Frankenfish

Coming from Hawaii, I obviously like seafood. Because of that, I try to keep up with all of the trendy seafood news more than I would keep up with other not so important things, like politics or what drug test(s) Lindsay Lohan is failing now. So you can imagine what I was thinking (hint: it was “huh?”) when I read this story.

Now genetically modified organisms have been a subject of debate for awhile. On one hand, you could get more out of the animals and feed everybody in the world. On the other hand, you could start sprouting tentacles from your back.

Now as a person who was asleep for a large portion (99%) of the only genetics-related class I ever took, I’m a little foggy as to how this whole genetically-modified stuff actually works. I mean when you read the story it sounds like they just put three different species of fish in the water, turned on some Marvin Gaye, lit some candles, turned out the lights and waited for things to get freaky. A friend told me they use DNA splicing or something, but that doesn’t sound nearly as fun. Unless maybe the scientists are listening to Marvin Gaye and saying “Oh yeeaah” in really deep voices while they are splicing.

Regardless of how it happens, we do know what we end up with. The “frankenfish” is twice as big as a normal salmon but takes half as long to mature. Personally, salmon is my least favorite fish, but if this whole experiment means that when I order a salmon filet I get a huge chunk of meat the size of Snooki’s poof then I’m all for it.

In fact, I say they start making other genetic changes to animals. Like they should make fish that have legs and can walk around on land so that the darn state of Colorado can actually have fresh seafood. Not chunks of tuna that have been frozen so long that you could use them as dry ice. And don’t try to tell me that Colorado has fresh fish. Catfish and tilapia are not fish. They eat dirt or something because that is the texture that they have when you eat them. I don’t trust fish that swim in rivers. People pee in rivers and throw rocks in there. I much prefer the ocean, which is much cleaner, at least when BP isn’t dumping oil into it.

They should also breed fish without bones. I mean, I’ve watched fish in aquariums and I still don’t see what they need bones for. Jellyfish live in the ocean don’t need bones, and frankly if all I had to do all day was float around in the ocean (which actually describes me on my breaks in Hawaii) I think even I wouldn’t need them. This way, I would not have to work around bones when I try to eat fish. As an official lazy person, I don’t like food that requires more calories to eat than you get from actually eating it. This is why I rarely eat crabs or pistachios.

While genetically modifying animals opens up a world of genius possibilities such as the ones I have proposed, it also opens up a can of worms. (Haha get it? Worms? Because you catch fish with worms? Oh never mind. You people have no sense of humor). Every sci-fi killer animal movie I have ever watched has begun with scientists experimenting on some sort of animal, and trust me, I have watched a ton of these movies. It’s normally all I do on weekends.

Because of these movies I have a natural distrust of scientists. For one thing they never experiment on cute, cuddly, non-threatening animals like koalas. No, they experiment on sharks and crocodiles and generally things with large teeth. The next thing you know, large killer animals are eating women running around in bikinis that are somehow bulletproof (the animals, not the bikinis). I always yell at the screen “You idiots of course the killer animal is going to escape its small cage! Now it’s going to go and terrorize a group of students on spring break and eat the minorities first but somehow make the two main characters fall in love!”

These scientists are saying that all this genetics mumbo jumbo is safe, since these fish are apparently engineered to be sterile. I guess this should mean that the possibility of large killer salmon terrorizing the South is low (and praise the Lord, there is already a movie about that very scenario). But I don’t care if they are supposedly sterile. Marvin Gaye can get anyone in the mood…

Shark Attack

So it’s Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, which is apparently a much bigger deal than I realized. Every other status update on Facebook this week has expressed some sort of excitement over shark week. To be honest, I probably will be one of the few people who won’t be watching, since I’m busy packing for my moving day (and by “packing” I mean “eating all of the food in my refrigerator”).

Although there are other reasons I’ve never really watched shark week. For one thing, I have a strict policy against watching educational television channels, so for the most part the Discovery Channel is off limits. Plus, as a person who grew up on an island in the middle of an ocean infested with them, I am not fascinated by sharks. I am scared s**tless by them. Oh sure, for people who live in a landlocked state it’s fun to watch a shark rip apart fish, since the odds of any Coloradoan encountering a shark in their lifetime is about as low as the odds of Mel Gibson ever getting invited to a Bar Mitzvah.

