Since I’ve managed to tune out this movie going on about war
and terrorism and corporate corruption and chopping down the
forests and September 11th and the West Nile virus and all of the
other things that have so many people freaked out because they don’t
realize that this is but a tiny second in the billion-year scheme of
things, I have no idea if we’ve bombed Iraq with Martha Stewart yet. I
have turned my attention to goats and sperm and nude lab mice
and testicles. Yes, I’m following the studies being conducted by some scientists in
Pennsylvania who are now grafting goat and pig sperm into lab mice in hopes of one
day being able to produce rare endangered animals and allow men who’ve lost their
testicles to still have children through the mice somehow. Does this mean men are
going to be bigger rats than they already are? Who knows? The way it works, I think, is
that they graft the sperm into the mouse and, later, when you’re out of sperm, you get
it from the mouse somehow. This is the explanation I read: “The researchers said
they hope to use the mice as ‘bio-incubators’ to grow sperm cells for endangered
species whose survival is threatened by a lack of sexually mature males.” WHAT?
Sexually mature males? Is that an oxymoron or a misprint? I don’t know. Goat sperm in
mice. Human sperm in mice. Pig sperm in mice. Somehow, I have this vision of a mice
giving birth to a goat, or vice versa, or a woman giving birth to a goat. Is mythology
being revisited here? I also have a vision of a
goat’s testicles exploding and a mouse coming out. BOOM! Goat testes blowing up and
the mouse flying out and having a ball. It’s all kind of neat, don’t you think? But not
as neat as a comment from one of the scientists: “Anything done with humans
would have to undergo scrutiny first by ethics boards and the whole nine yards. This
is nothing you’d want to try at home.” Well, no shit. I can see it now: Me trying to
extract sperm from a goat in my living room and graft it to a mouse. It would be kind
of fun to be doing that just when a Jehovah’s Witness comes calling. “Hi. Have you
been saved by the Lord?” “Well, yes, I have,
and now, I am busy trying to get sperm out of a goat! Do you think being saved was the
right thing to do?” Maybe I could try this with
my new pet grasshopper that lives in my den. He’s very beautiful and sits on my coffee table
in the morning while I read. I’ve named him Alfred and have grown quite attached to
him. I just hope his entire family doesn’t decide
to move in. But he’s a cutie. I wonder if grasshoppers have sperm. Maybe I could
clone him with a goat and have a goat that can jump up on the ceiling. Now,
that would really lessen the possibility of anyone
staying in the house for any length of time. It would be as good as when I had my
pet squirrel, Mister, whose favorite thing to do was jump up on the arm of a chair a
newcomer to the house was sitting in, sending said newcomer flying into the air
and screaming. It was a miraculous way to get rid of people from our church who
always came by to see where we had been for so long. I guess the possibilities here are
endless. I may just have to get a goat this weekend and get started. In the meantime,
here’s a brief look at what’s going on around town this week. Tonight, there’s not a whole
lot going on, but if you haven’t seen The
Dempseys in a while, check ’em out at Elvis Presley’s Memphis.
Lis Harvey is at the Map Room. The
Teresa Pate Jazz Trio is playing in the M Bar at Melange. And
The Domino Kings and The Central
Standards are at the Hi-Tone.
