just loose all control.  (I hate to quit at this point, but I have to run and tinkle.)

180830 Addendum: TiVo and other DVRs now do have a 30-second jump function.  My prescience astounded even me ... and may be exciting to Mr. Bishi, if I can find him.