But when I watch these shows, all I can think is “hey, that beach looks awfully familiar…” When I see open ocean, I want to think of dolphins and whales and other animals that don’t have many teeth. I don’t want go kayaking on the bay and constantly have to picture this. If you have ever seen a shark in person, you stop thinking “wow what magnificent and amazing creatures.” You start thinking “somebody shoot that thing with a goddam bazooka before it gets any closer.”

I remember a year or two ago we were fishing on a boat when we hooked up a fish. After fighting it for a few seconds, I all of a sudden noticed that the line got a lot lighter. Finally, I reeled up the fish and realized why: I had only half a fish on my line. That’s when we all peered into the water and saw a shark just cruising around our boat. Now this was only a six-foot long reef shark, but still we all immediately ran to the center of the boat and began debating who we would throw off the boat first to distract the shark while the rest of us motored away.

So the last thing I need is to watch a show telling me how deadly sharks are. I definitely don’t need a show telling me sharks can do this. Like I have always said, people always bring up that whole “bees kill more people than sharks,” but that is only because sharks can’t fly, but apparently they are learning. There are few animals in the world that would be scarier if they suddenly gained the ability to fly (ticks would be one). Then of course the show tells you interesting little facts, like apparently great white sharks are attracted by the color yellow, which, as an Asian, worries me just a bit.

Of course I do sort of feel sorry for the sharks on the show. I mean, they stick a diver in the water who proceeds to poke the shark in the stomach with a prod for five minutes and then sound surprised when the sharks attack. But at least they get free dead fish out of it. I bet sharks actually look forward to Shark Week almost as much as we do. It’s like a free all you can eat buffet plus you get to be on TV and try and bite biologists with funny English accents. I’m just concerned where these TV shows are being hosted, because I don’t want sharks getting used to free food off the coast of Kona.

Although when you think about it, it’s sort of ironic that I am afraid of sharks, since I have eaten way more sharks than sharks have eaten of me. In California I had a shark dish (a bit dry but pretty good) and in Japan I have eaten shark fin soup several times (it’s tasty, but a little disappointing when you find out you can’t see the actual fin in the soup). The Japanese like killing things in the ocean, so of course they fish for sharks. But when they catch a shark, they simply cut off the fins and dump the shark back alive to sink to the bottom of the ocean. PETA might think this is sad, but hey, eels somehow swim without fins and you don’t see them complaining. These things are supposedly the best killing machines in the world, so they need to get in shape. I think all of this TV exposure is going to their heads.

Thar She Blows! (Wait, That Sounds Dirty)

So this past weekend me and two friends were walking to get lunch in the middle of a snowstorm that would have killed a herd of wooly mammoths. About twenty feet from the restaurant, we happened to run into several environmental activists. Of course, by “ran into” I mean that this crazy girl ran at us and just sort of started to yell at us and gesture frantically and point at us in a threatening manner with her clipboard.

She explained that she was from a group called Green Peace. Now, I assume that this is a very popular group in Boulder simply because a bunch of them signed up thinking that it somehow involved either marijuana or Heinekens. Sadly, that is not what this girl wanted to talk to us about. She then began to rant on about how Barack Obama wanted to start whaling again and all of the poor whales are going to die. This, as she made very clear, was unacceptable. Once she figured out I was from Hawaii (I’m not sure what gave me away, but it could have been the fact that I was wearing slippers and shorts in a blizzard or that my shirt said “HAWAII FIRE DEPARTMENT” in big letters across it), she attempted to use me as an example. No, not of whales you jerk; of people who presumably love whales.

Then came the part that all three of us knew was coming. “How can we save the whales” you ask? Apparently by giving them money. That’s right, by giving them money every month you can personally save a whale. Maybe you get a picture of the whale you saved and you can write it letters and everything. Now we of course politely told this girl that while we love the Earth as much as the next apathetic SUV-driving citizen, we are college students and we barely have enough money for ourselves, much less whales.

