Oh Noes! Hand me my torch and pitchfork!

We're all gonna die!

And maybe go to hell, for eating the devil clone meat.

"Whole Foods Market is committed to providing consumers with clone-free products," says Margaret Wittenberg, global vice president of quality standards and public affairs for grocer Whole Foods Market Inc. "The lack of effective governmental oversight and tracking could mean consumers will lose the ability to choose clone-free products."

Head for the hills! We're going to be overrun by really bad scifi-channel movie dialog! A pox on this writer's strike! Flee! Flee for your lives!

Cloned Milk! Why you might as well just suckle from the Devil's own teat!

"What are we afraid of???? Well let me see. Eating that stuff could possibly(and i mean this in a nice way) could turn you psychotic."

Oh no, not psychotic (even in a nice way)!

Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh. Ah?

Ah, hell, what a bunch of mass hysteria over nothing.

Snark aside, the chief complaint appears to be that the milk and meat from cloned animals won't be labeled as such on supermarket shelves. Opponents want the word "Clone" in big red letters on each package, because it's, um, really, really important! (technically I think it should probably say Clone! Clone! Clone! on the label, see because the word 'Clone' is copied several times and... what?)

Attention, clueless retards - since you spent your entire education with your ears plugged, afraid you might get a little Darwin on you, let me fill you in, cloning is NOT genetic alteration. Cloning is no different than twins. That's right, twins. Are you suggesting that we label milk and meat that comes from genetically identical animals (again, twins for the slow, science challenged people) as such? Maybe we should ban twins outright, those damned cows and their devil babies.

Look I'm all about food safety. I'm all about controlling genetically engineered foods. Frankly I'm a hell of a lot more concerned about making damned sure we know the long term effects of the steroids and hormones that are pumped into our food supply. This isn't that, cloning produces an animal genetically identical to the progenitor animal - that's why it's called cloning. If progenitor and offspring are not identical, the offspring is not a clone. If that progenitor animal was safe to eat, so is the clone. Q.E.D.

Simple genetic tests can easily prove this.

Which is what these alarmist idiots should actually be calling for: verification of identical genetic make-up between progenitor and clone(s). Certification that no significant genetic replication errors have occurred in the cloning process (by 'significant' I mean no greater than the normal +/- percentage of genetic mean deviation in a naturally occurring offspring). This would actually increase safety in the food supply. For example: a cow resistant to Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE, commonly called Mad Cow Disease) can be cloned over and over again. In fact, this could be a pretty powerful marketing tool - "Guaranteed to come from BSE Immune Animals!"

Are you eating cloned foods right now? Yep. Corn, wheat, potatoes, and many more plant products - we've been doing it for years, centuries in fact. Except the agriculture industry has been producing cloned crops using natural techniques. It's called monculture and it's what lead directly to the Dutch and Irish Potato Famine.

Which, of course, brings us to an actual real and legitimate concern regarding cloning - reduction of genetic diversity in the food supply. Over time it is likely that widespread cloning of selected animals will lead to a form of monoculture within the meat and diary industry, just as it has in agriculture.

Then again, it can be effectively demonstrated that if used on a large scale, cloning effectively stops evolution. Yep. And I think that's the marketing key, right there. Seriously push this hard enough, and it won't be long until the Creation Museum Cafe is serving nothing but Cloned Meat Hot Dogs. Eat Cloned Meat, Stop Evolution!

Cloned Food, the Conservative Christian Kosher!



Enjoy your Saturday.

Please Make It Stop

OK, no TV today.

I'm still in pain this morning, the shoulder is better, but it hurts to turn my head. The pain in my neck caused me to wake up with a headache - which isn't surprising, since I went to bed with one.

Then I turned on the news - and it was like somebody jammed an icepick through my eye.

Somebody do me a favor - hold Britney Spears' head under water until she stops twitching. Please. Honestly, does anybody expect this empty-headed twit to live a long and happy life? Eventually she's going to commit suicide, or overdose, or drive her BMW through a Starbucks and over a cliff. It's inevitable. So, let's just get it over with, then the rest of us can get on with our business. Cold? Heartless? Yeah, that's me. I don't know what's more revolting, her drug-addled commando nihilism or the crazed mob of camera waving human diarrhea that camp out at the end of her driveway, or the fact that people the world over are actually interested in this woman's train wreck of a life.

Oh wait, as it turns out I do know what is more revolting - Huckabee's tent-revival smugness this morning, Praise JeeeZus! See, that's the problem with democracy - we have to let the idiots vote, and there's more and more idiots every day. The same people that compulsively surf the internet for pictures of Britney's nasty girl gadget are the ones who think the Huckster will make a good President - you know, because he's a preacher. Just what we need, another squinty-eyed conservative retard in the Oval Office who thinks Jesus talks to him personally.

