Weekend: The Haps
Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2003
1. Dolly T. Sheep
I learned a little about cloning from an adult this weekend. And it almost made me cry. Seems that, not only does it take tons of tries to get it right (Dolly took 270ish and that Italian horse took 800something) where, as the doc who worked on trying to get a rhesus monkey cloned described the embryos as a �gallery of horror�, but also, Dolly died of old age at middle age. And here�s why. All your cells start off new. As you age, and your cells divide, it doesn�t really make new cells, it makes two old cells. There something that starts with a T that CSI (the tv show) type people can look at in the lab and tell how old the person was that the cell was taken from. Well, that thing gets smaller as you age. Those kids with that fast aging disease have nearly none at all.
A normal sheep lives to be 12, maybe 13, years old before dying of old age. Dolly was taken from the mammary gland of a six year old sheep. She died of old age at six years old.
It�s not like I really wanted to have a clone of Aisai or me as a daughter or son, but it would be nice if other people in our same position could do that. To some people, it�s important that it�s their blood. But, if the technology was here, and we cloned a son off me, then he�d die of old age around 35 years old. And there�s nothing that can be done about any of that stuff until scientists figure out a way to stop aging. And that�ll never happen.
2. The Passion controversy
The Jewish Anti-Defamation People are upset about that Jesus movie that Mel Gibson is making. They think that it will make people dislike Jewish people since they feel it will depict that Jews killed Jesus, and that�s accurate to a point. However, at that time the Hebrew people didn�t have the right anymore to judge and carry out capital punishment. That�s why they had to have Pilot, the roman dude, pass judgment. I think it�s in the book of John where you even get the conversation where Pilot tells the Sanhedrin to judge him according to their laws. And they respond, �That�s illegal.�
But then again, anyone who has studies the Jewish and Roman laws of that time know that the trial of Jesus was a rushed, botch job carried out illegally at night, etc, etc. They broke about six major Roman laws as to how any trial must be conducted. And besides, Mel�s movie, no one will see it.
3. Call me Killer
Friday, on the way to work, a little baby bird hopped gently into the road in front of my car. I wasn�t able to get into the other lane much before he hopped again, smacking his lil birdie face into my front right tire. He was doing the lil birdie breakdance of death as I drove on. It made me sad.
Today, on the way to work, a fat forest rat scampered into the road in front of my car. I wasn�t able to get into the other lane much before he scampered too far, smacking his fat rat face into my front left tire. He was doing the fat rat breakdance of death as I drove on. It made me sad. But, hey, he�s a rat.
4. Two DVDs = 1 hr of enjoyment
I really like Netflix, but ordering crap sucks. Out of the two DVDs that I got for the weekend, I got only one hour of enjoyment out of them. I got X-Files: Season 6, disk 4, which contains the episode Monday, which is the Groundhog Day Bank episode. Aisai thought it was silly that I �wasted� one of my rentals on seeing an X-files episode. �Next time just set up a search and wait for it to come on.� She said. However, when I set up a search on the replaytv and waited for the Star Trek: Voyager episode �Message in a Bottle� (the one with Andy Dick) it took nearly six months for it to come on. I really wanted to see Groundhog Day Bank. Also, I managed to get the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day off TNT and watched that in pieces between errands on Saturday. Crap, Bill was stuck on Groundhog Day for years in that movie.
There were also three other episodes on the DVD, Aqua Mala (brain eating bugs in the hotel�s water during a hurricane) and Arcadia (undercover in a elitist subdivision/Mulder plants pink yard flamingo, �Bring it!�) were among them. But I didn�t want to see those really. After all, I had also caught The Hunter with the replay.
The second DVD, and a total waste of all things which were ever even remotely related in any way to it�s manufacture, was Monkeybone. I watched ten minutes of that and realized that if it was this horrible at the beginning, there was no way that any amount of talent could show up later. I went to the Netflix site and looked. The first four reviews showing were positive. The next seven pages were all negative. And there are about six reviews per page. Grr. And I really like Bridget Fonda.
Among actresses, the ones I really like are the abovementioned Fonda, Milla Jovovich, Jodie Foster, Janine Garafalo, and�man, there�s another one in that same Bridget Fonda/Jodie Foster vibe, but I can�t remember who. Runner ups are Claudia Black (who�s career is over) and Rachel Lee Cook (who�s career will be over after her crap TV show this fall, but then again, you never know since they just fired everyone and started the whole thing over from scratch�maybe they�d get Joss to polish the funny on the scripts?)
5. Aisai�s Books
Sometimes Aisai reads romance novels. And occasionally, they will have the borderline shameless cover. However, I don�t think that any of the books ever have the long haired guy with his ruffley shirt open so much you can see his nips or anything. Also, she doesn�t read the ones that, say, use the word �cock� or anything. Basically, stuff you�re mom would read if she read that kind of stuff (assuming your mom is like my mom is like Aisai�s mom�meaning a normal mom.)
Well, Aisai has a new genre she�s found. And I swear, it�s the oddest thing I�ve heard of but there are several in this genre. It�s the �Southern Vampire Romance� novel. I kid you not. Or at least the ones that she�s reading now are vampire, when she�s done with these I think she�ll move over to the Southern Horror Romance novels. She�ll library them. And if she likes an author, she might used book store them. And very rarely will we actually go to Barnes & Noble and buy a new one.
If I haven�t mentioned it, we have a room in the house with the walls (and floor, dangit) covered with books. It�s called The Library between Aisai and I, and her family too. But we can�t use that term when talking to anyone else. No one has thousands of books. Heck, it looks like we hijacked the home improvement and fiction sections of a public library. If you took the amalgam of all the books we had it would be a �Straw Bale House Southern Vampire Romance (No Cock)� Book.