Now normally at this point, these environmentalist people just give you a sad face, but let you go on your way. But apparently this girl did not read that chapter of the guide book, because she then started to try and make us change our minds. Of course she got off on the wrong foot right off the bat, because she suggested in a condescending tone of voice that we should give up our beer money every month to save the whales. This offended me; who is she to assume that we drink? Haha I’m just kidding we weren’t offended. Amused would probably be a better word. She might as well have asked us to shoot ourselves so they could give our hearts to transplant patients.

She then tried to guilt us into signing up. She told us how we were the first people that had stopped to listen to them all day, and they were beginning to get demoralized. I wanted to tell her that maybe the reason nobody was stopping was that they were standing outside in a blizzard. I took a look around and saw about three people outside. She probably would have had more success recruiting someplace with more people walking about, like the moon.

Now, we are standing out in this weather the whole time this crazy chick is rambling on about whales. There was now about three inches of snow on our heads, and we still had not eaten. So in the politest way we could, we walked away in mid-sentence. Or at least two of us did; the guy she was making eye-contact at that particular moment was stuck there for a little while longer. This is what we call the “buddy system,” always being with somebody who gets the short end of the stick instead of you.

Anyway, several days later while I was watching Obama sign the health care bill into law, I remembered what the girl had said about Obama legalizing whaling (and I’m almost 100 percent sure that I was the only person who has ever thought about whales while watching C-SPAN). So I looked it up and as I expected, she was absolutely right about Obama wanting to legalize whaling. Except for the “Obama” part. There is someone who wants to legalize whaling: the whalers (surprise!). But Obama has not introduced any such bill. Even if he did, I’m not sure how I would feel. I mean, the girl was right that as someone from Hawaii, I have seen my fair share of whales. But I don’t know if I would go as far as she did and call them “gorgeous creatures” (I reserve that type of distinction for myself and Megan Fox). I mean, I can’t eat them so I don’t love them, and they can’t eat me, so I don’t hate them. As far as whales go I’m an emphatic “Ehhh.”

Except for Free Willy. Free Willy was one of my favorite movies growing up as a kid (and apparently they are coming out with a fourth one). I used to always watch it with my sister at my grandmother’s house. Of course we also used to have a National Geographic video on how they viciously eat seals (although apparently that’s not all they eat). But regardless I like killer whales so much I almost considered signing up to help save the whales. But then I remembered that killer whales are not actually whales, they are orcas. So I didn’t sign up. Anyways, speaking of black and white things that die in amusement parks, I leave you with Michael Jackson’s music video for Free Willy. Enjoy, and feel free to donate your beer money to me. Mine mysteriously disappeared.

It's Raining Cats and Dogs

So this past week my mom recruited me to take her and one of our cats to the vet for his checkup. Like an idiot I of course said I would, mainly because I was so happy it wasn’t me going to the doctor for once. Then I got into the car with the cat and I suddenly remembered why I don’t like taking the cats to the vet. Somehow, the cats know where they are going, and they begin to make this loud, very irritating sound that resembles what a baby would sound like if you hung it by its nostrils. While my mom is trying to comfort Chewy (named because of his habit of gnawing on everything he sees including toes and the Chewbacca like sound he used to make when he was a kitten), I am driving as fast as I can to the vet. At least this one stays still; our other cat, Hawkins (I swear he already had that name at the shelter; I do not have some sort of unhealthy man crush on Cody Hawkins), will crawl around near the pedals and generally try as hard as he can to make me crash.

Of course, once I see what they go through at the vets I don’t blame them for preferring to crash. For one thing, they have to sit in the waiting room with a bunch of dogs. Oh sure, you may have to sit in the waiting room with some guy with the swine flu and a lady with boils or something, but you rarely have to sit next to someone who is trying to bite you (and if that has happened to you, I apologize, but the doctor said I’m cured of rabies now). When the vet finally does take Chewy in, she immediately wants to take his temperature. Unfortunately for animals, this doesn’t involve his mouth. He of course is sitting on his tail and scooting away from the vet with his butt pinned to the table like he was trying to scratch a bad itch. Eventually though the vet does grab his tail and gently says “It’s going to be okay.” I thought this was pretty stupid to be talking to the cat, but then I realized she was actually talking to me. I saw what she was doing and immediately looked away and suddenly became very interested in the heartworm poster on the wall (heartworms are another one of the really painful things that animals have to deal with that as far as I know humans don’t get, like hairballs). And don’t even get me started on the whole concept of neutering.