Way to go Iowa.

Since Britney's career is basically head first in the toilet, maybe she could be Huck's running mate. Why the hell not? Look at it this way, since we've managed to turn our government into a joke anyway - let's go big. The whole world is laughing at us already, I say let's laugh with them.

Think about it - Huck and Brit. There's some real advantages here:

1) No more evil vice president who secretly runs things from behind the scenes. Britney couldn't organize a salad fight down at the Beverly Hills Taco Bell. Hell, she doesn't even get out of bed before 2PM, honestly how much damage could she do?

2) Major energy and time savings. Consolidating the frothing mobs of reporters who follow both Britney and the VP around into one group saves us all time and money. We'd get both our political and entertainment news all in one shot. Think of the savings! And truthfully American Politics and the Entertainment Industry aren't really all that different. Think about it, both generate mindless followers, heaps of money, bullshit, and crazy religious twaddle faster than an L. Ron Hubbard brain washing. Let's lump it all together and simplify the process, that's what I'm talking about.

3) Huck's a Republican Conservative, an ordained Baptist minister, the bass player in the band Capital Offense, and he used to be the Governor of Arkansas - now, you tell me, is that a recipe for a little cigar smoking in the Oval Office or what? With Britney as the VP, well, at least he won't have to go far afield - cheap nasty sex complete with VD, booze, drugs, and scandal all in one convenient package. Just saying.

4) Truthfully, when Britney shaved her head, didn't she look a lot like Dick Cheney from the ribcage up? And at the rate Britney's pounding down the booze, jowls and the spider-veined red nose aren't far away. Put a pair of glasses on her and we wouldn't even have to change the VP pictures in every government building. More savings for the tax payer.

5) He plays bass, he's got his own band. She's a singer and a dancer and has her own groupies. Do I have to spell it out? It's the perfect match, like the Brady Bunch - if Mike and Carol snorted coke off a hooker's ass with a rolled up page ripped out of the bible.

6) Seriously, Huck and Brit, really could they do any worse than the current dipshits? Really, how bad could it be, comparatively speaking? I mean we're basically faced with no good choices, mostly it's a matter of voting for the lesser of evils anyway. In fact that would make a damned good campaign slogan: Huck and Brit 2008! No Good Choices!

7) And finally, we'd at last find something for Paris Hilton to do. With Britney in the VP's office, it's inevitable that she'd see her old friend on the cabinet - Secretary of State I'm thinking. Or maybe a nice ambassadorship somewhere - say Baghdad.


Yeah, OK, I'm done here. I'll be out in the shop if you need me.

Kids these days

Yesterday and this morning have been brutal, weather wise. The winds are coming in straight off the Gulf of Alaska, howling up the Knik Arm below my house and slamming into the mountains behind us. We're caught between the sea and the mountain passes, which has the effect of compressing the winter winds to truly ferocious speeds. Weather like this is normal here this time of year, Auto Body Shops gleefully call it the Sprung Door Hinge Season.

This morning the temperature is hovering around 13F, according to the weather station feed from the Palmer Airport. Combine the temperature with the 40-60MPH winds (gusts to 80MPH!) and you're looking at wind chill factors anywhere from Angry Velociraptor to Starving T-Rex. It's so damned cold and nasty out, that that the dog won't do more than poke her nose out of the flap in her kennel door - when a husky/Shepard mix sled dog won't go out in it, you know it's friggin' nasty. (yeah, yeah, I know the rest of the country is getting pelted with 'the first big winter storm' of the season. Blah, blah, so what? We had much worse than that a full month ago, didn't even make the local news, let alone the national. Welcome to the party, Midwesterners, you bunch of babies).

Now show of hands: if you had to go out in those conditions, how many of you would, you know, actually wear a jacket, hat, and gloves? You would? Me too. And a sweatshirt. And long johns. And googles. And probably a shotgun (for the velociraptors, duh). You're probably cold just thinking about it, right?

That's because you're not eleven and on your way to school this morning, where it is apparently much more important to look cool (really), than, you know, actually be smart enough not to get frost bitten. (This is also apparently the norm, since half the kids going into school this morning weren't wearing winter gear either. In fact I saw one kid in shorts!) We constantly have to fight with our son to wear proper cold weather gear, you'd think an Alaskan kid would know better, I mean wouldn't you? I'm not the praying type, but if I was I'd pray that he develops some common sense before the velociraptors get him.