As if this all weren’t bad enough, the vet said that Chewy had to lose some weight and that I should feed him less. I of course mentioned to the doctor that since as far as I could tell all cats did was eat and sleep, it was a wonder all cats aren’t just round jiggly balls of fur. In fact, I like cats mainly because their lifestyle is very similar to mine. But the vet insisted that Chewy needed to lose weight (that’s the convenient thing about being a vet, the patients can’t complain about your diagnosis). So in addition to being taken to the vet, Chewy is now constantly complaining to me because I don’t feed him as often as before and has resorted to stealing Hawkins’ food (not that I blame him, I do the same thing with my family). Thankfully Chewy is not a dog, or the vet would have told me to walk him, which of course means I have to walk, which I don’t want to do. After all, the vet never said I had to lose weight.

That is just one of the reasons that I like cats way better than dogs. In fact, I have to be completely honest, but I hate dogs. Now I have made fun of people’s race, religion, and appearance, yet the statement I just wrote will probably get the most negative reaction of anything I’ve ever written. Dog people are very enthusiastic about their dogs, and whenever I admit I hate dogs they all say the same thing: “How can anybody hate dogs?” Well, if you hate large, stupid, slobbering, stink things that take dumps all over the place, then you can hate dogs (and hockey players for that matter). Oh sure, puppies are cute. But then again even I was a cute baby at one point and look how that turned out. Just like with me, they start out small and cute but then they get big and hairy and they start humping random things and defecating everywhere.

But dog people are like “But dogs are so smart.” For some reason these people think that dogs are geniuses and can do things like smell cancer and dial 911 and sense storms and take SATs for football players and write poetry or whatever. Oh sure there was Lassie, but she just seemed smart because she lived with a retarded kid who kept getting stuck in wells and lawn tractors and drowning in rivers. (By the way, did you know all the dogs that played Lassie were actually males? So why didn’t they just make the Lassie a male? Is it so unbelievable that there is such a thing as a smart male that they had to make it a female?)

So of course dog people are like “Well what about seeing eye dogs and drug sniffing dogs?” Well, I’m sure if cats were big enough you could have seeing eye cats since all seeing eye dogs have to do as far as I can tell is not lead their owners out into the middle of the street and fetch them beer. And yes, dogs can sniff out drugs in bags, but so can some of my high school classmates. Besides, pigs can find truffles, but you don’t see anybody talking about how smart pigs are. Now, I’m not saying my cats are Harvard material; in fact my two cats take after me and are pretty much retarded. When we first went to the shelter we saw Hawkins sleeping. In the litter box. Although to be fair to him, as we found out he didn’t know what a litter box was for. He would dig a hole in the box and take a dump on the hill of litter instead of in the hole.

Dog people respond by saying “Dog’s love is unconditional.” For instance, my sister told me a story about a dog in Japan that used to wait for its owner by a train stop. One day the owner died, but the dog refused to leave the train stop and eventually died there. Now, personally this just proves to me that dogs are stupid. Besides, I don’t want unconditional love and constant companionship in the form of something drooling on my feet. At least cats are independent and don’t have to be constantly doted on; I don’t think I would have the energy to keep up with a dog.

Of course every time my mom and sister see a puppy, they get those goo goo eyes and all they can think about is that dog. But where they see a puppy I see something that will eventually grow into a loud, barking, pooping machine. So I’ve come up with a business idea. Using genetic engineering, I’ll breed a puppy that doesn’t have a temperature slot (if you get my drift) so it can’t poop and thus dies after two weeks, about the attention span of most children nowadays when it comes to pets. I’ll sell them for $30 and become rich and famous, at which point I can hire a personal trainer. For Chewy that is.

Save the Fur Coats

I am ashamed to say that while I’ve been in Hawaii, I haven’t really kept up with the goings-on in my adopted state of Colorado aside from hearing that a bunch of tornadoes landed there. So you can imagine my excitement when I read that Colorado has seen a dramatic increase in the birth of baby lynx. Okay, so I actually couldn’t care less about lynx. I care more about the recent National Hockey League’s draft than I do lynx, and I really do not care about the NHL’s draft. I didn’t even watch the draft and I know what happened: some team in Canada or something drafted some Russian guy with five teeth and one eyebrow and seven z’s in his name.

Anyway, I figured I should find out why lynx being born were such a big deal. I mean, something has to be a pretty big deal to get news coverage during the same week Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Billy Mays die, right? (In all seriousness though, I am truly saddened by the King of Pop’s passing. The guy may have grown up to be a perverted albino elf, but I count the “Thriller” album as the third greatest invention behind the wheel and TV. Whenever I dance in my room to “Wanna Be Startin’ Something,” I will miss him.) Getting back on topic, a lynx apparently is a bobcat with pointier ears, and they are supposedly an endangered species. This of course means that lynx have more laws protecting them than the Pope and that PETA has their conniving little minds involved. I’m sure they threw themselves extravagant “Save the Lynx” fundraisers with champagne so expensive one bottle could have bought an entire ranch for the five remaining lynx in Colorado.

In the meantime, zoos of course are furiously trying to breed more lynx so they can set them loose in the wild, where they of course die. I mean, they are endangered for a reason, right? I was always taught that if a species is dying out, that means it generally sucks at life and according to Charles Darwin they should not breed. Or at least this was the reason my ninth-grade health teacher gave me when he said I should be neutered (true story, he told me that). But never-the-less, here are these zoo keepers furiously trying to breed more lynx. What’s that like anyway? I mean, do they do like an eHarmony thing to find matching lynx? I imagine it would be awkward being forced to have sex with someone you may not even like to ensure the survival of the species, with people watching you no less. That’s a lot of pressure.

But apparently some brave/horny lynx in Colorado have finally accomplished what teen girls are somehow able to do every five minutes: get pregnant. The baby lynx are apparently going to be released into the Colorado wilderness, which concerns me. I for one would rather not have large predatory animals wandering in the Colorado wilderness, especially since nowadays the Colorado wilderness is awfully close to Colorado not-wilderness, which is where I spend a lot of my time. I have enough on my hands trying to dodge hippies and liberals, I don’t need these things to worry about. Why don’t we relocate them to someplace with fewer people and more wide open space, like North Dakota? I’m sure they won’t mind. Here, let’s ask them now: Raise your hands if you don’t mind us putting lynx in your backyards? Let’s see, five hands. Well, for North Dakota that’s more than half the population, so majority rules.

Now don’t get me wrong; I love the outdoors. Just this past week, my old Boy Scout troop went on their annually weekly summer camp, and I drove out to join them for one day. The second I got out into the wilderness away from cars and cell phone reception I felt relaxed. There’s something about sitting around a campfire that puts you at ease. I’ll tell you what that something is: knowing I won’t get eaten by bears. You see, I like the outdoors in Hawaii because the biggest animals running around are chickens. But on the mainland, the outdoors contains large animals that are capable of eating me before I eat them, which is my qualification to be a dangerous animal (which is why I don’t consider snakes dangerous). I remember I once took a trip to Canada and we were trout fishing on a lake. My dad and I were fishing a few hundred feet from the camp site when we smelled the others cooking chicken. The first though I had was “Mmmmm.” But my second thought was “wait, if I can smell this, can’t the bears?” It was the most afraid I have ever been eating food; half of the chicken ended up in my ears because I was always turning my head back and forth just waiting for some large bear or moose to come charging into camp and eat me.

Oh well. It looks like we’re just going to have to deal with these lynx for a little while until some rich person needs a new fur coat. In the meantime, I think the threat of lynx attack should qualify me to be listed as an endangered species and be enrolled in a breeding program. I heard that Megan Fox is also an endangered species…

F**k, F**k, Goose

It has come to my attention that there is a threat facing the United States that nobody is addressing: geese. Oh, laugh at me now. You may think that there are more pressing issues at the moment, like the War in Iraq, the economy, and the new season of American Idol. But trust me, if we do not start paying attention to these geese, our country will fall.