Alaska is a beautiful land, it really is. But it can turn deadly on you without warning. Every year a least a dozen people on average are swallowed by the wilderness. Truthfully, we Alaskans are, if not outright amused, then at least not surprised when outsiders manage to do something stupid and get themselves killed because they were either woefully unprepared or woefully lacking in common sense. Case in point: in November of 1996, my wife and I were making the two day trip from the Alaska Ferry Terminal in Haines to Anchorage. This is a distance of around 750 miles, across the Yukon and through some very rough country, especially in winter. The first day took us nearly fourteen hours to cover the 400 mile distance from Haines to the halfway point at the interior town of Tok. The road was a roller coaster of frost heaves and sags, snow drifts and ice, gloriously beautiful - and very, very dangerous. In the Yukon we drove for seven hours without seeing another living soul, it is a vast desolate land in the winter and you best be prepared for it - especially if, like us, you're making the crossing with a new baby in the truck. In Tok, as I recall temperatures that night were around -48F, and at those temperatures even the 80-weight oil in the jeep's differentials will freeze solid if you haven't taken proper precautions. The jeep is equipped with a cold weather package, including electric block heaters and battery blanket, and my anti-freeze is normally mixed for -75F, but that night I filled the Jeep's gas tank and left it running all night. Heat from the running engine kept the transmission warm and radiated enough heat under the vehicle to keep the differential oil from turning to amber and the brake and gas lines from freezing. The next morning we had reindeer sausage and pancakes at Fast Eddy's, had the waitress fill our thermoses with hot coffee, filled the gas tank again, and cheerfully headed out for Glennallen, two hundred miles away - the temperature was -52F. Twenty miles out we passed a young man walking on the side of the road, headed back towards town. No hat, no gloves, light jacket, jeans fashionably torn at the knees with bare skin showing through. Hmmm. A little way further we passed a car on the side of the road. We recognized the kid as a fellow passenger on the Columbia, the Alaskan ferry we had ridden for the last four days up the inland passage from Bellingham, Washington. I was in a hurry to get to Glennallen and then down the very dangerous mountainous Glenn Highway to Anchorage while there was still enough light to see by, and I was tempted to leave the kid to his fate (I wouldn't have, but there was that moment...). My wife turned to me and said "he'll die if we don't go back for him, you know." She was right of course, it was unlikely that anybody else would come along in time, so I found a wide spot in the road and carefully turned the jeep around (we were heavily loaded and had a hitch-haul mounted on the back, turning around in the dark on that road wasn't a casual decision). Total elapsed time from when we first spotted him to the time we picked him up was probably no more than four or fives minutes. He'd been walking no more than ten. And his ears, forehead, cheeks and fingers were already badly frost bitten, feet stone numb, and he was right on the edge of hypothermia. I doubt he would have been able to keep moving for more than another fifteen minutes. We got him in the jeep, wrapped him a polar-fleece emergency blanket and gave him a cup of coffee - and I headed back into Tok (didn't see another car the whole way, stupid would have been out there a long time if we hadn't turned around when we did). Along the way we got the story out of him, he was from Washington State, coming up to see his dad in Anchorage for the holidays. He hadn't winterized his car (even for the milder Washington climate, no snow tires, no arctic anti-freeze, no block heaters), hadn't brought hat or gloves, a heavy jacket, long johns, or even a decent set of boots. He didn't have an emergency kit, no blankets or sleeping bag, no matches, nothing. He'd gotten up that morning and left Tok an hour before us. He hadn't left his car running during the night and didn't have a block heater to plug in. I was surprised that his car had even started that morning. He hadn't waited for the vehicle to warm up and twenty miles from town he noticed that he still didn't have any heat, even though the temperature gauge on his dash was pegged above the redline. Odd, he thought, but what the hell, it'll thaw out - that's when the engine seized up and he coasted to a stop (I feel like I should add "and then the wolves began to howl" but I won't). Long story short we got him back into Tok and to the emergency station. I stuck around long enough to make sure he was going to be OK, then we headed back out for Anchorage.

We were already pretty savvy survivalists, even then, but that incident impressed on me just how brutal the Alaskan wilderness can be, and just how quickly the technology we depend on for our survival can fail. You can die up here, very quickly, without proper preparation and common sense. We never go into the bush without emergency equipment - even for a Sunday afternoon hike in Hatcher's Pass. Our vehicles always have emergency kits, even if we're just headed into Anchorage from our house in Palmer. I've tried to impress on my son the importance of being prepared but he's eleven and looking cool is more important to him than dressing properly. He's a kid and I guess that's normal, but, damn, I hope he develops some common sense before it's too late.