First of all, I deal with geese a lot. Near our dorm are two large ponds which we believe the school built to make the area a scenic little walk-about. Needless to say, it may be the ugliest body of water on Earth. Nobody cleans it, so it just has this strange smell and greenish color to it for most of the year. People piss in it, throw random furniture in it, and drive abandoned maintenance vehicles into it. For most of the year, the pond is home to various fish, turtles, ducks and large hostile wads of algae. But none of these animals bother anybody, they just go about their business of growing large radioactive tumors.

The geese on the other hand, are a nuisance. They don’t stay there all the time, but flocks fly in every once in awhile and stay for a day or two. In that time, they manage to drop an inch-thick layer of goose crap on every walking surface available. This is especially problematic for me, since I normally wear slippers and have gotten geese crap on my foot on more than one occasion.

Normally winter gives us a nice reprieve from these stupid geese because the pond freezes over. This year however, it has been unusually warm, and while I love warm weather, it has caused the geese to return from whatever warm climate they go to in the winter (hell). The other week while playing basketball, we heard an ominous honking in the distance. It’s kind of like in war movies, where the soldiers hear the buzz of planes coming. Chris immediately said “these geese are going to crap on me, just watch.” Sure enough, as they passed over, I see something dropping out of the sky. Chris moves just in time to watch a pile of goose crap land where he was just standing. Now don’t tell me that the goose wasn’t aiming, because I swear, if Chris had not moved, the crap would have landed directly on his forehead.

Ever since then, we’ve had these gooses (hey, you don’t say a herd of meese do you?) wandering around turning our sidewalks into a fertilizer factory. I have proposed crapping where they walk to show them what it feels like. Unfortunately, I was informed that since the geese walk where people walk (and geese are generally retarded), I would scare more people than geese. (Yeah, I thought it was a good idea. As I realized the other day, good ideas are pretty rare. I can go for days without having one. In fact, realizing that I don’t ever have good ideas was probably the best idea I’ve had in weeks.) Some kids have started a brave effort to touch the geese, but I feel that molesting them will not be enough. I mean, I once nailed a goose in the back with a half-empty Gatorade bottle and it didn’t fly away.

Now you may be thinking to yourself “well of course, geese are a nuisance, but that’s it.” Well need I remind you what geese can do when they put their mind to it? I’m sure you all recall the plane that landed in the Hudson River about a month ago. The plane blew an engine shortly after take-off, and the pilot was forced to land in the city. Fortunately, the pilot resisted the urge to crash into the new Yankees Stadium and safely set the plane down in the Hudson River. Everybody got out safely and the pilot was invited to the Superbowl and all was well, right? Lost in the whole situation though was what caused the crash. As it turns out, it was a flock of geese. The pilots just remember seeing geese and then smelling chicken nuggets. Now, you tell me what geese were doing high enough in the air to bring down a plane. I’ll tell you what they were doing, they were attacking our country.

Who are they taking their orders from? Well, ask yourself where Canadian geese are from. That’s right, Canada! The same evil empire which has already snuck various WMDs into our country in the form of hockey, Celine Dion, and cheap marijuana. Have you ever tried to give orders to a goose? I bet you looked pretty stupid. That’s because they only take orders in Canadian. Try and give your orders like this: “Eh, why don’t you, eh, go, like, eh, attack the, eh, United States, eh. Eh?” Do you know what will happen? They still won’t listen to you, cause you missed a few “eh”s. Anyways, we need to boycott all things Canadian to show we are serious about addressing this imminent threat (it shouldn’t be too hard, I mean the only things I might miss are Egg McMuffins). If we don’t, pretty soon a whole bunch of geese, beavers, moose, hockey players, and Avril Lavigne are going to attack us without warning. The other night while I was walking back to the dorms, we saw about twenty geese standing in a perfect v-formation, standing perfectly still and all facing the same direction: our dorm. On some Canadian signal, they will attack. What did you say? Celine Dion is coming to Denver on February 24^th? Uh oh…